Robert (Bob) Hennelly

Stuck Nation — Can the United States change course on our history of choosing profits over people?

In the midst of this once-in-a-century public health crisis, the United States was almost toppled from within by one of the two national political parties that a white-supremacist authoritarian had commandeered. For decades, American workers had been losing their leverage, as the world’s biggest corporations were able to successfully play one country’s workforce off another. For centuries, we have failed to directly address the crimes against humanity that were the cornerstones of American capitalism and are part of the continuum that extends systemic racism to our current circumstances. Our global brand may be equality, but the lived experience of tens of millions of Americans is the stark opposite, and there can be no forward motion if we fail to perceive just how deep a rut we are in.

Stuck Nation is the work of award-winning print and broadcast journalist, Robert “Bob” Hennelly. Its depth reflects his many decades of on-the-ground reporting, from the streets to historical archives and the White House. In his reporting and in this book, Hennelly bears witness to the ongoing assault of systemic racism, the toll from the World Trade Center toxic exposures, the attacks on our civil service by our own government, the breathtaking concentration of corporate media, the power of our collective agency, and more. It features interviews with the key players and shapers of history - everyday people - as well as with union leaders and politicians, historians and academics, organizers and activists.

Stuck Nation lifts up the stories of those whom our capitalist system would otherwise see ‘disappeared’. It bears the human cost of our system and our silence. It holds accounts of individuals and a broader movement willing to put everything at risk to change our national narrative. Through it all, Hennelly shares his observations on the origins of our national stuck-ness, his reporting on how it endures, and his analysis of what might be required for us to change the course of our historical patterns, so that America can begin putting the wellbeing of its people ahead of its profits.