This book examines how Martin Luther King's life and work had a profound, if unpredictable, impact on the course of the United States since the civil rights era. A global icon of freedom, justice, and equality, King is recognized worldwide as a beacon in the struggles of peoples seeking to eradicate oppression, entrenched poverty, social deprivation, as well as political and economic disfranchisement. While Dr. King's work and ideas have gained broad traction, some powerful people misappropriate the symbol of King, skewing his legacy. With unique, multidisciplinary works by scholars from around the country, this anthology focuses on contemporary socialpolicies and issues in America. Collectively, these pieces explore wide-ranging issues and contemporary social developments through the lens of Dr. King's perceptions, analysis, and prescriptions. Essayists bring a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to social policies and current issues in light of his ideals. They strive to glean new approaches and solutions that comport with Dr. King's vision. Organized into three sections, the book focuses on selected issues in contemporary domestic politics and policy, foreign policy and foreign affairs, and social developments that impinge upon African Americans and Americans in general. Essays shed light on Dr. King's perspective related to crime and justice, the right to vote, the hip hop movement, American foreign policy in the Middle East and Africa, healthcare, and other pressing issues. This book infers what Dr. King's response and actions might be on important and problematic contemporary policy and social issues that have arisen in the post-civil rights era. With contributions by: Rosa M. Banda, Michael L. Clemons, Lakeyta M. Bonnette-Bailey, Donathan L. Brown, Hannah Firdyiwek, Alonzo M. Flowers III, Helen Taylor Greene, William G. Jones, Athena M. King, Taj'ullah Sky Lark, Jamela M. Martin, Marcus L. Martin, Byron D'Andra Orey, Amardo Rodriguez, Audrey E. Snyder, James L. Taylor, Leslie U. Walker, and Jason M. Williams.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah is arguably the most high-profile political prisoner in Egypt, if not the Arab world, rising to international prominence during the revolution of 2011. A fiercely independent thinker who fuses politics and technology in powerful prose, an activist whose ideas represent a global generation which has only known struggle against a failing system, a public intellectual with the rare courage to offer personal, painful honesty, Alaa's written voice came to symbolize much of what was fresh, inspiring and revolutionary about the uprisings that have defined the last decade. Collected here for the first time in English are a selection of his essays, social media posts and interviews from 2011 until the present. He has spent the majority of those years in prison, where many of these pieces were written. Together, they present not only a unique account from the frontline of a decade of global upheaval, but a catalogue of ideas about other futures those upheavals could yet reveal. From theories on technology and history to profound reflections on the meaning of prison, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a book about the importance of ideas, whatever their cost.

Could we ever see Vladimir Putin in the dock for his crimes? What about a Western ally like Benjamin Netanyahu? Putting a country's leader on trial once seemed unimaginable. But as Steve Crawshaw describes in Prosecuting the Powerful - a blend of powerful eyewitness reporting and gripping history - the possibilities of justice have been transformed.

Crawshaw includes recent stories from the front lines of justice in Ukraine, Israel/Palestine and at The Hague, as well as his earlier encounters with war criminals like Slobodan Milošević. He tells the stories of those who have demanded protection for civilians and accountability for war criminals - from the Swiss businessman who is the reason why we have the Geneva Conventions today and the prosecutors at Nuremberg to the Syrian police photographer who helped put one of Bashar al-Assad's torturers behind bars. He also follows the extraordinary unfolding story of two of the world's most powerful and well-connected leaders currently under indictment at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

From Gaza to Bucha and beyond, survivors seek justice for the crimes committed against them. But for that to happen, governments must finally abandon their double standards and have the courage to support prosecutions of those who commit atrocities, whether opponents or allies.

For all the current darkness, this is a historic opportunity. The scales of justice can and must be balanced. Now is the moment.

