In the international press, East Africa is depicted as a region mired in civil war, child abduction, rebel militias, Muslim-Christian violence, and grinding poverty. Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) of northern Uganda has become a symbol for the troubles of contemporary Africa. Seen from within, however, an altogether different reality is visible-one in which local communities and their leaders work together to resolve conflict and rebuild their communities. Little known beyond northern Uganda, The Acholi Religious Leaders' Peace Initiative (ARLPI) is an inspiring example of one such community organization. The story of ARLPI, examined in this book by philosopher David Hoekema, demonstrates just how much can be accomplished by a small group of dedicated community leaders in a situation where a decade of military force and international pressure have had little discernible effect. Drawing on published sources and interviews with organization leaders and LRA survivors, Hoekema illuminates how both the depredations of the LRA and the healing work of ARLPI are rooted in modern East African history. He documents the courageous work of the Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim leaders who constitute the ARLPI to overcome centuries of mistrust and help bring an end to one of the most horrific conflicts in recent history. Their work, he argues, puts philosophical and theological ideas into practice and in so doing sheds new light on how religion relates to politics, how brutal conflicts can be resolved, and how a community can reclaim its future through locally-initiated initiatives against overwhelming obstacles.

**The New York Times and Sunday Times Bestseller** 'An ordinary person's guide to hope. Read this book' Arundhati Roy 'As accessible as it is brilliant' Owen Jones 'A genuine page turner' Michelle Alexander Naomi Klein - award-winning journalist, bestselling author of No Logo, The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything, scourge of brand bullies and corporate liars - gives us the toolkit we need to survive our surreal, shocking age. 'This is a look at how we arrived at this surreal political moment, how to keep it from getting a lot worse, and how, if we keep our heads, we can flip the script.' Remember when love was supposed to Trump hate? Remember when the oil companies and bankers seemed to be running scared? What the hell happened? And what can we do about it? Naomi Klein shows us how we got here, and how we can make things better. No Is Not Enough reveals, among other things, that the disorientation we're feeling is deliberate. That around the world, shock political tactics are being used to generate crisis after crisis, designed to force through policies that will destroy people, the environment, the economy and our security. That extremism isn't a freak event - it's a toxic cocktail of our times. From how to trash the Trump megabrand to the art of reclaiming the populist argument, Naomi Klein shows all of us how we can break the spell and win the world we need. Don't let them get away with it. 'Who better than Naomi to make sense of this madness, and help us find a way out? A top-of-the-stack must read' Michael Stipe 'Naomi Klein's new book incites us brilliantly to interweave our No with a programmatic Yes. A manual for emancipation' Yanis Varoufakis 'Magnificent ... a courageous coruscating counterspell' Junot Diaz

Can a writer help to bring about a more just society? This question was at the heart of the movement of al-adab al-multazim, or committed literature, which claimed to dominate Arab writing in the mid-twentieth century. By the 1960s, however, leading Egyptian writers had retreated into disillusionment, producing agonized works that challenged the key assumptions of socially engaged writing. Rather than a rejection of the idea, however, these works offered reinterpretation of committed writing that helped set the stage for activist writers of the present.David DiMeo focuses on the work of three leading writers whose socially committed fiction was adapted to the disenchantment and discontent of the late twentieth century: Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, and Sonallah Ibrahim. Despite their disappointments with the direction of Egyptian society in the decades following the 1952 revolution, they kept the spirit of committed literature alive through a deeply introspective examination of the relationship between the writer, the public, and political power.Reaching back to the roots of this literary movement, DiMeo examines the development of committed literature from its European antecedents to its peak of influence in the 1950s, and contrasts the committed works with those of disillusionment that followed. Committed to Disillusion is vital reading for scholars and students of Arabic literature and the modern history and politics of the Middle East.

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. -- .

