The mood in the USA today is decidedly angry and has been increasingly so for the past several years. Unhappiness with the pace of transforming Iraq from a dictatorship into a pro-Western democracy with an unending loss of American lives coupled with growing environmental and economic concerns positioned John McCain's presidential candidacy as a decided long-shot even before the Democratic nominee had been settled. It would be surprising therefore if this unhappiness had not spawned grass-roots activity and given support to oppositional organizations. Recognizing that a hodge-podge of anti-establishment protests even in this day of Internet-aided communications may not coalesce into anything substantial, David Sirota, a veteran chronicler of opposition, nevertheless saw enough in common to want to investigate.

For a year Sirota, author of Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government and How We Take It Back (Crown Publishers, 2006), "toured" America getting a first hand look at oppositional organizations and their leaders. His findings -- despite his anti-capitalist bias -- sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses of groups as widely disparate as the anti-war movement, the Working Families Party, the anti-illegal immigrant border patrolling Minutemen and disgruntled tech workers in Seattle. He also gauges the influence of maverick political leaders including Montana's anti-tax governor, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and the Socialist Senator from Vermont Bernard Sanders.

For New Yorkers the chapter on The Working Families Party is a must read. New York State has long been home to third parties. Operating on the margins at times they have had a major impact on important elections, but few observers foresaw the rapid rise of the Working Families Party. Formed by Dan Cantor in 1998, the WFP quickly surpassed the Independence Party in stature and in the process all but drowned out a fledgling Green Party organization.

The WFP has taken advantage of the fact that New York election law combines the results when a candidate runs on more than one line and has positioned itself as a major political force -- one that has influence outside New York City, which in the past represented the boundary of third party influence. To wit, when he did not get the WFP endorsement this spring a candidate for the NYS Assembly from Watertown dropped out of the race despite having already gained the Democratic Party endorsement.

Taking advantage of the fact that State Democratic Party has been surprisingly weak in recent years in its ability to raise money and marshal resources to back statewide candidates, the WFP's strength extends beyond the votes it can generate for a candidate on its line to providing experienced campaign workers who have proven their ability to make a difference between winning and losing.

Although Sirota fails to explore the forces behind the WFP, which could not have succeeded without financial support and its ability to produce needed volunteers, he does note that Cantor has had to play a risky game balancing the WFP's main support for the Democratic Party without shutting the door on the few Republicans who are willing to support their issues. This can backfire if you get into bed with ruthless politicians like Eliot Spitzer and Sheldon Silver. The WFP's support for Silver's re-election in 2008 means cutting off the "uprising" in his district -- those people who are tired of the lack of Democracy in Albany.

Sirota measures the groups that he investigated against the standards set by the legendary Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky whose organizing successes contributed to the philosophy of Tom Hayden and the other founders of Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. Alinsky viewed the role of the organizer as someone who helps the masses take their rightful place in the political process, even when that can mean that his personal views lose out.

Many movements that start as "uprisings," in order to sustain themselves and achieve their goals -- whether stopping urban renewal from demolishing a neighborhood or a corporation from polluting the environment -- create organizational structures that over time become less and less democratic in their internal workings.

Some view New York's so-called "good government" groups as an example of this phenomenon. After all, do these groups' leaders have to go before their members for re-election and to what extent to they condone or promote internal debate among their members before they arrive at the policy positions that they promulgate?

This process of the institutionalization of opposition gets further comprised by the political parties which "co-opt" movements when they get large enough to matter. By "buying" off opposition leaders with jobs running programs designed to assuage whatever issue -- poverty, discrimination, pollution, etc. -- led to the uprising in the first place, the political structure prevents these groups from threatening their hold on the ultimate power in America -- elected office.

Sirota chronicles the problems that can emerge when an "uprising" organization like Moveon.org sells out the goal of those at the grass roots -- putting a swift end to the war in Iraq in this case -- for partisan gain. When that happens people have no choice but to "move on" to another grass roots organization and try again, but of course that takes time and even protesters get tired.

Sirota's willingness to discuss the foibles of uprising groups and their leaders is one of the endearing features of his writing. It makes the difference between a political tract and a contribution to oneÕs understanding of the forces at work in our society. However, Sirota sometimes undermines his goal of providing support for the uprising if he would expunge the frequent throwaway digs that color his writing, such as disclosing that Bernie Sanders isn't into giving hugs.

For those who want to continue to stay abreast of grass roots movements, Sirota's weekly column can be found on the Web and in a growing number of newspapers.

Peter G. Pollak is publisher and editor of The Empire Page.