Best of
Activism

2008

Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and Food


Gene Baur - 2008
    Written by one of the foremost experts on animal rights, Farm Sanctuary is an insightful, thought-provoking examination of the ethical questions involved in the breeding of animals for food.

From Outrage to Courage: The Unjust and Unhealthy Situation of Women in Poor Countries and What They Are Doing About It


Anne Firth Murray - 2008
    In this searing cradle-to-grave review, Murray tackles health issues from prenatal care to challenges faced by aging women. Looking at how gender inequality affects basic nutrition, Murray makes clear the issues are political more than they are medical. In an inspiring look, From Outrage to Courage shows how women are organizing the world over. Women’s courage to transform their situations and communities provides inspiration and models for change. From China to India, from Indonesia to Kenya, Anne Firth Murray takes readers on a whirlwind tour of devastation—and resistance.

Lines from a Mined Mind: The Words of John Trudell


John Trudell - 2008
    More than a simple anthology, this collection goes deeper, revealing the incendiary intersection of music and activism.

To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World?


Lucy Siegle - 2008
    Coming at a time when the global financial crisis and contracting of consumer spending is ushering in a new epoch for the fashion industry, To Die For offers a very plausible vision of how green could really be the new black.Taking particular issue with our current mania for both big-name labels and cheap fashion, To Die For sets an agenda for the urgent changes that can and need to be made by both the industry and the consumer. Far from outlining a future of drab, ethical clothing, Lucy Siegle believes that it is indeed possible to be an 'ethical fashionista', simply by being aware of how and where (and by whom) clothing is manufactured.The global banking crisis has put the consumer at a crossroads: when money is tight should we embrace cheap fast fashion to prop up an already engorged wardrobe, or should we reject this as the ultimate false economy and advocate a return to real fashion, bolstered by the principles of individualism and style pedigree?In this impassioned book, Siegle analyses the global epidemic of unsustainable fashion, taking stock of our economic health and moral accountabilities to expose the pitfalls of fast fashion. Refocusing the debate squarely back on the importance of basic consumer rights, Siegle reveals the truth behind cut price, bulk fashion and the importance of your purchasing decisions, advocating the case for a new sustainable design era where we are assured of value for money: ethically, morally and in real terms.

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto


Aaron Swartz - 2008
    On January 13th 2013, two days after his death, Anonymous hacked MIT's website and posted a copy of this manifesto, along with a message which can be read in full at: http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/13/anon..."You were the best of us; may you yet bring out the best in us.-Anonymous, Jan 13, 2013."This manifesto is openly available across the internet, including at the official URL where it has been posted in numerous languages.

What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland


Waziyatawin Angela Wilson - 2008
    Many Dakota people say that the wounds incurred have never healed, and it is clear that the injustices: genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass executions, death marches, broken treaties, and land theft; have not been made right. The Dakota People paid and continue to pay the ultimate price for Minnesota's statehood.This book explores how we can embark on a path of transformation on the way to respectful coexistence with those whose ancestral homeland this is. Doing justice is central to this process. Without justice, many Dakota say, healing and transformation on both sides cannot occur, and good, authentic relations cannot develop between our Peoples.Written by Wahpetunwan Dakota scholar and activist Waziyatawin of Pezihutazizi Otunwe, What Does Justice Look Like? offers an opportunity now and for future generations to learn the long-untold history and what it has meant for the Dakota People. On that basis, the book offers the further opportunity to explore what we can do between us as Peoples to reverse the patterns of genocide and oppression, and instead to do justice with a depth of good faith, commitment, and action that would be genuinely new for Native and non-Native relations.

We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now


Murray Polner - 2008
    Beginning with the War of 1812, these selections cover every major American war up to the present and come from both the left and the right, from religious and secular viewpoints. There are many surprises, including a forgotten letter from a Christian theologian urging Confederate President Jefferson Davis to exempt Christians from the draft and a speech by Abraham Lincoln opposing the 1848 Mexican War. Among others, Daniel Webster, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Grover Cleveland, Eugene Debs, Robert Taft, Paul Craig Roberts, Patrick Buchanan, and Country Joe and the Fish make an appearance. This first-ever anthology of American antiwar writing offers the full range of the subject's richness and variety.

