ABSTRACT
I begin this book with the two quotes above because they exemplify the two sets of issues and questions that form its very core. The first quote comes from the local newspaper as the city of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, struggled to keep a modestly profitable plant open after its multinational corporate owner decided to close it and relocate production to a nonunion shop in Florida. I begin with this, because it is exactly this reality: one of consistently increasing levels of alienation from the structures that govern our lives, and declining standards of living-even in times and places experiencing aggregate levels of economic growth-faced by workers and communities all over the country that drives this work. That is, we are constantly hearing, from both the academic and popular press, that the economy is global and that capital is so mobile as to be able to go anywhere, at any time, and at dizzying speeds. Mark Miller (the former editor of the Berkshire Eagle) and I are therefore asking the relatively simple question: What can people in localities do in the face of that mobile capital?
