The Grass Roots Primer ed. by James Robertson, John Lewallen

Abstract

Reviews 181 The Grass Roots Primer. Edited by James Robertson and John Lewallen. (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1975. 287 pages, $7.15.) The Grass Roots Primer is just that. It is not a Sierra Club pretty picture book to place on coffee tabletops, nor an armchair excursion into natural scenic wonders. The Grass Roots Primer is a handbook for the protection of not only the spectacular land features, but also the land upon which an individual lives and the air and water shared. The function of the book is to inspire the reader and help him to act constructively in the environmental movements in local issues at the local level. The book has three major divisions: Grass Roots Heroes (case studies), Steps to Power, and Putting Teeth into the Law. The case studies function as a reveille — a roll call to action through an examination of how other individuals organized and acted. Steps to Power synthesizes the basic steps of constructive action shared by the nineteen issues discussed. The third division is an introduction to the legal foundation upon which environmental preservation stands. The nineteen case studies are written from the experiences of partici­ pants in local issues in New York, California, and nine other states, plus British Columbia. The cases include one man’s fighting against disposable beverage cans and bottles, residents of a small Vermont town rejecting an outsider’s plan for a zoo in their community, Hopi and Navajo Indians speaking to save the San Francisco Peaks outside of Flagstaff from a local company’s plans to build a ski village, and a 65-year-old woman continuing her fourteen-year battle to save a marsh. Supplementing the prose are occasional illustrations, cartoons, photo­ graphs, maps, and song lyrics. Topical headings interrupt the text for easy scanning, and in even larger type are key phrases, sentences, or concepts. The generous margins contain a substantial amount of background informa­ tion, testimonials, or editor’s notes. There are no footnotes. The case studies serve to inspire and encourage the reader. And they do. The Sierra Club is not backslapping its own membership, but presenting folk supporting local movements initiated within and without this national organization. Most impressive, and surprising, is the sophistication with which these people learned to move. Knowing the world operates on an economic plane, the environmentalists involved learned to not only support their cause with aesthetic principles, but also with direct economic criteria and ecological impact. The grassroots people are learning to move con­ structively and carefully without issuing statements that could cost them their case. Distilled from the nineteen different local issues, the editors arrived at a list of 23 steps to power. Cross references from the case studies support the steps. In a few instances examples other than those found in the nineteen case studies are cited. Putting Teeth in the Law briefly acquaints the reader with twelve 182 Western American Literature Federal agencies and their jurisdictions of environmental control plus major Federal environmental laws and amendments. The state land-use laws sec­ tion is the least developed of the three. The characters in Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang did not follow the 23 steps to power advocated by the primer, nor did they stay within the law. The Grass Roots Primer is a more reliable route for grass roots activism. MARY ELLEN ACKERMAN Death Valley National Monument The Wichita Poems. By Michael Van Walleghen. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975. 46 pages, $6.95.) Michael Van Walleghen is a controlled, highly skilled poetic craftsman. These are well-made poems that sustain a quiet, sophisticatedly simple tone with short, spare lines in which every word is carefully selected and placed exactly where it has to be: “On a cloudy day on a day the clouds the lake the late small sun seem stopped and the gray birds dive like stones . . Not all of the poems are as overtly shaped to the devices of language as these opening lines of “The Light,” but the same exacting precision is found throughout this volume. The book is worth the reading if only to see this display of workmanship in the short line and the...