Best of
Social-Justice

1999

Through My Eyes


Ruby Bridges - 1999
    From where she sat in the office, Ruby Bridges could see parents marching through the halls and taking their children out of classrooms. The next day, Ruby walked through the angry mob once again and into a school where she saw no other students. The white children did not go to school that day, and they wouldn't go to school for many days to come. Surrounded by racial turmoil, Ruby, the only student in a classroom with one wonderful teacher, learned to read and add.This is the story of a pivotal event in history as Ruby Bridges saw it unfold around her. Ruby's poignant words, quotations from writers and from other adults who observed her, and dramatic photographs recreate an amazing story of innocence, courage, and forgiveness. Ruby Bridges' story is an inspiration to us all.

Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples


Linda Tuhiwai Smith - 1999
    Here, an indigenous researcher issues a clarion call for the decolonization of research methods.The book is divided into two parts. In the first, the author critically examines the historical and philosophical base of Western research. Extending the work of Foucault, she explores the intersections of imperialism, knowledge and research, and the different ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and methodologies as 'regimes of truth'. Providing a history of knowledge from the Enlightenment to Postcoloniality, she also discusses the fate of concepts such as 'discovery, 'claiming' and 'naming' through which the west has incorporated and continues to incorporate the indigenous world within its own web.The second part of the book meets the urgent need for people who are carrying out their own research projects, for literature which validates their frustrations in dealing with various western paradigms, academic traditions and methodologies, which continue to position the indigenous as 'Other'. In setting an agenda for planning and implementing indigenous research, the author shows how such programmes are part of the wider project of reclaiming control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.Exploring the broad range of issues which have confronted, and continue to confront, indigenous peoples, in their encounters with western knowledge, this book also sets a standard for truly emancipatory research. It brilliantly demonstrates that "when indigenous peoples become the researchers and not merely the researched, the activity of research is transformed."

Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation


Eli Clare - 1999
    . . . Using the language of the elemental world, he delineates a complex human intersection and transmutes cruelty into its opposite—a potent, lifegiving remedy.”—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun HomeFirst published in 1999, Exile & Pride established Eli Clare as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability. With this critical tenth-anniversary edition, the groundbreaking publication secures its position as essential to the history of queer and disability politics, and, through significant new material that boldly interrogates and advances the original text, to its future as well. Clare’s writing on his experiences as a genderqueer activist/writer with cerebral palsy permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation, and yet Exile & Pride is much too great in scope to be defined by even these two issues. Instead it offers an intersectional framework for understanding how our bodies actually experience the politics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the heart of Clare’s exploration of environmental destruction, white working-class identity, queer community, disabled sexuality, childhood sexual abuse, coalition politics, and his own gender transition is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible for everyone.Blending prose and theory, personal experience and political debate, anger and compassion, Exile & Pride provides a window into a world where our whole selves in all their complexity can be loved and accepted.An award-winning poet and essayist, Eli Clare is also the author of The Marrow’s Telling.

All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life


Winona LaDuke - 1999
    Hers is a beautiful and daring vision of political, spiritual, and ecological transformation."All Our Relations" features chapters on the Seminoles, the Anishinaabeg, the Innu, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Mohawks, among others."One of the pleasures of reading "All Our Relations" is discovering the unique voices of Native people, especially Native women, speaking in their own Native truths."-"Women's Review of Books"..".as Winona LaDuke describes, in moving and often beautiful prose, [these] misdeeds are not distant history but are ongoing degradation of the cherished lands of Native Americans."-"Public Citizen News"..".a rare perspective on Native history and culture."-"Sister to Sister/S2S""Hers is a beautiful and daring vision of political, spiritual, and ecological transformation. "All Our Relations" is essential reading for everyone who cares about the fate of the Earth and indigenous peoples."-"Winds of Change""No ragtag remnants of lost cultures here. Strong voices of old, old cultures bravely trying to make sense of an Earth in chaos."-"Whole Earth"

From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i


Haunani-Kay Trask - 1999
    This 1999 revised work includes material that builds on issues and concerns raised in the first edition: Native Hawaiian student organizing at the University of Hawai'i; the master plan of the Native Hawaiian self-governing organization Ka Lahui Hawai'i and its platform on the four political arenas of sovereignty; the 1989 Hawai'i declaration of the Hawai'i ecumenical coalition on tourism; and a typology on racism and imperialism. Brief introductions to each of the previously published essays brings them up to date and situates them in the current Native Hawaiian rights discussion.