Robert Sobukwe, the founder and first leader of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), was silenced throughout his life, a condition which has been extended into the post-apartheid present. This book, comprising approximately 300 letters, provides access to his words via the single most poignant resource of Sobukwe's own voice that exists: his prison letters. Not only do the letters evince Sobukwe's storytelling abilities, they convey the complexity of a man who defied easy categorisation. More than this: they are testimony both to the desolate conditions of his imprisonment and to Sobukwe's unbending commitment to the cause of African liberation. Although jailed for nine years, including a six-year period of near complete solitary confinement on Robben Island, Sobukwe was better known during rather than after apartheid. Given his antagonistic views to both white liberalism and the African National Congress (ANC) it is unsurprising that he has been subjected to a 'consensus of forgetting'. With the changing political climate of recent years, the decline of the ANC's hegemonic hold on power, the re-emergence of Black Consciousness and Africanist political discourse and the growth of student protests, Sobukwe is being looked to as a leader once again.

More than half a decade after Arabs across the Middle East across the Middle East poured into the streets to demand change, hopes for democracy have disappeared in a maelstrom of violence and renewed state repression. In False Dawn, noted Middle East expert Steven A. Cook looks at the trajectory of events across the region from the initial uprising in Tunisia to the failed coup attempt in Turkey to explain why the Arab Spring uprisings did not succeed. Despite appearances, there were no true revolutions in the Middle East seven years ago: none of the affected societies underwent social revolutions, and the old structures of power were never eliminated. Even supposed successes like Tunisia still face significant barriers to democracy because of the continued strength of old regime players. Libya, the state that came closest to revolution, has fragmented into chaos, and Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has undertaken a widespread crackdown on his opponents, reinforcing the Turkish leader's personal power. After taking stock of how and why the uprisings failed to produce lasting change, Cook considers the role of the United States in the region. What Washington cannot do, Cook argues, is shape the politics of the Middle East going forward. While many in the policymaking community believe that the United States must "get the Middle East right," American influence is actually quite limited; the future of the region lies in the hands of the people who live there. Authoritative and powerfully argued, False Dawn is a major work on one of the most important historical events of the past quarter century.

'Fierce, fresh and feminist, Fern Riddell tells the story of Suffragette Kitty Marion in a way that fizzes and shocks. Exciting, twisty and very very timely.' Lucy Worsley In Death in Ten Minutes Fern Riddell uncovers the story of radical suffragette Kitty Marion, told through never before seen personal diaries in Kitty's own hand. Kitty Marion was sent across the country by the Pankhurst family to carry out a nationwide campaign of bombings and arson attacks, as women fought for the vote using any means necessary. But in the aftermath of World War One, the dangerous and revolutionary actions of Kitty and other militant suffragettes were quickly hushed up and disowned by the previously proud movement, and the women who carried out these attacks were erased from our history. Now, for the first time, their untold story will be brought back to life. Telling a new history of the women's movement in the light of new and often shocking revelations, this book will ask the question: Why has the life of this incredible woman, and the violence of the suffragettes been forgotten? And, one hundred years later, why are women suddenly finding themselves under threat again?

In the face of vicious oppression and years of authoritarian and neoliberal ideology, how did the Arab Left assert itself during the Arab Uprisings? In this bold new account, Caroline Rooney outlines the importance of aesthetic strategies and creative expression in the left's critique of authoritarian and Islamic extremist discourse during the revolutions. Using a wide array of texts and sources, both Arab and non-Arab, the book engages affect theory to show how a poetics of disappointment, despair and distrust, to dignity, solidarity and reconfigured senses of the sacred, offered a way for the left to reclaim ethical and progressive 'radical' values co-opted by political leaders and extremists in the Middle East. In so doing, the book offers an original conceptual framework for differentiating 'radicalization' from the creative radicalism of the Arab avant-garde.

