Summary
The mobilization to defeat George W. Bush was innovative, passionate, and ultimately insufficient. But its fusion of movement and machine could yet transform the political landscape. Here, Gitlin explores how the movement that rose to challenge Bush may yet portend a historic turnaround for the left.
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Extract
A Gathering Swarm
THE HILLY SWATHS OF HIGHWAY around Scranton, Pennsylvania, run thick with Wal-Mart trucks. A lot of the cars streaming down the road are festooned with magnetized yellow ribbons. Along the tired residential streets of Scranton, the state's sixth-largest city, American flags are more common than weeds, or even the little statues of the Virgin Mary that adorn the front lawns of weathered wood and brick houses. One hotel features a black POW-MIA flag. There's a lot of past here, a lot of patriotism, a lot of true memory and some false.
Around the Lackawanna County Courthouse, a handsome pile of gray stone that dominates downtown, stands a forest of memorials, among them monuments to George Washington, to William McKinley, to two local soldiers who won the Congressional Medal of Honor, and to John Mitchell, "Champion of Labor, Defender of Huma...See the full content of this document
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