Dated the 14th of December 1908, A Letter to a Hindu was a letter written by Leo Tolstoy to Tarak Nath Das, a Bengali revolutionary and scholar, in response to a request for support for India's separation from British rule, which argued that the Indian people should seek to free themselves from British rule through non-violent protests and strikes, and other forms of peaceful resistance. The letter soon gained international attention after it was published in the Free Hindustan, and it came to the attention of the young Mahatma Gandhi. Drawing on a variety of sources, cultures and teachings, Tolstoy's letter was instrumental in forming Gandhi's views on non-violent resistance - as Gandhi himself acknowledges in his introduction: 'To me, as a humble follower of that great teacher whom I have long looked upon as one of my guides, it is a matter of honour to be connected with the publication of his letter'.

In the late 1980s, after a decade spent engaged in more routine interest-group politics, thousands of lesbians and gay men responded to the AIDS crisis by defiantly and dramatically taking to the streets. But by the early 1990s, the organization they founded, ACT UP, was no more--even as the AIDS epidemic raged on. Weaving together interviews with activists, extensive research, and reflections on the author's time as a member of the organization, "Moving Politics" is the first book to chronicle the rise and fall of ACT UP, highlighting a key factor in its trajectory: emotion.

Surprisingly overlooked by many scholars of social movements, emotion, Gould argues, plays a fundamental role in political activism. From anger to hope, pride to shame, and solidarity to despair, feelings played a significant part in ACT UP's provocative style of protest, which included raucous demonstrations, die-ins, and other kinds of street theater. Detailing the movement's public triumphs and private setbacks, "Moving Politics" is the definitive account of ACT UP's origin, development, and decline as well as a searching look at the role of emotion in contentious politics.

This is a unique collection of poems written by and for people who have survived our mental health system and the diagnostic process that is used to categorise and treat mental and emotional distress. In October 2016, Jo Watson launched A Disorder for Everyone (AD4E) – an international campaign to challenge the culture of psychiatric diagnosis and the labelling of expressions of emotional distress as medical disorders. Since then hundreds of people have attended AD4E events all over the UK, and thousands have joined the campaign Facebook group ‘Drop the Disorder!’ What began as a shout of protest has become an international roar. Poetry has long been used to give voice to resistance and to drive change in all kinds of social movements, and it is a central aspect of this campaign as well. It has been at the heart of every AD4E event and, more recently, several online poetry events have brought together poets and poetry-lovers from across the globe under the Drop the Disorder! banner. We Are the Change-Makers is a collection of these and other poems that seek to describe the otherwise inexpressible and challenge the power of psychiatry that misrepresents and medicates what it does not understand.

Andrew Graystone is an everyday activist who believes in the power of tiny acts to change the world. He is the person whose image went viral when, after the mass shooting in the Christchurch mosque, he stood outside the mosque in his Manchester neighbourhood with a cardboard sign saying 'I'll watch while you pray'. Faith, Hope and Mischief tells funny, prophetic and powerful stories of tiny acts of rebellion Andrew has carried out, alongside arresting reflections on what it means to live in faith and hope. His stories delight and challenge in equal measure, showing how the kingdom of God turns up in all kinds of ways and how small things make a big difference. His stories encourage readers to take risks, make holy mischief, poke fun at the over-mighty, and believe that despite evidence to the contrary, the world's story is going to end well. This is a manual of everyday activism, a wellspring of wit and wisdom for days when hope is hard to come by, and an inspiration for anyone who feels powerless to make a difference.

