Best of
Social-Movements

2017

Angry Black Girl


Elexus Jionde - 2017
    With titles like "Racist White Women: An American Legacy" and The Black Church: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. (18+)

Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women


Brittney Cooper - 2017
    Eschewing the Great Race Man paradigm so prominent in contemporary discourse, Brittney C. Cooper looks at the far-reaching intellectual achievements of female thinkers and activists like Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Barrier Williams, Pauli Murray, and Toni Cade Bambara. Cooper delves into the processes that transformed these women and others into racial leadership figures, including long-overdue discussions of their theoretical output and personal experiences. As Cooper shows, their body of work critically reshaped our understandings of race and gender discourse. It also confronted entrenched ideas of how--and who--produced racial knowledge.

Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals


Jonathan Smucker - 2017
    Hopeful about the potential of today’s burgeoning movements, long-time grassroots organizer Jonathan Smucker nonetheless pulls no punches when confronting their internal dysfunction. Drawing from personal experience, he provides deep theoretical insight into the all-too-familiar radical tendency toward self-defeating insularity and paralyzing purism. At the same time, he offers tools to bridge the divide between anti-authoritarian values and hegemonic strategies, tools that might just help today’s movements to navigate their obstacles—and change the world.

Finally Got the News: The Printed Legacy of the U.S. Radical Left, 1970-1979


Brad DuncanEmily K. Hobson - 2017
    It uses original printed materials--from pamphlets to posters, flyers to record albums--to tell this politically rich and little-known story. The dawn of the 1970s saw an explosion of interest in revolutionary ideas and activism. Young people radicalized by the antiwar movement became anti-imperialists, veterans of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements increasingly identified with communism and Pan-Africanism, radical groups sent members into factories to organize the working class, and women were building for autonomy and liberation. Across movements with different roots, an incredible overlap and intermingling of activists, ideologies, and hybrid organizations emerged.These diverse movements used printed materials as organizing tools in every political activity, creating a remarkable array of publishing styles, techniques, and formats. Through the lens of printed materials we can see the real nuts and bolts of political organizing in an era when thousands of young revolutionaries were attempting to put their beliefs into practices in workplaces and neighborhoods across the US.Finally Got the News uses this agitational material to shine a light on the full breadth of organizations and collectives that were a part of the '70s radical renaissance. The book features original materials from Amiri Baraka's Congress of African People, radical broadsides distributed in factories, queer socialist pamphlets, and agitational newspapers from Puerto Rican revolutionary groups like the Young Lords Party.These materials were made to be ephemeral and disposable, making collecting and preserving the paper legacy of '70s radical activism especially difficult. But many materials have survived and offer an irreplaceable insight into this period. Finally Got the News highlights many essential issues that are still resoundingly contemporary: from community responses to police brutality, to battles for better wages and working conditions, to opposition to US imperialism in the Middle East. Radical movements of the '70s attempted to confront concerns that are still central to today's campaigns for social justice.The full-color book that accompanies the exhibition will collect almost 100 images of materials included in the show, original essays by 14 contributors, and a round table discussion amongst a broad collection of producers of propaganda in the 1970s. The majority of this exhibition is from the archive of Brad Duncan, amassed over twenty years of collecting and activism. Additional items are from the collection of Interference Archive.

The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers


Hollis Robbins - 2017
    Many of these pieces engage with social movements like abolition, women's suffrage, temperance and civil rights, but the thematic centre is black women's intellect and personal ambition. The diverse selection includes well-known writers like Sojourner Truth, Hannah Crafts and Harriet Jacobs, as well as lesser-known writers like Ella Sheppard, who offers a firsthand account of life in a world-famous singing group. Taken together, these incredible works insist that the writing of black women writers be read, remembered and addressed.

Straight Edge A Clear-Headed Hardcore Punk History


Tony Rettman - 2017
    Straight edge created its own sound and visual style, went on to embrace vegetarianism, and later saw the rise of a militant fringe. As the 'don't drink, don't smoke' message spread from Washington, D.C., to Boston, California, New York City, and, eventually, the world, adherents struggled to define the fundamental ideals and limits of what may be the ultimate youth movement.

