Best of
Social-Justice

2005

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing


Joy DeGruy - 2005
    Slavery produced centuries of physical, psychological and spiritual injury. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing lays the groundwork for understanding how the past has influenced the present, and opens up the discussion of how we can use the strengths we have gained to heal.

Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, and Empire


Angela Y. Davis - 2005
    Since then, a debate has raged regarding what is and what is not acceptable behavior for the world’s leading democracy. It is within this context that Angela Davis, one of America’s most remarkable political figures, gave a series of interviews to discuss resistance and law, institutional sexual coercion, politics and prison. Davis talks about her own incarceration, as well as her experiences as "enemy of the state," and about having been put on the FBI’s "most wanted" list. She talks about the crucial role that international activism played in her case and the case of many other political prisoners.Throughout these interviews, Davis returns to her critique of a democracy that has been compromised by its racist origins and institutions. Discussing the most recent disclosures about the disavowed "chain of command," and the formal reports by the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch denouncing U.S. violation of human rights and the laws of war in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, Davis focuses on the underpinnings of prison regimes in the United States.

Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide


Andrea Lee Smith - 2005
    In Conquest, Smith places Native American women at the center of her analysis of sexual violence, challenging both conventional definitions of the term and conventional responses to the problem.Beginning with the impact of the abuses inflicted on Native American children at state-sanctioned boarding schools from the 1880s to the 1980s, Smith adroitly expands our conception of violence to include environmental racism, population control and the widespread appropriation of Indian cultural practices by whites and other non-natives. Smith deftly connects these and other examples of historical and contemporary colonialism to the high rates of violence against Native American women—the most likely women in the United States to die of poverty-related illnesses, be victims of rape and suffer partner abuse.Essential reading for scholars and activists, Conquest is the powerful synthesis of Andrea Smith’s intellectual and political work to date. By focusing on the impact of sexual violence on Native American women, Smith articulates an agenda that is compelling to feminists, Native Americans, other people of color and all who are committed to creating viable alternatives to state-based “solutions.”

Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism


James W. Loewen - 2005
    Loewen, exposes the secret communities and hotbeds of racial injustice that sprung up throughout the twentieth century unnoticed, forcing us to reexamine race relations in the United States.In this groundbreaking work, bestselling sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the national bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America. In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of “sundown towns”—almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks could not live there—that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located outside of the South. These towns used everything from legal formalities to violence to create homogenous Caucasian communities—and their existence has gone unexamined until now. For the first time, Loewen takes a long, hard look at the history, sociology, and continued existence of these towns, contributing an essential new chapter to the study of American race relations.Sundown Towns combines personal narrative, history, and analysis to create a readable picture of this previously unknown American institution all written with Loewen’s trademark honesty and thoroughness.

The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine


Somaly Mam - 2005
    For the next decade she was shuttled through the brothels that make up the sprawling sex trade of Southeast Asia. Trapped in this dangerous and desperate world, she suffered the brutality and horrors of human trafficking—rape, torture, deprivation—until she managed to escape with the help of a French aid worker. Emboldened by her newfound freedom, education, and security, Somaly blossomed but remained haunted by the girls in the brothels she left behind.Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of Lost Innocence recounts the experiences of her early life and tells the story of her awakening as an activist and her harrowing and brave fight against the powerful and corrupt forces that steal the lives of these girls. She has orchestrated raids on brothels and rescued sex workers, some as young as five and six; she has built shelters, started schools, and founded an organization that has so far saved more than four thousand women and children in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. Her memoir will leave you awestruck by her tenacity and courage and will renew your faith in the power of an individual to bring about change.

Shi-shi-etko


Nicola I. Campbell - 2005
    Finalist for the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award, the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award and the Ruth Schwartz AwardIn just four days young Shi-shi-etko will have to leave her family and all that she knows to attend residential school.She spends her last days at home treasuring the beauty of her world -- the dancing sunlight, the tall grass, each shiny rock, the tadpoles in the creek, her grandfather's paddle song. Her mother, father and grandmother, each in turn, share valuable teachings that they want her to remember. And so Shi-shi-etko carefully gathers her memories for safekeeping.Richly hued illustrations complement this gently moving and poetic account of a child who finds solace all around her, even though she is on the verge of great loss -- a loss that native people have endured for generations because of the residential schools system.

