The story of how Black and Brown parents, students and members of low-income communities of color organized to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline in their local schools and built a movement that spread across the country. In Willful Defiance, Mark R. Warren documents how Black and Brown parents, students, and low-income communities of color organized to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline in their local schools and built an intersectional movement that spread across the country. Examining organizing processes in Mississippi, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other localities, he shows how relatively small groups of community members built the power to win policy changes to reduce suspensions and expulsions by combining deep local organizing with resources from the national movement. As a result, over the course of twenty years, the movement to combat the school-to-prison pipeline resulted in falling suspension rates across the country and began to make gains in reducing police presence in schools, especially in places where there have been sustained organizing and advocacy efforts. In documenting the struggle organizers waged to build national alliances led by community groups and people most impacted by injustice rather than Washington-based professional advocates, Warren offers a new model for movements that operate simultaneously at local, state and national levels, while primarily oriented to support and spread local organizing. In doing so, he argues for the need to rethink national social justice movements as interconnected local struggles whose victories are lifted and spread, In the end, the book highlights lessons from the school-to-prison pipeline movement for organizers, educators, policymakers and a broader public seeking to transform deep-seated and systemic racism in public schools and the broader society.

"Mark Warren's comprehensive case study of the Industrial Areas Foundation is a major contribution to the growing literature on coalition politics. Indeed, it is the best empirical study ever written on multiracial collaboration to address social inequality. Featuring careful and systematic analysis of rich data on local organizing, "Dry Bones Rattling" will be ancinfluential book and is must reading for those committed to revitalizing American democracy through interracial political cooperation."--William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

""Dry Bones Rattling" is timely, important, and inspiring. Timely, because this study of the most successful faith-based movement for social justice in America appears just as faith-based social initiatives have reached the top of the national political agenda. Important, because it is a deeply grounded contribution to the rapidly growing field of social capital theory. Inspiring, because by showing how civic malaise has been reversed in some of the nation's most impoverished, ethnically divided settings, this book should raise the aspirations of democratic reformers. Must reading for social theorists and civic activists."--Robert Putnam, Harvard University, author of "Making Democracy Work"

"Mark Warren has written a comprehensive and insightful analysis of a profoundly important community-based movement. I have seen how the Industrial Areas Foundation organizations this book examines have revitalized communities across America, both physically and spiritually. In San Antonio, the city I know best, I watched Communities Organized for Public Service empower poor neighborhoods and give voice to their concerns. Capable new leaders emerged and thecity entered a new era of citizen democracy. "Dry Bones Rattling" provides a compelling eyewitness account of the transformations these organizations bring, showing us a sacred force rooted in human dignity at work."--Henry Cisneros, Chairman and CEO of American CityVista

""Dry Bones Rattling" is an important addition to the literature on community organizations, populist politics, and--more than anything--religion-based politics."--James Morone, Brown University

"Original scholarship built on strong ethnographic work, Warren's book is among the best of the outstanding scholarship on the dilemmas of American democracy that has emerged in recent years. As such it will be highly useful to specialists on grassroots movements and on the intersection of religion and politics in American life, as well as broadly useful to political scientists and political sociologists. This is excellent scholarly work on an important political phenomenon that until now has eluded adequate scholarly attention."--Richard L. Wood, University of New Mexico, author of "Faith in Action"

While many white Americans played serious roles in the abolition movement against slavery and in the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties, among other efforts, their stories are not well known. Perhaps this unawareness is a logical consequence of the sense that white racism has outweighed antiracism through history, but if we are interested in the possibilities of social change, we need to understand both the processes that perpetuate racism as well as those that lead in the direction of racial justice. By looking at the stories of these white activists, we can determine how people who are not themselves victims of discrimination come to develop a commitment towards racial justice.
Fire in the Heart presents the first in-depth study of the processes through which white Americans become activists for racial justice. The book reports powerful accounts of the development of racial awareness drawn from in-depth interviews with fifty white activists in the fields of community organizing, education and criminal justice reform. Drawing extensively on the rich interview material, Mark Warren shows how white Americans can develop a commitment to racial justice not just because it is the right thing to do but because they embrace the cause as their own. Contrary to much contemporary thinking on racial issues-like the idea that we can increase white commitment to racial justice simply by teaching people about the realities of racism or by appealing to whites to see their material interests in such justice-Warren finds that such cognitive and rational processes alone do little to move whites to action. Rather, the motivation to take and sustain action for racial justice is profoundly moral and relational. Warren shows how white activists come to find common cause with people of color when their core values are engaged, as they build relationships with people of color that lead to caring, and when they develop a vision of a racially just future that they understand to benefit themselves and other whites as well as people of color. Warren reveals the perspectives of white people who are working day-to-day to build not a post-racial America but rather the foundations for a truly multiracial America rooted in a caring, human community with equity and justice at its core.
Fire in the Heart is an unprecedentedly comprehensive examination of the complex dynamics and dilemmas white people face in working in multiracial organizations committed to systemic change in America's racial order, and provides a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the role that white people can play in efforts to promote racial justice.

While many white Americans played serious roles in the abolition movement against slavery and in the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties, among other efforts, their stories are not well known. Perhaps this unawareness is a logical consequence of the sense that white racism has outweighed antiracism through history, but if we are interested in the possibilities of social change, we need to understand both the processes that perpetuate racism as well as those that lead in the direction of racial justice. By looking at the stories of these white activists, we can determine how people who are not themselves victims of discrimination come to develop a commitment towards racial justice.
Fire in the Heart presents the first in-depth study of the processes through which white Americans become activists for racial justice. The book reports powerful accounts of the development of racial awareness drawn from in-depth interviews with fifty white activists in the fields of community organizing, education and criminal justice reform. Drawing extensively on the rich interview material, Mark Warren shows how white Americans can develop a commitment to racial justice not just because it is the right thing to do but because they embrace the cause as their own. Contrary to much contemporary thinking on racial issues-like the idea that we can increase white commitment to racial justice simply by teaching people about the realities of racism or by appealing to whites to see their material interests in such justice-Warren finds that such cognitive and rational processes alone do little to move whites to action. Rather, the motivation to take and sustain action for racial justice is profoundly moral and relational. Warren shows how white activists come to find common cause with people of color when their core values are engaged, as they build relationships with people of color that lead to caring, and when they develop a vision of a racially just future that they understand to benefit themselves and other whites as well as people of color. Warren reveals the perspectives of white people who are working day-to-day to build not a post-racial America but rather the foundations for a truly multiracial America rooted in a caring, human community with equity and justice at its core.
Fire in the Heart is an unprecedentedly comprehensive examination of the complex dynamics and dilemmas white people face in working in multiracial organizations committed to systemic change in America's racial order, and provides a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the role that white people can play in efforts to promote racial justice.