Look for Me in the Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21st-Century Revolutions


Dhoruba Bin Wahad - 2017
    The membership of the NY 21, which includes the mother of Tupac Shakur, is largely forgotten and unknown. Their legacy, however—reflected upon here in this special edition—provides essential truths which have remained largely hidden.

Latino Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism


Chris Zepeda-Millán - 2017
    In this timely and highly anticipated book, Chris Zepeda-Millán analyzes the background, course, and impacts of this unprecedented wave of protests, highlighting their unique local, national, and demographic dynamics. He finds that because of the particular ways the issue of immigrant illegality was racialized, federally proposed anti-immigrant legislation (H.R. 4437) helped transform Latinos' sense of latent group membership into the racial group consciousness that incited their engagement in large-scale collective action. Zepeda-Millán shows how nativist policy threats against disenfranchised undocumented immigrants can provoke a political backlash - on the streets and at the ballot box - from not only 'people without papers', but also naturalized and US-born citizens. Latino Mass Mobilization is an important intervention into contemporary debates regarding immigration policy, social movements, and racial politics in the United States.

Rosa Parks: The Woman Who Ignited a Movement


Hourly History - 2017
     Rosa Parks was a quiet, dignified African-American woman who, in a world of injustice, decided to politely defy a racist policy. In doing so, she ignited a fire in the soul of a community whose “cup of endurance” would permit not even one more comparatively small injustice. Her case resulted in the Montgomery Bus Boycott wherein some 40,000 African-Americans crippled the Montgomery transportation industry with their non-violent protest of the racist policy that mandated Parks to give up her seat for white riders. But, as an unknown black minister was who elected to lead the boycott protest, one Martin Luther King, Jr., noted, it wasn’t just the bus policy the African-American community was protesting, it was over 100 years of horrific injustice heaped upon a community whose founders had been forcibly brought to the United States. Inside you will read about... ✓ A Dark Legacy ✓ The Winds of Change ✓ The Stage Is Set ✓ The Civil Rights Movement ✓ Life after the Boycott And much more! It was time for a change, and the act of defiance by Parks, though not the first sacrifice, created the spark that would ignite the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. This book tells the story of the context in which Parks’ refusal to yield her seat was set as well as the story of her life and legacy in a compelling, yet succinct, manner that is both packed with information and entertaining to read.

Trying to Make the Personal Political: Feminism and Consciousness-Raising


Mariame Kaba - 2017
    It is expanded with a new forward by Mariame Kaba and an afterword by Jacqui Shine.There is much to consider about Consciousness-Raising (CR) as a political education strategy. There are questions about why CR mostly appealed to white middle class women. There are questions about whether CR laid a foundation for contemporary concerns about trigger warnings and the politics of identity. In the afterword of this booklet, writer and historian Jacqui Shine extends our knowledge about the social context in which CR emerged as a practice among certain feminists.In her forward, Mariame Kaba writes:"Published in 1975 by the Women’s Action Alliance, the “Consciousness-Raising Guidelines” in A Practical Guide to the Women’s Movement add to our understanding of how some women sought to liberate themselves from patriarchy at a particular historical moment in the U.S. As a historical document, these guidelines and questions are a window into second-wave (white) feminist organizing.As such, I decided that it would be both informative and useful to reprint this document in the 21st century. After a 2016 general election when the first woman nominee of a major party (Hillary Clinton) lost after being widely expected to win, this publication is particularly timely. Clinton came of age during the 1960s and is a product of (white) second wave feminism. The majority of white women voters in 2016 chose to cast their ballots for Donald Trump. White feminists have to account for this fact in their future organizing efforts."In addition to the main text, forward, and afterword, there is a section of Supplemental Guidelines for Black Women prepared by Lori Sharpe, and Supplemental Guidelines for Youth Women (14-19) prepared by Jane Ginsburg and Gail Gordon.Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, and curator. She is the founder of Project NIA, a grassroots organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. Mariame is a founding member of Survived & Punished, a group focused on supporting criminalized survivors of violence. She is a feminist and an abolitionist. Her work has appeared in the Nation, In These Times, Truthout, the Guardian, and other publications.Jacqui Shine is a writer and historian. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Boston Review, The Believer, The Sun, Slate, the Journal of Social History, and other publications.

Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations in Post-Katrina New Orleans


Clyde Woods - 2017
    Reading contemporary policies of abandonment against the grain, Clyde Woods explores how Hurricane Katrina brought long-standing structures of domination into view. In so doing, Woods delineates the roots of neoliberalism in the region and a history of resistance.Written in dialogue with social movements, this book offers tools for comprehending the racist dynamics of U.S. culture and economy. Following his landmark study, Development Arrested, Woods turns to organic intellectuals, Blues musicians, and poor and working people to instruct readers in this future-oriented history of struggle. Through this unique optic, Woods delineates a history, methodology, and epistemology to grasp alternative visions of development.Woods contributes to debates about the history and geography of neoliberalism. The book suggests that the prevailing focus on neoliberalism at national and global scales has led to a neglect of the regional scale. Specifically, it observes that theories of neoliberalism have tended to overlook New Orleans as an epicenter where racial, class, gender, and regional hierarchies have persisted for centuries. Through this Blues geography, Woods excavates the struggle for a new society.

Kith


Divya Victor - 2017
    Victor reaps the pain, reams the pain, approaches the painful material from striated vantages, using discrete methodologies of extraction. This is not a pretty poetry of nostalgia for bittersweet pungencies, no invitation to savor bemusing exoticisms; this poetry invites disassociation from that which is no longer to be borne.From “Dromomania”:in one such case a woman embroidering the name of her fourth child into the mantelpiece tapestry was called by her husband to suckle oil from the Persian gulf in a city that clotted around a oasis where centuries ago star crossed lovers failed each other— Layla and Majnun: she dying in waiting, he walking miles and kissing every wall to know if she lived behind it— and from which she would return without her hair and with a spool of thread to spell again— later this story was told to children in a kitchen whilesmoothing the ruffled mackerel gills and sharpening knives on grey slabsof granite drawn from a quarry where men had fallen over and over in lovewith their own destiniesDivya Victor is the author of Natural Subjects, UNSUB, and Things to Do with Your Mouth. Her criticism has appeared in Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Jacket2, and the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet. She lives in Singapore, and is assistant professor of poetry and writing at Nanyang Technological University.

In Spirit


Tara Beagan - 2017
    He asked if she could get in and help him back to the highway, and said he could bring her back to her bike after. Molly declined, out of interest for her own safety. The next things Molly remembers are dirt, branches, trees, pain, and darkness.Molly is now a spirit.Mustering up some courage, she pieces together her short life for herself and her family while she reassembles her bicycle—the same one that was found thrown into the trees on the side of the road. Juxtaposed with flashes of news, sounds, and videos, Molly’s chilling tale becomes more and more vivid, challenging humanity not to forget her presence and importance.

Beautiful Rising: Creative Resistance from the Global South


Dave Oswald Mitchell - 2017
    In this follow-up to the bestselling Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution, Beautiful Rising showcases some of the most innovative tactics used in struggles against autocracy and austerity across the Global South.Based on face-to-face jam sessions held in Yangon, Amman, Harare, Dhaka, Kampala and Oaxaca, Beautiful Rising includes stories of the Ugandan organizers who smuggled two yellow-painted pigs into parliament to protest corruption; the Burmese students’ 360-mile long march against undemocratic and overly centralized education reforms; the Lebanese “honk at parliament” campaign against politicians who had clung to power long after their term had expired; and much more.Now, in one remarkable book, you can find the collective wisdom of more than a hundred grassroots organizers from five continents. It’s everything you need for a DIY uprising of your own.

