Don't Blame Us: Grassroots Liberalism in Massachusetts, 1960-1990.

Abstract

“Don’t Blame Us” recasts the conventional narratives of modern liberalism, civil rights, suburban politics, and electoral realignment through an examination of the political culture and grassroots activism in the liberal suburbs of metropolitan Boston between 1960 and 1990. It interweaves the stories of postwar suburban growth and inequality, grassroots social movements and the transformation of both Massachusetts politics and the Democratic Party at the national level during the second half of the twentieth century. This examination of the suburbanization of liberalism revises existing scholarly assessments to demonstrate that the rise of the New Right and Reagan Revolution in the 1970s and 1980s did not mark the demise of liberalism or the Democratic Party. Instead, it illuminates the increasing centrality of suburban voters outside of Boston and throughout the nation in remaking modern liberalism and the Democratic Party. Through a thematic approach with chapters devoted to civil rights, housing, education, growth and development, taxation, environmentalism, feminism and antiwar activism, “Don’t Blame Us” demonstrates how the suburban liberal vision of equal opportunity and freedom of choice that favored individualist solutions to structural problems played a crucial role in helping Massachusetts preserve both its liberal reputation and segregated social structures. It highlights how the suburban-centered political sensibility of social liberalism and fiscal moderation has contributed in important ways to transformations of liberalism, the political realignment of the nation, and the persistence of structural inequality throughout the country over the course of the last half-century. Ultimately, “Don’t Blame Us” suggests that Massachusetts and suburban liberals provide a model for, not the exception, to understanding the political, economic and social trends of the last decades of the twentieth century.