This book is the first attempt to rethink and appraise the role of temporary commoning experiences that develop in contexts of crisis. Activist and urban planner, Angelos Varvarousis, argues that there is a certain type of commons - the liminal commons - which despite their often short lives play a crucial function in contemporary societies; they demarcate and facilitate transitions at the individual, collective and ultimately the societal level. Through an intense exploration of grassroots projects such as occupied squares, self-organised refugee camps, solidarity food structures and social clinics in crisis-ridden Greece, the author observes that humans still invent such collectively performed rituals in order to prepare, symbolize and practically explore the possibility of transformation and transition. In a period in which traditional rites of passage have faded away but many changes are urgently needed, liminal commons can be a key element in the process of claiming awareness and control over the mechanisms of individual, collective and societal emancipation.

'Ground-breaking and ambitious' - Nick Srnicek, author of Platform Capitalism Whoever controls the platforms, controls the future. Platform Socialism sets out an alternative vision and concrete proposals for a digital economy that expands our freedom. Powerful tech companies now own the digital infrastructure of twenty-first century social life. Masquerading as global community builders, these companies have developed sophisticated new techniques for extracting wealth from their users. James Muldoon shows how grassroots communities and transnational social movements can take back control from Big Tech. He reframes the technology debate and proposes a host of new ideas, from the local to the international, for how we can reclaim the emancipatory possibilities of digital platforms. Drawing on sources from forgotten histories to contemporary prototypes, he proposes an alternative system and charts a roadmap for how we can get there.

Social movement studies have grown enormously in the last few decades, spreading from sociology and political science to other fields of knowledge, as varied as geography, history, anthropology, psychology, economics, law and others. With the growing interest in the field, there has been also an increasing need for methodological guidance for empirical research. This volume addresses this need by introducing the main methods of data collection and data analysis as they have been used in past research on social movements. Unlike other volumes, the book offers a practical, how-to approach and not simply a review of the methodological literature. Each author writes on a method they are very familiar with, having used it extensively in their own work. And each chapter presents specific discussions on every stage of research: from research design to data collection and the use of the information gathered. Throughout, research dilemmas and choices are presented, illustrated, and discussed. The volume offers an essential point of references for anyone undertaking research on social movements.

In this groundbreaking new study on ladinas in Guatemala City, Patricia Harms contests the virtual erasure of women from the country's national memory and its historical consciousness. Harms focuses on Spanish-speaking women during the "revolutionary decade" and the "liberalism" periods, revealing a complex, significant, and palpable feminist movement that emerged in Guatemala during the 1870s and remained until 1954. During this era ladina social activists not only struggled to imagine a place for themselves within the political and social constructs of modern Guatemala, but they also wrestled with ways in which to critique and identify Guatemala's gendered structures within the context of repressive dictatorial political regimes and entrenched patriarchy. Harms's study of these women and their struggles fills a sizeable gap in the growing body of literature on women's suffrage, social movements, and political culture in modern Latin America. It is a valuable addition to students and scholars studying the rich history of the region.

Profiles of influential Black women activists at a historic moment This volume offers a panoramic view of Black feminist politics through the stories of a remarkable cross section of Black women who attended the 1977 National Women's Conference. These women advocated for civil and women's rights but also for accessibility, lesbians, sex workers, welfare recipients, laborers, and children. The women featured in this book include icons Coretta Scott King and Michelle Cearcy, a teenager who served as a torchbearer at the conference. Contributors offer insights into the lives of Gloria Scott, Dorothy Height, Freddie Groomes-McLendon, and Jeffalyn Johnson. The profiles include activist organizers Georgia McMurray, Barbara Smith, Johnnie Tillmon, Addie Wyatt, and Florynce Kennedy. The hard-won achievements of politicians are examined and celebrated, including those of Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisholm, Maxine Waters, C. Delores Tucker, the first Black female secretary of state for Pennsylvania, and Yvonne Burke, one of the first Black women elected to Congress and the first representative to give birth while serving. The final profiles cover Clara McClaughlin, reporter Melba Tolliver, and photojournalist Diana Mara Henry, who shared the details of the conference and the continual work being done by Black women with others through various media channels. This book places the diversity of Black women's experiences and their leadership at the center of the history of the women's movement. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

'A brilliant expose' - Danny Dorling Covid-19 has exposed the limits of a neoliberal public health orthodoxy. But instead of imagining radical change, the left is stuck in a rearguard action focused on defending the NHS from the wrecking ball of privatisation. Public health expert Christopher Thomas argues that we must emerge from Covid-19 on the offensive - with a bold, new vision for our health and care. He maps out five new frontiers for public health and imagines how we can move beyond safeguarding what we have to a radical expansion of the principles put forward by Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, over 70 years ago. Beyond recalibrating our approach to healthcare services, his blueprint includes a fundamental redesign of our economy through Public Health Net Zero; a bold new universal public health service fit to address the real causes of ill health; and a major recalibration in the efforts against the epidemiological reality of an era of pandemics.

