Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland is a music history of Solidarity, the social movement opposing state socialism in 1980s Poland. The story unfolds along crucial sites of political action under state socialism: underground radio networks, the sanctuaries of the Polish Roman Catholic Church, labor strikes and student demonstrations, and commemorative performances. Through innovative close listenings of archival recordings, author Andrea F. Bohlman uncovers creative sonic practices in bootleg cassettes, televised state propaganda, and the unofficial, uncensored print culture of the opposition. She argues that sound both unified and splintered the Polish opposition, keeping the contingent formations of political dissent in dynamic tension. By revealing the diverse repertories-singer-songwriter verses, religious hymns, large-scale symphonies, experimental music, and popular song-that played a role across the decade, she challenges paradigmatic visions of a late twentieth-century global protest culture that place song and communitas at the helm of social and political change. Musical Solidarities brings together perspectives from historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and sound studies to demonstrate the value of sound for thinking politics. Unfurling the rich soundscapes of political action at demonstrations, church services, meetings, and in detention, it offers a nuanced portrait of this pivotal decade of European and global history.

Asked to name an activist, many people think of someone like Cesar Chavez or Rosa Parks--someone uniquely and passionately devoted to a cause. Yet, two-thirds of Americans report having belonged to a social movement, attended a protest, or engaged in some form of contentious political activity. Activism, in other words, is something that the vast majority of people engage in. This book examines these more common experiences to ask how and when people choose to engage with political causes.
Corrigall-Brown reveals how individual characteristics and life experiences impact the pathway of participation, illustrating that the context and period in which a person engages are critical. This is the real picture of activism, one in which many people engage, in a multitude of ways and with varying degrees of continuity. This book challenges the current conceptualization of activism and pushes us to more systematically examine the varying ways that individuals participate in contentious politics over their lifetimes.

This book brings together the voices of people from five continents who live, work, and research on the front lines of climate resistance and renewal. The many contributors to this volume explore the impacts of extreme weather events in Africa, the Caribbean and on Pacific islands, experiences of life-long defenders of the land and forests in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and eastern Canada, and efforts to halt the expansion of fossil-fuel infrastructure from North America to South Africa. They offer various perspectives on how a just transition toward a fossil-free economy can take shape, as they share efforts to protect water resources, better feed their communities, and implement new approaches to urban policy and energy democracy. Climate Justice and Community Renewal uniquely highlights the accounts of people who are directly engaged in local climate struggles and community renewal efforts, including on-the-ground land defenders, community organizers, leaders of international campaigns, agroecologists, activist-scholars, and many others. It will appeal to students, researchers, activists, and all who appreciate the need for a truly justice-centered response to escalating climate disruptions.

Winner of the 2013 New York Book Show Award in Scholarly/Professional Cover Design Jewish Radicals explores the intertwined histories of Jews and the American Left through a rich variety of primary documents. Written in English and Yiddish, these documents reflect the entire spectrum of radical opinion, from anarchism to social democracy, Communism to socialist-Zionism. Rank-and-file activists, organizational leaders, intellectuals, and commentators, from within the Jewish community and beyond, all have their say. Their stories crisscross the Atlantic, spanning from the United States to Europe and British-ruled Palestine. The documents illuminate in fascinating detail the efforts of large numbers of Jews to refashion themselves as they confronted major problems of the twentieth century: poverty, anti-semitism, the meaning of American national identity, war, and totalitarianism. In this comprehensive sourcebook, the story of Jewish radicals over seven decades is told for the first time in their own words.

With his colleagues at the People's Law Office (PLO), Taylor has argued landmark civil rights cases that have exposed corruption and cover-ups within the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and throughout the city's corrupt political machine. The Torture Machine takes the reader from the 1969 murders of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and Panther Mark Clark-and the historic, thirteen-years of litigation that followed-through the dogged pursuit of commander Jon Burge, the leader of a torture ring within the CPD that used barbaric methods, including electric shock, to elicit false confessions from suspects. Joining forces with community activists, torture survivors and their families, other lawyers, and local reporters, Taylor and the PLO gathered evidence from multiple cases to bring suit against the CPD officers and the City of Chicago. As the struggle expanded beyond the torture scandal to the ultimately successful campaign to end the death penalty in Illinois, and obtained reparations for many of the torture survivors, it set human rights precedents that have since been adopted across the United States.