Abolition Now!: Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex


The CRIO Publications CollectiveJulia Sudbury - 2008
    Critical Resistance is a leading voice in the movement for abolition and the pieces in this collection are powerful tools for both long-time activists and those brand new to the movement for abolition now!”—Angela Y. Davis, author of Are Prisons Obsolete?The number of people in prison in the United States has risen 400 percent in the last twenty years—the world’s highest incarceration rate. Over seven million people currently live under the control of US jail, prison, probation, or parole systems—the vast majority of them people of color and young people. Policing at all levels is increasingly militarized and demands more and more resources.For a decade, Critical Resistance has organized to abolish the reliance on imprisonment, policing, and surveillance, seeing the prison industrial complex (PIC) not as a broken system to be fixed, but a well-oiled machine that must be eliminated entirely.Published in honor of Critical Resistance’s tenth anniversary, Abolition Now! reflects the organization’s themes: Dismantle, Change, and Build. It presents bold strategies to create a stronger movement of people committed to PIC abolition and building stronger, safer, healthier communities, not more elaborate forms of repression.The CR10 Publications Collective is a national grassroots organization with thousands of members and supporters working toward reducing the current prison population, stopping construction of new prisons, and developing alternative public safety models.

Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca


Diana Denham - 2008
    The show of international solidarity for the people of Oaxaca was the most extensive since the Zapatista uprising in 1994. Fueled by long ignored social contradictions, what began as a teachers' strike demanding more resources for education quickly turned into a massive movement that demanded direct, participatory democracy.  Hundreds of thousands of Oaxacans raised their voices against the abuses of the state government. They participated in marches of up to 800,000 people, occupied government buildings, took over radio stations, called for statewide labor and hunger strikes, held sit-ins, reclaimed spaces for public art and created altars for assassinated activists in public spaces. In the now legendary March of Pots and Pans, two thousand women peacefully took over and operated the state television channel for three weeks. Barricades that were built all over the city to prevent the passage of paramilitaries and defend occupied public spaces, quickly became a place where neighbors got to know each other, shared ideas and developed new strategies for organizing.  Despite the fierce repression that the movement faced—with hundreds arbitrarily detained, tortured, forced into hiding, or murdered by the state and federal forces and paramilitary death squads—people were determined to make their voices heard.  "Once you learn to speak, you don't want to be quiet anymore," an indigenous community radio activist said.  Accompanied by photography and political art, Teaching Rebellion is a compilation of testimonies from longtime organizers, teachers, students, housewives, religious leaders, union members, schoolchildren, indigenous community activists, artists and journalists—and many others who participated in what became the Popular Assembly of the People's of Oaxaca. This is a chance to listen directly to those invested in and affected by what quickly became one of the most important social uprisings of the 21st century.

The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Programs


Huey P. Newton Foundation - 2008
    The Party pioneered free social service programs that are now in the mainstream of American life.The Party's Sickle Cell Anemia Research Foundation, operated with Oakland's Children's Hospital, was among the nation's first such testing programs. Its Free Breakfast Program served as a model for national programs. Other initiatives included free clinics, grocery giveaways, school and education programs, senior programs, and legal aid programs.Published here for the first time in book form, "The Black Panther Party" makes the case that the programs' methods are viable models for addressing the persistent, basic social injustices and economic problems of today's American cities and suburbs.

What Matters: The World's Preeminent Photojournalists and Thinkers Depict Essential Issues of Our Time


David Elliot Cohen - 2008
    Socially conscious pioneers with cameras transformed the world—and that legacy lives on in this eye-opening, thought-provoking, and (we hope) action-inducing book. Like Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth before it, we believe that What Matters will fundamentally alter the way we see and understand the human race and our planet.What Matters asks: What are the essential issues of our time? What are the pictures that will spark public outrage and spur reform? The answer appears in 18 powerful, page-turning stories by the foremost photojournalists of our age, edited by The New York Times best-selling author/editor David Elliot Cohen (A Day in the Life and America 24/7 series), and featuring trenchant commentary from well-recognized experts and thinkers in appropriate fields. Photographer Gary Braasch and climate-change guru Bill McKibben provide “A Global Warming Travelogue” that takes us from ice caves in Antarctica to smoke-spewing coal plants in Beijing. Brent Stirton and Peter A. Glick examine a “Thirsty World,” chronicling the daily search for clean water in non-developed countries. James Nachtwey and bestselling poverty expert Jeffrey D. Sachs look at the causes of, and cures for, global poverty in “The Bottom Billion.” Stephanie Sinclair and Judith Bruce present the preteen brides of Afghanistan, Nepal, and Ethiopia.Sometimes the juxtaposition of photographs can be startling: “Shop ‘til We Drop,” Lauren Greenfield’s images of upscale consumer culture, starkly contrast with Shehzad Noorani’s “Children of the Black Dust”—child laborers in Bangladesh, their faces blackened with carbon dust from recycled batteries.The combination of compelling photographs and insightful writing make this a highly relevant, widely discussed book bound to appeal to anyone concerned about the crucial issues shaping our world. What Matters is, in effect, a 336-page illustrated letter to the next American president about the issues that count. It will inspire readers to do their part—however small—to make a difference: to help, the volume includes extensive “What You Can Do” sections with a menu of web links and effective actions readers can take now. This year give What Matters.

Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation


Gary L. Francione - 2008
    Francione is known for his criticism of animal welfare laws and regulations, his abolitionist theory of animal rights, and his promotion of veganism and nonviolence as the baseline principles of the abolitionist movement. In this collection, Francione advances the most radical theory of animal rights to date. Unlike Peter Singer, Francione maintains that we cannot morally justify using animals under any circumstances, and unlike Tom Regan, Francione's theory applies to all sentient beings, not only to those who have more sophisticated cognitive abilities.

How Shall I Live My Life?: On Liberating the Earth from Civilization


Derrick JensenJesse Wolf Hardin - 2008
    Whether it is Carolyn Raffensperger and her radical approach to public health, or Thomas Berry on perceiving the sacred; be it Kathleen Dean Moore reminding us that our bodies are made of mountains, rivers, and sunlight; or Vine Deloria asserting that our dreams tell us more about the world than science ever can, the activists and philosophers interviewed in How Shall I Live My Life? each bravely present a few of the endless forms that resistance can and must take.

Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future


Melissa K. Nelson - 2008
    They’ve successfully managed complex reciprocal relationships between biological and cultural diversity. Awareness of indigenous knowledge is reemerging at the eleventh hour to help avert global ecological and social collapse. Indigenous cultural wisdom shows us how to live in peace--with the earth and one another.Original Instructions evokes the rich indigenous storytelling tradition in this collection of presentations gathered from the annual Bioneers conference. It depicts how the world’s native leaders and scholars are safeguarding the original instructions, reminding us about gratitude, kinship, and a reverence for community and creation. Included are more than 20 contemporary indigenous leaders--such as Chief Oren Lyons, John Mohawk, Winona LaDuke, and John Trudell. These beautiful, wise voices remind us where hope lies.

In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past


Henry Louis Gates Jr. - 2008
    Slavery was a brutally efficient nullifier of identity, willfully denying black men and women even their names. Yet, from that legacy of slavery, there have sprung generations who’ve struggled, thrived, and lived extraordinary lives. For too long, African Americans’ family trees have been barren of branches, but, very recently, advanced genetic testing techniques, combined with archival research, have begun to fill in the gaps. Here, scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., backed by an elite team of geneticists and researchers, takes nineteen extraordinary African Americans on a once unimaginable journey, tracing family sagas through U.S. history and back to Africa. Those whose recovered pasts collectively form an African American “people’s history” of the United States include celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, Don Cheadle, Chris Tucker, Morgan Freeman, Tina Turner, and Quincy Jones; writers such as Maya Angelou and Bliss Broyard; leading thinkers such as Harvard divinity professor Peter Gomes, the Reverend T. D. Jakes, neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot; and famous achievers such as astronaut Mae Jemison, media personality Tom Joyner, decathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Ebony and Jet publisher Linda Johnson Rice. More than a work of history, In Search of Our Roots is a book of revelatory importance that, for the first time, brings to light the lives of ordinary men and women who, by courageous example, blazed a path for their famous descendants. For a reader, there is the stirring pleasure of witnessing long-forgotten struggles and triumphs–but there’s an enduring reward as well. In accompanying the nineteen contemporary achievers on their journey into the past and meeting their remarkable forebears, we come to know ourselves.

A Community Guide to Environmental Health


Jeff Conant - 2008
    This highly-illustrated guide will help health promoters, educators, community leaders and ordinary people take charge of their communities' environmental health. In small villages and large cities, 'A Community Guide to Environmental Health' can provide tools, knowledge, and inspiration to begin transforming the global crisis in evironmental health. This book contains activities to stimulate critical thinking and environmental change, dozens of stories of communitites in action, and instructions for making simple technologies to purify water, clean without toxics, get rid of pests, and more. Like all Hesperian books, this title was developed in consultation with organizations from around the world, ensuring its appropriateness and usefulness for a variety of cultures and circumstances.

Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race


George Yancy - 2008
    George Yancy examines themes such as double consciousness, invisibility, and corporeal malediction that capture the lived reality of Black bodies under tremendous existential duress. He demonstrates that the Black body is a historically lived text on which whites have inscribed their projections which speak equally forcefully to whites' own self-conceptions.

Opa Nobody


Sonya Huber - 2008
    Then Sonya Huber turned to her long-dead grandfather, the family “nobody,” for help. Huber’s search for meaning and resonance in the life of her grandfather Heina Buschman was unusual insofar as she knew him only through dismissive family stories: He let his wife die of neglect . . . he used his infant son as a decoy when transporting anti-Nazi literature in a baby carriage . . . and so the stories went. What she actually discovered was that, like his granddaughter, Heina Buschman was a committed and beleaguered activist whose story echoed her own. Huber’s research not only conjured her grandfather’s voice in answer to many of the questions that troubled her but also found in his story a source of personal sustenance for herself. Based on extensive research and documentation, this story of Heina Buschman offers a rare look into the heart of the “average” socialist trying to survive the Nazis and rebuild a broken world. Alternating with his voice is Huber’s own, providing a rich and moving counterpoint that makes this deeply personal exploration of family, politics, and individual responsibility a story for all of us and for all time.

Peace: 50 Years of Protest


Barry Miles - 2008
    Miles uses a combination of research and personal recall to recount the evolution of this iconic image. Illustrated.

Strategic Action for Animals: A Handbook on Strategic Movement Building, Organizing, and Activism for Animal Liberation


Melanie Joy - 2008
    These industries have vastly more resources at their disposal than activists do. Given this tremendous power differential, how can activists hope to compete? The good news is that there is a way to shift the balance of power in favor of the movement. And strategy is the way. In Strategic Action for Animals, Melanie Joy explains how to use strategy to exponentially increase the effectiveness of activism for animals. Drawing on diverse movements and sources, she offers tried and true tactics based on well-established principles and practices. She also explains how to address the most common problems that weaken the movement, such as dissidence among organizations and activists, inefficient campaigns, wasted resources, and high rates of burnout. Whether you are working alone or with a group, whether you are a seasoned activist or new to the movement, Strategic Action for Animals, can help you make the most of your efforts to make the world a better place for animals.

Chicago Seven


Abbie Hoffman - 2008
    Here, from trial transcripts, are the testimony of Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, Bobby Seale, and others.

Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience


Beatriz da Costa - 2008
    Tactical Biopolitics suggests that the political challenges at the intersection of life, science, and art are best addressed through a combination of artistic intervention, critical theorizing, and reflective practices. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, contributions to this volume focus on the political significance of recent advances in the biological sciences and explore the possibility of public participation in scientific discourse, drawing on research and practice in art, biology, critical theory, anthropology, and cultural studies. After framing the subject in terms of both biology and art, Tactical Biopolitics discusses such topics as race and genetics (with contributions from leading biologists Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins); feminist bioscience; the politics of scientific expertise; bioart and the public sphere (with an essay by artist Claire Pentecost); activism and public health (with an essay by Treatment Action Group co-founder Mark Harrington); biosecurity after 9/11 (with essays by artists' collective Critical Art Ensemble and anthropologist Paul Rabinow); and human-animal interaction (with a framing essay by cultural theorist Donna Haraway).ContributorsGaymon Bennett, Larry Carbone, Karen Cardozo, Gary Cass, Beatriz da Costa, Oron Catts, Gabriella Coleman, Critical Art Ensemble, Gwen D'Arcangelis, Troy Duster, Donna Haraway, Mark Harrington, Jens Hauser, Kathy High, Fatimah Jackson, Gwyneth Jones, Jonathan King, Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin, Rachel Mayeri, Sherie McDonald, Claire Pentecost, Kavita Philip, Paul Rabinow, Banu Subramanian, subRosa, Abha Sur, Samir Sur, Jacqueline Stevens, Eugene Thacker, Paul Vanouse, Ionat Zurr

If It Takes All Summer: Martin Luther King, the KKK, and States' Rights in St. Augustine, 1964


