Abstract
Grassroots politics might be infused with a distinctive ethos that draws heavily on ideas about community. Under neoliberal policies, individuals may have formal rights, yet these individual rights may be rendered meaningless in the context of group subordination. Within disadvantaged groups, individuals who lack material resources or the capacity to exercise their formal rights often only have each other. In such situations, a self-oriented political language of individual rights may be far less useful than a language of community that potentially provides a functional statement of collective political demand.