Before his murder at twenty-five, Tupac Shakur rose to staggering artistic heights as the pre-eminent storyteller of the 90s, building, in the process, one of the most iconic public personas of the last half century. He recorded several platinum-selling albums, starred in major films and became an activist and political hero known the world over.

In this cultural history and brilliantly researched biography, Van Nguyen reckons with Tupac's coming of age, fame and influence and how the political machinations that shaped him as a boy have since buoyed his legacy as a revolutionary following the George Floyd uprising. Words for My Comrades crucially engages with the influence of Tupac's mother, Afeni, whose role in the Black Panther Party, with its dedication to dismantling American imperialism and police brutality, informed Tupac's art. Tupac's childhood as a son of the Panthers, coupled with the influence of his militant step-father Mutulu Shakur, became his own riveting code of ethics that helped listeners reckon with America's inherent injustices.

Drawing upon conversations with the people who bore witness - from Panther veterans and other committed Marxist revolutionaries of 1970s America, to good friends and close collaborators of the rapper himself - Van Nguyen demonstrates how Tupac became one of the most enduring musical legends in hip-hop history and how intimately his name is threaded with the legacy of Black Panther politics.

Words for My Comrades is the story of how the energy of the Black political movement was subsumed by culture and how America produced, in Tupac and Afeni, two of its most iconic, enduring revolutionaries.

This book provides the first historical and comparative study of the 'transnational activist'. A range of important recent scholarship has considered the rise of global social movements, the presence of transnational networks, and the transfer or diffusion of political techniques. Much of this writing has registered the pivotal role of 'transnational' or 'global' activists. However, if the significance of the 'transnational activist' is now routinely acknowledged, then the history of this actor is still something of a mystery. Most commentators have associated the figure with contemporary history. Hence much of the debate around 'transnational activism' is ahistorical, and claims for novelty are not often based on developed historical comparison. As this volume argues, it is possible to identify the 'transnational activist' in earlier decades and even centuries. But when did this figure first appear? What are the historical conditions that nurtured its emergence? What are the principal moments in the development of the transnational activist? And do the transnational activists of the Internet age differ in number or nature from those of earlier years? These historical questions will be at the heart of this volume.

In a time of great gloom and doom internationally and of major global problems, this book offers an invaluable contribution to our understanding of alternative societies that could be better for humans and the environment. Bringing together a wide range of approaches and new strands of economic and social thinking from across the US, Mexico, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa, Luke Martell critically assesses contemporary alternatives and shows the ways forward with a convincing argument of pluralist socialism. Presenting a much-needed introduction to the debate on alternatives to capitalism, this ambitious book is not about how things are, but how they can be!

Militarism is the elephant in the room of global warming. Of all government sectors, 'Defence' has the highest carbon footprint and expenditure, yet has largely been exempt from international scrutiny and regulation. Marty Branagan uses Australian and international case studies to show that nonviolence is a viable alternative to militarism for national defence and regime change. 'Active resistance', initiated in Australian environmental blockades and now adopted globally, makes the song 'We Shall Not Be Moved' much more realistic, as activists erect tripod villages, bury, chain and cement themselves into the ground, and 'lock-on' to machinery and gates. Active resistance, 'artistic activism', and use of new information and communication technologies in movements such as the Arab Spring and 'Occupy' demonstrate that nonviolence is an effective, evolving praxis.

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 was startling, as was the victory of Donald Trump eight years later. Because both presidents were unusual and gained office backed by Congresses controlled by their own parties, their elections kick-started massive counter-movements. The Tea Party starting in 2009 and the "resistance" after November 2016 transformed America's political landscape. Upending American Politics offers a fresh perspective on recent upheavals, tracking the emergence and spread of local voluntary citizens' groups, the ongoing activities of elite advocacy organizations and consortia of wealthy donors, and the impact of popular and elite efforts on the two major political parties and candidate-led political campaigns. Going well beyond national surveys, Theda Skocpol, Caroline Tervo, and their contributors use organizational documents, interviews, and local visits to probe changing organizational configurations at the national level and in swing states. This volume analyzes conservative politics in the first section and progressive responses in the second to provide a clear overview of US politics as a whole. By highlighting evidence from the state level, it also reveals the important interplay of local and national trends.

First published in 2004. Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914. He was one of the first black leaders to encourage black people to discover their cultural traditions and history, and to seek common cause in the struggle for true liberty and political recognition. This book discusses his philosophy and opinions.This series comprises reprints as well as original works covering various aspects of African life- history, institutions, culture, political and social thought, and eminent African personalities. The reprints for the most part are landmarks in African writing and each contains a new introduction placing the author's life, ideas and activities in perspective. The documents are selected and edited by scholars working in the particular field. It is hoped that these documents will not only provide scholars with source materials but also stimulate further research on the topics with which they deal.

