Best of
Activism

1997

The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy


Howard Zinn - 1997
    It is rare that a historian of the Left has managed to retain as much credibility while refusing to let his academic mantle change his beautiful writing style from being anything but direct, forthright, and accessible. Whether his subject is war, race, politics, economic justice, or history itself, each of his works serves as a reminder that to embrace one's subjectivity can mean embracing one's humanity, that heart and mind can speak with one voice. Here, in six sections, is the historian's own choice of his shorter essays on some of the most critical problems facing America throughout its history, and today.

The Disability Studies Reader


Lennard J. Davis - 1997
    This volume represents a major advance in presenting the most important writings about disability with an emphasis on those writers working from a materialist and postmodernist perspective.Drawing together experts in cultural studies, literary criticism, sociology, biology, the visual arts, pedagogy and post-colonial studies, the collection provides a comprehensive approach to the issue of disability. Contributors include Erving Goffman, Susan Sontag, Michelle Fine and Susan Wendell.

Sacred Pampering Principles: An African-American Woman's Guide to Self-care and Inner Renewal


Debrena Jackson Gandy - 1997
    With her holistic, self-care approach to filling your life with comfort, joy, and peace, Debrena Jackson Gandy debunks the common belief that doing something for yourself is decadent and selfish. In fact, she says, the joy we gain from nurturing ourselves - whether it's in the form of a luxuriant bath or quiet time alone - is transferred to the people in our lives. When we emerge rejuvenated, others benefit from a more patient mother, a more fulfilled wife, an effective co-worker, a solidly grounded friend. Self-care is empowering, plain and simple. Often, however, today's Black woman gives so much to others that she hardly has time for herself. With her twelve sacred pampering principles for the spirit and twelve for the body. Debrena Jackson Gandy shares her unique, proven method for achieving a balanced, satisfying life.

Plants for a Future: Edible & Useful Plants for a Healthier World


Ken Fern - 1997
    There is therefore a need to create gardens, woodlands and farms which are in harmony with nature. Natural ecosystems are good models, but many of the plants they contain are not necessarily edible. What we need is to discover and grow a wide variety of easily grown perennial and self-seeding annuals which provide delicious and healthy food, or are useful in other ways. Describing plants such as these, both native to Britain and Europe and from temperate areas around the world, this book includes those suitable for: the ornamental garden, the edible lawn, shade, ponds, walls, hedges, agroforestry and conservation. In this thoroughly useful book, Ken Fern shares his experiments and successes in growing herbs, vegetables, flowers, shrubs and trees. Packed with information, personal anecdote and detailed appendices and indexes, this pioneering book takes gardening, conservation and ecology into a new dimension.

The Great Bear Rainforest: Canada's Forgotten Coast


Ian McAllister - 1997
    The area is one of the northern hemisphere's richest unprotected wildlife habitats, the home of Canada's largest grizzly bears as well as the rare all-white spirit or Kermode bear.Ian and Karen McAllister, both environmental campaigners, have spent over ten years exploring, photographing and researching this once-forgotten coast. The book contains over 150 stunning colour photographs, including some of the most extraordinary images of wild bears ever seen in print, lush river valleys where grizzly bears feast on salmon, dramatic Coast Range mountaintops, exotic plants of the ancient rainforest, and some of the most magnificent coastline in Canada. With these photographs, a personable, informative commentary by Ian and Karen and environmental writer Cameron Young, and full-colour maps and drawings, this book is the first to unveil the beauty and magnificence of this unique place.Since 1990, fourteen large rainforest valleys on the mainland coast of British Columbia have been lost to industrial logging. The publication of The Great Bear Rainforest aided Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Ian and Karen McAllister's Raincoast Preservation Society and other environmental groups successfully lobby BC's provincial government for a moratorium on grizzly-bear hunting and the protection of a large portion of the area as parkland in 2001.

Planting Noah's Garden: Further Adventures in Backyard Ecology


Sara Bonnett Stein - 1997
    The book contains advice on a wide range of topics relevant to ecological gardening, including the handling of group wholesale orders, killing invasive plants, collecting and planting wild seeds, starting a tree island, and planting a patio habitat.

The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy


Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen - 1997
    A book of history, theory and polemic, the authors show how, if we are to survive, economies must become needs-based, environmentally sustainable, co-operative and local. They explain how the current capitalist system is none of these things, is inherently unstable and is dependent on the exploitation of various marginalized groups, particularly women, and of the environment. They call instead for a new politics and economics based on subsistence and present examples of such a perspective in practice.

Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance


Ackbar Abbas - 1997
    There is a need to define a sense of place through buildings and other means, at the moment when such a sense of place (fragile to begin with) is being threatened with erasure by a more and more insistently globalizing space".On June 30, 1997, Hong Kong as we know it will disappear, ceasing its singular and ambiguous existence as a colonial holdover and becoming part of the People's Republic of China. In an intriguing and provocative exploration of its cinema, architecture, photography, and literature, Ackbar Abbas considers what Hong Kong, with its unique relations to decolonization and disappearance, can teach us about the future of both the colonial city and the global city.The culture of Hong Kong encompasses Jackie Chan and John Woo, British colonial architecture and postmodern skyscrapers. Ironically, it was not until they were faced with the imposition of Mainland power -- with the signing of the Sino British Joint Agreement in 1984 -- that the denizens of the colony began the search for a Hong Kong identity. According to Abbas, Hong Kong's peculiar lack of identity is due to its status as "not so much a place as a space of transit", whose residents think of themselves as transients and migrants on their way from China to somewhere else.Abbas explores the way Hong Kong's media saturationchanges its people's experience of space so that it becomes abstract, dominated by signs and images that dispel memory, history, and presence.Hong Kong disappears through simple dualities such as East/West and tradition/modernity. What is missing from a view of Hong Kong as merely a colony is the paradox that Hong Kong has benefited from and made a virtue of its dependent colonial status, turning itself into a global and financial city and outstripping its colonizer in terms of wealth.Combining sophisticated theory and a critical perspective, this rich and thought-provoking work captures the complex situation of the metropolis that is contemporary Hong Kong. Along the way, it challenges, entertains, and makes an important contribution to our thinking about the surprising processes and consequences of colonialism.

The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice


Václav Havel - 1997
    "Like his American predecessor Thomas Jefferson, Vaclav Havel is a politician with the soul of a writer and a writer with the savvy of a politician. . . . Havel's speeches have the power to sustain hope and inspire action even when the prospects of success seem dim. . . ".--George Stephanopoulus, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW.

Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life


Michael Bérubé - 1997
    Bad Subjects offers a critique of the post-1960s left in the United States, and attempts to reclaim a utopian vision for a political movement which has become fragmented and cynical about the possibility of social transformation. Indeed, Bad Subjects itself is simultaneously a valuable resource and an inspiration, a record of what politically-engaged cultural criticism can achieve, and an example of a progressive political community making use of new technologies. Offering a way out of vulgar multiculturalism--based on separatism and the idea of authenticity--into a critical identity politics founded on coalitions, hybridity, and class consciousness, Bad Subjectsspeaks to readers both in and outside of the academy. Taking their cue from the feminist slogan, the personal is political, and from Marxist injunctions to study everyday life, Bad Subjects covers everything from popular culture and high technology to economic restructuring and political organizing, from Raymond Williams to The Dead Kennedys. In the terrain of cultural criticism, Bad Subjects is an off-road vehicle roaring away from the beaten path.

Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts


Samuel Totten - 1997
    The book assembles a group of international scholars to discuss the causes, results, and ramifications of these genocides: from the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire; to the Jews, Romani, and the mentally and physically handicapped during the Holocaust; and genocides in East Timor, Bangladesh, and Cambodia.The second edition has been fully updated and features new chapters on the genocide in the former Yugoslavia and the mass killing of the Kurds in Iraq, as well as a chapter on the question of whether or not the situation in Kosovo constituted genocide. It concludes with an essay concerning methods of intervention and prevention of future genocide.

American Indian Activism: ALCATRAZ TO THE LONGEST WALK


Troy R. Johnson - 1997
    In this volume, some of the dominant scholars in the field chronicle and analyze Native American activism of the 1960s and 1970s. Much of what is included here began as a special issue of the American Indian Culture and Research Journal; the introduction has been extensively modified and one chapter deleted. Importantly, the new first chapter provides extended background and historical analysis of the Alcatraz takeover and discusses its place in contemporary Indian activism. Contributors include: Karren Baird-Olson, LaNada Boyer, Edward D. Castillo, Duane Champagne, Ward Churchill, Vine Deloria, Jr., Tim Findley, Jack D. Forbes, Adam (Nordwall) Fortunate Eagle, Lenny Foster, John Garvey, George P. Horse Capture, Troy Johnson, Luis S. Kemnitzer, Woody Kipp, Joane Nagel, Robert A. Rundstrom, Steve Talbot

Generation React


Danny Seo - 1997
    Danny shares his hard-won skills and years of experience in a step-by-step guide that makes changing the world a little bit easier. In Generation React he teaches you how to start your own activist group, reenergize an existing, activist group, brainstorm creative fund-raising techniques, win media exposure, reform school policy, launch boycotts, make legislators listen, organize a protest, tap the wealth of free information on the Internet and much more!