In 2009, Ecuador became the first nation ever to enshrine rights for nature in its constitution. Nature was accorded inalienable rights, and every citizen was granted standing to defend those rights. At the same time, the government advanced a policy of "extractive populism," buying public support for mineral mining by promising that funds from the mining would be used to increase public services. This book, based on a nationwide survey and interviews about environmental attitudes among citizens as well as indigenous, environmental, government, academic, and civil society leaders in Ecuador, offers a theory about when and why individuals will speak for nature, particularly when economic interests are at stake. Parting from conventional social science arguments that political attitudes are determined by ethnicity or social class, the authors argue that environmental dispositions in developing countries are shaped by personal experiences of vulnerability to environmental degradation. Abstract appeals to identity politics, on the other hand, are less effective. Ultimately, this book argues that indigenous groups should be the stewards of nature, but that they must do so by appealing to the concrete, everyday vulnerabilities they face, rather than by turning to the more abstract appeals of ethnic-based movements.

*A Times, Financial Times, Observer and Nature Book of the Year* We still have time to change the world. From Greta Thunberg, the world's leading climate activist, comes the essential handbook for making it happen. You might think it's an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There is hope - but only if we listen to the science before it's too late. In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts - geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and indigenous leaders - to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster. Alongside them, she shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark. This is one of our biggest challenges, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, how can we not act? And if a schoolchild's strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried? We are alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity. Together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now.

We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and ordinary people are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way. Pursued by global elites since the 1970s, neoliberalism is defined by dispossession and ever-increasing inequality. The refusal to continue to be ruled like this - 'ya basta!' - appears in an arc of resistance stretching from rural India to the cities of the global North. From this network of movements, new visions are emerging of a future beyond neoliberalism. We Make Our Own History responds to these visions by reclaiming Marxism as a theory born from activist experience and practice. This book marks a break both with established social movement theory, and with those forms of Marxism which treat the practice of social movement organising as an unproblematic process. It shows how movements can develop from local conflicts to global struggles; how neoliberalism operates as a social movement from above, and how popular struggles can create new worlds from below.

Drawing on global research, this book argues that processes of professionalization form an integral part of the production of neoliberal spaces, with profound implications for political activism. It brings together original research from diverse contexts, including studies conducted in the Global South and the Global North, in order to enable key features of neoliberalisation to be understood more fully.

The book brings into focus tensions and connections between activism and processes of professionalisation in relation to neoliberalism. It illuminates links between the context of neoliberal restructuring and the ways in which professionalisation involves processes of representation, negotiation and embodiment as activism feeds into "scaled up" policy-making. In doing so, it elaborates how the spaces of neoliberalism are "worked" in two related senses: namely how neoliberalisation incorporates, co-opts, constrains and depletes activism; and how professional subjects inhabit and sometimes subvert the opportunities neoliberalisation opens up.

A MOVEMENT IN WORDS AND IMAGES Award-winning photographer Devin Allen has devoted the last six years to documenting the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement, from its early days in Baltimore, Maryland, up to the present day. The riveting images in No Justice, No Peace provide a lens on the resistance that has empowered Black lives generation after generation. Allen's signature black-and-white photos bear witness to the profound history of African Americans and allies in the fight for social justice and portray the collective action over decades in stunning, timeless portraits. Allen's remarkable photos of today's Black Lives Matter protests, which have been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and twice on the cover of Time magazine, were inspired by Gordon Parks of the Civil Rights Movement, and create a vision of the past and future of Black activism and leadership in America. With contributions from twenty-six bestselling and influential writers and activists of today such as Clint Smith, DeRay Mckesson, D. Watkins, Jacqueline Woodson, Emmanuel Acho, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and more, alongside the words of past writers and activists such as Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, and John Lewis, No Justice, No Peace is a reminder of the moral responsibility of Americans to break unjust laws and take direct action. In words and pictures, No Justice, No Peace honors the connection between activism today and that of the past. If indeed hindsight is 20/20, this artistic look back is a lens on history that enlarges our understanding of the lasting predicament of racism in the United States of America. At once deeply intimate and profoundly uplifting, No Justice, No Peace is a visual tribute to Black resistance and a stern missive on the tough, but necessary, road that lies ahead.