'I loved this book... An exhilarating romp through Orwell's life and times' Margaret Atwood 'Expansive and thought-provoking' Independent Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening - George Orwell Inspired by her encounter with the surviving roses that Orwell is said to have planted in his cottage in Hertfordshire, Rebecca Solnit explores how his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature and power. Following his journey from the coal mines of England to taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War; from his prescient critique of Stalin to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism, Solnit finds a more hopeful Orwell, whose love of nature pulses through his work and actions. And in her dialogue with the author, she makes fascinating forays into colonial legacies in the flower garden, discovers photographer Tina Modotti's roses, reveals Stalin's obsession with growing lemons in impossibly cold conditions, and exposes the brutal rose industry in Colombia. A fresh reading of a towering figure of the 20th century which finds solace and solutions for the political and environmental challenges we face today, Orwell's Roses is a remarkable reflection on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance. 'Luminous...It is efflorescent, a study that seeds and blooms, propagates thoughts, and tends to historical associations' New Statesman 'A genuinely extraordinary mind, whose curiosity, intelligence and willingness to learn seem unbounded' Irish Times

This powerful and original book locates the anti-police violence that spread across England in 1980-1 within a longer struggle against racism and disadvantage faced by black Britons, which had seen a growth in more militant forms of resistance since the Second World War. It explains these disturbances as 'collective bargaining by riot' - attempts to increase political inclusion by this marginalised group. Through case studies of Bristol, Brixton and Manchester, the book explores the actions of community organisations in the aftermath of disorders. Highlighting the political activities of black Britons and the often-problematic reliance upon 'official' sources when forming historical narratives, it demonstrates the contested value awarded to public inquiries - contrastingly viewed by black Britons as either a method for increased political participation or simply a governmental diversionary tactic. -- .

Behind the walls of a church, Liliana and her baby eat, sleep, and wait. Outside, protestors shout ''Go back to Mexico!'' and ''Tax this political church!'' They demand that the U.S. government deport Liliana, which would separate her from her husband and children. Is Liliana a criminal or a hero? And why does the church protect her? Grace Yukich draws on extensive field observation and interviews to reveal how immigration is changing religious activism in the U.S. In the face of nationwide immigration raids and public hostility toward ''illegal'' immigration, the New Sanctuary Movement emerged in 2007 as a religious force seeking to humanize the image of undocumented immigrants like Liliana. Building coalitions between religious and ethnic groups that had rarely worked together in the past, activists revived and adapted ''sanctuary,'' the tradition of providing shelter for fugitives in houses of worship. Through sanctuary, they called on Americans to support legislation that would keep immigrant families together. But they sought more than political change: they also pursued religious transformation, challenging the religious nationalism in America's faith communities by portraying undocumented immigrants as fellow children of God. Yukich shows progressive religious activists struggling with the competing goals of newly diverse coalitions, fighting to expand the meaning of ''family values'' in a globalizing nation. Through these struggles, the activists both challenged the public dominance of the religious right and created conflicts that could doom their chances of impacting immigration reform.

ABOLISHING STATE VIOLENCE is an urgent and accessible analysis of the key structures of state violence in our world today, and a clarion call to action for their abolition. Connecting movements for social justice with ideas for how activists can support and build on this analysis and strategy, this book shows that there are many mutually supportive abolition movements, each enhanced by a shared understanding of the relationship between structures of violence and a shared framework for challenging them on the basis of their roots in patriarchy, racism, militarism, settler colonialism, and capitalism. This book argues that abolition is transformative. It is about defunding, demilitarizing, disbanding, and divesting from current structures of violence, but also about imagining new ways to organize and care for each other and our planet, and about building new systems and cultures to sustain ourselves in a more equitable, free, and peaceful way. It shows that change is possible.

