Best of
Social-Justice

2004

Voices of a People's History of the United States


Howard Zinn - 2004
    For Voices, Zinn and Arnove have selected testimonies to living history—speeches, letters, poems, songs—left by the people who make history happen but who usually are left out of history books—women, workers, nonwhites. Zinn has written short introductions to the texts, which range in length from letters or poems of less than a page to entire speeches and essays that run several pages. Voices of a People’s History is a symphony of our nation’s original voices, rich in ideas and actions, the embodiment of the power of civil disobedience and dissent wherein lies our nation’s true spirit of defiance and resilience.

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.

We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party


Mumia Abu-Jamal - 2004
    In We Want Freedom, Mumia combines personal experience with extensive research to provide a compelling history of the Black Panther Party—what it was, where it came from, and what rose from its ashes. Mumia also pays special attention to the U.S. government’s disruption of the organization through COINTELPRO and similar operations.While Abu-Jamal is a prolific writer and probably the world’s most famous political prisoner, this book is unlike any of Mumia’s previous works. In We Want Freedom, Abu-Jamal applies his sharp critical faculties to an examination of one of the U.S.’s most revolutionary and most misrepresented groups. A subject previously explored by various historians and forever ripe for "insider" accounts, the Black Panther Party has not yet been addressed by a writer with the well-earned international acclaim of Abu-Jamal, nor with his unique combination of a powerful, even poetic, voice and an unsparing critical gaze. Abu-Jamal is able to make his own Black Panther Party days come alive as well as help situate the organization within its historical context, a context that included both great revolutionary fervor and hope, and great repression. In this era, when the US PATRIOT Act dismantles some of the same rights and freedoms violated by the FBI in their attack on the Black Panther Party, the story of how the Party grew and matured while combating such invasions is a welcome and essential lesson.

Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary


Jasmine Guy - 2004
    But when her family moved to New York during the radical sixties, she became intoxicated by the promise of social change. By the time she turned twenty-one, Alice had a new name -- Afeni Shakur, derived from the Yoruba term for "lover of people" -- and a new vision for the future. The rest is history. In 1969, Afeni was arrested along with other members of the Black Panther party on 189 felony charges that included 30 counts of conspiracy. Though she was eventually acquitted of the charges, Afeni spent eleven months in jail before being released. Once on bail, she became pregnant with a son: Tupac Amaru Shakur, a rap megastar until his tragic death in 1996. In this searing work, renowned actress and Afeni's trusted friend Jasmine Guy reveals the evolution of a woman through a series of intimate conversations on themes such as love, death, race, drugs, politics, music, and of course her son. Filled with startling revelations and heartbreaking truths, Afeni's memoir is a powerful testament to the human spirit and the perseverance of the African American people.

Come September


Arundhati Roy - 2004
    With lyricism and passion, Roy combines her literary talents and encyclopedic knowledge to expose injustice and provide hope for a future world."Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead."—From the CDArundhati Roy is an outspoken critic of globalization and American influence. She has authored four books, -including The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize. This summer, she will accept the Lannan Award for Cultural Freedom.

Vintage Baldwin


James Baldwin - 2004
    His literary achievement is a lasting legacy about what it means to be American.Vintage Baldwin includes the short story “Sonny’s Blues”; the galvanizing civil rights examination “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation”; the essays “Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem,” “The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American,” and “Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South”; and excerpts from the novel Another Country and the play The Amen Corner.

Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement


Dennis Banks - 2004
    In Ojibwa Warrior, written with acclaimed writer and photographer Richard Erdoes, Banks tells his own story for the first time and also traces the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM). The authors present an insider’s understanding of AIM protest events—the Trail of Broken Treaties march to Washington, D.C.; the resulting takeover of the BIA building; the riot at Custer, South Dakota; and the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee. Enhancing the narrative are dramatic photographs, most taken by Richard Erdoes, depicting key people and events.

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.

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.