White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism


Kevin M. Kruse - 2005
    Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, however, so many whites fled the city for the suburbs that Atlanta earned a new nickname: "The City Too Busy Moving to Hate."In this reappraisal of racial politics in modern America, Kevin Kruse explains the causes and consequences of "white flight" in Atlanta and elsewhere. Seeking to understand segregationists on their own terms, White Flight moves past simple stereotypes to explore the meaning of white resistance. In the end, Kruse finds that segregationist resistance, which failed to stop the civil rights movement, nevertheless managed to preserve the world of segregation and even perfect it in subtler and stronger forms.Challenging the conventional wisdom that white flight meant nothing more than a literal movement of whites to the suburbs, this book argues that it represented a more important transformation in the political ideology of those involved. In a provocative revision of postwar American history, Kruse demonstrates that traditional elements of modern conservatism, such as hostility to the federal government and faith in free enterprise, underwent important transformations during the postwar struggle over segregation. Likewise, white resistance gave birth to several new conservative causes, like the tax revolt, tuition vouchers, and privatization of public services. Tracing the journey of southern conservatives from white supremacy to white suburbia, Kruse locates the origins of modern American politics.

Dorothy Day: Selected Writings; By Little and by Little


Robert Ellsberg - 2005
    By her lifelong option for the poor and her devotion to active nonviolence, Day fashioned a new face for the gospel in our time. In 2000 the Vatican recognized her cause for canonization, and she was officially termed "Servant of God." To mark the occasion, Orbis is pleased to issue an anniversary edition of Dorothy Day: Selected Writings, widely recognized as the essential and authoritative guide to her life and work.

Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth


John Hubner - 2005
    How was it possible, he wondered, that a state like Texas, famed for its hardcore attitude toward crime and punishment, could be leading the way in the rehabilitation of violent and troubled youth? Now Hubner shares the surprising answers he found over months of unprecedented access to the Giddings State School, home to “the worst of the worst”: four hundred teenage lawbreakers convicted of crimes ranging from aggravated assault to murder. Hubner follows two of these youths–a boy and a girl–through harrowing group therapy sessions in which they, along with their fellow inmates, recount their crimes and the abuse they suffered as children. The key moment comes when the young offenders reenact these soul-shattering moments with other group members in cathartic outpourings of suffering and anger that lead, incredibly, to genuine remorse and the beginnings of true empathy . . . the first steps on the long road to redemption.Cutting through the political platitudes surrounding the controversial issue of juvenile justice, Hubner lays bare the complex ties between abuse and violence. By turns wrenching and uplifting, Last Chance in Texas tells a profoundly moving story about the children who grow up to inflict on others the violence that they themselves have suffered. It is a story of horror and heartbreak, yet ultimately full of hope.

The Book of Mev


Mark Chmiel - 2005
    From witnessing homelessness in the United States to struggles for social change in Haiti, El Salvador, and Brazil, Puleo used photography and interviews to be a bridge between poverty and affluence, the First World and the Third World. Puleo's familiarity with suffering, however, was dramatically intensified when she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor at the age of thirty-one. She died twenty-one months later.

¡Sí, Se Puede! / Yes, We Can!: Janitor Strike in L.A.


Diana Cohn - 2005
    It tells about Carlitos, whose mother is a janitor. Every night, he sleeps while his mother cleans in one of the skyscrapers in downtown L.A. When she comes home, she waves Carlitos off to school before she goes to sleep. One night, his mamá explains that she can’t make enough money to support him and his abuelita the way they need unless she makes more money as a janitor. She and the other janitors have decided to go on strike.How will Carlitos support his mother? Carlitos wants to help but he cannot think of a way until his teacher, Miss Lopez, explains in class how her own grandfather had fought for better wages for farmworkers when he first came to the United States. He and the other children in his class join the marchers with a very special sign for his mom!¡Sí, Se Puede! is a Jane Addams Peace Award Honor Book, a Skipping Stones Honor Book, as well as a selection for The Best of Beyond Difference, a recommended list of the top 10 diversity books published in 2002.Diana Cohn, the author, is a social activist. As an elementary teacher, she discovered there were few books for children that discussed social issues, so she began to write as an avocation. She now works as Program Director for the Solidago Foundation, a foundation that supports communities working for economic and environmental justice. She lives on a houseboat in Sausalito, California.Francisco Delgado, the illustrator, grew up in Juárez, Chihuahua, but completed high school in El Paso, Texas. He will -receive his MFA at Yale in Painting, Drawing, and Printmaking in May 2002. Francisco is becoming known nationally for his political paintings that satirize U.S. icons blind to the mestizo and immigrant communities of Mexico. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut. Luis J. Rodriguez (Always Running) adds the afterword and a poem.

Black Liberation and Socialism


Ahmed Shawki - 2005
    and much more—with essential lessons for today’s struggles.In the 40 years since the civil rights movement, many gains have been made—but there is still far to go to win genuine change. Here is a badly needed primer on the history and future of the struggle against racism.Ahmed Shawki is the editor of the International Socialist Review. A member of the National Writers Union, he is also a contributor to The Struggle for Palestine (Haymarket). He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

This Day We Fight!: Breaking the Bondage of a Passive Spirit


Francis Frangipane - 2005
    And considering daily news reports, it often seems his plan is succeeding. It is in this climate that Francis Frangipane calls believers to awaken as if from a stupor. The church must, he states, overcome weariness and indifference, strategize for war, and scatter wickedness like dust! This fervent, biblical exhortation to defeat evil will appeal to spiritual warriors, intercessors, the prophetically gifted, and anyone who feels overwhelmed by sin and current events. Here is indispensable insight for transforming the temporal with the power of the eternal.

Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated


Dave Eggers - 2005
    They were wrongfully convicted because of problems that plague many criminal proceedings: inept defense lawyers, overzealous prosecutors, deceitful and coercive interrogation tactics, bad science, snitches, and eyewitness misidentification. The lives of these victims of the U.S. criminal justice system were effectively wrecked. Finally free, usually after more than a decade of incarceration, they re-enter society with nothing but the scars from a harrowing descent into prison only to struggle to survive on the outside.The thirteen men and women portrayed here, and the hundreds of others who have been exonerated, are the tip of the iceberg. There are countless others (thousands by all estimates) who are in prison today for crimes they did not commit. These are the stories of some of the wrongfully convicted, who have managed, often by sheer luck, to prove their innocence. Their stories are spellbinding, heartbreaking, unimaginable, and ultimately inspiring. After reading these deeply personal accounts, you will never look at the criminal justice system the same way. (from the publisher's website)

Let's Talk about Race


Julius Lester - 2005
    So are you. So is everyone.Julius Lester says, "I write because our lives are stories. If enough of those stories are told, then perhaps we will begin to see that our lives are the same story. The differences are merely in the details." Now Mr. Lester shares his own story as he explores what makes each of us special. Karen Barbour's dramatic, vibrant paintings speak to the heart of Lester's unique vision, truly a celebration of all of us.

The Hidden Wound


Wendell Berry - 2005
    Available for the first time in paperback.

Terrify No More: Young Girls Held Captive and the Daring Undercover Operation to Win Their Freedom


Gary A. Haugen - 2005
    Terrify No More is a suspenseful read that will introduce you to the new heroes of the faith people who are willing to take risks to bring hope and freedom to those who need it most.Rick Warren, Author, The Purpose Driven Life Senior Pastor, Saddleback ChurchProducer Richard Greenberg showed me some truly alarming videotape he d obtained from a human rights group called the International Justice Mission That tape would trigger one of the most extensive international searches I d ever been involved with as a Dateline Correspondent.Chris Hansen, NBC News CorrespondentNow we have a gripping, close-up account of how IJM carries out its mission in Cambodia. Gary Haugen s book should awaken many to what goes on in the 21st century slave trade.Ambassador John R. Miller, Director, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in PersonsOut of shocking depravity emerges a story of hope.In a small village outside Phnom Penh, children as young as five are bought and sold as sex slaves. Day after day their abuse continues, and their hope slips away.In Terrify No More an international team of investigators goes undercover to infiltrate this ring of brothels and gather evidence needed to free these girls. Meanwhile, skilled legal minds race the clock, working at the highest levels of U.S. and foreign governments to bring the perpetrators to justice. Headed up by former U.N. war-crimes investigator, Gary Haugen, the team perseveres against impossible obstacles police corruption, death threats, and mission-thwarting tip-offs in a mission focused on bringing freedom to the victims."

The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America


Jonathan Kozol - 2005
    Board of Education, segregation of black children has reverted to its highest level since 1968. In many inner-city schools, a stick-and-carrot method of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons is now used with students. Meanwhile, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society.Filled with the passionate voices of children, principals, and teachers, and some of the most revered leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.

The Derrick Bell Reader


Derrick A. Bell - 2005
    A founder of Critical Race Theory and pioneer of the use of allegorical stories as tools of analysis, Bell's groundbreaking work shatters conventional legal orthodoxies and turns comfortable majoritarian myths inside out.Edited and with an extensive introduction by leading critical race theorists Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, The Derrick Bell Reader reflects the tremendous breadth of issues that Bell has grappled with over his phenomenal career, including affirmative action, black nationalism, legal education and ethics. Together, the selections offer the most complete collection of Derrick Bell's writing available today.

The Little Hero—One Boy's Fight for Freedom: Iqbal Masih's Story


Andrew Crofts - 2005
    Iqbal Masih was murdered at the age of thirteen, but not before becoming an internationally renowned opponent of child and slave labor. Forced into servitude at a carpet factory in order to pay a family debt, Iqbal, a Pakistani, experienced firsthand the cruelty of an economic system which decimates local communities on one end and spits out consumer products on the other. Mustering the courage to escape the factory, Iqbal found the Bonded Labor Liberation Front and worked to instigate a children's rebellion against companies using child slavery. Rewarding Iqbal for his work, Reebok presented him with the Youth in Action Award in 1995 and offered him a full scholarship to study law at Brandeis University—a scholarship he did not live to accept.

