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INTRODUCTION Here is the real political story, the one most politicians won’t even acknowledge: the reality of the anonymous, disquieting daily struggle of ordinary people, including the most marginalized and vulnerable Americans but also young workers and elders and parents, families and communities, searching for dignity and fairness against long odds in a cruel market world. Everywhere you turn, you’ll ‹nd people who believe they have been written out of the story. Everywhere you turn there’s a sense of insecurity grounded in a gnawing fear that freedom in America has come to mean the freedom of the rich to get richer even as millions of Americans are dumped from the Dream. —bill moyers, Nation, January 22, 2007 The term grassroots was probably coined early in the twentieth century by Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana. Enthusiastic about the new Progressive Party and a champion of Theodore Roosevelt who was its presidential candidate in 1912, Beveridge proudly declared, “This party has come from the grass roots. It has grown from the soil of people’s hard necessities .” That election year, all 15 of Michigan’s electoral votes went to Theodore Roosevelt—the only time the Republican Party lost the state since 1856 when it ‹rst ‹elded a presidential candidate. Roosevelt, this maverick Republican running on the third-party ticket, roused Michigan hearts and votes in part out of “hard necessities,” but he also articulated a vision and version of America that they shared. Roosevelt had rallied his faithful with a platform of reforms and a crusade he promised to lead. Together they would “stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord.”1 Throughout the twentieth century Michigan would be home to nearly every political movement in America that emerged from the grassroots. Citizens organized on behalf of concerns on the “left,” on the “right,” and in the “middle of the road.” These were people not so easily described or explained, whatever the cause or era. This book is about the people who supported movements that others, then and later, would denounce as disgraceful . It is about the members of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s, the followers of Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s, anti-Communists and the John Birch Society in the post–World War II era, the members of the Michigan Militia who ‹rst appeared in the 1990s. And it is about circum- stances in Michigan that prompted men and women to act on behalf of America as they saw it. As soon as Michigan Militia members made their way into public view the scramble for explanations was on: “Who are these people?” Nightly newscasters looked appropriately shocked while the screen shifted to camou›age-clad men toting guns and gas masks across a Michigan pasture. Then, the inevitable follow-up: “What’s going on in Michigan now?” Was it a breeding ground for hate? Journalists searched their back-‹les. Academics provided scholarly perspective. A pattern was not hard to come by, usually starting with Henry Ford who publicized his anti-Semitism alongside his Model T. The Ku Klux Klan nearly elected a mayor of Detroit and burned crosses on the steps of the city hall. Father Coughlin was often labeled the father of “hate radio,”and his notoriety as an anti-Semite rivals that of Henry Ford. The small town of Howell became synonymous with a revived, white-supremacist Klan because Robert Miles, a founder and leader, lived in the vicinity. The Michigan Militia seemed, indeed, on a path well trod by “extremists.” Michigan, the state that produced automobiles and cherries, appeared to be a longtime producer of right-wing groups, a term conjuring up bigotry in mean and ugly forms. To cast the state as a cauldron of hate ignores the other side of the coin. Michigan was a focal point for Progressive reforms in the early part of the century and a pioneer in civil rights legislation by the 1950s; it was home to radical labor activists from the Industrial Workers of the World to the Communist faction in the United Auto Workers. Michigan idealists planned a “peace ship” voyage to end World War I, Michigan students went off to join the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, and Students for a Democratic Society was launched at Port Huron in the 1960s. Ordinary citizens joined Martin Luther King to march through Michigan streets, civil rights advocates headed South as freedom riders, and Michigan’s peace activists faced tear gas and riot sticks...

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