Anthonyas fascinating biography of this aworld citizen in the Black Atlantica sheds a good deal of light on the origins of Yerganas radical engagement in the 1930s and 1940s.a
--"Radical History Review"

aAs the title of this provocative work suggests, Max Yergan certainly is one of the more intriguing figures of the previous century. . . . This biography includes a particularly strong bibliography and a detailed index.a
--Gerald Horne in the "Journal of American History"

"Beautifully written and accessible . . . "Max Yergan" is a remarkable book which reflects prodigious and imaginative research. It is more than a biography; it is a walk through a variety of political and institutional movements that have substantially shaped the history of the black world, from the United States to South Africa."
--Robin D.G. Kelley, author of "Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination"

aAnthony has done an admirable job making sense of the sometimes contradictory sources related to Yerganas life, and the scope of his research is truly remarkable.a
--Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies

"The multiple lives of the man David Anthony explores in these pages are fascinating, tragic, and remarkably little-known. The left-to-right journeys of many white American intellectuals are familiar, but the trajectory of this talented black man seems more dramatic than any of them: from mentor of a key African National Congress leader to enthusiastic backer of apartheid, from friend of Paul Robeson and target of FBI surveillance to someone eulogized in the "National Review," Max Yergan's odyssey through the twentieth century is a prism through which to view anera's dreams and conflicts on four continents."
--Adam Hochschild, author of "King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa"

"David Anthony's biography of Max Yergan and the story of Otto Huiswoud and his comrades by Joyce Moore Turner have provided us with deeper understanding of that complex and often contradictory history that has been the African-American relationship with the communist movement."
--Allen Ruff, "Against the Current"

In his long and fascinating life, black activist and intellectual Max Yergan (1892-1975) traveled on more ground--both literally and figuratively--than any of his impressive contemporaries, which included Adam Clayton Powell, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and A. Phillip Randolph. Yergan rose through the ranks of the "colored" work department of the YMCA, and was among the first black YMCA missionaries in South Africa. His exposure to the brutality of colonial white rule in South Africa caused him to veer away from mainstream, liberal civil rights organizations, and, by the mid-1930s, into the orbit of the Communist Party. A mere decade later, Cold War hysteria and intimidation pushed Yergan away from progressive politics and increasingly toward conservatism. In his later years he even became an apologist for apartheid.

Drawing on personal interviews and extensive archival research, David H. Anthony has written much more than a biography of this enigmatic leader. In following the winding road of Yergan's life, Anthony offers a tour through the complex and interrelated political and institutional movements that have shaped the history of the black world from the United States to South Africa.

The forces of freedom are challenged everywhere by a newly energized spirit of tyranny, whether it is Jihadist terrorism, Putin's imperialism, or the ambitions of China's dictatorship, writes Waller R. Newell in this engaging expose of a thousand dangers. We will see why tyranny is a permanent threat by following its strange career from Homeric Bronze Age warriors, through the empires of Alexander the Great and Rome, to the medieval struggle between the City of God and the City of Man, leading to the state-building despots of the Modern Age including the Tudors and 'enlightened despots' such as Peter the Great. The book explores the psychology of tyranny from Nero to Gaddafi, and how it changes with the Jacobin Terror into millenarian revolution. Stimulating and enlightening, Tyrants: Power, Injustice, and Terror will appeal to anyone interested in the danger posed by tyranny and terror in today's world.

"Finally we have a book that seriously examines the religious views of one of the most important figures in modern American history as well as the black freedom struggle." -- Clarence Taylor, author ofBlack Religious Intellectuals: The Fight for Equality from Jim Crow to the Twenty-first Century A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was one of the most effective black trade unionists in America. Once known as "the most dangerous black man in America," he was a radical journalist, a labor leader, and a pioneer of civil rights strategies. His proteg? Bayard Rustin noted that, "With the exception of W.E.B. Du Bois, he was probably the greatest civil rights leader of the twentieth century until Martin Luther King." Scholarship has traditionally portrayed Randolph as an atheist and anti-religious, his connections to African American religion either ignored or misrepresented. Taylor places Randolph within the context of American religious history and uncovers his complex relationship to African American religion. She demonstrates that Randolph's religiosity covered a wide spectrum of liberal Protestant beliefs, from a religious humanism on the left, to orthodox theological positions on the right, never straying far from his African Methodist roots.