A lively historical account of the rise of Ethiopia's student movement by one of those involved, its role in overthrowing the imperial regime, and its impact on the shaping of the country's future. Finalist for the Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize to the author of the best book on East African Studies, 2015. In the second half of the 1960s and the early 1970s, the Ethiopian student movement became the major oppositionforce against the imperial regime in Ethiopia, ultimately playing a fundamental role in the shaping of the country's future political and social development. Bahru Zewde, one of the students involved in the uprising, draws on interviews with former student leaders and activists, as well as documentary sources, to describe the steady radicalisation of the movement, characterised particularly after 1965 by annual demonstrations against the regime and culminating in the ascendancy of Marxism-Leninism by the early 1970s. In 1969, the students broached what came to be famously known as the "national question", ultimately resulting in the adoption of the Leninist/Stalinist principle of self-determination up to and including secession. On the eve of the revolution, the student movement abroad split into two rival factions - a split that would ultimately lead to the liquidation of both and the consolidation of military dictatorship. Bahru Zewde is Emeritus Professor of History at Addis Ababa University and founding Fellow and Vice President of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences. He has authored many books and articles, notably A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1974 and Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century. Ethiopia: Addis Ababa University Press

2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title In Life of the Indigenous Mind David Martinez examines the early activism, life, and writings of Vine Deloria Jr. (1933-2005), the most influential Indigenous activist and writer of the twentieth century and one of the intellectual architects of the Red Power movement. An experienced activist, administrator, and political analyst, Deloria was motivated to activism and writing by his work as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, and he came to view discourse on tribal self-determination as the most important objective for making a viable future for tribes. In this work of both intellectual and activist history, Martinez assesses the early life and legacy of Deloria's "Red Power Tetralogy," his most powerful and polemical works: Custer Died for Your Sins (1969), We Talk, You Listen (1970), God Is Red (1973), and Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties (1974). Deloria's gift for combining sharp political analysis with a cutting sense of humor rattled his adversaries as much as it delighted his growing readership. Life of the Indigenous Mind reveals how Deloria's writings addressed Indians and non-Indians alike. It was in the spirit of protest that Deloria famously and infamously confronted the tenets of Christianity, the policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the theories of anthropology. The concept of tribal self-determination that he initiated both overturned the presumptions of the dominant society, including various "Indian experts," and asserted that tribes were entitled to the rights of independent sovereign nations in their relationship with the United States, be it legally, politically, culturally, historically, or religiously.

Jessica Alexander arrived in Rwanda in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide as an idealistic intern, eager to contribute to the work of the international humanitarian aid community. But the world that she encountered in the field was dramatically different than anything she could have imagined. It was messy, chaotic, and difficult--but she was hooked.
In this honest and irreverent memoir, she introduces readers to the realities of life as an aid worker. We watch as she manages a 24,000-person camp in Darfur, collects evidence for the Charles Taylor trial in Sierra Leone, and contributes to the massive aid effort to clean up a shattered Haiti. But we also see the alcohol-fueled parties and fleeting romances, the burnouts and self-doubt, and the struggle to do good in places that have long endured suffering.
Tracing her personal journey from wide-eyed and naive newcomer to hardened cynic and, ultimately, to hopeful but critical realist, Alexander transports readers to some of the most troubled locations around the world and shows us not only the seemingly impossible challenges, but also the moments of resilience and recovery.

This book shows that the third wave of democracy has been accompanied by a worldwide wave of opposition-initiated, election-related protests. Such electoral protests result from a failure on the part of incumbent and opposition elites in the developing world to negotiate acceptable terms of electoral conduct, and their consequences for democracy depend on the context in which they occur. Where election boycotts receive international support, they increase the probability of democratic reform, but where support is primarily domestic, there is a higher probability of authoritarian backsliding. Based on an extensive new data set covering nearly thirty years of electoral protest and election-related reform in the developing world, this book explores the causes of different types of electoral protest and their consequences for democracy. Statistical analysis and case studies provide readers with a complete picture of the dynamics surrounding developing world elections, protest, and democratization.