The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions


Helen Prejean - 2004
    Both were convicted of murder on flimsy evidence (O’Dell’s principal accuser was a jailhouse informant who later recanted his testimony). Both were executed in spite of numerous appeals. Sister Helen Prejean watched both of them die.As she recounts these men’s cases and takes us through their terrible last moments, Prejean brilliantly dismantles the legal and religious arguments that have been used to justify the death penalty. Riveting, moving, and ultimately damning, The Death of Innocents is a book we dare not ignore.

A Shelter in Our Car


Monica Gunning - 2004
    Since she left Jamaica for America after her father died, Zettie lives in a car with her mother while they both go to school and plan for a real home.

Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition


Steven Greenberg - 2004
    Employing traditional rabbinic resources, Greenberg presents readers with surprising biblical interpretations of the creation story, the love of David and Jonathan, the destruction of Sodom, and the condemning verses of Leviticus. But Greenberg goes beyond the question of whether homosexuality is biblically acceptable to ask how such relationships can be sacred. In so doing, he draws on a wide array of nonscriptural texts to introduce readers to occasions of same-sex love in Talmudic narratives, medieval Jewish poetry and prose, and traditional Jewish case law literature. Ultimately, Greenberg argues that Orthodox communities must open up debate, dialogue, and discussion-precisely the foundation upon which Jewish law rests-to truly deal with the issue of homosexual love. This book will appeal to all people of faith struggling to merge their belief in the scriptures with a desire to make their communities more open and accepting to gay and lesbian members.

Go Tell it on the Mountain / The Fire Next Time / If Beale Street Could Talk


James Baldwin - 2004
    Includes: Go Tell It on The Mountain, The Next time by fire and If Beale Street Could Talk all in one volume

Don't Hit My Mommy!: A Manual for Child-Parent Psychotherapy with Young Witnesses of Family Violence


Alicia F. Lieberman - 2004
    Practitioners from a variety of disciplines will gain an understanding of the impact of violence and will discover concrete intervention strategies to address the consequences of this experience for young children.

The Emptiness of Our Hands: 47 Days on the Streets


Phyllis Cole-Dai - 2004
    They went to the streets with a single intention: to be as present as possible to everyone we met, offering them sustained and nonjudgmental attention. Such attention is the heart of compassion. This book chronicles their streets experiences. It will thrust you out the door of your comfortable life, straight into the unknown. It will force you to confront what might happen to you, and who you might become, if suddenly you had no home. The meditative narrative is accompanied by pinhole photographs shot by James using cameras he constructed from trash. This is the third edition of the book, lightly edited. Though recounting events that occurred in 1999, The Emptiness of Our Hands remains as relevant today as ever. An "eye-opening" and "life-changing" read! Read this book on its own or in the company of Practicing Presence: Insights from the Streets, which Phyllis wrote on the tenth anniversary of her time on the streets. Take your reading slow, perhaps one chapter per day, so you can absorb and reflect. If you happen to be Christian, you might consider using this book and Practicing Presence as companion resources during Lent and Holy Week, which served as a backdrop for Phyllis and James's experience. But you don’t need to be a Christian to take this stumbling journey into practicing mindfulness on the streets. Just allow these forty-seven days to be for you what they were for Phyllis and James: a deep embrace of core values that human beings around the world have held in common for millennia. These values might best be articulated as questions: How do we treat others as we would have them treat us? How do we love our neighbors, including those who seem “alien” and “other?” How do we extend hospitality to strangers, allowing them an honored place among us? These age-old questions have no simple answers. We must seek to answer them daily with our lives. Get your free sampler of Phyllis's work when you join her mailing list at http://subscribe.phylliscoledai.com/. It includes music, poetry, spiritual nonfiction and historical fiction. You can also join her mailing list at http://www.phylliscoledai.com. CATEGORIES FOR THIS BOOK: --spirituality --memoir --mindfulness --homelessness --Lent & Holy Week --social conscience --engaged Buddhism