This powerful collection from an international mix of respected academics, newer voices and political activists explores the place of Israel as a Jewish state in today's modern world-a world in which identifies, citizenship and human rights are defined increasingly cosmopolitan and inclusive ways. Offering compelling and comprehensive arguments as to why Israel falls into the category of an ethnocentric state, the contributions to this volume explore four central themes. They reveal the reality behind Israel's founding myths. They document the experiences of some of those who have fallen victim to this ethnic state. They reveal the reality behind Israel's founding myths. Then, they draw comparisons with other ethnic states, notably South Africa, and finally, they point towards the radical hope of achieving a single nation, united, peaceful and just. Unpacking both Jewish and Palestinian nationalism, the nation-state, and ethnic nationalism, this fascinating collection offers new insights into one of the world's most intractable conflicts. It will appeal not only to scholars and teachers, but to anyone interested in the history, politics, anthropology and legal standing of Palestine-Israel.

The Maldives is a small and beautiful archipelago south of India, more renowned for luxury resorts than experiments in democracy. It is a country of contradictions, where tourists sip cocktails on the beach while on nearby islands local women are flogged for extramarital sex and blackmarket vodka costs $140 a bottle. Until 2008 the Maldives also hosted Asia's longest-serving dictator, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. A former political prisoner, Mohamed Nasheed, an environmental activist, journalist, and politician, brought Gayoom's thirty-year autocracy to a sudden end, in the Maldives' first democratic elections. Young, progressive and charismatic, President Nasheed thrust the Maldives into the spotlight as a symbol of the fight against climate change and the struggle for democracy and human rights in one of the world's strictest Islamic societies. But dictatorships are hard to defeat, enduring in a country's institutions and the minds of people conditioned to autocracy over three decades. Democracy brought turmoil, protests, violence and intense political polarisation.The ousted dictatorship overthrew Nasheed's government in February 2012, supported by Islamic radicals and mutinying security forces. Amid Byzantine intrigue, the fight for democracy was just beginning.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The funny, sad, super-honest, all-true story of Chelsea Handler’s year of self-discovery—featuring a nerdily brilliant psychiatrist, a shaman, four Chow Chows, some well-placed security cameras, various family members (living and departed), friends, assistants, and a lot of edibles

A SKIMM READS PICK

“This will be one of your favorite books of all time.”—Amy Schumer

In a haze of vape smoke on a rare windy night in L.A. in the fall of 2016, Chelsea Handler daydreams about what life will be like with a woman in the White House. And then Donald Trump happens. In a torpor of despair, she decides that she’s had enough of the privileged bubble she’s lived in—a bubble within a bubble—and that it’s time to make some changes, both in her personal life and in the world at large.

At home, she embarks on a year of self-sufficiency—learning how to work the remote, how to pick up dog shit, where to find the toaster. She meets her match in an earnest, brainy psychiatrist and enters into therapy, prepared to do the heavy lifting required to look within and make sense of a childhood marked by love and loss and to figure out why people are afraid of her. She becomes politically active—finding her voice as an advocate for change, having difficult conversations, and energizing her base. In the process, she develops a healthy fixation on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and, through unflinching self-reflection and psychological excavation, unearths some glittering truths that light up the road ahead.

Thrillingly honest, insightful, and deeply, darkly funny, Chelsea Handler’s memoir keeps readers laughing, even as it inspires us to look within and ask ourselves what really matters in our own lives.

