Lessons from Lockport by Jim Shultz

Lessons from Lockport by Jim Shultz

A long-time liberal activist gets an up-close political education about conservative America when he moves to a small town in upstate New York.

Finalist for the 2025 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Regional category

During a time of great national division and a growing working-class rebellion that has turned American politics on its head, a longtime liberal activist moves to a small town in the conservative northwest corner of New York State. He becomes a weekly opinion columnist for the city's two-hundred-year-old daily newspaper. His columns force light into the dark corners of local politics and provoke local debate over national issues, from guns to climate change. Dozens of people begin to speak to him about his columns, in stores, on the street, in playgrounds, and beyond. His columns also spark fierce debate in a community Facebook group that includes almost everyone in town. The result is an up-close education about what makes small-town America tick, just as small towns like this one are driving a national political upheaval. Told through stories that will entertain readers as well as make them think, Lessons from Lockport offers a unique look at one of the most misunderstood corners of American culture.

"Through the skillful use of personal stories, and interviews with his friends and neighbors in a small conservative town in New York, Jim Shultz opens a window into the hopes, dreams, and fears of those across the 'political divide' In doing so, he reveals that the 'divide' is largely the creation of a partisan political culture, that floods us with divisive messages every two years. In fact, regardless of where we define ourselves along the political spectrum, most of us care and worry about the same things: our families, our jobs, our future. This book reintroduces us to each other and shows us a commonsense path forward...together." — Former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber

"For seven years a small-town newspaper columnist, Jim Shultz the newcomer to Lockport, New York, slowly built a following as he jumped into the fray on the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal's opinions page, exploring the culture and the simmering issues of a weathered but proud Rust Belt community. Jim gained traction not with his piercing observations about Donald Trump, but his natural affinity with the underdog, which shows equally in his political essays and his columns earnestly celebrating local life. Jim's observations about the folly of spy cams in local schools, about alienation within Lockport's long-established Black community, about unchecked political power contradicting and even mocking public interest, don’t sit well with everyone, of course, but because he’s as generous with his praise for the good in our community as he is with critiquing of its flaws, he keeps earning credit with readers who don't agree with him in every instance. Overall, Jim's probing of issues at every level has shown that people on so-called opposite ends of the spectrum actually have a lot in common. And, really, that’s what Lessons from Lockport boils down to." — Joyce Miles, editor of the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal

"Written by an observant progressive writer of op-eds in the newspaper of a small, Republican town in Western New York, this book takes you out of your bubble, whatever that is. Shultz gives us local issues—facial recognition technology in public schools, renewable energy, a police killing of a black man—seen through local eyes. He helps us like the people we disagree with. Memorable." — Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right

Jim Shultz is the Founder and Executive Director of the Democracy Center, a longtime advocacy advisor to UNICEF, and a contributing writer at The New York Review of Books. He is the author of five previous books, including The Democracy Owners' Manual: A Practical Guide to Changing the World and Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization.