Best of
Social-Movements

2012

Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity


David L. Felten - 2012
    Tackling issues of faith and controversial subjects such as the church’s position on homosexuality, Living the Questions is the most comprehensive, indeed the only survey of progressive Christianity in existence today.

Liberty and Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from the Renaissance to Enlightenment


Ellen Meiksins Wood - 2012
    Nearly everything about its history remains controversial, but one thing is certain: it left a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history. The concepts of liberty, equality, property, human rights and revolution born in those turbulent centuries continue to shape, and to limit, political discourse today. Assessing the work and background of figures such as Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, Spinoza, the Levellers, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, Ellen Wood vividly explores the ideas of the canonical thinkers, not as philosophical abstractions but as passionately engaged responses to the social conflicts of their day.

Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue: A History of New Jewish Agenda


Ezra Berkley Nepon - 2012
    NJA organized a progressive Jewish voice for every political issue of their decade: working for Middle East Peace, Central American Solidarity, Worldwide Nuclear Disarmament, Economic and Social Justice, and they had a powerful Jewish Feminist Taskforce that included work on LGBT issues and the emergence of the AIDS pandemic. New Jewish Agenda was most controversial for positions on the rights of Palestinians and the rights of Queer Jews. Jewish activists from a wide range of religious and secular communities coalesced in NJA, building power and analysis that continue to illuminate our movements today. This book includes afterwords essays by Dr. Rachel Mattson and Daniel Rosza Lang/Levitsky, an appendix of relevant NJA documents, and it features original cover art by Abigail Miller.Distributed by AK Press: http://www.akpress.org/justicejustice...

Freedom Now! Struggles for the Human Right to Housing in LA and Beyond


Jordan T. Camp - 2012
    It documents the dynamic social movements emerging around struggles for housing as a human right. Produced with the grassroots housing and social justice organization LA CAN (the Los Angeles Community Action Network), this reader considers the struggles against eviction, gentrification, homelessness and the privatization of public housing. Drawing on the legacy of the Freedom Movement, Freedom Now! argues that these human rights struggles have been and continue to be constitutive of a struggle for a new society. Contributors include organizers such as Deborah Burton from LA CAN, J.R. Fleming of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, S'bu Zikode with Abahlali baseMjondolo a movement of South African Shack dwellers, artists like Chuck D from Public Enemy, as well as scholar-activists such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mike Davis, Rhonda Williams, George Lipsitz, Gaye Theresa Johnson, and Daniel Martinez HoSang.

Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969-1986


Michael Staudenmaier - 2012
    Through the influence of founding members like Noel Ignatiev and Don Hamerquist, STO took a Marxist approach to the question of race and revolution, exploring the notion of “white skin privilege,” and helping to lay the groundwork for the discipline of critical race studies.Michael Staudenmaier is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Illinois-Urbana.

Asia's Unknown Uprisings Volume 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century


George Katsiaficas - 2012
    From the 1894 Tonghak uprising through the March 1, 1919, independence movement and anti-Japanese resistance, a direct line is traced to the popular opposition to U.S. division of Korea after World War II. The overthrow of Syngman Rhee in 1960, resistance to Park Chung-hee, the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, as well as student, labor, and feminist movements are all recounted with attention to their economic and political contexts. This is the first of two volumes that emphasizes the effects of grassroots political movements in different countries of Asia.

Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements


Raul Zibechi - 2012
    . . [Territories in Resistance] will be a key reference point in the development of anti-systemic thought."—Gilberto López y Rivas, La JornadaTerritories in Resistance is an indispensable complement to existing literature on Latin American autonomous social movements. Explore the “other worlds” being created in the wreckage of colonialism and capitalism. From Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia to Argentina and Brazil, no living author digs as deep and presents theoretical challenges quite like Raúl Zibechi.Raúl Zibechi is an international analyst for Brecha, a weekly journal in Montevideo, Uruguay, and the author of Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces (AK Press, 2010).In Oakland, California on March 24, 2015 a fire destroyed the AK Press warehouse along with several other businesses. Please consider visiting the AK Press website to learn more about the fundraiser to help them and their neighbors.

Bolivia: Refounding the Nation


Kepa Artaraz - 2012
    Evo Morales, leader of the MAS, became the first indigenous president of Bolivia.Kepa Artaraz looks at the attempt to 'refound the nation' which the new government has made as its goal. He shows how the mix of Marxism, indigenous liberation politics, anti-imperialism and environmentalism has made Bolivia one of the most interesting and unique political experiments of Latin America's 'red decade'.As the historic left-turn in Latin America reaches a crossroads, Bolivia: Refounding the Nation guides us through the politics and ideas which have animated this popular movement, drawing out important lessons for progressive politics everywhere.

Resisting the State: Canadian History Through the Stories of Activists


Scott Neigh - 2012
    

Lessons for Our Struggle


Frances Fox Piven - 2012
    "Piven has embodied the best of American democracy."—The NationFrances Fox Piven reminds us why we must understand the labor, civil-rights, and anti-imperialist struggles of the Depression era if we are going to advance the struggles of the present.Frances Fox Piven is the author of many important books.

Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis


Jenna M. Loyd - 2012
    In 2011 some 1,500 migrants died trying to enter Europe, and the United States deported nearly 400,000 and imprisoned some 2.3 million people—more than at any other time in history. International borders are increasingly militarized places embedded within domestic policing and imprisonment and entwined with expanding prison-industrial complexes. Beyond Walls and Cages offers scholarly and activist perspectives on these issues and explores how the international community can move toward a more humane future.Working at a range of geographic scales and locations, contributors examine concrete and ideological connections among prisons, migration policing and detention, border fortification, and militarization. They challenge the idea that prisons and borders create safety, security, and order, showing that they can be forms of coercive mobility that separate loved ones, disempower communities, and increase shared harms of poverty. Walls and cages can also fortify wealth and power inequalities, racism, and gender and sexual oppression.As governments increasingly rely on criminalization and violent measures of exclusion and containment, strategies for achieving change are essential. Beyond Walls and Cages develops abolitionist, no borders, and decolonial analyses and methods for social change, showing how seemingly disconnected forms of state violence are interconnected. Creating a more just and free world—whether in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands, the Morocco-Spain region, South Africa, Montana, or Philadelphia—requires that people who are most affected become central to building alternatives to global crosscurrents of criminalization and militarization.Contributors: Olga Aksyutina, Stokely Baksh, Cynthia Bejarano, Anne Bonds, Borderlands Autonomist, Collective, Andrew Burridge, Irina Contreras, Renee Feltz, Luis A. Fernandez, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Amy Gottlieb, Gael Guevara, Zoe Hammer, Julianne Hing, Subhash Kateel, Jodie M. Lawston, Bob Libal, Jenna M. Loyd, Lauren Martin, Laura McTighe, Matt Mitchelson, Maria Cristina Morales, Alison Mountz, Ruben R. Murillo, Joseph Nevins, Nicole Porter, Joshua M. Price, Said Saddiki, Micol Seigel, Rashad Shabazz, Christopher Stenken, Proma Tagore, Margo Tamez, Elizabeth Vargas, Monica W. Varsanyi, Mariana Viturro, Harsha Walia, Seth Freed Wessler.

The Fight for Freedom: A Memoir of My Years in the Civil Rights Movement


John Reynolds - 2012
    A few short months later he finds himself in Atlanta, standing in the sanctuary of Ebenezer Baptist Church, being interviewed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for a position on SCLC's field staff. As a young foot soldier in the Civil Rights Movement, John Reynolds was an eyewitness to history. In The Fight for Freedom, he shares his experiences in some of the hot spots of that day, such as Selma, Birmingham, and Mississippi. A passionate and dedicated soldier, Reynolds was jailed more than twenty times and beaten on a number of occasions as he went through some of the toughest battles of the Movement and played a role in awakening the national conscience and redeeming the soul of America.

Reclaiming Iraq: The 1920 Revolution and the Founding of the Modern State


Abbas Kadhim - 2012
    An Iraqi identity was established long before the League of Nations defined the nation-state of Iraq in 1932. Drawing on neglected primary sources and other crucial accounts, including memoirs and correspondence, Reclaiming Iraq puts the 1920 revolt against British occupation in a new light—one that emphasizes the role of rural fighters between June and November of that year.While most accounts of the revolution have been shaped by the British administration and successive Iraqi governments, Abbas Kadhim sets out to explore the reality that the intelligentsia of Baghdad and other cities in the region played an ideological role but did not join in the fighting. His history depicts a situation we see even today in conflicts in the Middle East, where most military engagement is undertaken by rural tribes that have no central base of power. In the study of the modern Iraqi state, Kadhim argues, Faysal's coronation has detracted from the more significant, earlier achievements of local attempts at self-rule. With clarity and insight, this work offers an alternative perspective on the dawn of modern Iraq.

Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark: Corporate and Police Spying on Activists


Eveline Lubbers - 2012
    This book shows the other grave threat to our political freedoms - undercover activities by corporations.Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark documents how corporations are halting legitimate action and investigation by activists. Using exclusive access to previously confidential sources, Eveline Lubbers shows how companies such as Nestlé, Shell and McDonalds use covert methods to evade accountability. She argues that corporate intelligence gathering has shifted from being reactive to pro-active, with important implications for democracy itself.Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark will be vital reading for activists, investigative and citizen journalists, and all who care about freedom and democracy in the 21st century.

Rippling: How Social Entrepreneurs Spread Innovation Throughout the World


Beverly Schwartz - 2012
    "Rippling" shows how to activate the type of change that is needed to address the critical challenges that threaten to destroy the foundations of our society and planet in these increasingly turbulent times.These actionable principles are brought to life by compelling real-life stories. Schwartz provides a road map that allows anyone to become a changemaker.Presents some of today's most innovative and effective approaches to solving social and environmental challengesOffers a vision of social entrepreneurs as role models, catalysts, enablers and recruiters who spread waves system changing solutions throughout societyThe author offers a model of change that begins with the end result in mindFirst book from an insider at Ashoka, the foremost global organization on social change through social entrepreneurship"Rippling" clearly demonstrates how and when empathy, creativity, passion, and persistence are combined; significant, life-altering progress is indeed possible.