The Black Lives Matter movement has awakened a new generation of activists.In this stirring and insightful analysis, activist and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and persistence of structural inequality such as mass incarceration and Black unemployment. In this context, she argues that this new struggle against police violence holds the potential to reignite a broader push for Black liberation.

    William Barber led more than a hundred thousand people at rallies across North Carolina to protest cuts to voting rights and the social safety net, which the state’s conservative legislature had implemented. These protests, which came to be known as Moral Mondays, have blossomed into the largest social movement the South has seen since the civil rights era—and, since then, it has spread to states as diverse as Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Ohio. In The Third Reconstruction, Rev. Barber tells the story of how he helped lay the groundwork for the Moral Mondays movement and explores the unfulfilled promises of America’s multiethnic democracy. He draws on the lessons of history to offer a vision of a new Reconstruction, one in which a diverse coalition of citizens—black and white, religious and secular, Northern and Southern—fight side-by-side for racial and economic justice for all Americans. The Third Reconstruction is both a blueprint for activism at the state level and an inspiring call to action from the twenty-first century’s most effective grassroots organizer.

    When mass movements erupt onto our television screens, the media consistently portrays them as being spontaneous and unpredictable. Yet, in this book, Mark and Paul Engler look at the hidden art behind such outbursts of protest, examining core principles that have been used to spark and guide moments of transformative unrest. With incisive insights from contemporary activists, as well as fresh revelations about the work of groundbreaking figures such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Gene Sharp, and Frances Fox Piven, the Englers show how people with few resources and little conventional influence are engineering the upheavals that are reshaping contemporary politics. Nonviolence is usually seen simply as a philosophy or moral code. This Is an Uprising shows how it can instead be deployed as a method of political conflict, disruption, and escalation. It argues that if we are always taken by surprise by dramatic outbreaks of revolt, we pass up the chance to truly understand how social transformation happens.

    His political voyage began in the 1920s when he joined the Industrial Workers of the World. He rode the rails as an itinerant laborer, bedding down in hobo camps and mounting soapboxes in cities across the United States. Self-educated, he translated, edited, and wrote some of the most important books and journals of twentieth-century anti-authoritarian politics, including the most widely read collection of Mikhail Bakunin's writings in English.His story, told with passion and humor by his son, conjures images of a lost New York City—the Lower East Side, the strong immigrant and working-class neighborhoods, the blurred lines dividing proletarian and intellectual culture, the union halls and social clubs, the brutal cops and bosses, and the solidarity that kept them at bay.An instant classic of radical history, this biography is written by a man now in his seventies who, as a child and young man, had a front-row seat to the world of proletarian politics and the colorful characters who brought it to life."The American left in its classical age used to celebrate an ideal, which was the worker-intellectual—someone who toils with his hands all his life and meanwhile develops his mind and deepens his knowledge and contributes mightily to progress and decency in the society around him. Sam Dolgoff was a mythic figure in a certain corner of the radical left ... and his son, Anatole, has written a wise and beautiful book about him." —Paul Berman, author of A Tale of Two Utopias and Power and the Idealists "If you want to read the god-honest and god-awful truth about being a radical in twentieth-century America, drop whatever you're doing, pick up this book, and read it. Pronto! If you're not crying within five pages, you might want to check whether you've got a heart and a pulse." —Peter Cole, author of Wobblies on the WaterfrontAnatole Dolgoff is the son of Esther and Sam Dolgoff, two of the most important anarchists in the United States in the twentieth century. He has lived in New York City his entire life and teaches geology at the Pratt Institute.

    "Then I learned I couldn't have been more wrong."This memoir depicts the author's unexpected plunge into, and triumphant emergence from, deep poverty."A Day at the Fare" is a welfare success story. An example of what can happen when an adequate safety net is available to assist those attempting to help themselves by making the best of its resources.It's also a demonstration of the pros and cons of the welfare system and the kinds of things about it that need to be changed.SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK?IF your head is full of preconceived notions about everyone who receives government aid, this book is for you. You'll see that each welfare case is as individual as each welfare applicant.Have you ever wondered, "Why would anyone want to be on welfare? To depend on food stamps?"Honestly. No one says, "When I grow up I'm going to be on welfare." Many times people end up on welfare through no fault of their own. The author recalls that when faced with adversity, "Applying for assistance was my last resort to having nothing at all."IF you've been lucky enough in life to avoid any form of economic struggle, this book is for you. You'll gain an understanding of the complexities of poverty.Are you a policy maker or other individual in position to determine how much assistance poor people should receive and for how long, yet have no experience yourself with the struggles of poverty?IF so, this book is for you. Reading it will provide you insight into the everyday realities of a family struggling to meet basic needs.Are you someone, maybe even a member of the working poor class, who requires government aid just to be able to barely get by, and are finding it hard to envision ever being able to move beyond your struggle with poverty?THEN this book is especially for you. It may leave you somewhat inspired.IMAGINE...You’re living a good life in a grand old house with your family, spending your summer looking out from your veranda onto a picturesque park and enjoying the scent of flowers in the air—until fall arrives and you’re beholding a multi-colored canopy of foliage.But... by winter you’re stealing toilet tissue from a restaurant restroom and wondering what you’re going to do with your first welfare check that won’t even pay the rent for the ghetto apartment you and your children are now calling home.The reality is we’re all only living one or two misfortunes away from losing the people or things we’re depending upon, and if and when that happens, you could easily find yourself enduring A Day at the Fare.What would you be willing to do to survive its grim circumstances?

    The administration responded by institutionalizing an ethnic studies program; Third World studies was over before it began. Detailing the field's genesis and premature death, Gary Y. Okihiro presents an intellectual history of ethnic studies and Third World studies and shows where they converged and departed by identifying some of their core ideas, concepts, methods, and theories. In so doing, he establishes the contours of a unified field of study—Third World studies—that pursues a decolonial politics by examining the human condition broadly, especially in regard to oppression, and critically analyzing the locations and articulations of power as manifested in the social formation. Okihiro's framing of Third World studies moves away from ethnic studies' liberalism and its U.S.-centrism to emphasize the need for complex thinking and political action in the drive for self-determination.

    Countless books, films, songs, pamphlets, buttons, t-shirts, and more are rightfully devoted to this transformative struggle for social revolution by Spanish workers and peasants. But digging through the mountain of available material, little can be found on black militants in the Spanish revolution, like the one featured in the powerful photo on the cover of this reader — a member of the Bakunin Barracks in Barcelona, Spain 1936, and a symbol of both the profound presence and absence of Black anarchism internationally.For more than 150 years, black anarchists have played a critical role in shaping various struggles around the globe, including mass strikes, national liberation movements, tenant organizing, prisoner solidarity, queer liberation, the formation of autonomous black liberation organizations, and more.Our current political moment is one characterized by a global resurgence of Black rebellion in response to racialized state violence, criminalization, and dispossession. Black and Afro-diasporic communities in places like Britain, South Africa, Brazil, Haiti, Colombia and the US have initiated popular social movements to resist conditions of social death and forge paths toward liberation on their own terms. Given the anti-authoritarian spirit of these struggles, the time is ripe to take a closer look at anarchism more broadly, and Black anarchism in particular.The deceptive absence of Black anarchist politics in the existing literature can be attributed to an inherent contradiction found within the Eurocentric canon of classical anarchism which, in its allegiance to a Western conception of universalism, overlooks and actively mutes the contributions by colonized peoples. In recent years, Black militants, and others dedicated to Black anarchist politics, have gone a long way toward bringing Black anarchism into focus through numerous essays, books, interviews, and public talks, many of which are brought together for the first time in this reader.Our hope is that this reader will serve as a fruitful contribution to ongoing dialogues, debates, and struggles occurring throughout the Black diaspora about how to move forward toward our liberation globally. “Anarchism,” noted Hannibal Abdul Shakur, “like anything else finds a radical new meaning when it meets blackness.” While this reader brings us closer to “a radical new meaning” for anarchism, there are glaring gaps that need to be filled to get a fuller picture of Black anarchism, particularly the vital contributions of black women, queer militants, and more folks from the Global South.