The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia's Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jail


Mary C. Jordan - 2005
    At the age of fifty, Clarke left her comfortable life in suburban Los Angeles to follow a spiritual calling to care for the prisoners in one of Mexico's most notorious jails. She actually moved into a cell to live among drug king pins and petty thieves. She has led many of them through profound spiritual transformations in which they turned away from their lives of crime, and has deeply touched the lives of all who have witnessed the depth of her compassion. Donning a nun's habit, she became Mother Antonia, renowned as "the prison angel," and has now organized a new community of sisters-the Servants of the Eleventh Hour—widows and divorced women seeking new meaning in their lives. "We had never heard a story like hers," Jordan and Sullivan write, "a story of such powerful goodness."Born in Beverly Hills, Clarke was raised around the glamour of Hollywood and looked like a star herself, a beautiful blonde reminiscent of Grace Kelly. The choreographer Busby Berkeley spotted her at a restaurant and offered her a job, but Mary's dream was to be a happy wife and mother. She raised seven children, but her two unfulfilling marriages ended in divorce. Then in the late 1960s, in midlife, she began devoting herself to charity work, realizing she had an extraordinary talent for drumming up donations for the sick and poor.On one charity mission across the Mexican border to the drug-trafficking capitol of Tijuana, she visited La Mesa prison and experienced an intense feeling that she had found her true life's work. As she recalls, "I felt like I had come home." Receiving the blessings of the Catholic Church for her mission, on March 19, 1977, at the age of fifty, she moved into a cell in La Mesa, sleeping on a bunk with female prisoners above and below her. Nearly twenty-eight years later she is still living in that cell, and the remarkable power of her spiritual counseling to the prisoners has become legendary.The story of both one woman's profound journey of discovery and growth and of the deep spiritual awakenings she has called forth in so many lost souls, The Prison Angel is an astonishing testament to the powers of personal transformation.

Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama


Diane C. Fujino - 2005
    Heartbeat of Struggle is the first biography of this courageous woman, the most prominent Asian American activist to emerge during the 1960s. Based on extensive archival research and interviews with Kochiyama's family, friends, and the subject herself, Diane C. Fujino traces Kochiyama's life from an "all-American" childhood to her achievements as a tireless defender of - and fighter for - human rights. Raised by a Japanese immigrant family in California during the 1920s and 1930s, Kochiyama was active in sports, school, and church. She was both unquestioningly patriotic and largely unconscious of race and racism in the United States. After Pearl Harbor, however, Kochiyama's family was among the thousands of Japanese Americans forcibly removed to internment camps for the duration of the war, a traumatic experience that opened her eyes to the existence of social injustice. After the war, Kochiyama moved to New York. It was in the context of the vibrant Black movement in Harlem in the 1960s that she began her activist career. There, she met Malcolm X, who inspired her radical political development and the ensuing four decades of incessant work for Black liberation, Asian American equality, Puerto Rican independence, and political prisoner defense. Kochiyama is widely respected for her work in forging unity among diverse communities, especially between Asian and African Americans. Fujino, a scholar and activist, offers an in-depth examination of Kochiyama's political awakening, rich life, and impressive achievements with particular attention to how her public role so often defied gender, racial, and cultural norms. Heartbeat of Struggle is a source of inspiration and guidance for anyone committed to social change.

Beyond The Soiled Curtain: Project Rescue's Fight For The Victims Of The Sex Slave Industry


David Grant - 2005
    Story of relief efforts following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook


Waziyatawin Angela Wilson - 2005
    The authors begin with the belief that Indigenous Peoples have the power, strength, and intelligence to develop culturally specific decolonization strategies for their own communities and thereby systematically pursue their own liberation. These scholars and writers demystify the language of colonization and decolonization to help Indigenous communities identify useful concepts, terms, and intellectual frameworks in their struggles toward liberation and self-determination. This handbook covers a wide range of topics, including Indigenous governance, education, language, oral tradition, repatriation, images and stereotypes, and truth-telling. It aims to facilitate critical thinking while offering recommendations for fostering community discussions and plans for meaningful community action.

When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America


Ira Katznelson - 2005
    Through mechanisms designed by Southern Democrats that specifically excluded maids and farm workers, the gap between blacks and whites actually widened despite postwar prosperity. In the words of noted historian Eric Foner, "Katznelson's incisive book should change the terms of debate about affirmative action, and about the last seventy years of American history."

The School is Not White!


Doreen Rappaport - 2005
    In Drew, Mississippi, in 1965, the schools were still segregated. The "all-black" schools were separate and unequal to "white" schools, lacking resources and support from the government. The Carters, a family of sharecroppers, had had enough. Mae Bertha and Matthew wanted their children to have an equal opportunity for a good education. So they sent their kids to the "all-white" schools.Teasing, death threats, and rebuking followed-from the white children and the white adults and teachers. It was not easy to be black and wage a fight for equality, but that's just what the Carters did. Their faith in a higher power and in the goodness of people helped them battle through ignorance and prejudice. As President John F. Kennedy said, "When Americans are sent to war, we do not ask for whites only. American students of any color should be able to attend any school." For the Carters, it would be the fight of their lives.This is a true story of faith, courage, and honor: qualities Americans of any color can learn from the Carters.

