Best of
Activism

2004

Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism


Patricia Hill Collins - 2004
    In Black Sexual Politics, one of America's most influential writers on race and gender explores how images of Black sexuality have been used to maintain the color line and how they threaten to spread a new brand of racism around the world today.

The Thich Nhat Hanh Collection: Peace is Every Step; Teachings on Love; The Stone Boy and Other Stories


Thich Nhat Hanh - 2004
    3 parts in 1 book,CD included with the book

The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony


Will Tuttle - 2004
    By eating the plants and animals of our earth, we literally incorporate them. It is also through this act of eating that we partake of our culture's values and paradigms at the most primal levels. It is becoming increasingly obvious, however, that the choices we make about our food are leading to environmental degradation, enormous human health problems, and unimaginable cruelty toward our fellow creatures.Incorporating systems theory, teachings from mythology and religions, and the human sciences, The World Peace Diet presents the outlines of a more empowering understanding of our world, based on a comprehension of the far-reaching implications of our food choices and the worldview those choices reflect and mandate. The author offers a set of universal principles for all people of conscience, from any religious tradition, that they can follow to reconnect with what we are eating, what was required to get it on our plate, and what happens after it leaves our plates.The World Peace Diet suggests how we as a species might move our consciousness forward so that we can be more free, more intelligent, more loving, and happier in the choices we make.Now includes a full index.

Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice


Loretta J. Ross - 2004
    But, if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together.”—Lila Watson, Aboriginal ActivistVibrant. Strong. Fierce. Undivided Rights captures the evolving and largely unknown activist history of women of color organizing for reproductive justice—on their own behalf.Undivided Rights presents a fresh and textured understanding of the reproductive rights movement by placing the experiences, priorities, and activism of women of color in the foreground. Using historical research, original organizational case studies, and personal interviews, the authors illuminate how women of color have led the fight to control their own bodies and reproductive destinies. Undivided Rights shows how women of color—-starting within their own Latina, African American, Native American, and Asian American communities—have resisted coercion of their reproductive abilities. Projected against the backdrop of the mainstream pro-choice movement and radical right agendas, these dynamic case studies feature the groundbreaking work being done by health and reproductive rights organizations led by women-of-color.The book details how and why these women have defined and implemented expansive reproductive health agendas that reject legalistic remedies and seek instead to address the wider needs of their communities. It stresses the urgency for innovative strategies that push beyond the traditional base and goals of the mainstream pro-choice movement—strategies that are broadly inclusive while being specific, strategies that speak to all women by speaking to each woman. While the authors raise tough questions about inclusion, identity politics, and the future of women’s organizing, they also offer a way out of the limiting focus on “choice.”Undivided Rights articulates a holistic vision for reproductive freedom. It refuses to allow our human rights to be divvied up and parceled out into isolated boxes that people are then forced to pick and choose among.

Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women


Wilma Mankiller - 2004
    Coming together as one, 19 strong and successful women provide a rare glimpse into their lives with the hope that their voices will be heard and their message understood: bear witness to the unforgivable acts that their people have survived and take a step forward in mending old wrongs and forgiving past and present hurts. Brings to light the insight of women artists, lawyers, ranchers, doctors, and educators Discussions range from the land to government, love to family life. Conversational style of writing presents a genuine Native American perspective.

The Search for a Nonviolent Future: A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, Our Families, and Our World


Michael N. Nagler - 2004
    Beginning with the achievements of Mahatma Gandhi, and following the legacy of nonviolence through the struggles against Nazism in Europe, racism in America, oppression in China and Latin America, and ethnic conflicts in Africa and Bosnia, Nagler unveils a hidden history. Nonviolence, he proposes, has proven its power against arms and social injustice wherever it has been correctly understood and applied.Nagler's approach is not only historical, but also spiritual. He argues, drawing upon the experience of Gandhi and other activists, that the shift to nonviolence begins within the individual, through the reshaping and re-visioning of how one understands the world. He then shows how from changes in the individual, changes in the larger community follow.Is There No Other Way? is a provocative and emotionally powerful document that challenges readers' assumptions about the workings of power in their homes and communities, as well as the larger political arena.

Beautiful Trouble


Amy Fleury - 2004
    Beautiful Trouble explores the subtleties of landscape, place, families, girlhood, womanhood, and everyday existence on the prairie. Fleury writes of the Midwest with authenticity, speaks of romance with delicate allure, and recalls the heartbreak of childhood without self-pity. In meditations on resilience and life’s contradictions, Fleury engages her characters fully and paints their souls and sensations evenly in language both rare and beautiful. She is a poet in love with sound and its power to summon majesty from quotidian scenes. Her poems are brief and striking, depending on exquisite word choice and balance to achieve a simple order on the page.

Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals


Steven Best - 2004
    Calling on sources as venerable as Thomas Aquinas and as current as the Patriot Act—and, in some cases, personal experience—the contributors explore the history of civil disobedience and sabotage, and examine the philosophical and cultural meanings of words like "terrorism," "democracy" and "freedom," in a book that ultimately challenges the values and assumptions that pervade our culture. Contributors include Robin Webb, Rod Coronado, Ingrid Newkirk, Paul Watson, Karen Davis, Bruce Friedrich, pattrice jones and others.

Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action


Anne Waldman - 2004
    Civil Disobediences offers a manual for understanding poetry’s history and enacting its ultimate power to dismantle and recreate political and cultural realities.Composed of essays, lectures and teaching materials by leading contemporary poets and scholars, this anthology explores the craft of poetry, as well as the history of poetic/political action in the U.S. and abroad, the development of ancient and modern poetic forms, the legacy of world-renowned poets, and the intersections between poetry and spirituality. It also provides concrete advice about bringing poetry into your local community and ensuring that “poetry is news that stays news.”Editor Anne Waldman is an internationally acclaimed poet, performer, cultural activist, and distinguished -professor of poetics at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She is the author of over 40 books, including Vow to Poetry: Essays, Interviews, & Manifestos and the recent collection In the Room of Never Grieve: New and Selected Poems 1985–2003.Editor Lisa Birman is a poet and writer from Melbourne, Australia. Her books include Some Things—Poems and Translations, Deportation Poems, and the forthcoming possibly. Birman is the co-founder of Movie Star Press and co-director of Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program.Contributors include: Helen Adam, Ammiel Alcalay, Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Robin Blaser, Reed Bye, Jack Collum, Robert Creeley, Samuel R. Delany, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Alan Gilbert, Allen Ginsberg, James Grauerholtz, Barbara Guest, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Anselm Hollo, Laird Hunt, Pierre Joris, Joanne Kyger, Ann Lauterbach, Harryette Mullen, Eileen Myles, Alice Notley, Michael Ondaatje, Sonia Sanchez, Edward Sanders, Eleni Sikelianos, Gary Snyder, Cole Swenson, Arthur Sze, Steven Taylor, Robert Tejada, Lorenzo Thomas and more.

Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality & Solidarity - Writings & Speeches, 1878-1937


Lucy Parsons - 2004
    "More dangerous than a thousand rioters!" That's what the Chicago police called Lucy Parsons--America's most defiant and persistent anarchist agitator, whose cross-country speaking tours inspired hundreds of thousands of working people. Her friends and admirers included William Morris, Peter Kropotkin, "Big Bill" Haywood, Ben Reitman, and Sam Dolgoff. And the groups in which she was active were just as varied: the Knights of Labor, IWW, Dil Pickle Club, International Labor Defense, and others. Here for the first time is a hefty selection of her powerful writings and speeches: on anarchism, women, race matters, class war, the IWW, and the U.S. injustice system. "Lucy Parsons's writings are among the best and strongest in the history of U.S. anarchism"--Gale Ahrens.

Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform


Derrick A. Bell - 2004
    Board of Education was handed down in 1954, many civil rights advocates believed that the decision, which declared public school segregation unconstitutional, would become the Holy Grail of racial justice. Fifty years later, despite its legal irrelevance and the racially separate and educationally ineffective state of public schooling for most black children, Brown is still viewed by many as the perfect precedent. Here, Derrick Bell shatters the shining image of this celebrated ruling. He notes that, despite the onerous burdens of segregation, many black schools functioned well and racial bigotry had not rendered blacks a damaged race. He maintains that, given what we now know about the pervasive nature of racism, the Court should have determined instead to rigorously enforce the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" standard. Racial policy, Bell maintains, is made through silent covenants--unspoken convergences of interest and involuntary sacrifices of rights--that ensure that policies conform to priorities set by policy-makers. Blacks and whites are the fortuitous winners or losers in these unspoken agreements. The experience with Brown, Bell urges, should teach us that meaningful progress in the quest for racial justice requires more than the assertion of harms. Strategies must recognize and utilize the interest-convergence factors that strongly influence racial policy decisions. In Silent Covenants, Bell condenses more than four decades of thought and action into a powerful and eye-opening book.

Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 1: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE-1939)


Robert Graham - 2004
    Edited and introduced by noted anarchist scholar Robert Graham, the collection will include the definitive texts from the anarchist tradition of political thought, beginning with some of the earliest writings from China and Europe against feudal servitude and authority.The collection will then go on to document the best of the anti-authoritarian writings from the English and French Revolutions and the early development of libertarian socialist ideas, including such writers as Gerrard Winstanley, William Godwin, Charles Fourier, Max Stirner, as well as the early anarchist writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, Elisee Reclus, Leo Tolstoy, and Emma Goldman.This incomparable volume deals both with the positive ideas and proposals the anarchists tried to put into practice, and with the anarchist critiques of the authoritarian theories and practices confronting them during these years with their revolutionary upheavals.Robert Graham has written extensively on the history of anarchist ideas. He is the author of “The Role of Contract in Anarchist Ideology,” in the Routledge publication, For Anarchism, edited by David Goodway, and he wrote the introduction to the 1989 Pluto Press edition of Proudhon’s General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century, originally published in 1851. He has been doing research and writing on the historical development of anarchist ideas for over 20 years and is a well respected commentator in the field.Includes original portraits of the anarchists drawn by Maurice Spira specifically for this book Spira’s imagery is rooted to the political, his subject matter global. Works such as “Battle of Seattle,” “Gulf,” and “Refugees” are the visual equivalent of newspaper headlines.

Hitler's Forgotten Victims: The Holocaust and the Disabled


Suzanne E. Evans - 2004
    These programmes were designed to eliminate all persons with disabilities who threatened the health and purity of the German race. This text explores the development and workings of this process.

Ecological Medicine: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves


Kenny Ausubel - 2004
    Drawn largely from presentations given at the annual Bioneers Conference, it focuses on pragmatic solutions growing at the fertile interface between environmental restoration and holistic healing. The Bioneers (“biological pioneers”) are a network of scientists, writers, economists, artists, and others with practical and visionary solutions for our most pressing environmental and social challenges.Advocates of the emerging movement known as Ecological Medicine look to the strategic public health measures that first do no harm to the environment and, in turn, improve human health. They call for prevention and precaution as the first line of action. They seek to heal the tragic split that conventional medicine made from nature, and to conjure nature’s own mysterious capacity for self-repair. They celebrate the virtues of ancient natural medicine but also embrace an integrative approach that blends the best of all healing practices—emphasizing the centrality of the human spirit in the healing process. Their inspiring work, described so compellingly in this book, is of critical relevance to everyone concerned about health and the environment.

Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland


Linda J. Lumsden - 2004
    Moving in radical circles, she agitated for social change in the prewar years, and she epitomized the independent New Woman of the time. Her death at age 30 while stumping for suffrage in California in 1916 made her the sole martyr of the American suffrage movement. Her death helped inspire two years of militant protests by the National Woman's Party, including the picketing of the White House, which led in 1920 to ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. Lumsden's study of this colorful and influential figure restores to history an important link between the homebound women of the 19th century and the iconoclastic feminists of the 1970s.

Why You Should Give A Damn About Gay Marriage


Davina Kotulski - 2004
    While countries such as Canada and Belgium have recently legalized gay marriage, the US seems steadfastly locked in the past. Change, Davina Kotulski argues, will only come through organized activism, but the importance of legalized gay marriage remains unclear to many in the GLBT community. There are no less than 1049 federal rights granted to hetero-sexuals that remain out of reach to gays and lesbians as long as they don’t have the right to marry. This quick and simple read outlines the rights, benefits and protections afforded through marriage, exploring the negative effects of not having these rights through case examples of real couples who have experienced hardships and composite vignettes illustrating how couples can be hurt by lacking access to these protections. Through learning of the great disparity between how same-sex couples are treated compared to heterosexual couples, and of the membership privileges society affords married couples readers of this book will begin to see new possibilities in their lives, and be inspired to join the growing freedom to marry movement.Davina Kotulski, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist with deep roots in the freedom-to-marry movement. She has organized same-sex marriage gay pride contingents throughout Northern California, first with Californian’s for Same-Sex Marriage, and then with Marriage Equality California. She has been active in fighting antigay legislation such as the Knight Initiative, is on the board of Marriage Equality California, and serves on the Education and Religious Outreach Committee of the California Marriage Coalition/Freedom-to-Marry Coalition.

The Power and Promise of Humane Education


Zoe Weil - 2004
    Humane education does this, offering young people deeply meaningful education about the issues of our time, teaching them to be critical and creative thinkers, inspiring their reverence and respect, and empowering them to be conscientious decision-makers. This book offers teachers clear suggestions for implementing humane education in both classrooms and non-traditional educational settings. Inviting and easy to use, it describes the four elements of humane education, along with stories, examples, case studies, activities and resources.Zoe Weil is president of the International Institute for Humane Education. A frequent speaker, she authored Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times.