The Cornel West Reader


Cornel West - 1999
    Whether he is writing a scholarly book or an article for Newsweek, whether he is speaking of Emerson, Gramsci, or Marvin Gaye, his work radiates a passion that reflects the rich traditions he draws on and weaves together: Baptist preaching, American transcendentalism, jazz, radical politics. This anthology reveals the dazzling range of West's work, from his explorations of ”Prophetic Pragmatism” to his philosophizing on hip-hop.The Cornel West Reader traces the development of West's extraordinary career as academic, public intellectual, and activist. In his essays, articles, books, and interviews, West emerges as America's social conscience, urging attention to complicated issues of racial and economic justice, sexuality and gender, history and politics. This collection represents the best work of an always compelling, often controversial, and absolutely essential philosopher of the modern American experience.

Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy


Kevin Bales - 1999
    Kevin Bales's disturbing story of contemporary slavery reaches from Pakistan's brick kilns and Thailand's brothels to various multinational corporations. His investigations reveal how the tragic emergence of a "new slavery" is inextricably linked to the global economy. This completely revised edition includes a new preface.All of the author's royalties from this book go to fund antislavery projects around the world.

No Future Without Forgiveness


Desmond Tutu - 1999
    Never had any country sought to move forward from despotism to democracy both by exposing the atrocities committed in the past and achieving reconciliation with its former oppressors. At the center of this unprecedented attempt at healing a nation has been Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whom President Nelson Mandela named as Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. With the final report of the Commission just published, Archbishop Tutu offers his reflections on the profound wisdom he has gained by helping usher South Africa through this painful experience.In No Future Without Forgiveness, Tutu argues that true reconciliation cannot be achieved by denying the past.  But nor is it easy to reconcile when a nation "looks the beast in the eye." Rather than repeat platitudes about forgiveness, he presents a bold spirituality that recognizes the horrors people can inflict upon one another, and yet retains a sense of idealism about reconciliation. With a clarity of pitch born out of decades of experience, Tutu shows readers how to move forward with honesty and compassion to build a newer and more humane world.

Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practice of Transformational Development


Bryant L. Myers - 1999
    "A masterpiece of integration and application that draws widely on the best Christian and scientific sources on development and draws solid conclusions from what we have learned from experience in ministries around the world." From the Foreword by Paul G. Hiebert"A book from which Christians of every church tradition can draw deeply and profit greatly. The practical wisdom found here can only be the result of what is expressed by its title: 'walking with the poor.'"� --Stephen B. Bevans, Catholic Theological UnionIn this revised and updated edition of a modern classic, Bryant Myers shows how Christian mission can contribute to dismantling poverty and social evil. Integrating the best principles and practice of the international development community, the thinking and experience of Christian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and a theological framework for transformational development, Myers demonstrates what is possible when we cease to treat the spiritual and physical domains of life as separate and unrelated.

Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World


Gary A. Haugen - 1999
    We wonder what we can possibly do in response. And we wonder where is the God of justice? Jesus, however, said, "Take heart! I have overcome the world." Gary Haugen sees the truth of Jesus' claim vindicated throughout Scripture, which portrays a God who rises up against injustice. He also sees this truth in the lives of sometimes little-known Christians who through the years have courageously confronted evil when they saw it. Here he tells stories of these witnesses of hope in a hurting world. The good news about injustice is that God is against it. God is in the business of using the unlikely to perform the holy, Haugen contends. And in this book he not only offers stories of courageous witnesses past and present, he also calls the body of Christ to action. He offers concrete guidance on the ways and means its members can rise up to seek justice throughout the world.

The Uses of Haiti


Paul Farmer - 1999
    It tells the truth about what has been happening in Haiti, and the US role in its bitter fate.—Noam Chomsky, from the introductionIn this third edition of the classic The Uses of Haiti, Paul Farmer looks at what has happened to the health of the poor in Haiti since the coup.Winner of a McArthur Genius Award, Paul Farmer is a physician and anthropologist who has worked for 25 years in Haiti, where he serves as medical director of a hospital serving the rural poor. He is the subject of the Tracy Kidder biography, Mountains Beyond Mountains.

Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices on Resistance, Reform, and Renewal an African American Anthology


Manning MarableAmy Euphemia Jacques Garvey - 1999
    The essays, manifestos, interviews, and documents assembled here, contextualized with critical commentaries from Marable and Mullings, introduce the reader to the character and important controversies of each period of black history. The selections represent a broad spectrum of ideology. Conservative, radical, nationalistic, and integrationist approaches can be found in almost every period, yet there have been striking shifts in the evolution of social thought and activism. The editors judiciously illustrate how both continuity and change affected the African-American community in terms of its internal divisions, class structure, migration, social problems, leadership, and protest movements. They also show how gender, spirituality, literature, music, and connections to Africa and the Caribbean played a prominent role in black life and history. To view the companion study guide, please click here http: //www.rowmanlittlefield.com/ISBN/074252...

A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System


John S. Milloy - 1999
    Begun in the 1870s, it was intended, in the words of government officials, to bring these children into the “circle of civilization,” the results, however, were far different. More often, the schools provided an inferior education in an atmosphere of neglect, disease, and often abuse.     Using previously unreleased government documents, historian John S. Milloy provides a full picture of the history and reality of the residential school system. He begins by tracing the ideological roots of the system, and follows the paper trail of internal memoranda, reports from field inspectors, and letters of complaint. In the early decades, the system grew without planning or restraint. Despite numerous critical commissions and reports, it persisted into the 1970s, when it transformed itself into a social welfare system without improving conditions for its thousands of wards. A National Crime shows that the residential system was chronically underfunded and often mismanaged, and documents in detail and how this affected the health, education, and well-being of entire generations of Aboriginal children.

The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality


William Sloane Coffin - 1999
    William Sloane Coffin offers an antidote to the politics of the religious right with a call to passive intellectuals and dispirited liberals to reenter the fray with a Christian view of social justice.

Sex and Social Justice


Martha C. Nussbaum - 1999
    Offering an internationalism informed by development economics and empirical detail, many essays take their start from the experiences of women in developing countries. Nussbaum argues for a universal account of human capacity and need, while emphasizing the essential role of knowledge of local circumstance. Further chapters take on the pursuit of social justice in the sexual sphere, exploring the issue of equal rights for lesbians and gay men. Nussbaum's arguments are shaped by her work on Aristotle and the Stoics and by the modern liberal thinkers Kant and Mill. She contends that the liberal tradition of political thought holds rich resources for addressing violations of human dignity on the grounds of sex or sexuality, provided the tradition transforms itself by responsiveness to arguments concerning the social shaping of preferences and desires. She challenges liberalism to extend its tradition of equal concern to women, always keeping both agency and choice as goals. With great perception, she combines her radical feminist critique of sex relations with an interest in the possibilities of trust, sympathy, and understanding.Sex and Social Justice will interest a wide readership because of the public importance of the topics Nussbaum addresses and the generous insight she shows in dealing with these issues. Brought together for this timely collection, these essays, extensively revised where previously published, offer incisive political reflections by one of our most important living philosophers.

A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life


Howard Thurman - 1999
    This lyrical collection of select published and unpublished works traces his struggle with the particular manifestations of violence and hatred that mark the twentieth century. His words remind us all that out of religious faith emerges social responsibility and the power to transform lives.

Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace


Noa Davenport - 1999
    Some flee from jobs they love, forced out by mean-spirited co-workers, subordinates or superiors -- often with the tacit approval of higher management. The authors, Dr. Noa Davenport, Ruth Distler Schwartz, and Gail Pursell Elliott have written a book for every employee and manager in America. The book deals with what has become a household word in Europe: Mobbing. Mobbing is a "ganging up" by several individuals, to force someone out of the workplace through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, discrediting, and particularly, humiliation. Mobbing is a serious form of nonsexual, nonracial harassment. It has been legally described as status-blind harassment. Mobbing affects the mental and physical health of victims. It extracts staggering costs from victims, their families, and from organizations. With this new book, Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, there is a name for the problem and help for the victims. The book helps readers to understand what mobbing is, why it occurs, how it affects a victim and organizations, and what people can so. The authors have interviewed victims from across the U.S. and the book contains many quotes that poignantly illustrate the gravity of the mobbing experience. An overview of the literature and research is provided as well as many practical strategies to help the victims, managers, healthcare and legal professionals. Original drawings by Sabra Vidali express the depth of the experience and enhance the authors' work.