The People Speak: American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known: Dramatic Readings Celebrating the Enduring Spirit of Dissent


Howard Zinn - 2004
    These words were read by a remarkable cast at an event held at the 92nd Street YMHA in New York City that included James Earl Jones, Alice Walker, Jeff Zinn, Kurt Vonnegut, Alfre Woodard, Marisa Tomei, Danny Glover, Myla Pitt, Harris Yulin, and Andre Gregory.From that celebration, this book was born. Collected here under one cover is a brief history of America told through dramatic readings applauding the enduring spirit of dissent.Here in their own words, and interwoven with commentary by Zinn, are Columbus on the Arawaks; Plough Jogger, a farmer and participant in Shays' Rebellion; Harriet Hanson, a Lowell mill worker; Frederick Douglass; Mark Twain; Mother Jones; Emma Goldman; Helen Keller; Eugene V. Debs; Langston Hughes; Genova Johnson Dollinger on a sit-down strike at General Motors in Flint, Michigan; an interrogation from a 1953 HUAC hearing; Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper and member of the Freedom Democratic Party; Malcolm X; and James Lawrence Harrington, a Gulf War resister, among others.

Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought


Sandy Grande - 2004
    Grande asserts that, with few exceptions, the matters of Indigenous people and Indian education have been either largely ignored or indiscriminately absorbed within critical theories of education. Furthermore, American Indian scholars and educators have largely resisted engagement with critical educational theory, tending to concentrate instead on the production of historical monographs, ethnographic studies, tribally-centered curricula, and site-based research. Such a focus stems from the fact that most American Indian scholars feel compelled to address the socio-economic urgencies of their own communities, against which engagement in abstract theory appears to be a luxury of the academic elite. While the author acknowledges the dire need for practical-community based research, she maintains that the global encroachment on Indigenous lands, resources, cultures and communities points to the equally urgent need to develop transcendent theories of decolonization and to build broad-based coalitions.

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.

The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola


Dean Brackley - 2004
    Dean Brackley integrates a realistic analysis of today's social crisis with the deep personal spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola.

Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism


Hilda Gutiérrez Baldoquín - 2004
    Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, Charles Johnson, Thich Nhat Hanh, and twenty-five other contributors share their unique perspectives on the fundamental Buddhist concepts of suffering and the path to the cessation of suffering. Together they represent the entire spectrum of Buddhist tradition.Thought-provoking and passionate, Dharma, Color, and Culture forges a new path in our understanding of the simple truths of Buddhism and their relevance for all of us. Essays by Latino, Asian, African-American, and Native American Buddhist practitioners, lay people, and Dharma teachers address the connection between diversity, racism, and Buddhism at four levels: the personal, the interpersonal, the institutional, and the cultural. Recognizing that attention to the pain of racism is essential, the overarching theme of this work is how the Dharma becomes an effective antidote to the suffering and a vehicle for healing and liberation.

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.

Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex


Julia Sudbury - 2004
    The distinguished contributors to this collection offer a variety of perspectives, from former prisoners to advocates to scholars from around the world. The book is a must-read for anyone concerned by mass incarceration and the growth of the prison-industrial complex within and beyond U.S. borders, as well as those interested in globalization and resistance.

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.