On December 2-3, 1984, India witnessed arguably the world's worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, which continues to this day as an economic, medical, environmental, and political disaster. "Surviving Bhopal" draws on oral testimonials of the affected community and analyzes the cause and aftermath of the disaster from the perspective of those who suffered the severe consequences of systemic failure and travesty of justice. The event resulted in a resistance movement, led by women, against corporate and state power. Mukherjee explores the underlying gender politics, showing how activism challenged and redefined the contemporary model of development.

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.

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Read the author's Op Ed on "Boston Globe"

"Itas an achievement of Blood and Belief that despite the bloodletting, Marcus still generates empathyanot for the murderous Ocalan, but for the desperate Kurds who joined the PKK revolution feeling they had nowhere else to turn."
--"The Washington Post Book World"

"Blood and Belief gives meaning and context to the grinding guerrilla war that claimed tens of thousands of livesa]"
--"Boston Globe"

a"Blood and Belief" offers unusual insight into the rebels' shadowy universe and, by extension, into Turkey's festering Kurdish problem. . . . [A] scholarly, gripping account.a
--"The Economist"

aMarcus has unequalled knowledge of the PKK and her book will be essential reading for all who are interested in the topic. Blood and Belief comes out at an important moment when fate of the Kurds is becoming more and more important to the future of the Middle East.a
--Patrick Cockburn, author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq"

aAliza Marcus has written the kind of book that only a journalist who has covered conflict on the ground could write. She has brought her superb eye for detail and her deep knowledge of history of the region to the task of understanding the violent and painful journey of the Kurds. Blood and Belief is necessary reading for anyone who seeks to understand all of the moving parts of the Middle East today.a
--Charles M. Sennott, author of "The Body and the Blood: The Middle East's Vanishing Christians and the Possibility for Peace"

aMarcus carefully chronicles the scarcely believable saga of long repressed, but resurgent Kurdish identity inTurkey and the ongoing quarter century revolt of the PKK inspired by Abdullah Ocalan, one of the Third World's more paranoid contemporary nationalist fountainheads. This is the astounding tale of a ruthless hard scrabble beneficiary of the Turkish Republicas liberal education system who mounted the twentieth centuryas longest challenge to Ankaraas authority and sent tens of thousands of Kurds -- and Turks -- to their deaths from the safety of a foreign sanctuary. Marcus dissects fatal Kurdish and Turkish stubbornness which helped perpetuate this sputtering revolt despite Ocalanas manifest errors, his craven repudiation of the PKK objectives once in Turkish captivity and mass desertions by true believers disillusioned by his transparent efforts to save his neck.a
--Jonathan Randal, author of "Osama: The Making of a Terrorist"

"This is a very good, original work that will add greatly to our understanding of the Kurdish national movement and Kurdish politics. It is an important contribution to an understanding of contemporary Kurdish history and of the Kurdish question in general. I know of no book like it."
--Keith Hitchins, editor, "The Journal of Kurdish Studies"

The Kurds, who number some 28 million people in the Middle East, have no country they can call their own. Long ignored by the West, Kurds are now highly visible actors on the world's political stage. More than half live in Turkey, where the Kurdish struggle has gained new strength and attention since the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq.

Essential to understanding modern-day Kurds--and their continuing demands for an independent state--is understanding the PKK, the Kurdistan Workersa Party. Aguerilla force that was founded in 1978 by a small group of ex-Turkish university students, the PKK radicalized the Kurdish national movement in Turkey, becoming a tightly organized, well-armed fighting force of some 15,000, with a 50,000-member civilian militia in Turkey and tens of thousands of active backers in Europe. Under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan, the war the PKK waged in Turkey through 1999 left nearly 40,000 people dead and drew in the neighboring states of Iran, Iraq, and Syria, all of whom sought to use the PKK for their own purposes. Since 2004, emboldened by the Iraqi Kurds, who now have established an autonomous Kurdish state in the northernmost reaches of Iraq, the PKK has again turned to violence to meet its objectives.

Blood and Belief combines reportage and scholarship to give the first in-depth account of the PKK. Aliza Marcus, one of the first Western reporters to meet with PKK rebels, wrote about their war for many years for a variety of prominent publications before being put on trial in Turkey for her reporting. Based on her interviews with PKK rebels and their supporters and opponents throughout the world--including the Palestinians who trained them, the intelligence services that tracked them, and the dissidents who tried to break them up--Marcus provides an in-depth account of this influential radical group.