Dan R. Warren - 2008
    Augustine, Florida, in the early and mid-1960s. In the summer of 1964 the nation’s oldest city became the center of the civil rights movement as Martin Luther King Jr., encouraged by President Johnson, a southerner, who made the civil rights bill the center piece of his domestic policy, chose this tourism-driven community as an ideal location to demonstrate the injustice of discrimination and the complicity of southern leaders in its enforcement.  St. Augustine was planning an elaborate celebration of its founding, and expected generous federal and state support. But when the kick-off dinner was announced only whites were invited, and local black leaders protested. The affair alerted the national civil rights leadership to the St. Augustine situation as well as fueling local black resentment.  Ferment in the city grew, convincing King to bring his influence to the leadership of the local struggle. As King and his allies fought for the right to demonstrate, a locally powerful Ku Klux Klan counter-demonstrated. Conflict ensued between civil rights activists, local and from out-of-town, and segregationists, also home-grown and imported. The escalating violence of the Klan led Florida’s Governor to appoint State Attorney Dan Warren as his personal representative in St. Augustine. Warren’s crack down on the Klan and his innovative use of the Grand Jury to appoint a bi-racial committee against the intransigence of the Mayor and other officials, is a fascinating story of moral courage. This is an insider view of a sympathetic middleman in the difficult position of attempting to bring reason and dialog into a volatile situation.

Activist Scholarship: Antiracism, Feminism, and Social Change


Julia Sudbury - 2008
    imperialism, racial/gender oppression, and the economic violence of capitalist globalization? This book explores what happens when scholars create active engagements between the academy and communities of resistance. In so doing, it suggests a new direction for antiracist and feminist scholarship, rejecting models of academic radicalism that remain unaccountable to grassroots social movements. The authors explore the community and the academy as interlinked sites of struggle. This book provides models and the opportunity for critical reflection for students and faculty as they struggle to align their commitments to social justice with their roles in the academy. At the same time, they explore the tensions and challenges of engaging in such contested work.

The Prisons We Broke


Baby Kamble - 2008
    The Prisons We Broke provides a graphic insight into the oppressive caste and patriarchal tenets of the Indian society, but nowhere does the writing descend to self-pity. With verve and colour the narrative brings to life, among other things, the festivals, rituals, marriages, snot-nosed children, hard lives and hardy women of the Mahar community. The original Marathi work, Jina Amucha, re-defined autobiographical writing in Marathi in terms of form and narrative strategies adopted, and the selfhood and subjectivities that were articulated. It is the first autobiography by a Dalit woman in Marathi, probably even the first of its kind in any Indian language.

Fiat Paper Money, the history and evolution of our currency


Ralph T. Foster - 2008
    The history and evolution of our currency.traces the rise and "inevitable fall" of every paper currency that has every existed, save the most recent ones that are collapse, and or still exist

Homeboy Came to Orange: A Story of People's Power


Ernest Thompson - 2008
    Inspired and led by Ernest Thompson -- an extraordinary organizer with decades of experience in some of America's roughest political arenas -- they defined a vision for a just and beautiful city and they worked tirelessly to advance their dream. They fought for a holistic program that included better schools, relocation for people in the path of a new highway, jobs, recreation, and crime prevention. Their most important success was in rescuing the city's school system from decades of neglect. Their courage and tenacity enabled them to win political power and use it in the best interests of the city's people. At the heart of their success was that these black Americans fought not for themselves alone but for a better life for all. Their inclusive stance transformed the city's social relations. In time, political alliances transcended the convenient and became what Thompson called "pure coalition" coalition based on friendship and mutual respect. Though Thompson died in 1971, the work of these loving friends reaches out to guide Orange and the nation.

Beyond Masculinity: Essays by Queer Men on Gender and Politics


Trevor Hoppe - 2008
    Part audiobook, part-blog, and part-anthology, brings together a smart, diverse group of queer male writers all critically examining maleness and the construction of masculinity and gender norms for men.

Paper Trails: From Trees to Trash - The True Cost of Paper


Mandy Haggith - 2008
    It is written on, things are packaged in it, it’s used as currency, and people blow their noses on it. Yet the dependence on this seemingly “green” product is damaging the planet and creating mountains of unnecessary waste. This exploration journeys to the heart of the global paper industry, traveling from the pristine forests and managed plantations of Canada, Russia, and Indonesia to the pulp mills and paper factories of China and Britain, and the end users in businesses, governments, schools, and homes throughout the world. Pursuing the paper trail from forest to landfill, it uncovers the origins, multiple uses, and disposal of this everyday product and gives a fascinating new perspective on the paper industry’s dirtiest secrets, from environmental devastation to human rights abuses. The truth about the paper that is used every day is given as are the simple, practical steps to can take to minimize a person’s own paper trail.