A Tilted Guide To Being A Defendant


Tilted Scales Collective - 2017
    As much as we like to believe it couldn’t happen to us, it could. And it’s best to be prepared. This book it is a guide wrote by the veteran legal support activists of the Tilted Scales Collective, that present an overview of how to balance your personal, political, and legal goals in a criminal trial.

Today's Lesson: Black Lives Matter


Willie D. Jones - 2017
    But will he ever see the eleventh grade? When he confronts his chemistry teacher about her closed-minded, “comply or die” response to the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice at the hands of Cleveland police, a heated argument ensues. Cut to the next scene: Marcus stands accused of assaulting his teacher and is in danger of expulsion and criminal prosecution. Will he become one of the thousands of black boys and girls who are pushed out of school and onto the seemingly irreversible conveyor belt of the school-to-prison pipeline every day? That’s the premise of "Today’s Lesson: Black Lives Matter" the debut novel from tech journalist turned novelist Willie D. Jones.

Resistance Guide: How to Sustain the Movement to Win


Paul Engler - 2017
    Resistance Guide will equip you with the essential strategies to shift public opinion, change laws and decisions, and elect new leaders. This is a handbook for anyone who wants to understand what makes movements succeed, and how we can use this knowledge to fight for a better America.

Knocking on Labor's Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide


Lane Windham - 2017
    In recent years, many have argued that the crisis took root when unions stopped reaching out to workers and workers turned away from unions. But here Lane Windham tells a different story. Highlighting the integral, often-overlooked contributions of women, people of color, young workers, and southerners, Windham reveals how in the 1970s workers combined old working-class tools--like unions and labor law--with legislative gains from the civil and women's rights movements to help shore up their prospects. Through close-up studies of workers' campaigns in shipbuilding, textiles, retail, and service, Windham overturns widely held myths about labor's decline, showing instead how employers united to manipulate weak labor law and quash a new wave of worker organizing.Recounting how employees attempted to unionize against overwhelming odds, Knocking on Labor's Door dramatically refashions the narrative of working-class struggle during a crucial decade and shakes up current debates about labor's future. Windham's story inspires both hope and indignation, and will become a must-read in labor, civil rights, and women's history.

Radical Intellect: Liberator Magazine and Black Activism in the 1960s


Christopher M Tinson - 2017
    The movement's victories were inspirational, but its failures to bring about structural political and economic change pushed many to look elsewhere for new strategies. During this era of intellectual ferment, the writers, editors, and activists behind the monthly magazine Liberator (1960-71) were essential contributors to the debate. In the first full-length history of the organization that produced the magazine, Christopher M. Tinson locates the Liberator as a touchstone of U.S.-based black radical thought and organizing in the 1960s. Combining radical journalism with on-the-ground activism, the magazine was dedicated to the dissemination of a range of cultural criticism aimed at spurring political activism, and became the publishing home to many notable radical intellectual-activists of the period, such as Larry Neal, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Harold Cruse, and Askia Toure.By mapping the history and intellectual trajectory of the Liberator and its thinkers, Tinson traces black intellectual history beyond black power and black nationalism into an internationalism that would shape radical thought for decades to come.

The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy


ياسين الحاج صالح - 2017
    Former political prisoner, and current refugee, Yassin al-Haj Saleh exposes the lies that enable Assad to continue on his reign of terror as well as the complicity of both Russia and the US in atrocities endured by Syrians.

Egypt in a Time of Revolution: Contentious Politics and the Arab Spring


Neil Ketchley - 2017
    Drawing on a catalogue of more than 8,000 protest events, as well as interviews, video footage and still photographs, Neil Ketchley provides the first systematic account of how Egyptians banded together to overthrow Husni Mubarak, and how old regime forces engineered a return to authoritarian rule. Eschewing top-down, structuralist and culturalist explanations, the author shows that the causes and consequences of Mubarak's ousting can only be understood by paying close attention to the evolving dynamics of contentious politics witnessed in Egypt since 2011. Setting these events within a larger social and political context, Ketchley sheds new light on the trajectories and legacies of the Arab Spring, as well as recurring patterns of contentious collective action found in the Middle East and beyond.