Cultural and historical accounts of the public intellectual and French feminism have been remiss in their failure to recognise an important group of major women intellectuals in France. In particular, studies of French feminism and public intellectuals have overlooked the contribution of notable figures such as Francoise Parturier, Gisele Halimi and Elisabeth Badinter amongst many others which has necessarily had a detrimental effect on discourses about the gendered phenomenon of the public intellectual in France. By studying the work of these neglected intellectuals alongside those of more recognised women thinkers such as Assia Djebar, Marguerite Duras and Annie Ernaux, this book aims to provide a much broader picture of the activities, both political and literary, of female key public in the aftermath of May 1968. By exploring the relationship between their interventions in the public sphere and their creative work it throws new light on the reasons for their omission in standard theoretical and empirical work on the French intellectual. In so doing, this book offers a cultural and theoretical re-evaluation of the gendered phenomenon of the public intellectual in France, as such it is important reading to students and scholars of French Feminism and French public intellectuals more generally.

The Internet is facilitating a generational transition within America's advocacy group system. New "netroots" political associations have arisen in the past decade and play an increasingly prominent role in citizen political mobilization. At the same time, the organizations that mediate citizen political engagement and sustained collective action are changing. They rely upon modified staff structures and work routines. They employ novel strategies and tactical repertoires. Rather than "organizing without organizations," the new media environment has given rise to "organizing through different organizations." The MoveOn Effect provides a richly detailed analysis of this disruptive transformation. It highlights changes in membership and fundraising regimes - established industrial patterns of supporter interaction and revenue streams - that were pioneered by MoveOn.org and have spread broadly within the advocacy system. Through interviews, content analysis, and direct observation of the leading netroots organizations, the book offers fresh insights into 21st century political organizing. The book highlights important variations among the new organizations - including internet-mediated issue generalists like MoveOn, community blogs like DailyKos.com, and neo-federated groups like DemocracyforAmerica.com. It also explores a wider set of netroots infrastructure organizations that provide supporting services to membership-based advocacy associations. The rise of the political netroots has had a distinctly partisan character: conservatives have repeatedly tried and failed to build equivalents to the organizations and infrastructure of the progressive netroots. The MoveOn Effect investigates these efforts, as well as the late-forming Tea Party movement, and introduces the theory of Outparty Innovation Incentives as an explanation for the partisan adoption of political technology. Written by a political scientist who is also a longtime political organizer, The MoveOn Effect offers a widely-accessible account of the Internet's impact on American politics. Operating at the intersection of practitioner and academic knowledge-traditions, Karpf provides a reassessment of many longstanding claims about new media and citizen political engagement.

Volume 37 explores the question, what can the emerging discipline of intersectionality studies contribute to our quest to understand and analyze social movements, conflict and change? This collection is part of a continued broadening and deepening of the theoretical contributions of intersectional analysis in understanding social structures and human practices. It lends analytical eye to questions of how race, class, and gender shape strategy and experience in social change processes. It also stretches to include thinking about how analysis of age, religion, or sexual identity can influence the model. The papers contribute to our growing understanding of ways to use the social power analysis unique to the intersectional lens to offer new perspectives on well-researched questions such as group identity development in conflict, coalition organizing, and movement resonance. Through the intersectional lens questions often ignored and populations traditionally marginalized become the heart of the analysis. Additionally, the volume also considers how surveillance and information sharing shape the complex relationship between democratic freedoms and hegemonic governmental systems.

Anti-racist scholar-activism raises urgent questions about the role of contemporary universities and the academics that work within them. As profound socio-racial crises collide with mass anti-racist mobilisations, this book focuses on the praxes of academics working within, and against, their institutions in pursuit of anti-racist social justice. Amidst a searing critique of the university's neoliberal and imperial character, Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly situate the university as a contested space, full of contradictions and tensions. Drawing upon original empirical data, the book considers how anti-racist scholar-activists navigate barriers and backlash in order to leverage the opportunities and resources of the university in service to communities of resistance. Showing praxes of anti-racist scholar-activism to be complex, diverse, and multi-faceted, and paying particular attention to how scholar-activists grapple with their own complicities in the harms perpetrated and perpetuated by Higher Education institutions, this book is a call to arms for academics who are, or want to be, committed to social justice. -- .