The Nazis, Capitalism and the Working Class


Donny Gluckstein - 1999
    In this extraordinary Marxist analysis, Donny Gluckstein take issue with such arguments, demonstrating that at the height of an economic crisis in one of the most advanced countries in the world, it was the Nazis’ commitment to annihilating the gains of working-class organizations that made their political platform attractive to the German ruling class.Though anti-Semitism was at the center of Nazi ideology, it was not enough to propel the party to popularity; the Nazis were a minor, politically irrelevant force until the collapse of the German economy. Only then did their promise of relief from the hardships of the Depression pave the way for fascism's wider appeal and ultimate rise to power. Yet this rise did not go unchallenged. Gluckstein also provides an analysis of working-class resistance to the Nazis.As the global economy careens into a new period of crisis, far-right and explicitly fascist parties are gaining ground across Europe. The urgency of preventing a resurgence of fascism in the twenty-first century makes it more necessary than ever to understand the political and social context of the Nazis’ ascent to power in Germany.

Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen


James Bovard - 1999
    Bovard shows how the State threatens to destroy the individual in order to preserve the belief that any government is superior to the citizen. Bovard asks how we got to this point and answers with a thoughtful look at the history of governmental control from ancient times to the present, peppered throughout with observations on our present day, out of control governmental regulatory commissions and all-confiscating IRS.

Prisons of Poverty


Loïc Wacquant - 1999
    The author argues that the policies have their roots in a network of Reagan-era conservative think tanks, which used them as weapons in their crusade to dismantle the welfare state and, in effect, criminalise poverty.

Lay This Body Down: The 1921 Murders of Eleven Plantation Slaves


Gregory A. Freeman - 1999
    Williams plantation in Georgia was operated largely with the labor of slaves—and this was in 1921, 56 years after the Civil War. Williams was not alone in using “peons,” but his reaction to a federal investigation was almost unbelievable: he decided to destroy the evidence. Enlisting the aid of his trusted black farm boss, Clyde Manning, he began methodically killing his slaves. As this true story unfolds, each detail seems more shocking, and surprises continue in the aftermath, with a sensational trial galvanizing the nation and marking a turning point in the treatment of black Americans.

The African Unconscious: Roots of Ancient Mysticism and Modern Psychology


Edward Bruce Bynum - 1999
    The author uses a non-Western intellectual paradigm and draws his documentation from many fields including biology, physics, history, anthropology and archaeology, mysticism, psychology and psychoanalysis, and astronomy. The text unfolds a vision of the human species from our earliest days up to contemporary times.

Abraham Lincoln: In His Own Words


David Zarefsky - 1999
    As he led the nation through its gravest crisis, Lincoln emerged as a master of eloquence without equal.This series of 24 lectures examines the rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln—the public messages in which Lincoln evolved his views on slavery and the Union and by which he sought to persuade others.

Indian Cartography


Deborah A. Miranda - 1999
    Native American Studies. Winner of the North American Native Authors First Book Award. Deborah Miranda's INDIAN CARTOGRAPHY provides a psychic and emotional remapping of the Native American world of the West Coast. In lyric verse that is sometimes spare, sometimes dramatic, Miranda charts a homeward journey through the heart's territory --a land that has long been torn, disrupted, and colonized in the harshest sense of that word --Janice Gould. The first poem grabbed my wrist and held me for the duration. The prose is equally alive and its images have the precision and the edge of the finest poetry. Seamless back and forth journey from one little girl to another, one woman to another, one memory to another. All distinct yet connected. One long scream from a heart who will not stop living, whose life is an affirmation of survival --Wendy Rose. Miranda's poetry and essays have appeared in Bricolage, Calyx, Calloo, The Cimarron Review, Raven Chronicles, and Soujourner.

