Backroom Deals in Our Backyards

How Government Secrecy Harms Our Communities and the Local Heroes Fighting Back

Miranda S. Spivack

A groundbreaking look at how ordinary people are fighting back against their local and state governments to keep their communities safe, by an award-winning journalist

“We ignore the use of secrecy at the state and local level at our peril.” —from the introduction

Most Americans are likely to encounter the effects of government malfeasance or neglect close to home—from their governors, mayors, town councils, school boards, police, and prosecutors. In fact, deals shrouded in darkness are regularly made at the state and local levels, often the result of closed-door discussions between governments and industry without any scrutiny whatsoever from the public. Too often, as this groundbreaking new work of investigative reporting reveals, residents are intentionally kept on the outside, struggling to get information about significant issues affecting their communities—from car crashes and dirty drinking water, to failing safety gear—until the backroom deals are done and it’s too late to challenge them.

A work of riveting narrative nonfiction based on years of original reporting, Backroom Deals in Our Backyards tells the story of five “accidental activists”—people from across the United States who started questioning why their local and state governments didn’t protect them from issues facing their communities and why there was a frightening lack of transparency surrounding the way these issues were resolved. The secret deals, lies, and corruption they uncover shake their faith in government but move them to action.

For readers of Chain of Title and Superman’s Not Coming, Spivack’s revealing take on a hidden dimension of American politics will outrage and educate anyone who cares about the forces shaping their own communities.

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Praise

“Miranda Spivack not only demonstrates how government secrecy threatens democracy. She shows us how ordinary people can fight to make local government more transparent. This eye–opening and meticulously reported book is both a call to action and a road map for success.”

—Linda Greenhouse, Yale Law School

“In Backroom Deals in our Backyards, Miranda Spivack shows that there’s no real democracy without accountability, no real accountability without government transparency and no real government transparency without a fight. This book celebrates the fighters, American democracy’s life-size heroes like my constituent Richard Boltuck, who demanded nothing more—and nothing less—than public information about River Road in Bethesda so we could protect the safety of young pedestrians in a school zone. Bravo to Miranda Spivack for shining a positive light on the people determined to shine a positive light.”

—Congressman Jamie Raskin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy

“Miranda S. Spivack has written the Unsafe At Any Speed of our time, highlighting the corrosive secrecy of increasingly powerful local governments. Beyond identifying an under–covered problem, to her enormous credit, she offers a deeply reported look at accidental activists who became Davids that beat Goliath. Based on their experiences, she offers a playbook for how citizens can effectively fight back against abuses of power in their own communities. With local reporting in decline, and more power being delegated to states, we’ll depend increasingly on individual watchdogs like those featured here to expose wrongdoing and force change.”

—James Hohmann, The Washington Post

“An urgent exposé, Backroom Deals in Our Backyards not only uncovers the dangers of government secrecy but highlights the unsung heroes fighting it. Miranda’s dogged reporting, combined with her empathetic and powerful prose, make this as easy to read as it is important.”

—Sara Ganim, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist

“When governments and corporations collude, the public suffers—but that doesnt’t have to be the end of the story. Spivack shares incredible true tales of ordinary people who fought injustice against incredible odds. It’s a book that will inspire and equip readers with the tools they need to ask their own questions—and get them answered.”

The New Press

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