Beginning with responses to fascism in the 1930s and ending with protests against the Iraq wars, David McCarthy shows how American artists - including Philip Evergood, David Smith, H. C. Westermann, Ed Kienholz, Nancy Spero, Leon Golub, Chris Burden, Robert Arneson, Joyce Kozloff, Martha Rosler, and Coco Fusco-have borne witness, registered dissent, and asserted the enduring ability of imagination to uncover truths about individuals and nations. During what has been called the American Century, the United States engaged in frequent combat overseas while developing technologies of unprecedented lethality. Many artists, working collectively or individually, produced antiwar art to protest the use or threat of military violence in the service of an expansionist state. In so doing, they understood themselves to be fighting on behalf of two liberal beliefs: that their country was the guarantor of liberty against empire, and that modern art was a viable means of addressing the most compelling events and issues of the moment. For many artists, creative work was a way to participate in democratic exchange by challenging and clarifying government and media perspectives on armed conflict. Charting a seventy-five-year history of antiwar art and activism, American Artists against War, 1935-2010 lucidly tracks the continuities, preoccupations, and strategies of several generations.

Risk and Hyperconnectivity brings together for the first time three paradigms: new risk theory, neoliberalization theory, and connectivity theory, to illuminate how the kaleidoscope of risk events in the opening years of the new century has recharged a neoliberal battlespace of media, economy, and security. Hoskins and Tulloch argue that hyperconnectivity is both a conduit of risk and a form of risk in itself, and that it alters the ways in which we experience events and remember them. Through interdisciplinary dialogue and case study analysis they offer original perspectives on the key questions of risk of our age, including: What is the path to a 'balance' between individual privacy and state (or corporate) security? Is hyperconnectivity itself a new risk condition of our time? How do remembering and forgetting shape citizen insecurity and cultures of risk, and legitimize neoliberal governance? How do journalists operate as 'public intellectuals' of risk? Through probing a series of risk events that have already scarred the twenty-first century, Hoskins and Tulloch show how both established and emergent media are central in shaping past, present and future horizons of neoliberalism, while also propelling wide pressure for its alternatives on those ranging from economics students worldwide to potential political leaders cultivated by austerity policies.

No state has voted Republican more consistently or widely or for longer than Kansas. To understand red state politics, Kansas is the place. It is also the place to understand red state religion. The Kansas Board of Education has repeatedly challenged the teaching of evolution, Kansas voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage, the state is a hotbed of antiabortion protest--and churches have been involved in all of these efforts. Yet in 1867 suffragist Lucy Stone could plausibly proclaim that, in the cause of universal suffrage, "Kansas leads the world " How did Kansas go from being a progressive state to one of the most conservative?

In "Red State Religion," Robert Wuthnow tells the story of religiously motivated political activism in Kansas from territorial days to the present. He examines how faith mixed with politics as both ordinary Kansans and leaders such as John Brown, Carrie Nation, William Allen White, and Dwight Eisenhower struggled over the pivotal issues of their times, from slavery and Prohibition to populism and anti-communism. Beyond providing surprising new explanations of why Kansas became a conservative stronghold, the book sheds new light on the role of religion in red states across the Midwest and the United States. Contrary to recent influential accounts, Wuthnow argues that Kansas conservatism is largely pragmatic, not ideological, and that religion in the state has less to do with politics and contentious moral activism than with relationships between neighbors, friends, and fellow churchgoers.

This is an important book for anyone who wants to understand the role of religion in American political conservatism.

Early in the 1980s AIDS epidemic, six gay activists created one of the most iconic and lasting images that would come to symbolize a movement: a protest poster of a pink triangle with the words "Silence=Death." The graphic and the slogan still resonate widely today, the latter an anthem for AIDS activism, and are often used-and misused-to brand the entire movement, appearing in a variety of ubiquitous manifestations. Cofounder of the collective Silence=Death and member of the art collective Gran Fury, Avram Finkelstein tells the story of how his work and other protest artworks associated with the early years of the pandemic were created. In his writing about art and AIDS activism, the formation of collectives, and the political process, Finkelstein exposes us to a different side of the traditional HIV/AIDS history told twenty-five years later and offers a creative toolbox for those who want to learn how art and activism save lives.