The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today


Charles Marsh - 2004
    Rather, “the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community.” King’s words reflect the strong religious impetus behind the civil rights movement in the South in its early days. Consciously emphasizing the Judeo-Christian roots of their convictions, civil rights leaders at the time saw their ultimate purpose as building a “beloved community” on earth. In their quest for social justice, the radical idea of Christian love, specifically through the practice of nonviolence, would transform the social and political realities of twentieth-century America. By the end of the 1960s, that exuberant vision of the beloved community had come apart, lost to disillusionment and secular radicalism. But as noted theologian Charles Marsh shows, the same spiritual vision that animated the civil rights movement remains a vital-and growing-source of moral energy today. In moving prose, Marsh traces the history of this vision over the past four decades, from the racial reconciliation movement in American cities to the intentional communities that church groups have founded. His portraits of faith-based social justice initiatives-including Eugene Rivers’ Azusa Christian Community in Boston and Koinonia Farm in Georgia-offer a stark contrast to the usual media portrayal of Christian activism. Despite the odds against it, the pursuit of the beloved community continues to foster racial unity and civic responsibility in a divided American culture. With The Beloved Community, Marsh lays out a exuberant new vision for Christian progressivism, and simultaneously reclaims the centrality of faith in the quest for social justice.

Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families


Arlene Istar Lev - 2004
    Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families views assessment and treatment through a nonpathologizing lens that honors human diversity and acknowledges the role of oppression in the developmental process of gender identity formation.Specific sections of Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families address the needs of gender-variant people as well as transgender children and youth. The issues facing gender-variant populations who have not been the focus of clinical care, such as intersexed people, female-to-male transgendered people, and those who identify as bigendered, are also addressed.The book examines:the six stages of transgender emergencecoming out transgendered as a normative process of gender identity developmentthinking "outside the box" in the deconstruction of sex and genderthe difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as the convergence, overlap, and integration of these parts of the selfthe power of personal narrative in gender identity developmentetiology and typographies of transgenderismtreatment models that emerge from various clinical perspectivesalternative treatment modalities based on gender variance as a normative lifecycle developmental processComplete with fascinating case studies, a critique of diagnostic processes, treatment recommendations, and a helpful glossary of relevant terms, this book is an essential reference for anyone who works with gender-variant people. Handy tables and figures make the information easier to access and understand.Visit the author's Web site at http: //www.choicesconsulting.com

The Forbidden Book: The Philippine-American War in Political Cartoons


Abe Ignacio - 2004
    Asian & Asian American Studies. Filipino American Studies. Co-authored by Abe Ignacio, Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel, and Helen Toribio. THE FORBIDDEN BOOK uses over 200 political cartoons from 1898 to 1906 to chronicle a little known war between the United States and the Philippines. The war saw the deployment of 126,000 U.S. troops, lasted more than 15 years and killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos beginning in February 1899.The book's title comes from a 1900 Chicago Chronicle cartoon of the same name showing then-President William McKinley putting a lock on a book titled "True History of the War in the Philippines." Today, very few Americans know about the brutal suppression of Philippine independence or the anti-war movement led at that time by the likes of writer Mark Twain, peace activist Jane Addams, journalist Joseph Pulitzer, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, labor leader Samuel Gompers, and Moorfield Storey, first president of the NAACP.The book reveals how the public was misled in the days leading to the war, shows illustrations of U.S. soldiers using the infamous "water cure" torture (today referred to as "waterboarding"), and describes a highly publicized court martial of soldiers who had killed prisoners of war. The election of 1900 pitted a pro-war Republican president against an anti-war Democratic candidate. In 1902, the Republican president declared a premature "mission accomplished" as the war was beginning to expand to the southern Philippines. The book shows political cartoons glorifying manifest destiny, demonizing the leader of the Filipino resistance President Emilio Aguinaldo, and portraying Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Hawaiians, Chamorros, and other colonials as dark-skinned savages in need of civilization. These images were used to justify a war at a time when three African Americans on average were lynched every week across the south and when the Supreme Court approved the "separate but equal" doctrine.More than a century later, the U.S.- Philippine War remains hidden from the vast majority of Americans. The late historian Howard Zinn noted, "THE FORBIDDEN BOOK brings that shameful episode in our history out in the open... The book deserves wide circulation."

Powerful Words: More Than 200 Years Of Extraordinary Writings By ....