What I saw during the time I was employed at the Pass Office – I mean the ill- treatment of Africans – affected my heart and stirred my soul ... I would be of some service to my down-trodden people.

Richard Victor Selope Thema was voorsitter van die komitee wat ’n nuwe grondwet vir die South African Native National Congress opgestel het, die eerste redakteur van The Bantu World (nou The Sowetan) en lid van die Native Representative Council (NRC). Thema was in 1919 ook een van die eerste swart mans wat Engeland besoek het om voorspraak te maak vir swart Suid-Afrikaners.

Die boek, in Thema se eie woorde, beskryf sy vroeë lewe en volg sy denke en skryfwerk van radikaal na pasifis – Thema het geglo dat amper enigiets met onderhandeling en gesprek opgelos kan word en nie almal in die ANC het met hom saamgestem nie. Hy is ’n intellektuele voorvader van beide die ANC-jeugliga en die Pan-Afrikane van die 1950’s, en een van die vergete leiers van die ANC.

"The idea of feminism being everywhere and nowhere is a perfect description of the contemporary movement. Jo Reger provides badly needed new data on a movement that is still very much alive. By looking at three contemporary communities of feminists, Reger shows how feminism is practiced and shaped within different political and cultural contexts. This book is an extremely welcome addition to the literature on contemporary feminism. "-Suzanne Staggenborg, Professor of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh "Contesting multiple myths circulating in popular culture, Everywhere and Nowhere documents the nuances and diverse contexts of feminism in the contemporary era. Exploring the factors that contribute to its flourishing and the manifold forms feminism takes, Jo Reger paints a rich portrait of vibrant modes of activism that transform identities, communities, and cultural values."-Mary Hawkesworth, Professor, Department of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University Challenging the idea that feminism in the United States is dead or in decline, Everywhere and Nowhere examines the contours of contemporary feminism. Through a nuanced investigation of three feminist communities, Jo Reger shows how contemporary feminists react to the local environment currently shaping their identities, tactics, discourse, and relations with other feminist generations. By moving the analysis to the community level, Reger illustrates how feminism is simultaneously absent from the national, popular culture-"nowhere"-and diffused into the foundations of American culture-"everywhere." Reger addresses some of the most debated topics concerning feminists in the twenty-first century. How do contemporary feminists think of the second-wave generation? Has contemporary feminism succeeded in addressing racism and classism, and created a more inclusive movement? How are contemporary feminists dealing with their legacy of gender, sex, and sexuality in a world of fluid identity and queer politics? The answers, she finds, vary by community. Everywhere and Nowhere offers a clear, empirical analysis of the state of contemporary feminism while also revealing the fascinating and increasingly complex development of community-level feminist groups in the United States.

Queer Precarities in and out of Higher Education looks at queer scholars pushing against institutional structures, and the queer knowledge that gets pushed out by universities. It provides insight into the work of, in and beyond academia as it is un-done in the contemporary (post)Covid moment, not least by queer academic-activists. This radical un-doing represents cycles of queer precarity, pragmatism and participation both situating and questioning the 'queer arrival' of institutionalized programmes and presences (e.g. queer and gender studies degrees, prominent and public feminist academics). In this book, the contributors push back against contemporary educational precarity, mobilizing queer insight and insistence; and push back against confinement of the University, socially and spatially. The collection brings together academic-activist perspectives to extend understandings of experiences of marginalization and inequality in higher education. It also documents the diversity of tactics with which queers negotiate and resist the various, shifting and interconnected forms of precarity and privilege found on the edges of academia. Contributors consider these issues from inside/outside academia and across career course, challenging the 'queer arrival' as emanating outward from the university to the community, from the academic to the activist, or from a state of privilege to a place of precarity.