"A wonderful starting point for studying social movements in contemporary Latin America and for analyzing how unique processes of dependent capitalist development, and attendant political structures, influence their emergence and impact. This edited volume comes just in time, before we get too carried away with Euro-centered theories of new social movements and lose sight of what is really happening at the grassroots. It is one of the first collections of its kind published in English, and as such it is a rich and long-overdue contribution. "--Diane E. Davis, "Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs"

"Carefully conceived," Power and Popular Protest" is a superb text to be consulted in the years to come by anyone interested in understanding contemporary Latin American politics and society."--Rosario Espinal, "Contemporary Sociology"

This book tells the story of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, an emblematic grassroots social movement of peasant farmers, who unusually declared themselves 'neutral' to Colombia's internal armed conflict, in the north-west region of Uraba. It reveals two core narratives in the Community's collective identity, which Burnyeat calls the 'radical' and the 'organic' narratives. These refer to the historically-constituted interpretative frameworks according to which they perceive respectively the Colombian state, and their relationship with their natural and social environments. Together, these two narratives form an 'Alternative Community' collective identity, comprising a distinctive conception of grassroots peace-building. This study, centered on the Community's socio-economic cacao-farming project, offers an innovative way of approaching victims' organizations and social movements through critical, post-modern politics and anthropology. It will become essential reading to Latin American ethnographers and historians, and all interested in conflict resolution and transitional justice. Read the author's blog drawing on the book here: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2018/06/07/colombias-unsung-heroes/

The voice of reason in a world that won’t shut up.

The Sunday Times Bestseller

Every day, James O’Brien listens to people blaming hard-working immigrants for stealing their jobs while scrounging benefits, and pointing their fingers at the EU and feminists for destroying Britain. But what makes James’s daily LBC show such essential listening – and has made James a standout social media star – is the incisive way he punctures their assumptions and dismantles their arguments live on air, every single morning.

In the bestselling How To Be Right, James provides a hilarious and invigorating guide to talking to people with unchallenged opinions. With chapters on every lightning-rod issue, James shows how people have been fooled into thinking the way they do, and in each case outlines the key questions to ask to reveal fallacies, inconsistencies and double standards.

If you ever get cornered by ardent Brexiteers, Daily Mail disciples or corporate cronies, this book is your conversation survival guide.

Most observers of Iran viewed the Green Uprisings of 2009 as a 'failed revolution', with many Iranians and those in neighbouring Arab countries agreeing. In Contesting the Iranian Revolution, however, Pouya Alimagham re-examines this evaluation, deconstructing the conventional win-lose binary interpretations in a way which underscores the subtle but important victories on the ground, and reveals how Iran's modern history imbues those triumphs with consequential meaning. Focusing on the men and women who made this dynamic history, and who exist at the centre of these contentious politics, this 'history from below' brings to the fore the post-Islamist discursive assault on the government's symbols of legitimation. From powerful symbols rooted in Shi'ite Islam, Palestinian liberation, and the Iranian Revolution, Alimagham harnesses the wider history of Iran and the Middle East to highlight how activists contested the Islamic Republic's legitimacy to its very core.

Most observers of Iran viewed the Green Uprisings of 2009 as a 'failed revolution', with many Iranians and those in neighbouring Arab countries agreeing. In Contesting the Iranian Revolution, however, Pouya Alimagham re-examines this evaluation, deconstructing the conventional win-lose binary interpretations in a way which underscores the subtle but important victories on the ground, and reveals how Iran's modern history imbues those triumphs with consequential meaning. Focusing on the men and women who made this dynamic history, and who exist at the centre of these contentious politics, this 'history from below' brings to the fore the post-Islamist discursive assault on the government's symbols of legitimation. From powerful symbols rooted in Shi'ite Islam, Palestinian liberation, and the Iranian Revolution, Alimagham harnesses the wider history of Iran and the Middle East to highlight how activists contested the Islamic Republic's legitimacy to its very core.

Protest Politics in the Marketplace examines how social media has revolutionized the use and effectiveness of consumer activism. In her groundbreaking book, Caroline Heldman emphasizes that consumer activism is a democratizing force that improves political participation, self-governance, and the accountability of corporations and the government. She also investigates the use of these tactics by conservatives. Heldman analyzes the democratic implications of boycotting, socially responsible investing, social media campaigns, and direct consumer actions, highlighting the ways in which such consumer activism serves as a countervailing force against corporate power in politics. In Protest Politics in the Marketplace, she blends democratic theory with data, historical analysis, and coverage of consumer campaigns for civil rights, environmental conservation, animal rights, gender justice, LGBT rights, and other causes. Using an inter-disciplinary approach applicable to political theorists and sociologists, Americanists, and scholars of business, the environment, and social movements, Heldman considers activism in the marketplace from the Boston Tea Party to the present. In doing so, she provides readers with a clearer understanding of the new, permanent environment of consumer activism in which they operate.