Brute Science: Dilemmas of Animal Experimentation (Philosophical Issues in Science)


Hugh LaFollette - 1997
    The outcome of this debate will shape future public health policy. The authors expose the weaknesses in both the standard defense and standard criticisms of animal experimentation. This thorough investigation of one of today's most fiercely debated questions yields some unexpected conclusions.

Refugee Health: An Approach to Emergency Situations


Médecins Sans Frontières - 1997
    The authors of this book use their experience in the area to produce an operational manual of the issues involved in refugee health programs. This book is aimed at professionals involved in public health assistance to refugees and displaced persons. It deals with a variety of specific refugee health issues at the decisional level, and discusses the priorities of intervention during the different phases of a refugee crisis, from emergency to repatriation.

Lessons from the Damned: Queers, Whores and Junkies Respond to AIDS


Nancy E. Stoller - 1997
    Nancy Stoller records how the poor, people of color, gay men and lesbians, drug users, and women have built social movements to fight the impact of AIDS, revealing that organizational structure and culture have a greater impact on who is served and how than do public health theories or official organizational goals. She draws on ethnographic research and the words of the activists themselves, as well as the literature of social movements and theories of bureaucracy. In addition to the stories of the organizational strategies, the book offers guidelines for dealing with diversity and conflict with both theoretical and practical perspectives on cross-community and international organizing.

We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics


Mark Blasius - 1997
    Tracing the evolution of the lesbian and gay movement, We AreEverywhere includes writings from the beginnings of the gay and lesbian movement in the 19th century; legal and government studies concerning rights of gay and lesbian citizens; articles from the early US liberation movement publications; documents from the first days of the AIDS epidemic to current activism; statements and writings from the movements within the movement; and finally, alook at the future of lesbian and gay politics.

Unnecessary Suffering: Tradition, Transition and Transformation


Maurice Glasman - 1997
    Maurice Glasman argues that this dream is an unrealisable utopia - or a nightmare if put into practice. He takes the management-speak cliches of the New Right, and New Labour alike and turns them on their head: managers are not efficient, they are a barrier to work and production; 'liberal democracy' - which now means the free market and the strong state - should be turned upside down, with democracy at the level of the economy and liberalism at the level of the state. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi, Glasman argues that there is no need to surrender solidarity and human rights to the march of the managers and the market. There is another tradition, represented by the labour movement and the Catholic church in West Germany, which defended democracy in the workplace and reined back the savageries of capitalism. It was the tradition that Solidarity in Poland could have looked to after 1989, instead of allowing itself to be hijacked by the New Right and statist communitarianism. Unnecessary Suffering examines this tradition and issues a call that cries out that human beings and the environment cannot, should not, and will not be treated as commodities.

Living Inside Our Hope


Staughton Lynd - 1997
    David Dellinger is on one side, Robert Moses on the other. In the middle is Staughton Lynd, chairperson of the first march on Washington against the war, and former director of the Mississippi Freedom Schools.Thirty years later, Staughton Lynd here reaffirms ideas central to the New Left of the sixties: nonviolence, participatory democracy, an experiential approach to education, and anti-capitalism. In essays written between 1970 and 1995, he passionately defends the intellectual contribution of a movement often dismissed as mindlessly activist. In addition, he advocates direct, sustained involvement in meeting the needs of the working class and the poor.Each section of the book identifies major influences on Lynd's life as teacher, historian, lawyer, and organizer. In the section entitled "Accompaniment", Lynd suggests the relevance to the United States of the concepts of liberation theology which have revolutionized Central America. In "Socialism with a Human Face", he expresses continued allegiance to the socialist ideals exemplified by Simone Weft and E. P. Thompson. The final section, "Solidarity Unionism", deals with the self-activity of rank-and-file workers.Living Inside Our Hope will reach out to everyone who remembers the Meals of the sixties with nostalgia and to those, too young to remember, who are seeking a foundation on which to build their own social activism.

1968


Ed Sanders - 1997
    this is the '68 / whose pulses still surge / in my psyche," writes author Edward Sanders. What he's done with that surge is to take memoir, anecdote, and factual research and fashion them into an epic, book-length poem.Sanders is distinguished among the poets of his generation by his engagement with history, including its missed chances, wrong turns, broken hearts. He evokes participation, performance and prophecy in a fury of emotional tones and swirling facts, chronicling the laughter and terror of his own creative annus mirabilis as freak/ poet/ publisher / Yippie activist / rock star in the midst of the near-breaking of the nation. He looks back toward his generation's vital and tragic sources, reconstructing the decisive year in a unique commingling of personal and political poetry.