Wade Hudson - 2004
    Dynamic, timely, crucial, and eloquent words from more than 30 important African-American personalities are represented here.This is a moving collection of excerpted writings (letters, speeches, poetry, novels, songs, and more) by famous African-Americans with thoughtful commentary on the authors, as well as the impact the writings have had on society.Benjamin Banneker. Dred Scott. Ida B. Wells Barnett. Marcus Garvey. Langston Hughes. Rosa Parks. Malcolm X. Toni Morrison. Lauryn Hill. These and many more are the people who have helped shape African-American culture throughout history.

Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee


Mona Z. Smith - 2004
    Such is the story of Canada Lee. Among the most respected black actors of the forties and a tireless civil rights advocate, Lee was unjustly dishonored, his name reduced to a footnote in the history of the McCarthy era, his death one of a handful directly attributable to the blacklist. Born in Harlem in 1907, Lee was a Renaissance man. A musical prodigy on violin and piano at eleven, by thirteen he had become a successful jockey and by his twenties a champion boxer. After wandering into auditions for the WPA Negro Theater Project, Lee took up acting and soon shot to stardom in Orson Welles's Broadway production of Native Son, later appearing in such classic films as Lifeboat and the original Cry, the Beloved Country. But Lee's meteoric rise to fame was followed by a devastating fall. Labeled a Communist by the FBI and HUAC as early as 1943, Lee was pilloried during the notorious spy trial of Judith Coplon in 1949, then condemned in longtime friend Ed Sullivan's column. He died in 1952, forty-five and penniless, a heartbroken casualty of a dangerous and conflicted time. Now, after nearly a decade of research, Mona Smith revives the legacy of a man who was perhaps the blacklist's most tragic victim.

Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America's Prisons


Alan Elsner - 2004
    Reuters journalist Alan Elsner shows how prisons really work, how race-based gangs are able to control institutions and prey on weaker inmates, and how an epidemic of abuse and brutality has exploded across American prisons. Readers will discover the plight of 300,000 mentally ill people in prisons, virtually abandoned with little medical treatment. They'll also meet the fastest growing segment of the prison population: women. Readers go inside "supermax" prisons that cut inmates off from all human contact, and uncover the official corruption and brutality that riddles jail systems in major cities like Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and New York. Finally, they'll learn prisons accelerate the spread of infectious diseases throughout the broader society--just one of the many ways the prison epidemic touches everyone, even if they've never met anyone who's gone to jail.

Howard Zinn on Democratic Education


Howard Zinn - 2004
    This is the first book devoted to his views on education and its role in a democratic society. Howard Zinn on Democratic Education describes what is missing from school textbooks and in classrooms-and how we move beyond these deficiencies to improve student education. Critical skills of citizenship are insufficiently developed in schools, according to Zinn. Textbooks and curricula must be changed to transcend the recitation of received wisdom too common today in schools. In these respects, recent Bush Administration and educational policies of most previous US presidents have been on the wrong track in meeting educational needs. This book seeks to redefine national goals at a time when public debates over education have never been more polarised--nor higher in public visibility and contentious debate. Zinn's essays on education-many never before published--are framed in this book by a dialogue between Zinn and Donaldo Macedo, a distinguished critic of literacy and schooling, whose books with Paulo Freire, Noam Chomsky and other authors have received international acclaim.

James and Other Apes


James Mollison - 2004
    This title provides Close-Up Large Format Photographs Of The Faces Of Great Apes.

Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching: A Resource Guide for Classrooms and Communities


Deborah Menkart - 2004
    With sections on education, economic justice, citizenship, and culture, it connects the African-American Civil Rights Movement to Native American, Latina, Asian-American, gay rights, and international struggles; while highlighting the often-ignored roles of women in social justice movements.. Packed into nearly 600 oversize pages are photographs, songs, statements, and work from the likes of such great writers, historians, and activists as Bill Bigelow, James Loewen, June Jordan, Grace Lee Boggs, Herbert Kohl, Bayard Rustin, Rita Dove, Malcolm X, George Jackson, Ward Churchill, Leonard Peltier, Thurgood Marshall, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Martinez, Sonia Sanchez, Eric Foner, Marcus Garvey, Manning Marable, and dozens more. What a treasure trove. And what a vital (and useful) tool.