In The Politics of Religion and the Rise of Social Catholicism in Peru (1884-1935) Ricardo Cubas Ramacciotti provides a lucid synthesis of the Catholic Church's responses to the secularisation of the State and society whilst offering a fresh appraisal of the emergence of Social Catholicism and its contribution to social thought and development of civil society in post-independence Peru. Making use of diverse historical sources, Cubas provides a comprehensive view of a reformist yet anti-revolutionary trend within the Peruvian Church that, decades before the emergence of Liberation Theology and under divergent intellectual paradigms, developed an active agenda that addressed the new social problems of the country, including those of urban workers, and of indigenous populations.

St Vincent was among the earliest of the British Caribbean colonies to have experienced labour disturbances in the 1930s. While disturbances in the other Caribbean colonies were largely associated with the plantations and with strikes, in St Vincent the riots broke out on the grounds of the court house during a meeting of the Legislative Council on the upper floor. The 1935 Riots in St Vincent: From Riots to Adult Suffrage is the first comprehensive treatment of those disturbances. Fraser's analysis is to a large extent informed by the use of newspapers and of oral history. In St Vincent, the plantations no longer had total dominance of the colony's export economy. Instead, peasants, farmers and agricultural labourers were major players in an export economy that had shifted from sugar production to Sea Island cotton and arrowroot, crops that were suited to the lands to which they had access. Of added significance to the events following the riots was the fact that political leaders unearthed by the riots failed to maintain popular support with the advent of adult suffrage in 1951. Interpretations of British West Indian colonial history have to a large extent been informed by the experiences of the larger colonies. An understanding of the St Vincent riots will make a valuable contribution to the literature of the rebellions of the 1930s.

Civil resistance, especially in the form of massive peaceful demonstrations, was at the heart of the Arab Spring-the chain of events in the Middle East and North Africa that erupted in December 2010. It won some notable victories: popular movements helped to bring about the fall of authoritarian governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Yet these apparent triumphs of non-violent action were followed by disasters-wars in Syria, anarchy in Libya and Yemen, reversion to authoritarian rule in Egypt, and counter-revolution backed by external intervention in Bahrain. Looming over these events was the enduring divide between the Sunni and Shi'a branches of Islam. Why did so much go wrong? Was the problem the methods, leadership and aims of the popular movements, or the conditions of their societies? In this book, experts on these countries, and on the techniques of civil resistance, set the events in their historical, social and political contexts. They describe how governments and outside powers-including the US and EU-responded, how Arab monarchies in Jordan and Morocco undertook to introduce reforms to avert revolution, and why the Arab Spring failed to spark a Palestinian one. They indicate how and why Tunisia remained, precariously, the country that experienced the most political change for the lowest cost in bloodshed. This book provides a vivid illustrated account and rigorous scholarly analysis of the course and fate, the strengths and the weaknesses, of the Arab Spring. The authors draw clear and challenging conclusions from these tumultuous events. Above all, they show how civil resistance aiming at regime change is not enough: building the institutions and the trust necessary for reforms to be implemented and democracy to develop is a more difficult but equally crucial task.