    Yet in spite of the programs, violence has grown worse in some of the very neighborhoods that the violence prevention programs were intented to help. Whilepublic officials and social scientists often attribute the violence - and the failure of the programs - to a lack of community in poor neighborhoods, closer study reveals another source of community division: local politics.Through an ethnographic case study of Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, Wounded City dispells the popular belief that a lack of community is the primary source of violence, arguing that competition for political power and state resources often undermine efforts to reduce gang violence. RobertVargas argues that the state, through the way it governs, can contribute to distrust and division among community members, thereby undermining social cohesion. The strategic actions taken by police officers, politicians, nonprofit organizations, and gangs to collaborate or compete for power andresources can vary block by block, triggering violence on some blocks while successfully preventing it on others.A rich blend of urban politics, sociology, and criminology, Wounded City offers a cautionary tale for elected officials, state agencies, and community based organizations involved with poor neighborhoods.

    Through probing inquiry, Davidson draws out how nationalist ideology and consciousness is used to bind the subordinate classes to “the nation,” while simultaneously using “the state” as a means of conducting geopolitical competition for capital.

    Much of this labor was provided by Mexican guest workers, Tejano migrants, and undocumented immigrants, who converged on the region beginning in the mid-1940s. Of Forests and Fields tells the story of these workers, who toiled in the fields, canneries, packing sheds, and forests, turning the Pacific Northwest into one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country.  Employing an innovative approach that traces the intersections between Chicana/o labor and environmental history, Mario Sifuentez shows how ethnic Mexican workers responded to white communities that only welcomed them when they were economically useful, then quickly shunned them. He vividly renders the feelings of isolation and desperation that led to the formation of ethnic Mexican labor organizations like the Pineros y Campesinos Unidos Noroeste (PCUN) farm workers union, which fought back against discrimination and exploitation. Of Forests and Fields not only extends the scope of Mexican labor history beyond the Southwest, it offers valuable historical precedents for understanding the struggles of immigrant and migrant laborers in our own era.   Sifuentez supplements his extensive archival research with a unique set of first-hand interviews, offering new perspectives on events covered in the printed historical record. A descendent of ethnic Mexican immigrant laborers in Oregon, Sifuentez also poignantly demonstrates the links between the personal and political, as his research leads him to amazing discoveries about his own family history...www.mariosifuentez.com

    population has fundamentally changed, many progressives and Democrats continue to waste millions of dollars chasing white swing voters. Explosive population growth of people of color in America over the past fifty years has laid the foundation for a New American Majority consisting of progressive people of color (23 percent of all eligible voters) and progressive whites (28 percent of all eligible voters). These two groups make up 51 percent of all eligible voters in America right now, and that majority is growing larger every day. Failing to properly appreciate this reality, progressives are at risk of missing this moment in history—and losing.A leader in national politics for thirty years, Steve Phillips has had a front-row seat to these extraordinary political changes. A civil rights lawyer and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, Phillips draws on his extensive political experience to unveil exactly how people of color and progressive whites add up to a new majority, and what this means for U.S. politics and policy. A book brimming with urgency and hope, Brown Is the New White exposes how far behind the curve Democrats are in investing in communities of color—while illuminating a path forward to seize the opportunity created by the demographic revolution

    As a social worker, she knew she was needed to help and march alongside African Americans, Asians, and Latinos in the quest for equality. Along with several other Northerners—mostly whites—she decided to travel down to the tense segregated South right in the middle of an era that would change America forever. With a clear understanding of history and evocative language, BEV is the fictionalized account of those who answered the call to help their fellow citizens earn the right to vote.

    As capitalism developed, people tried to escape capitalist constraints connected with state control. This powerful book gives voice to three communities living at the edges of capitalism: Cossacks on the Don River in Russia; Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico; and prisoners in long-term isolation since the 1970s. Inspired by their experiences visiting Cossacks, living with the Zapatistas, and developing connections and relationships with prisoners and ex-prisoners, Andrej Grubacic and Denis O’Hearn present a uniquely sweeping, historical, and systematic study of exilic communities engaged in mutual aid.    Following the tradition of Peter Kropotkin, Pierre Clastres, James Scott, Fernand Braudel and Imanuel Wallerstein, this study examines the full historical and contemporary possibilities for establishing self-governing communities at the edges of the capitalist world-system, considering the historical forces that often militate against those who try to practice mutual aid in the face of state power and capitalist incursion.