Children's Literature of the Harlem Renaissance


Katharine Capshaw Smith - 2004
    raises issues about the political and social intent of all children's literature. Essential." --ChoiceDuring the New Negro Renaissance, African American children's literature became a crucial medium through which a disparate community forged bonds of cultural, economic, and aesthetic solidarity. Employing interdisciplinary critical strategies, including social, educational, and publishing history, canon-formation theory, and extensive archival research, Children's Literature of the Harlem Renaissance analyzes childhood as a site of emerging black cultural nationalism. It explores the period's vigorous exchange about the nature and identity of black childhood and uncovers the networks of African Americans who worked together to transmit black history and culture to a new generation.

Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi


Betty Bastien - 2004
    In sharing her personal story of "coming home" to reclaim her identity within that culture, Betty Bastien offers us a gateway into traditional Blackfoot ways of understanding and experiencing the world. As a scholar and researcher, Bastien is also able to place Blackfoot tradition within the context of knowledge building among indigenous peoples generally, and within a historical context of precarious survival amid colonial displacement and cultural genocide. In mapping her own process of coming to know, Bastien stresses the recovery of the Blackfoot language and of the Blackfoot notions of reciprocal responsibilities and interdependence. For the Siksikaitsitapi, knowledge is experiential, participatory, and ultimately sacred, rather than objective and inert. Rekindling traditional ways of knowing is essential if First Nations people in Canada are to heal and rebuild their communities and cultures. By sharing what she has learned, Betty Bastien hopes to ensure that the next generation of First Nations people will enjoy a future of hope and peace

No Lonesome Road: SELECTED PROSE AND POEMS


Don West - 2004
    West was a poet, a pioneer advocate for civil rights, a preacher, a historian, a labor organizer, a folk-music revivalist, an essayist, and an organic farmer. He is perhaps best known as an educator, primarily as cofounder of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee and founder of the Appalachian South Folklife Center in West Virginia. In his old age, West served as an elder statesman for his causes.  No Lonesome Road allows Don West to speak for himself. It provides the most comprehensive collection of his poetry ever published, spanning five decades of his literary career. It also includes the first comprehensive and annotated collection of West's nonfiction essays, articles, letters, speeches, and stories, covering his role at the forefront of Southern and Appalachian history, and as a pioneer researcher and writer on the South's little-known legacy of radical activism.   Drawing from both primary and secondary sources, including previously unknown documents, correspondence, interviews, FBI files, and newspaper clippings, the introduction by Jeff Biggers stands as the most thorough, insightful biographical sketch of Don West yet published in any form.   The afterword by George Brosi is a stirring personal tribute to the contributions of West and also serves as a thoughtful reflection on the interactions between the radicals of the 1930s and the 1960s.   The best possible introduction to his extraordinary life and work, this annotated selection of Don West's writings will be inspirational reading for anyone interested in Southern history, poetry, religion, or activism.

Belonging: A Culture of Place


bell hooks - 2004
    Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which hooks moves from place to place, from country to city and back again, only to end where she began--her old Kentucky home. hooks has written provocatively about race, gender, and class; and in this book she turns her attention to focus on issues of land and land ownership. Reflecting on the fact that 90% of all black people lived in the agrarian South before mass migration to northern cities in the early 1900s, she writes about black farmers, about black folks who have been committed both in the past and in the present to local food production, to being organic, and to finding solace in nature. Naturally, it would be impossible to contemplate these issues without thinking about the politics of race and class. Reflecting on the racism that continues to find expression in the world of real estate, she writes about segregation in housing and economic racialized zoning. In these critical essays, hooks finds surprising connections that link the environment and sustainability to the politics of race and class that reach far beyond Kentucky.With characteristic insight and honesty, Belonging offers a remarkable vision of a world where all people--wherever they may call home--can live fully and well, where everyone can belong.