With a focus on mainline Protestants and gay rights activists in the twentieth century, Heather R. White challenges the usual picture of perennial adversaries with a new narrative about America's religious and sexual past. White argues that today's antigay Christian traditions originated in the 1920s when a group of liberal Protestants began to incorporate psychiatry and psychotherapy into Christian teaching. A new therapeutic orthodoxy, influenced by modern medicine, celebrated heterosexuality as God-given and advocated a compassionate ""cure"" for homosexuality. White traces the unanticipated consequences as the therapeutic model, gaining popularity after World War II, spurred mainline church leaders to take a critical stance toward rampant antihomosexual discrimination. By the 1960s, a vanguard of clergy began to advocate for homosexual rights. White highlights the continued importance of this religious support to the consolidating gay and lesbian movement. However, the ultimate irony of the therapeutic orthodoxy's legacy was its adoption, beginning in the 1970s, by the Christian Right, which embraced it as an age-old tradition to which Americans should return. On a broader level, White challenges the assumed secularization narrative in LGBT progress by recovering the forgotten history of liberal Protestants' role on both sides of the debates over orthodoxy and sexual identity.

Recent years have seen an enormous increase in protests across the world in which citizens have challenged what they see as a deterioration of democratic institutions and the very civil, political and social rights that form the basis of democratic life. Beginning with Iceland in 2008, and then forcefully in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece and Portugal, or more recently in Peru, Brazil, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Ukraine, people have taken to the streets against what they perceive as a rampant and dangerous corruption of democracy, with a distinct focus on inequality and suffering. This timely new book addresses the anti-austerity social movements of which these protests form part, mobilizing in the context of a crisis of neoliberalism. Donatella della Porta shows that, in order to understand their main facets in terms of social basis, strategy, and identity and organizational structures, we should look at the specific characteristics of the socioeconomic, cultural and political context in which they developed. The result is an important and insightful contribution to understanding a key issue of our times, which will be of interest to students and scholars of political and economic sociology, political science and social movement studies, as well as political activists.

From the protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square to the Tea Party in the United States to the campaign to elect indigenous leader Evo Morales in Bolivia, modern populist movements command international attention and compel political and social change. When citizens demand "power to the people," they evoke corrupt politicians, imperialists, or oligarchies that have appropriated power from its legitimate owners. These stereotypical narratives belie the vague and often contradictory definitions of the concept of "the people" and the many motives of those who use populism as a political tool.

In The Promise and Perils of Populism, Carlos de la Torre assembles a group of international scholars to explore the ambiguous meanings and profound implications of grassroots movements across the globe. These trenchant essays explore how fragile political institutions allow populists to achieve power, while strong institutions confine them to the margins of political systems. Their comparative case studies illuminate how Latin American, African, and Thai populists have sought to empower marginalized groups of people, while similar groups in Australia, Europe, and the United States often exclude people whom they consider to possess different cultural values. While analyzing insurrections in Latin America, advocacy groups in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and populist parties in Asia and Africa, the contributors also pose questions and agendas for further research.

This volume on contemporary populism from a comparative perspective could not be more timely, and scholars from a variety of disciplines will find it an invaluable contribution to the literature.

In Unearthing Conflict Fabiana Li analyzes the aggressive expansion and modernization of mining in Peru since the 1990s to tease out the dynamics of mining-based protests. Issues of water scarcity and pollution, the loss of farmland, and the degradation of sacred land are especially contentious. She traces the emergence of the conflicts by discussing the smelter-town of La Oroya-where people have lived with toxic emissions for almost a century-before focusing her analysis on the relatively new Yanacocha gold mega-mine. Debates about what kinds of knowledge count as legitimate, Li argues, lie at the core of activist and corporate mining campaigns. Li pushes against the concept of "equivalence"-or methods with which to quantify and compare things such as pollution-to explain how opposing groups interpret environmental regulations, assess a project's potential impacts, and negotiate monetary compensation for damages. This politics of equivalence is central to these mining controversies, and Li uncovers the mechanisms through which competing parties create knowledge, assign value, arrive at contrasting definitions of pollution, and construct the Peruvian mountains as spaces under constant negotiation.

