Local Democracy Under Siege: A reading at Quail Ridge Books

On Thursday, Sept. 27, University of North Carolina faculty members Donald Nonini and Dorothy Holland will be at Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books to read from their new work titled Local Democracy Under Siege: Activism, Public Interest and Private Politics.

To examine the state of U.S. democracy, Nonini, Holland and their five co-authors (Catherine Lutz, Lesley Bartlett, Marla Frederick-McGlathery, Thaddeus Guldbrandsen, and Enrique Murillo Jr.) lived for a year in five North Carolina communities where they observed public meetings, conducted interviews, and listened in on conversations at bus stops, barber shops, soccer games and workplaces. Their collaborative ethnography sheds light on how diverse members of a community think about and experience politics in ways that transcend merely voting, and on the relationship between neoliberal economics and democracy.

The reading begins at 7 p.m., and all proceeds from the book's sales go to Democracy North Carolina, a Durham-based organization that works for democratic reform of the electoral process. Quail Ridge Books is located at 3522 Wade Ave.