Inequality, Poverty, and Neoliberal Governance: Activist Ethnography in the Homeless Sheltering Industry


Vincent Lyon-Callo - 2004
    As advocates, activists, policy makers, and homeless people focused attention on market-based and individualized practices of reform and governance, collective efforts that challenged an economy dependent on low wage jobs, declining housing affordability, and the dismantling of the social safety net were marginalized and ignored. Homelessness continued, despite, and partly due to, the limitations of the neoliberal approach. Combining the rich detail of an ethnographic study with the systemic examination of political economic studies, this book offers a view of homelessness and inequality that is rarely explored elsewhere. Chapters include discussion of the medicalization of homelessness, the difficulty of finding paid employment given broader political economic conditions, how shelter staff are trained to manage homeless people, how statistics are used to produce ideas of homeless people as deviants, and how funding concerns affect possibilities for resistance. Key to the study is an activist approach that raises the possibilities and problems associated with a publicly engaged anthropology.

Langston Hughes in Lawrence: Photographs and Biographical Resources


Denise Dotson Low - 2004
    This biography includes 60 B&W photos of Lawrence places connected to Hughes, along with text, maps, and a family tree of known African, American Indian, and White ancestry. A story emerges of his prominent abolitionist grandparents, Charles and Mary Langston, who lived in the Lawrence area from 1870, and their struggle for education and civil rights. Many buildings from their and Langston Hughes's time survive in Lawrence, a place where the spirit of political activism is still alive. "Langston Hughes in Lawrence is a remarkable visual portrait of a place that nurtured a man known for his words more than one hundred years after his birth. We owe a debt of gratitude to Low and Weso for bringing Hughes's boyhood home alive, for returning us to those years between 1902 and 1915. Here we can see and imagine the world that made its permanent mark on the foremost poet of the 20th century." -Maryemma Graham, Langston Hughes National Poetry Project, University of Kansas "No previous scholar of Langston Hughes' boyhood in Lawrence has examined the complexities in Hughes's multiracial family or in his community with the comprehensiveness and insight that Low and Weso provide in their new study." Elizabeth Schultz, University of Kansas.

Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity


Loïc Wacquant - 2004
    It partakes of a broader reconstruction of the state wedding restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare” under a philosophy of moral behaviorism. This paternalist program of penalization of poverty aims to curb the urban disorders wrought by economic deregulation and to impose precarious employment on the postindustrial proletariat. It also erects a garish theater of civic morality on whose stage political elites can orchestrate the public vituperation of deviant figures—the teenage “welfare mother,” the ghetto “street thug,” and the roaming “sex predator”—and close the legitimacy deficit they suffer when they discard the established government mission of social and economic protection. By bringing developments in welfare and criminal justice into a single analytic framework attentive to both the instrumental and communicative moments of public policy, Punishing the Poor shows that the prison is not a mere technical implement for law enforcement but a core political institution. And it reveals that the capitalist revolution from above called neoliberalism entails not the advent of “small government” but the building of an overgrown and intrusive penal state deeply injurious to the ideals of democratic citizenship.Visit the author’s website.

Walking the Road: Race, Diversity, and Social Justice in Teacher Education


Marilyn Cochran-Smith - 2004
    Mapping the way to reconceptualizing teacher education today, this volume:Spells out, in detail, the problem of teacher preparation and why it needs to be understood as both a learning and a political problem. Explores an urban teaching program and how its participants came to understand race, diversity, and multicultural issues as part of the larger process of learning to teach. Explains why "unlearning" is an unavoidable part of the journey to teaching and teacher education for social justice. Uncovers political agendas and their serious implications for the teaching profession itself. Offers a much-needed framework for understanding and sorting out the multiple meanings of concepts related to multicultural issues and social justice in teacher education policy.