The young generation aren't apathetic. We're disenfranchised, under or unemployed, insecure and anxious. But we're also angry. We know there are alternatives to the political consensus, but voices calling for comprehensive radical changes are ignored. We urgently need new forms of collective organisation. In the run up to the 2015 General Election, this third book in the Radical Future series looks at young peoples' resistance to what passes for politics. Mainstream politics has failed the young: our political system is fundamentally bankrupt. We have much to stand against, but little to vote for. The coalition government openly prioritises economic gain for the few above the lives of the many, allowing UKIP to repurpose frustration from rising inequality into racist bigotry. Instead of providing structural opposition, the Labour Party tear themselves apart in their failure to do anything different. Growing numbers identify with the Left, but the institutions that once supported it are old, stagnant, and sectarian. When we do manage to create mass resistance, we come up against the state through the police: physically and legally. It's easy to lose the belief we can create change. In this climate, the vital protest movements of recent years seem long gone. The message is clear: the neoliberals have won. In our third book, on the cusp of an election that feels like an irrelevance, the Radical Future collective take up this thread. Each author's chapter seeks to re-engage with radical alternative politics: values like social justice, liberation and collectivity. Bringing together contributors from different fields and perspectives means that we don't all argue for the same thing. But the question that we are all asking is: How can we fight back?

One hundred twenty years ago, the Independent Order of Good Templars was the world's largest, most militant, and most evangelical organization hostile to alcoholic drink. Standing in the forefront of the international temperance movement, it was recognized worldwide as a potent social and moral force.Temperance and Racism restores the Templars, now an almost forgotten footnote in American and British social history, to a position of prominence within the temperance movement. The group's ideology of universal membership made it unique among fraternal organizations in the late nineteenth century and led to pioneering efforts on behalf of equal rights for women.Its policy toward African Americans was more ambiguous. Though a great many whiteTemplars, especially those in Great Britain, rejected the extreme racism prevalent in the late nineteenth century, members in the American South did not. The decision to allow state lodges to rule on their member¬ship eligibility led to the great schism of 1876- 87. The break was mended only after British leaders compromised their ideals of universal brotherhood and sisterhood for the sake of the organization's international unity. Drawing on previously unused primary sources, David Fahey reveals much about racial attitudes and behavior in the late nineteenth century on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, and on both sides of the Atlantic.

From Facebook, Twitter, BlackBerry and gossip to hard facts, research and empirical investigation, this outstanding collection looks at the nature and causes of the English Riots of 2011 one year after they occurred. Though worrying in their nature, speed and scale, the book points out that rioting is nothing new - even if technological advances have altered their 'organization', the way in which the police respond and the incessant nature of media coverage. From 'moral panics' to 'broken Britain' and anxieties about youth crime, the book looks at various flashpoints of the riots such as the killing of Mark Duggan by police marksmen, the widespread looting, the political and criminal justice responses and a growing discontent about the current neoliberal order. The book rejects Coalition Prime Minister David Cameron's much-publicized assertion that these events were 'criminality, pure and simple', just as it counters attempts to lay blame on sections of the community or 'outsiders'. Looking at phenomena such as 'shopping for free' and the idea that the lawlessness represented some kind of instant carnival, it concentrates on how order was restored and individuals fast-tracked via police cells and courts into harsh sentences as well as issues of marginality, hopelessness, political and economic corruption and media distortions. Wide-ranging and expert in its analysis, it also considers the modern-day global context for riots as well as comparing Brixton 1981 and other iconic events of the past. Further highlights include: the role of new social media in terms of recruitment, resistance, and surveillance; the role of the urban street gang; gender, racialization, resentment, post-riot rhetoric and the profiling the 2011 rioters. It looks at how the riots spread to other cities in the UK including Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham - as well as examining events and attitudes in places such as Spain, Greece, and those of the Arab Spring. Asks Who, When and Why? Includes first-hand accounts from 2011 rioters, victims and the public Applies historical, cultural, structural and social perspectives to the English Riots of 2011 Considers the aftermath of the riots and the wider picture of global social unrest Editor Dr Daniel Briggs is a Reader in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of East London who also works with the most vulnerable people to the most dangerous and the most misunderstood. His work has taken him into prisons, crack houses, mental health institutions, asylum institutions, hostels, care homes, hospices and places for the homeless. He is the author of Crack Cocaine Users: High Society and Low Life in South London (Routledge, 2011). Contributors In this book he is assisted by contributions from some 20 leading commentators: Stephanie Alice Baker, Tim Bateman, Steve Briggs, Joel Busher, Celia Diaz-Catalan, Rebecca Clarke, Aisha K. Gill, Steve Hall, Simon Harding, Vicky Heap, Steven Hirschler, Liz Kelly, Axel Klein, Lorenzo Navarrete-Moreno, Geoffrey Pearson, Hannah Smithson, John Strawson, Sheldon Thomas, Simon Winlow and Ricardo Zuniga.