Peace Under Fire: Israel, Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement


Josie Sandercock - 2004
    The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was founded as a peaceful resistance to that violence. Its highly visible actions, which have included breaking the sieges in Ramallah and Bethlehem, as well as saving countless lives, have shone a spotlight on Israel’s occupation. Outlawed in Israel and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the ISM has threatened the governing coalition with fears that Israeli opinion might at last be turning against them.In showing what risks Palestinians take, ISM volunteers have also tragically been targeted. The deaths of Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall, as well as the shootings of Kate Edwards, Caoimhe Butterley and Brian Avery, have never been fully explained, covered up in the US and UK and brushed aside in Israelan unfortunate consequence of Israel’s “war on terror.”This collection of accounts, drawn from web-logs and diaries of ISM volunteers, news articles, press releases, writings from the Corrie and Hurndall families, Rachel Corrie’s last email home, and cover photograph by Tom Hurndall, reveals the real horror of life under occupation and describes the first signs of a new wave of international solidarity.

What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy


Thom Hartmann - 2004
    Yet in numerous countries around the world, democracy has failed or is tottering, and in the United States its principles are increasingly under siege from corporate and other forces.In What Would Jefferson Do? Thom Hartmann shows why democracy is not an aberration in human history but the oldest, most resilient, and most universal form of government, with roots in nature itself. He traces the history of democracy in the United States, identifies the most prevalent myths about it, and offers an inspiring yet realistic plan for transforming the political landscape and reviving Jefferson’s dream before it is too late.

POPaganda: The Art And Subversion Of Ron English


Ron English - 2004
    A seminal figure in the subvertising, or culture jamming movement, in which artists and activists subvert an existing advertisement to send out their own message or encourage free thought, English has pirated over a thousand billboards over the last twenty years, replacing existing advertisements with his own hand-painted subvertisements. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, from Japan to Europe to the former Soviet Union; and are included in prominent collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Paris and the Whitney Museum in New York.

Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving


Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore - 2004
    Twenty-six stories illuminate the reality of growing up in fear, struggling to rebuild lives damaged by sexual, physical, and/or emotional abuse. The book explores how abuse turns queer survivors-male, female, and transgendered-into healers, heartbreakers, and homicidal maniacs, presenting brilliant stories that sear and soar. Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving addresses all forms of abuse head-on, representing a cross-section of queer survivors in terms of race, class, ethnicity, education, origin, sexuality, and gender. Contributors use their own life experiences to create a book that takes back control from well-meaning "outsiders," as they recount the daily struggle to overcome the damage done to their minds, bodies, and spirits in a world that denies their gender, sexual, and social identities. From the editor: "Dangerous Families consists entirely of writing by survivors of childhood abuse. That's right-no therapists analyzing our plight, no talk-show hosts exploiting us-just survivors, exploring our complicated, frightening, and fulfilling lives. These stories dispense with the usual technique of carefully massaging the reader's fragile worldview before plunging this unsuspecting innocent into a world of horror. They go right to the horror, the beauty, and the joy, often throwing the reader off-guard, revealing layers of meaning before the reader can step back." Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving is an anthology of 26 true stories of growing up queer in families that magnify the horrors of the outside world instead of offering protection. The book is an essential read for therapists, caseworkers, cultural studies specialists, and anyone struggling to survive childhood

The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear


Paul Rogat Loeb - 2004
    In THE IMPOSSIBLE WILL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE, a phrase borrowed from Billie Holliday, the editor of Soul of a Citizen brings together fifty stories and essays that range across nations, eras, wars, and political movements.Danusha Goska, an Indiana activist with a paralyzing physical disability, writes about overcoming political immobilization, drawing on her history with the Peace Corps and Mother Teresa. Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, finds value in seemingly doomed or futile actions taken by oppressed peoples.Rosemarie Freeney Harding recalls the music that sustained the civil rights movement, and Paxus Calta-Star recounts the powerful vignette of an 18-year-old who launched the overthrow of Bulgaria’s dictatorship.Many of the essays are new, others classic works that continue to inspire. Together, these writers explore a path of heartfelt community involvement that leads beyond despair to compassion and hope. The voices collected in THE IMPOSSIBLE WILL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE will help keep us all working for a better world despite the obstacles.