In 2011, spontaneous popular uprisings overthrew Muammar Qadhafi - one of the world's most infamous tyrants. Paradoxically, it was Qadhafi's own efforts to "reform" Libya's economy and rebuild the country's international relationships since 2003 that set the stage for Qadhafi's downfall. Despite the enabling effects of twenty-first century communications technology and the aid of NATO jets, the 2011 Libyan uprisings were organized largely along traditional regional, local, and tribal cleavages. The future of post-Qadhafi Libya will be determined by a struggle between "center" and "periphery." This contest has deep resonances in Libyan history. A work of contemporary political history, this volume analyzes the 2011 Libyan uprisings thematically - focusing on the roles of economics, outside actors, tribes, ethnic minorities, and Islamists. This volume's contributors include the British Ambassador to Libya during the uprisings, the President of the American University of Cairo, a former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and the world's leading academic and security specialists in Libyan affairs.

Considered by many to be the greatest Irish song poet of her generation, Maire Bhui Ni Laeire (Yellow Mary O'Leary; 1774-1848) was an illiterate woman unconnected to elite literary and philosophical circles who powerfully engaged the politics of her own society through song. As an oral arts practitioner, Maire Bhui composed songs whose ecstatic, radical vision stirred her community to revolt and helped to shape nineteenth-century Irish anti-colonial thought. This provocative and richly theorized study explores the re-creative, liminal aspect of song, treating it as a performative social process that cuts to the very root of identity and thought formation, thus re-imagining the history of ideas in society.

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.

Social movements have been implicated in long-term societal transformations, helping bring about political democratization, economic freedom, and social equality. In recent years, movements such as Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and Black Lives Matter have organized protests, and other contentious activities, against varied injustices in the world today. But what are social movements, how do they work, and what are their impacts upon society? In this landmark contribution, social movement activities and outcomes are understood through the lens of liberal political economy. This approach emphasizes dynamic collective choices within multi-faceted economic, political, and social environments, with the capacity for such choices to promote freedom, equality, and dignity. Inspired by the works of Friedrich Hayek, Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, and James Buchanan, Freedom in Contention illustrates how social movements fluidly organize in often repressive environments, bringing people together in their efforts to audaciously challenge public power and other forms of authority. Using historical and contemporary case studies, this book reveals how advances in human liberty are shaped by the struggles of social movement activists to have their concerns heard and respected. This important book will appeal to social scientists, decision-makers, and people interested in how social movements affect our lives.

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.

It is the final years of Nationalist rule, and four ANC cadres steal across the border into South Africa. They left as students after the Soweto riots of June 1976; now they return as soldiers, a specialist unit reporting to Chris Hani. Their mission: to carry out acts of war in the country of their birth.

On the other side, a police hit squad operates in deepest secrecy, relentless, and a dark conspiracy unfolds. When the four are eventually captured, they face the ultimate penalty.

Narrated by their lawyer as the trial progresses, this compelling true story is an insider's account of one of the most dramatic political court cases of the previous era. A tale of men driven to extremes for an ideal. Of people with unwavering commitment to their cause; and of a mother who never loses hope.

'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.

Popular virtue is the first in-depth study of the changing nature of moral politics within working-class Radicalism between 1820 and 1870. Through study of the lives, activism and intellectual influences of a number of key leaders of working-class Radicalism, this book highlights how Radicalism's attitudes to morality and everyday life shifted from a festive and libertarian culture that advocated sexual liberty and gender equality in the 1820s-30s to a more austere and ascetic politics that emphasized moral improvement, temperance and frugality after the 1840s. Despite the fracturing of this culture with the decline of Chartism in the 1850s, Popular virtue highlights how the moral politics of the 1840s possessed important legacies in not only the politics of Popular Liberalism and the Reform League but also in heterodox medicine and self-help. -- .

What can culture, and its manifestations in artistic and creative forms, 'do'? Creativity and resistance in a hostile world draws on original collaborative research that brings together a range of stories and perspectives on the role of creativity and resistance in a hostile world. In times of racial nationalism across the world, this volume seeks to understand how creative acts have agitated for social change. The book suggests that creative actions themselves, and acting together creatively, can at the same time offer vital sources of hope. Drawing on a series of case studies, this volume focuses on the past and emergent grassroots arts work that has responded to racisms, the legacies of colonialism or the depredations of capitalist employment across several contexts and locations, including England, Northern Ireland and India. The book makes a timely intervention, foregrounding the value of creativity for those who are commonly marginalised from centres of power, including from the mainstream cultural industries. The authors also critically reflect on the possibilities and limitations of collaborative research within and beyond the academy. -- .