City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the United States

In City Trenches, Ira Katznelson looks at an important phenomenon of the sixties-the resurgence of community activism-and explains its sources, challenges, and failure. Katznelson argues that the American working class perceives workplace politics and community politics as separate and distinct spheres, a perception that defeats attempts to address grievances or raise demands that break the rules of local politics or of bread-and-butter unionism. He supports his thesis with an absorbing case study of Washington Heights-Inwood, a multiethnic working-class community in Manhattan.