A New Theory for American Poetry: Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of Imagination


Angus Fletcher - 2004
    He lays out a fresh approach to American poetry at large, the first in several decades, expounding a defense of the art that will resonate well into the new century.Breaking with the tired habit of treating American poets as the happy or rebellious children of European romanticism, Fletcher uncovers a distinct lineage for American poetry. His point of departure is the fascinating English writer, John Clare; he then centers on the radically American vision expressed by Emerson and Walt Whitman. With Whitman this book insists that "the whole theory and nature of poetry" needs inspiration from science if it is to achieve a truly democratic vista. Drawing variously on Complexity Theory and on fundamentals of art and grammar, Fletcher argues that our finest poetry is nature-based, environmentally shaped, and descriptive in aim, enabling poets like John Ashbery and other contemporaries to discover a mysterious pragmatism.Intense, resonant, and deeply literary, this account of an American poetics shows how today's consumerist and conformist culture subverts the imagination of a free people. While centering on American vision, the argument extends our horizon, striking a blow against all economically sanctioned attacks upon the finer, stronger human capacities. Poetry, the author maintains, is central to any coherent vision of life.

The Sage Dictionary of Cultural Studies


Chris Barker - 2004
    Taken together, the definitions provide a effective overview of the field′ - Stuart Allan, Reader in Cultural Studies, University of the West of England, Bristol `Any student wishing to acquaint her or himself with the field of cultural studies will find this an enormously useful book′ - Joke Hermes, Editor, European Journal of Cultural Studies and Lecturer in Television Studies, University of Amsterdam Containing over 200 entries on key concepts and theorists, the Dictionary provides an unparalled guide to the terrain of cultural studies. The definitions are authoritative, stimulating and written in an accessible style. There are up-to-date entries on new concepts and innovative approaches.An ideal teaching and research resource, the Dicitionary can also be used as a companion to Chris Barker′s highly successful Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice (Second Edition, SAGE, 2003) and in conjunction with his Making Sense of Cultural Studies (SAGE, 2002)

Gay and Lesbian Rights Organizing: Community-Based Strategies


Yolanda Padilla - 2004
    It is an inspiring testimonial to grassroots work going on across the country, from a community located in the heart of the anti-gay operation in the US, the home of Focus on the Family, in Colorado, to a moving vision of a different world told first-hand by four transgender youth in the Northeast, to a successful campaign in a community in Kentucky where a decade earlier television crews agreed to film only the feet of gay rights marchers in order to protect them in view of fierce opposition and even death threats against them. As Urvashi Vaid states in the foreword, "local and state activism remains the vibrant center of the movement."The first section of Gay and Lesbian Rights Organizing, entitled "Building Coalitions and Changing Communities" examines:a multilevel process of organizing for GLBT rights, and how a grassroots campaign lobbied successfully for a local ordinance protecting GLBT rights in Louisville, Kentuckythe campaign and strategies utilized by the Fairness Alliance in Lexington-Fayette county, Kentucky, to facilitate the passage of that county's Fairness Ordinance, including effective lobbying and coalition building between the GLBT community and business, civic, political, community, and religious leadersthe development of gay rights organizations and their participation in several important local and statewide political coalitions in Connecticuthow GLBT activists organized to amend anti-discrimination laws in MarylandThe next section, "Visions of Community for GLBT Youth," presents: candid interviews with four male-to-female transgender students of color at an alternative school in the Northeastan examination of the development of Supporting Our Youth, an innovative grassroots program that builds community for GLBT youth in Toronto, Canada, through a broad range of arts, cultural, recreational, and employment training activities and a popular housing/mentoring programa framework for creating community-based gay/straight and youth/adult alliances in rural settings--and a look at PRISM, a community-based alliance open to youth from several schools in a college town and nearby rural communitiesthe challenges and successes of a small grassroots effort to change the learning environment for GLBT youth in a public school district in a small, conservative Colorado cityThe final section, "Innovative Strategies for a New Era," examines: GLBT think tanks--how they identify the concerns of GLBT people through research and policy analysis to provide the basis for more effective and proactive organizingwhat we can learn from Norway's example when it comes to protecting GLBT rights and providing services for GLBT peoplethe use of the Internet in the development and growth of the transgender movement--how it facilitates organizing, helps activists and organizations to be more productive and effective, and provides new tactics and arenas for activismGLAAD's "AM/FM Activism," an online resource that provides local activists with the tools necessary for responding to defamation in their communitiesthe Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, Texas, the world's largest gay church--and how in seeking social justice on behalf of other marginalized people they have gained acceptance and support from the local communitythe birth of the Lesbians and Lesbian Feminists organization on Mexico City, with a focus on the actualization of two of the movement's ideas--a lesbian kiss-in and legal recognition of same-sex relationships--and their eventual transformation into a major med