In April 1969, one of America's premier universities was celebrating parents' weekend and the student union was an armed camp, occupied by over eighty defiant members of the campus's Afro-American Society. Marching out Sunday night, the protesters brandished rifles, their maxim: "If we die, you are going to die." Cornell '69 is an electrifying account of that weekend which probes the origins of the drama and describes how it was played out not only at Cornell but on campuses across the nation during the heyday of American liberalism.Donald Alexander Downs tells the story of how Cornell University became the battleground for the clashing forces of racial justice, intellectual freedom, and the rule of law. Eyewitness accounts and retrospective interviews depict the explosive events of the day and bring the key participants into sharp focus: the Afro-American Society, outraged at a cross-burning incident on campus and demanding amnesty for its members implicated in other protests; University President James A. Perkins, long committed to addressing the legacies of racism, seeing his policies backfire and his career collapse; the faculty, indignant at the university's surrender, rejecting the administration's concessions, then reversing itself as the crisis wore on. The weekend's traumatic turn of events is shown by Downs to be a harbinger of the debates raging today over the meaning of the university in American society. He explores the fundamental questions it posed, questions Americans on and off campus are still struggling to answer: What is the relationship between racial justice and intellectual freedom? What are the limits in teaching identity politics? And what is the proper meaning of the university in a democratic polity?"

Crisis and Control explains how neoliberal transformations of political and economic systems are militarising the policing of protest, based on a compelling empirical study of police agencies and practices from 1995 until the present. Lesley J. Wood shows that the increasing role of the security and defense industries, professional police associations, anti-terrorism initiatives and 'best practices' in policing networks have accelerated the use of less lethal weapons, pre-emptive arrests, infiltration and barricading strategies against protesters. The book uses Bourdieu and Boltanski to analyse court transcripts, police reports, policy, training materials and the conference programs of professional police organisations to argue that police agencies are neither omnipotent strategists, nor simple tools of the elite, but institutions struggling to maintain legitimacy, resources and autonomy in a changing field.

1842 was a year of crisis in Britain, and no more so than in the West Riding town of Halifax. A great strike of all trades took place across England in 1842. It reached its zenith in the industrial towns of the north, starting in the small communities of Lancashire and quickly spreading to the West Riding of Yorkshire as Lancashire marchers poured across the Pennines. In hand with its neighbouring town of Huddersfield, Halifax was noted for its opposition to the New Poor Law which, in 1834, attempted to abolish outdoor relief for the poor, for its support of a maximum ten-hour working day and the Chartists' call for workers' voting rights. When Bradford publican 'Fat Peter' Bussey attended the first Chartist Convention in London in 1839, he took with him the West Riding petition bearing 52,800 signatures, 25 percent of which had been given at Halifax. This book discusses the efforts made by the men and women of Halifax in these early years of organised agitation for social reform, their 'clandestine meetings and nightly drilling', their 'determination, resilience and militancy' to gain a say in the laws under which they lived. It tells of the fight for the legislative rights of workers like seventeen-year-old Patience Kershaw, who dragged loads of coal for twelve hours each day along narrow and dangerous passages under the hills of Halifax. When the Lancashire marchers arrived at Halifax in the hot summer of 1842, the cavalry attempted to clear the streets with their sabres and a violent response was inevitable, arrests quickly followed. The climax came when many hundreds of the men and women of Halifax fought against British soldiers on 16th August 1842, an event which led to the humiliation of a proud platoon of Prince Albert's Own and to the death of at least six men of Halifax.