This volume of "Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change" investigates gendered aspects of social activism and peacebuilding, an area of research that continues to be undertheorized. Gender cuts across all forms of conflict and all aspects of society politically, economically, and socially. As a basic organizing principle in society, gender roles, relations, and inequalities impact social processes. From a gender perspective, the transformation of society requires investigating the overlapping and intertwined root causes of conflict from the interpersonal to the community and structural level, and the critical role that women play in conflict resolution, peacebuilding, and social movements. With a focus on the agency of grassroots citizens, refugee, indigenous, and ethnic minority women, this volume seeks to bring light to gendered aspects of practice that will assist scholars and practitioners in research and policy development. From reconciliation commissions in Sierra Leone, environmental activists in the Czech Republic, women's organizations in Burmese refugee camps, women's work in conflict resolution rituals in Laos, Minutewomen's e-activism in the United States, to women's social networks in Uzbekistan, this book explores complex contexts and critical issues central to women's grassroots activism, peacebuilding, and social movements.

Examines the variety of mostly unorganized and informal ways in which Africans exercise agency and resist state power in the 21st century, through citizen action and popular culture, and how the relationship between ruler and ruled is being reframed. The recent eruption of popular protests across North Africa and the Middle East has reopened academic debate on the meaning and strategies of resistance in the 21st century. This book argues that Western notions of state and civilsociety provide only a limited understanding of how power and resistance operate in the African context, where informality is central to the way both state officials and citizens exercise agency. With the principle of informality as a template, the chapters in this volume collectively examine the various modes - organised and unorganised, formal and informal, urban and rural, embodied and discursive, serious and ludic, online and offline, successful and failing - through which Africans contend with power. Resistance takes place against the backdrop of deep fractures in state sovereignty, the remnants of colonial rule and the constraints of a global, neoliberal economic system. Ebenezer Obadare is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas; Wendy Willems is Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

This is the story of an activist, a fighter for justice, an inspiration to young people and, most of all, one of the best soccer players South Africa has ever produced. He played in many countries around the world. Steve Mokone was born in South Africa during the apartheid era –yet played internationally for top clubs. He was also a son, a brother, an excellent student, a teammate, and a reciepent of several awards. Much has been said about this extraordinary athlete in newspapers, magazines, books and documentaries. This book pulls it all together as a record of his achievements. The story begins when he played barefoot with a tennis ball in townships streets. It ends when he walked away from the lights of the football grounds, leaving behind a great legacy. ‘It is my hope,’ Louise Mokone says, ‘that people will read this book and believe that they too can achieve their goals and not allow others to determine their destiny.’

There is an elaborate and often invisible carnival that emerges alongside presidential campaigns as innumerable activist groups attempt to press their issues into mainstream political discourse. Sarah Sobieraj's fascinating ethnographic portrait of fifty diverse organizations over the course of two campaign cycles reveals that while most activist groups equate political success with media success and channel their energies accordingly, their efforts fail to generate news coverage and come with deleterious consequences. Sobieraj shows that activists' impact on public political debates is minimal, and carefully unravels the ways in which their all-consuming media work and unrelenting public relations approach undermine their ability to communicate with pedestrians, comes at the expense of other political activities, and perhaps most perniciously, damages the groups themselves.

Weaving together fieldwork, news analysis, and in-depth interviews with activists and journalists, "Soundbitten" illuminates the relationship between news and activist organizations. This captivating portrait of activism in the United States lays bare the challenges faced by outsiders struggling to be heard in a mass media dominated public sphere that proves exclusionary and shows that media-centrism is not only ineffective, but also damaging to group life. "Soundbitten" reveals why media-centered activism so often fails, what activist groups lose in the process, and why we should all be concerned.

While the links between conservative Christians and politics have been drawn strongly in recent years, coming to embody what many think of as religious activism, the profoundly religious nature of community organizing and other more left-leaning justice work has been largely overlooked. "Prophetic Activism" is the first broad comparative examination of progressive religious activism in the United States. Set up as a counter-narrative to religious conservatism, the book offers readers a deeper understanding of the richness and diversity of contemporary religious activism.