Practical Spirituality: The Spiritual Basis of Nonviolent Communication


Marshall B. Rosenberg - 2005
    Rosenberg, Ph.D., our most basic spiritual need is to contribute to the well being of others and ourselves. His brief, unscripted reflections on the spiritual basis of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) will inspire you not only to connect with the Divine in yourself and others, but to begin to create a world of empathy and compassion, where the language we use is the key to enriching life. Discover an intensely satisfying and joyful spiritual experience that begins with you. In these rich pages, learn how NVC can help you achieve a more practical, applied spirituality.Discover how to:- Strengthen the connection between your actions and your spiritual values- Let go of enemy images and moralistic judgments, and experience our common humanity- Connect with others from a place of compassionate energy

Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists


Prison Research Education Action - 2005
    A reprint of this 1976 classic, with a new introduction from Critical Resistance.

The Color Line


Walker Smith - 2005
    DuBois, Langston Hughes, Marcus Garvey's Back to Africa Movement, and the glamour of the Cotton Club. The Color Line follows one soldier's personal journey from his wedding day to the trenches of the Western Front and home again.Along with hundreds of other young Black men from Harlem, Serval Rivard joins the U.S. Army in 1918 -- not for glory, just respect -- despite the prospect of menial work and segregation. But due to mounting casualties on the Western Front, a twist of fate has them reassigned to French command. In recognition of their valor, the French dub them "The Harlem Hellfighters."After surviving the horrors of the war, Rivard returns to his bride and a community on the rise. But as reports pour into Harlem of Black soldiers lynched in the uniforms of their country, it becomes clear that despite Black progress and military accomplishments, America's racial divide remains immutably in place. For Rivard and his family, the Great War has ended, but a new war has begun -- the war of the American Color Line.

Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy


Bruno Latour - 2005
    In a time of political turmoil and anticlimax, this book redefines politics as operating in the realm of "things." Politics is not just an arena, a profession, or a system, but a concern for things brought to the attention of the fluid and expansive constituency of the public. But how are things made public? What, we might ask, is a republic, a "res publica," a public thing, if we do not know how to make things public? There are many other kinds of assemblies, which are not political in the usual sense, that gather a public around things--scientific laboratories, supermarkets, churches, and disputes involving natural resources like rivers, landscapes, and air. The authors of "Making Things Public"--and the ZKM show that the book accompanies--ask what would happen if politics revolved around disputed things. Instead of looking for democracy only in the official sphere of professional politics, they examine the new atmospheric conditions--technologies, interfaces, platforms, networks, and mediations that allow things to be made public. They show us that the old definition of politics is too narrow; there are many techniques of representation--in politics, science, and art--of which Parliaments and Congresses are only a part.The authors include such prominent thinkers as Richard Rorty, Simon Schaffer, Peter Galison, Richard Powers, Lorraine Daston, Richard Aczel, and Donna Haraway; their writings are accompanied by excerpts from John Dewey, Shakespeare, Swift, La Fontaine, and Melville. More than 500 color images document the new idea of what Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel call an "object-oriented democracy."

Courageous Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools


Glenn E. Singleton - 2005
    Through these courageous conversations, educators will learn how to create a learning community that promotes true academic parity. Practical features of this book include:Implementation exercises Prompts, language, and tools that support profound discussion Activities and checklists for administrators Action steps for creating an equity team

My People Is the Enemy: An Autobiographical Polemic


William Stringfellow - 2005
    Stringfellow does not try to speak for African Americans and Puerto Ricans in the Harlem ghetto, but, as a lawyer, he graphically underlines the failure of the American legal system to provide equal justice for the poor. And, as a Christian who lived for seven years on what the New York Times called the worst block in New York City, he challenges the reluctance of the churches "to be involved in the racial crisis beyond the point of pontification."

Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery


Anne Farrow - 2005
    But the North’s profit from–indeed, dependence on–slavery has mostly been a shameful and well-kept secret . . . until now. In this startling and superbly researched new book, three veteran New England journalists de-mythologize the region of America known for tolerance and liberation, revealing a place where thousands of people were held in bondage and slavery was both an economic dynamo and a necessary way of life.Complicity reveals the cruel truth about the Triangle Trade of molasses, rum, and slaves that lucratively linked the North to the West Indies and Africa; discloses the reality of Northern empires built on profits from rum, cotton, and ivory–and run, in some cases, by abolitionists; and exposes the thousand-acre plantations that existed in towns such as Salem, Connecticut. Here, too, are eye-opening accounts of the individuals who profited directly from slavery far from the Mason-Dixon line–including Nathaniel Gordon of Maine, the only slave trader sentenced to die in the United States, who even as an inmate of New York’s infamous Tombs prison was supported by a shockingly large percentage of the city; Patty Cannon, whose brutal gang kidnapped free blacks from Northern states and sold them into slavery; and the Philadelphia doctor Samuel Morton, eminent in the nineteenth-century field of “race science,” which purported to prove the inferiority of African-born black people.Culled from long-ignored documents and reports–and bolstered by rarely seen photos, publications, maps, and period drawings–Complicity is a fascinating and sobering work that actually does what so many books pretend to do: shed light on America’s past. Expanded from the celebrated Hartford Courant special report that the Connecticut Department of Education sent to every middle school and high school in the state (the original work is required readings in many college classrooms,) this new book is sure to become a must-read reference everywhere.From the Hardcover edition.

Other Lands Have Dreams: Letters From Pekin Prison


Kathy Kelly - 2005
    While in prison, Kelly’s organization, Voices in the Wilderness, was targeted by a US State Department lawsuit charging that Kelly violated US-imposed sanctions when she took humanitarian aid to Iraq during numerous visits over the last five years.In this fiercely eloquent book, Kelly recounts such trips to Iraq, tells the largely unknown story of the School of the Americas and describes daily life inside a federal prison, where America’s poor are warehoused. Like Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, Kelly’s powerful narrative gives voice to the unheard millions suffering at home and abroad.

Say It Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches


Catherine Ellis - 2005
    In “full-throated public oratory, the kind that can stir the soul” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), this unique anthology collects the transcribed speeches of the twentieth century’s leading African American cultural, literary, and political figures, many of them never before available in printed form.From an 1895 speech by Booker T. Washington to Julian Bond’s harp assessment of school segregation on the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board in 2004, the collection captures a powerful tradition of oratory—by political activists, civil rights organizers, celebrities, and religious leaders—going back more than a century.This edition includes the text of each speech along with an introduction placing it in its historical context. Say It Plain is a remarkable historical record—from the back-to-Africa movement to the civil rights era and the rise of black nationalism and beyond riveting in its power to convey the black freedom struggle.Includes speeches by:Mary McLeod BethuneJulian BondStokely CarmichaelShirley ChisholmLouis FarrakhanMarcus GarveyJesse JacksonMartin Luther King Jr.Thurgood MarshallBooker T. WashingtonWalter White

Money Power Respect: Pictures of My Neighborhood


Brenda Ann Kenneally - 2005
    Having inspired the likes of Eugene Richards and Thomas Roma, Brooklyn provides an inexhaustible muse, and Kenneally comes to the familiar ground with a fresh perspective. Her poignant, psychological photographs span generations, tracing the same people she sees everyday on her street. With her camera, Kenneally narrates their tale of both hope and despair as she explores how her subjects empower themselves in a lost culture of drugs and prison. Money, Power, Respect: Pictures of My Neighborhood chronicles pregnancies and births, institutions and streets, drugs and rehab, showing the community of inner-city families at once full of life and also institutionalized by the welfare system. Through it all, Kenneally evokes their dreams for a better life, tempered with the awareness that they may be caught in the cyclic lifestyle of limited opportunites. The photographs are in the best sense fully present, alive to what, rather than searching for what is not. Her images draw us to hope for their survival and compel us to experience the depths and complexities of family life in the American social and justice systems. Money, Power, Respect details a crucial historical moment in our nation's nearly total abandonment of the poor. This book makes it impossible to turn away from the yearning towards life, to detach the economics of the situation from the machinery of the heart.

Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone


Douglas Biklen - 2005
    It is said to occur in as many as 2 to 6 in 1,000 individuals. This book challenges the prevailing, tragic narrative of impairment that so often characterizes discussions about autism.Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone seriously engages the perspectives of people with autism, including those who have been considered as the most severely disabled within the autism spectrum. The heart of the book consists of chapters by people with autism themselves, either in an interview format with the author or written by themselves. Each author communicates either by typing or by a combination of speech and typing. These chapters are framed by a substantive introduction and conclusion that contextualize the book, the methodology, and the analysis, and situate it within a critical disability studies framework. The volume allows a look into the rich and insightful perspectives of people who have heretofore been thought of as uninterested in the world.