    A World to Win brings these movements alive as agents of history-in-the-making. It situates Quebec student strikers, Indigenous resistance and resurgence, Occupy, workers, feminist and queer movements and many others in their struggle against the hegemonic institutions of capitalism. Using theory and case studies, this book articulates the particular histories and structures facing social movements while also building bridges to comprehensive analyses of our current era of crisis and change--in Canada and the world.Contributors to A World to Win include well-known political and social theorists, activist-intellectuals who have made significant contributions to movement politics and emerging voices in this field. Bridging the conceptual and the practical, this book will be of value to activists whose interventions can be sharpened through critical reflection and to students and scholars who will find pathways to activism.

    . . brings a fresh perspective to the stubborn debates around violence and nonviolence and suggests a way to move beyond the left's tactical impasse. Nonviolence Ain't What It Used to Be won't settle the old argument, but it may start a new one."—Kristian Williams, Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in AmericaShon Meckfessel takes an innovative look at challenges faced by twenty-first century social movements in the US. One of their most important stumbling blocks is the question of nonviolence. Civil disobedience, symbolic protest, and principles of nonviolence have characterized many struggles in the United States since the Civil Rights era. But as Meckfessel argues, conditions have changed. We've seen the consolidation of the media, the militarization of policing, the co-optation and institutionalization of dissent, among many other shifts. The rules have changed, but the rhetoric, logic, and strategic tools we employ haven't necessarily kept pace, and narratives borrowed from movements of the past are falling short.Nonviolence Ain't What It Used to Be maps the emerging, more militant approaches that seem to be developing to fill the gap, from Occupy to Ferguson. It offers new angles on a seemingly intractable debate, introducing terms and criteria that carve out a larger middle-ground between the two camps, in order to chart a path forward.

    Art. African & African American Studies. Poetry. Exhibition curated by Daniel Tucker. ORGANIZE YOUR OWN: THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF SELF DETERMINATION MOVEMENTS features new work by contemporary artists, poets, and writers that relates to the Black Power movement's mandate to "organize your own" community against racism. Exploring the question of what "your own" might mean, this book connects some of the concerns dealt with in the 1960s and '70s to the conversations and social movements around racial justice happening today. Far from an historical account, ORGANIZE YOUR OWN documents and expands upon an exhibition and event series of the same name that took place in Chicago and Philadelphia in early 2016. In addition to exhibition documentation and a series of commissioned texts, this book also includes transcripts from five panel discussions that were organized as part of the exhibition. Two of these discussions focus on the original Rainbow Coalition, a unique example of race and class negotiation in which organizations such as the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and the Young Patriots Organization joined forces. Other discussions and contributions explore poetry, performance, and socially engaged art which, broadly speaking, finds its foundation in the histories and language of community organizing. What is the role of politics and poetics in complicating and clarifying these ongoing conversations the ones that happen when people come together? With contributions by: Amber Art & Design, Rashayla Marie Brown, Emily Chow Bluck, Billy "Che" Brooks, Salem Collo-Julin, Irina Contreras, Brad Duncan, Bettina Escauriza, Eric J. Garcia, Maria Gaspar, Thomas Graves, Robby Herbst, Jen Hofer, Alethea Hyun Jin Shin, Mike James, Marissa Johnson- Valenzuela, Jennifer Kidwell, Antonio Lopez, Nicole Marroquin, Fred Moten, Matt Neff, Mark Nowak, Edward Onaci, Dave Pabellon, Mary Patten, Rasheedah Phillips, Anthony Romero, Frank Sherlock, Amy Sonnie, Hy Thurman, Thread Makes Blanket, James Tracy, Daniel Tuker, the University of Louisville's Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research, Dan S. Wang, Jakobi WIlliams, Mariam Williams, Rosten Woo, Wooden Leg Print & Press, Works Progress with Jayanthi Kyle, and Rebecca Zorach"