Helene Slessarev-Jamir offers five case studies of major progressive religious justice movements that have their roots in liberative interpretations of Scripture: congregational community organizing; worker justice; immigrant rights work; peace-making and reconciliation; and global anti-poverty and debt relief. Drawing on intensive interviews with activists at all levels of this work--from pastors and congregational leaders to local organizers and the executive directors of the national networks--she uncovers the ways in which they construct an ethical framework for their work. In addition to looking at predominantly Christian organizations, the book also highlights the growth of progressive activism among Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists who are engaged in reinterpreting their religious texts to support new forms of activism.

Religion and Social Transformation series

'For its historical depth, analytical vigour and mobilizational potential, this book is unparalleled ... every page is an urgent invitation to resist' David Lammy MP The bestselling author of PostCapitalism offers a guide to resisting the far right The far right is on the rise across the world. From Modi's India to Bolsonaro's Brazil and Erdogan's Turkey, fascism is not a horror that we have left in the past; it is a recurring nightmare that is happening again - and we need to find a better way to fight it. In How to Stop Fascism, Paul Mason offers a radical, hopeful blueprint for resisting and defeating the new far right. The book is both a chilling portrait of contemporary fascism, and a compelling history of the fascist phenomenon: its psychological roots, political theories and genocidal logic. Fascism, Mason powerfully argues, is a symptom of capitalist failure, and it has haunted us throughout the twentieth century. History shows us the conditions that breed fascism, and how it can be successfully overcome. But it is up to us in the present to challenge it, and time is running out. From the ashes of COVID-19, we have an opportunity to create a fairer, more equal society. To do so, we must ask ourselves: what kind of world do we want to live in? And what are we going to do about it?

This is a pictorial record of the Chartist Movement. Photography was in its infancy in those years and the only photographic record of a Chartist gathering is of the last of the great meetings in April 1848. Pictures of the Chartists themselves as they appeared in those years are all from wood or metal engravings mostly published by Chartist newspapers. An introduction provides a background to the pictures and their captions.

Volatile social dissonance in America's urban landscape is the backdrop as Valerie Miles-Tribble examines tensions in ecclesiology and public theology, focusing on theoethical dilemmas that complicate churches' public justice witness as prophetic change agents. She attributes churches' reticence to confront unjust disparities to conflicting views, for example, of Black Lives Matter protests as "mere politics," and disparities in leader and congregant preparation for public justice roles. As a practical theologian with experience in organizational leadership, Miles-Tribble applies adaptive change theory, public justice theory, and a womanist communitarian perspective, engaging Emilie Townes' construct of cultural evil as she presents a model of social reform activism re-envisioned as public discipleship. She contends that urban churches are urgently needed to embrace active prophetic roles and thus increase public justice witness. "Black Lives Matter times" compel churches to connect faith with public roles as spiritual catalysts of change.

For the first time in a decade, leaders and citizens across the political spectrum are celebrating dissent. The reappearance of dissent in town hall meetings and on street corners brings new promise for improved democratic life and citizen participation. But this promise cannot be fulfilled if schools do not cultivate the skills necessary for our citizens to engage in political dissent. Indeed, this book reveals troubling practices in schools, resulting from the testing atmosphere and the hidden curriculum, that omit or suppress students ability to dissent and voice ideas that stand in opposition to the status quo. In this exciting book, Stitzlein investigates the historical and philosophical foundations of dissent in the work of the American Founders and the pragmatist philosophers who followed them. She examines the ways in which dissent is understood as a negative right and then proposes instead that dissent should be seen as a positive right. This book calls for a realignment of curriculum and the practices of schooling with both a guiding vision and a realistic interpretation of democracy as it is currently invoked in the era of Tea Party protests."

Student Activism, Politics, and Campus Climate in Higher Education presents a comprehensive, contemporary portrait of political engagement and student activism at postsecondary institutions in the United States. This resource explores how colleges and universities are experiencing unrest and in what ways broader sociopolitical conflicts are evident on-campus, ultimately unpacking the political dimensions of student engagement within campus climates. Chapter authors in this book critically synthesize relevant research, illuminate interdisciplinary perspectives, and interrogate how current issues of power and oppression shape participatory democracy and higher education at large. A go-to resource for researchers, faculty, administrators, and student affairs professionals, this text addresses the most intractable challenges facing society and its institutions of higher education.