Sanctuary: Unexpected Places Where God Found Me


Becca Stevens - 2005
    Sanctuary was nominated by Christianity Today as best spirituality book of 2005. "I have never read a more direct and moving set of meditations. Becca Stevens has the most extraordinary gift for finding the ineffable in our ordinary old real world, and for making us feel it, too." -Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls "Becca Stevens' meditations imagine an entire world and our part in it, as a place where God dwells. Instead of the tired effort of searching for God, she reminds us, like Francis Thompson's 'Hound of Heaven, ' that God can find us wherever we are." -Charles Strobel, Founding Director, Campus for Human Development "Becca Stevens is my kind of preacher woman. Her ministry extends far beyond the walls of St. Augustine's Chapel. Her words bring to life the miracles that abound in the mundane." -Marshall Chapman, author of Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller "Sanctuary can be found in Becca Stevens's elegant, exquisite, earnest pages." -Alice Randall, author of The Wind Done Gone Becca Stevens is an Episcopal priest at St. Augustine's Chapel on the Vanderbilt University campus. She is the founder of Magdalene, a residential community for women with a criminal history of prostitution and drug abuse, and the author of Hither & Yon: A Travel Guide for the Spiritual Journey, coming in September 2007. Meet Becca Stevens in this video interview about her life, faith and experience with the women of Magdalene House.

Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980


Kimberly Springer - 2005
    Through original oral history interviews with key activists and analysis of previously unexamined organizational records, Kimberly Springer traces the emergence, life, and decline of several black feminist organizations: the Third World Women’s Alliance, Black Women Organized for Action, the National Black Feminist Organization, the National Alliance of Black Feminists, and the Combahee River Collective. The first of these to form was founded in 1968; all five were defunct by 1980. Springer demonstrates that these organizations led the way in articulating an activist vision formed by the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality.The organizations that Springer examines were the first to explicitly use feminist theory to further the work of previous black women’s organizations. As she describes, they emerged in response to marginalization in the civil rights and women’s movements, stereotyping in popular culture, and misrepresentation in public policy. Springer compares the organizations’ ideologies, goals, activities, memberships, leadership styles, finances, and communication strategies. Reflecting on the conflicts, lack of resources, and burnout that led to the demise of these groups, she considers the future of black feminist organizing, particularly at the national level. Living for the Revolution is an essential reference: it provides the history of a movement that influenced black feminist theory and civil rights activism for decades to come.

Critical Race Counterstories Along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline


Tara J. Yosso - 2005
    Using a 'counterstorytelling' methodology, Tara Yosso debunks racialized myths that blame the victims for these unequal educational outcomes and redirects our focus toward historical patterns of institutional neglect. She artfully interweaves empirical data and theoretical arguments with engaging narratives that expose and analyse racism as it functions to limit access and opportunity for Chicana/o students. By humanising the need to transform our educational system, Yosso offers an accessible tool for teaching and learning about the problems and possibilities present along the Chicano/a educational pipeline.

Letters to Young Black Men: Advice and Encouragement for a Difficult Journey


Daniel Whyte III - 2005
    Letters To Young Black Men is overflowing with "advice and encouragement for a difficult journey."

American Orphan-The Life And Times Of Roger Dean Kiser


Roger Dean Kiser - 2005
    The pain, suffering and mental anguish is not easy to read. These stories tell of my feelings. How I took that suffering boldly and how I tried, as best I could, to ease the pain of others. The abuse, hurt and pain I suffered as a child has never left my mind and I feel it as strongly today as I did when I was a child. Forever these memories live with me as a reminder of where I came from and who I am. If the quote above is indeed true, then why I did not turn out to be an abuser. Many who read my stories of my abusive childhood marvel at how I could become a contributing member of society. How I can become a published author with only a 6th grade education, how I can focus on the horrible abuse, and how I earnestly strive, through my books and my media coverage, to seek public and government reform. How can I help others when so much in me goes unhealed? So, why did I not turn out to be an abuser myself ? It is because I could no longer stand to see the pain abuse causes in the hearts and mind of my fellow man. I know the desperation very well. I was there and it happened to me. I cannot recall even one instance where I physically abused my children. I suppose this is because the abuse, the hurt and the pain that I suffered as a child has left such a devastating effect on me I promised myself I would never do this to my children. I find I make that conscious decision everyday. My children are grown and have children of their own. Now, I reaffirm my decision for my grandchildren s sake. I choose not to abuse. It is a decision that I make every day of my life. I help others because I have no choice. When I see the pain of others, my own past reappears and it hurts me so badly. I see myself in their faces, I understand their mental torture, and I know their hopelessness. I need to let them know that I am here and I am a friend. I understand because I have been wh

Operation Desert Light: Standing Up for Those Caught in the Middle East Crossfire


Brother Andrew - 2005
    Still, keeping the facts straight is often hard to do. Students at the high school and even college level may not understand every aspect of the Middle East conflict, but they still want to do something about it. Filled with behind-the-scenes accounts of the people caught in the Middle East crossfire, Operation Desert Light will show young adults how they too can get involved. -"What about you?" sections will help students connect ideas to their own life -Q & A sections allow students to hear Brother Andrew's perspective directly from him -Helpful sidebars explain people, places, and events -Maps of the regions put the conflict into perspective With an interactive, reader-friendly layout, Operation Desert Light will engage young people and help them find ways to make a difference.

Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom


Taiaiake Alfred - 2005
    The author notes, "This book traces the journey of those Indigenous people who have found a way to transcend the colonial identities which are the legacy of our history and live as Onkwehonwe, original people. It is dialogue and reflection on the process of transcending colonialism in a personal and collective sense: making meaningful change in our lives and transforming society by recreating our personalities, regenerating our cultures, and surging against forces that keep us bound to our colonial past."

The Catholic Worker Movement: Intellectual and Spiritual Origins


Mark Zwick - 2005
    The founders of the movement, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin met during the Great Depression in 1932. Their collaboration sparked something in the Church that has been both an inspiration and a reproach to American Catholicism. Dorothy Day is already a cultural icon. Once maligned, she is now being considered for sainthood. From a bohemian circle that included Eugene O'Neil to her controversial labor politics to the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement, she lived out a civil rights pacifism with a spirituality that took radical message of the Gospel to heart. Peter Maurin has been less celebrated but was equally important to the movement that embraced and uplifted the poor among us. Dorothy Day said he was, "a genius, a saint, an agitator, a writer, a lecturer, a poor man and a shabby tramp." Mark and Louise Zwick's thorough research into the Catholic Worker Movement reveals who influenced Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day and how the influence materialized into much more than good ideas. Dostoevsky, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, Therese of Lisieux, Jacques and Raissa Maritain and many others contributed to fire in the minds of two people that sought to "blow the dynamite of the Church" in 20th-century America. This fascinating and detailed work will be meaningful to readers interested in American history, social justice, religion and public life. It will also appeal to Catholics wishing to live the Gospel with lives of action, contemplation, and prayer. +

Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers


Eric (Rico) Gutstein - 2005
    Rethinking Mathematics offers teaching ideas, lesson plans, and reflections by practitioners and mathematics educators. This is real-world math-math that helps students analyze problems as they gain essential academic skills. This book offers hope and guidance for teachers to enliven and strengthen their math teaching. It will deepen students' understanding of society and help prepare them to be critical, active participants in a democracy. Blending theory and practice, this is the only resource of its kind.

New Black Man


Mark Anthony Neal - 2005
    Politicians, preachers, and pundits routinely cast blame on those already ostracized within African American communities. But the crisis of black masculinity does not rest with "at-risk" youth of the hip-hop generation or men "on the down low" alone. In this provocative new book, acclaimed cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal argues that the "Strong Black Man"-an ideal championed by generations of African American civic leaders-may be at the heart of problems facing black men today.

Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics: Toward a Pedagogy for Social Justice


Eric (Rico) Gutstein - 2005
    And working for fundamental social change and rectifying injustice are rarely included in any mathematics curriculum. Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics argues that mathematics education should prepare students to investigate and critique injustice, and to challenge, in words and actions, oppressive structures and acts. Based on teacher-research, the book provides a theoretical framework and practical examples for how mathematics educators can connect schooling to a larger sociopolitical context and concretely teach mathematics for social justice.

Teaching Black Girls; Resiliency in Urban Classrooms


Venus E. Evans-Winters - 2005
    Evans-Winters uses qualitative research methods to interpret and discuss school resilience in the lives of African American female students. The book demonstrates how these girls are simultaneously one of the most vulnerable, and one of the most resilient group of students. Teaching Black Girls implements alternative approaches to the study of the intersection of race, class, and gender on schooling, deliberately highlighting how students growing up and attending schools in urban neighborhoods are educationally resilient in the face of adversity. Through dialogue and self-reflection, the author and participants in the ethnographic study documented here reconstruct and tell stories of resilience to derive practice that is both gender and culturally relevant. Teaching Black Girls has research and practice implications for graduate students, advanced pre-service teachers, and school practitioners.

Outside the Ark: An Artist's Journey in Occupied Palestine


Ellen O'Grady - 2005
    The paintings and stories reflect a complex world of love and injustice, violence and compassion, hope and despair. You will meet Ali and Mahmoud, two best friends from Bethlehem who get caught in a clash with Israeli soldiers; Salwa, a 69-year old woman suffering from untreated diabetes who breaks the military closure to get to the hospital; Aseel, a girl who dreams of taking flight from her refugee camp on the string of a kite. Outside the Ark is a provocative collection of paintings and stories, a window into the realities of life under occupation and a witness to the enduring human spirit." (description taken from the back cover)

Reforming Punishment: Psychological Limits to the Pains of Imprisonment


Craig Haney - 2005
    Today the U.S. imprisons more people than any other nation. Prisons cause prisoners to make adaptations so they can take the long-term exposure to pain and these adaptations cause personal and social problems, both while offenders are imprisoned and after the offenders are released. Haney presents evidence that problems in prisons - which include overcrowding, violence, and sexual assault - are the result of poor design, lack of funding, and an outdated understanding of individual punishment that does not acknowledge the context in which crimes are perpetrated.