Undoing the Revolution looks at the way rural underclasses ally with out-of-power elites to overthrow their governments-only to be shut out of power when the new regime assumes control. Vasabjit Banerjee first examines why peasants need to ally with dissenting elites in order to rebel. He then shows how conflict resolution and subsequent bargains to form new state institutions re-empower allied elites and re-marginalize peasants. Banerjee evaluates three different agrarian societies during distinct time periods spanning the twentieth century: revolutionary Mexico from 1910 to 1930; late-colonial India from 1920 until 1947; and White-dominated Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) from the mid-1960s to 1980. This comparative approach also allows examination of both the underclass need for elite participation and the variety of causes that elites use to incentivize peasant classes to participate, extending from religious-ethnic identity and common political targets to the peasants' and elites' own economic grievances. Undoing the Revolution demonstrates that both international and domestic investors in cash crops, natural resources, and finance can ally with peasant rebels; and, after threatened or actual state collapse, they can bargain with each other to select new state institutions.

The participatory politics and civic engagement of youth in the digital age. Read Online at connectedyouth.nyupress.org There is a widespread perception that the foundations of American democracy are dysfunctional, public trust in core institutions is eroding, and little is likely to emerge from traditional politics that will shift those conditions. Youth are often seen as emblematic of this crisis-frequently represented as uninterested in political life, ill-informed about current-affairs, and unwilling to register and vote. By Any Media Necessary offers a profoundly different picture of contemporary American youth. Young men and women are tapping into the potential of new forms of communication such as social media platforms, spreadable videos and memes, remixing the language of popular culture, and seeking to bring about political change-by any media necessary. In a series of case studies covering a diverse range of organizations, networks, and movements involving young people in the political process-from the Harry Potter Alliance which fights for human rights in the name of the popular fantasy franchise to immigration rights advocates using superheroes to dramatize their struggles-By Any Media Necessary examines the civic imagination at work. Before the world can change, people need the ability to imagine what alternatives might look like and identify paths by which change can be achieved. Exploring new forms of political activities and identities emerging from the practice of participatory culture, By Any Media Necessary reveals how these shifts in communication have unleashed a new political dynamism in American youth.

In the midst of current debates about the accessibility of public spaces, resurfacing as a result of highly visible demonstrations and occupations, this book illuminates an overlooked domain of civic participation: the office, workshop, or building where activist groups meet to organize and plan acts of political dissent and collective participation. Author Nandini Bagchee examines three re-purposed buildings on the Lower East Side that have been used by activists to launch actions over the past forty years. The Peace Pentagon was the headquarters of the anti-war movement, El Bohio was a metaphoric "hut" that envisioned the Puerto Rican Community as a steward of the environment, and ABC No Rio, appropriated from a storefront sign with missing letters, was a catchy punk name that appealed to the anarchistic sensibility of the artists that ran a storefront gallery in a run-down tenement. In a captivating discussion of buildings and urban settings as important components of progressive struggles in New York City over more than a century, Bagchee reveals how these collectively organized spaces have provided a venue for political participation while existing as a vital part of the city's civic infrastructure. The "counter institution" explored in this book represents both a conceptual and a literal struggle to create a space for civic action in a city that is built upon real estate speculation. The author reveals the fascinating tension between the impermanence of the insurgent activist practices and the permanent but maintenance heavy aspects of architecture. The actors she vividly describes-the war resisters, the Puerto Rican organizers, the housing activists, the punks and artists-all seized the opportunity to create what are seen as "activist estates," at a time and in a place where urban life itself was under attack. And now, when many such self-organized "activist" buildings are imperiled by the finance-driven real estate market that is New York City, this book takes stock and provides visibility to these under recognized citizens' initiatives. Counter Institution is an innovative work that intersects architecture, urban design practices, and geography (cartography) on the one hand, with history, politics, and sociology on the other. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of activism in New York City and how the city can inspire and encourage political engagement. Through its beautifully illustrated pages-where drawings, maps, timelines, and photographs underline the connections between people, politics, and space-readers will discover new ways to imagine buildings as a critical part of the civic infrastructure and a vital resource for the future.