This event is free!
About The Uprising
The Uprising is a work of investigative journalism. It is a firsthand narrative account inside America's new populist movement, from the streets of New York City to the halls of Microsoft to the deserts at the Mexican border. David Sirota reports on this seething popular discontent on both the Right and Left, which is creating a new political movement and roiling the 2008 presidential race.
From the Montana state senate and an antiwar march on Washington, with appearances by Jane Fonda and Sean Penn to an ExxonMobil stockholder meeting in Dallas and the dusty campsite of the California Minutemen guarding the U.S.–Mexico border, Sirota traveled the United States to report on this anger and the populist uprising it is creating—an uprising that is impacting national politics. While wages stagnate, health-care costs rise, and personal debt skyrockets, we still see corporate profits continue to increase, politicians pass tax breaks for the superwealthy, and CEOs pay themselves tens of millions of dollars a year. It is no wonder that a Scripps Howard news service poll in 2006 found “anger against the federal government is at record levels” and that Gallup's 2008 surveys now show the lowest approval of Congress and the President in its entire seven decades of public polling.
The book traces the historical roots of populism and why it is such a powerful force in national politics today. Sirota also traces the age-old efforts to thwart populism, including a close look at the Democratic Party’s construction of the “superdelegate” system now playing a key role in the presidential campaign.
With exclusive reporting from CNN’s Lou Dobbs, to Montana governor Brian Schweitzer, to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, The Uprising provides a fascinating, firsthand adventure at the serrated edges of American politics, and asks the vital question—“Will a real movement emerge from all this rage?”
About David Sirota
David Sirota is a political journalist, nationally syndicated weekly newspaper columnist and bestselling author. He has been a guest on several national news programs, including CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, PBS’s Now with David Brancaccio, and National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation. Sirota was also a twice-weekly guest on Air America’s The Al Franken Show for the show’s entire run. His weekly column, which was launched by Creators Syndicate in 2007, has followed Molly Ivins’s much-loved column and now appears in newspapers with a combined daily circulation of more than 1.6 million readers. Sirota lives in Denver, Colorado.