Citizen Democracy: Political Activists in a Cynical Age

(Paperback, Third Edition)

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Apathy and antipathy toward politics are epidemic. Citizen Democracy provides the antidote. In this revised and updated edition, Stephen E. Frantzich portrays citizens from every walk of liferich and poor, old and young, black and white, male and female, left and right, famous and obscureas they choose to become involved in politics at a level to which readers can relate.

Some of the stories contain unexpected twists. Candy Lightner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, now works as a liquor industry lobbyist and argues that MADD has gone too far. College freshman Gregory Watson reacted to receiving a C on a political science paper by quitting school and becoming the driving force behind passage of a constitutional amendment that had been the subject of his paper. Two young women independently wrote letters of application to the U.S. Naval Academy and in the process moved military education in the direction of gender neutrality.

Citizen Democracy shows ordinary people engaged in extraordinary civic activity. Their causes run the gamut from civil rights to flag burning, from the Internet to the environmentbut their common cause is the fact that they creatively entered the arena of national public policy making and made a difference.

Author Bio

Stephen E. Frantzich is professor of political science at the U.S. Naval Academy.