David Sirota is a Denver writer who apparently spends little time in Denver, judging by the traveling he did to piece together his book, “The Uprising.”
To document what Sirota believes is a grassroots revolt of disparate groups against the craven money changers and the corrupt legislators, he visited:
• Montana, where the Democratic governor is using tax revenue to help the truly needy, instead of giving in to Republican legislators who want to further enrich out-of-state wealthy landowners.
• Washington, D.C., where protesters wanting to discontinue the Iraqi invasion are trying to move cowardly legislators to a position of moral opposition against President Bush.
• Albany, N.Y., where the Working Families Party has used effective tactics at polling booths to make inroads on Democratic and Republican party policy initiatives.
• New York City, where television commentator Lou Dobbs mobilizes huge numbers of viewers who want America to reflect traditional values — which, among many meanings, signifies limits on immigration.
• San Diego, where the California Minuteman Civil Defense Corps is policing the border with Mexico, hoping to turn away illegal immigrants.
• Seattle, where the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers is trying to change the corporate cubicle culture.
• Dallas, where individuals who own small amounts of stock in ExxonMobil are pushing for responsible investment policies in the realm of alternative energy resources.
Sirota is a keen observer and writes well. Yet too often his pronouncements about the uprising he purports to observe seem oddly empty.
About the California Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, for example, Sirota writes, “Here at the southern border, the right edge of the uprising is at once predictable and shocking, spontaneous and calculated, uniquely American and uniquely frightening.”
Each individual chapter of the book is interesting. As a unified whole, though, it fails to hang together without the overlay imposed by Sirota.
Perhaps he is correct that an uprising of unaffiliated malcontents will topple self-centered powerful government officials and corporate chieftains from their perches. Based on Sirota’s book, however, the evidence of an effective uprising appears weak.
Steve Weinberg is a freelance writer in Columbia, Mo.
Nonfiction
THE UPRISING: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington, by David Sirota, $25.95