What We Bury at Night: Disposable Humanity


Julian Aguon - 2008
    Micronesia is last domino in the quest to globalize the Earth into a singular monoculture. It is the region least affected by the increasingly global culture of conspicuous consumption and individualistic materialism. Micronesia is at a crossroads, as is the human race. If the last region on earth in which, among the majority of the population, communal living based on interconnectedness, extended families, shared resources, non-linear thinking, and a sustainable relationship with the natural environment is the norm is allowed to be destroyed, the future of humanity is truly in jeopardy. When imagination of indigenous youth and the viability of sustainable living are allowed to die, so does hope for the entire human race. Micronesia is one of the last corners on earth where people, on the whole, still pattern life in humane and interdependent arrangements built on sustaining, life-supporting values, in short, where people still mostly function as people. This resilience, perhaps, is an offering of beauty - its contribution to the world. This book is a series of essays describing the present day realities of the U.S.-Micronesia relationship through the eyes of the folk on the ground, being disappeared. Both elders and youth tell of the continuing harm of the U.S. colonial project in Micronesia, revealing how that project continues to starve the imaginations of entire peoples. Made up of more than 2,000 islands and atolls in three major archipelagos, the Carolines, the Marshalls, and the Marianas, Micronesia was known from the last World War until the 1970s as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. All of it, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Republic of Palau (Belau), and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), less Guam, which was cut from the rest after the Spanish-American war and lumped with the other 1898 Unfortunates: the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. While the world looks away, this region of the planet is facing down death. Mostly losing. Current U.S. militarist and corporate plans for the region now threaten to destroy the life-affirming values that bind and sustain these ancient civilizations by deepening dispossession of the people."

Mixed Race Hollywood


Mary Beltrán - 2008
    Mixed Race Hollywood is a pioneering compilation of essays on mixed-race romance, individuals, families, and stars in U.S. film and media culture.Situated at the cutting-edge juncture of ethnic studies and media studies, this collection addresses early mixed-race film characters, Blaxploitation, mixed race in children’s television programming, and the "outing" of mixed-race stars on the Internet, among other issues and contemporary trends in mixed-race representation. The contributors explore this history and current trends from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives in order to better understand the evolving conception of race and ethnicity in contemporary culture.

Love Every Leaf: The Life of Landscape Architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander


Kathy Stinson - 2008
    Playing in her grandmother’s garden as a child, Cornelia absorbed the beauty and importance of the natural world and by the age of eleven had decided that she would become a landscape architect.Leaving her native Germany in the wake of Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, the teenaged Cornelia was transplanted in America, where she could pursue her dream in safety, although not without having to struggle to carve out a place for herself in the male-dominated world of her chosen profession. This 96-page biography tells her remarkable life’s story, complete with photographs and plans for the imaginative playgrounds and the innovative museum and embassy grounds she has created around the world, and for green rooftops, her latest passion. Young readers will not only learn about the profession, but also will find inspiration in Cornelia Hahn Oberlander’s love for the natural world and the respect and concern she shows for our increasingly fragile environment.

We Will Be Heard: Voices in the Struggle for Constitutional Rights Past and Present


Bud Schultz - 2008
    'We Will Be Heard' features over 90 stirring portraits and first-person accounts of Americans targeted for speaking out against government policies and actions.

Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World's Frontlines


William Cleveland - 2008
    Here are six remarkable stories of artists in Northern Ireland, Cambodia, South Africa, the United States (Watts, Los Angeles), aboriginal Australia, and Serbia, who heal unspeakable trauma, give voice to the forgotten and disappeared, and re-stitch the cultural fabric of their communities.Author Bill Cleveland is an activist, teacher, facilitator, lecturer, and director of the Center for the Study of Art & Community. He is the author of Art in Other Places, which explores the emerging community arts movement in the United States.

Ain't I a Feminist?: African American Men Speak Out on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom


Aaronette M. White - 2008
    In her analysis, Aaronette M. White highlights feminist fathering practices; how men establish egalitarian relationships with women; the variety of Black masculinities; and the interplay of race, gender, class, and sexuality politics in American society. Coming from a wide range of family backgrounds, ages, geographical locations, sexualities, and occupations, each man also shares what he experiences as the personal benefits of feminism, and how feminism contributes to his efforts towards social change. Focusing on the creative agency of Black men to redefine the assumptions and practices of manhood, the author also offers recommendations regarding the socialization of African American boys and the reeducation of African American men in the interest of strengthening their communities.