Unbending Gender


Joan C. Williams - 1999
    Concerned by what she finds--young women who flatly refuse to identify themselves as feminists and working-class and minority women who feel the movement hasn't addressed the issues that dominate their daily lives--she outlines a new vision of feminism that calls for workplaces focused on the needs of families and, in divorce cases, recognition of the value of family work and its impact on women's earning power. Williams shows that workplaces are designed around men's bodies and life patterns in ways that discriminate against women, and that the work/family system that results is terrible for men, worse for women, and worst of all for children. She proposes a set of practical policies and legal initiatives to reorganize the two realms of work in employment and households--so that men and women can lead healthier and more productive personal and work lives. Williams introduces a new 'reconstructive' feminism that places class, race, and gender conflicts among women at center stage. Her solution is an inclusive, family-friendly feminism that supports both mothers and fathers as caregivers and as workers.

Rainbows in the Dark


Jan L. Coates - 1999
    Charlie is Joanna's guide dog, a loyal friend and worker who helps her to see, but he's no help in picking out clothes for a very special event. With Abby's assistance, a wonderfully colorful outfit is soon ready for Joanna. To thank her new friend for her help, Joanna gives Abby and her mother tickets for an unspecified event. They decide to go. What a surprise for the young girl when she sees Joanna at a concert recital, wearing the clothes she helped to choose! Joanna's gift of music and magic creates a perfect ending and proves that there is no harm in wishing for rainbows.

Watch Me Fly: What I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be


Myrlie Evers-Williams - 1999
    Her dignity and perseverance in bringing her husband's killer to justice - a battle she waged for more than thirty years - have made her an inspiration and role model for millions of women of all ages and races. Yet few people know the private side of this most remarkable of public lives, a side that Myrlie Evers-Williams shares for the first time in Watch Me Fly. Here is a moving and vivid portrait of a childhood within a family of proud, determined Mississippi women; of the harrowing dangers her family faced during the civil rights struggle; of her efforts as a single mother to raise three children while attending college, efforts that left her battling depression; of her opening her heart to another wonderful man, only to lose him to cancer; and of her path from business and civic careers to her brilliant leadership of the NAACP through scandal to a newfound vitality. Watch Me Fly is not just a traditional memoir, however, but what Myrlie Evers-Williams calls an "instructive autobiography, " a book that links her memories to the wisdom she has gained over the years.

A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth


Andrew M. Manis - 1999
    Shuttlesworth took it as a sign that God would protect him on the mission that had made him a target that night. Standing in front of his demolished home, Shuttlesworth vigorously renewed his commitment to integrate Birmingham's buses, lunch counters, police force, and parks. The incident transformed him, in the eyes of Birmingham's blacks, from an up-and-coming young minister to a virtual folk hero and, in the view of white Birmingham, from obscurity to rabble-rouser extraordinaire.From his 1956 founding of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights through the historic demonstrations of 1963, driven by a sense of divine mission, Shuttlesworth pressured Jim Crow restrictions in Birmingham with radically confrontational acts of courage. His intensive campaign pitted him against the staunchly segregationist police commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor and ultimately brought him to the side of Martin Luther King Jr. and to the inner chambers of the Kennedy White House.First published in 1999, Andrew Manis's award-winning biography of "one of the nation's most courageous freedom fighters" demonstrates compellingly that Shuttleworth's brand of fiery, outspoken confrontation derived from his prophetic understanding of the pastoral role. Civil rights activism was tantamount to salvation in his understanding of the role of Christian minister.

Tricking and Tripping: Prostitution in the Era of AIDS


Claire E. Sterk - 1999
    

Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America's First Civil Rights Martyr


Ben Green - 1999
    This is his story. Before Martin Luther King Jr. began to preach from his pulpit in Montgomery, before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, and before Rosa Parks' famous bus ride, a man named Harry T. Moore toiled in Jim Crow Florida on behalf of the NAACP and the Progressive Voters’ League. For seventeen years, in an era of official indifference and outright hostility, the soft-spoken but resolute Moore traveled the back roads of the state on a mission to educate, evangelize, and organize. On Christmas night in 1951, in Mims, Florida, a bomb placed under his bed ended Harry Moore’s life. His wife, Harriette, died of her wounds a week later. Although Florida’s governor reopened the case in 1991, no one was ever convicted of this crime.            Using previously unavailable FBI files, Green introduces his readers to the good and the bad, the villainous and the virtuous, in Jim Crow Florida. In doing so, he offers a poignant and gripping memorial to the pioneering work of Harry T. Moore, one of the earliest martyrs of the modern civil rights movement.