Glorious Causes explores the British nation as a stage for reform in the late Georgian era. Liberation movements for social and political change, for slaves, for factory and rural workers, for women, and for the vote, drew their energies crucially from theatre as well as political agitation, together creating the drama of reform.

To what extent is queer anti-identitarian? And how is it experienced by activists at the European level? At queer festivals, activists, artists and participants come together to build new forms of sociability and practice their ideals through anti-binary and inclusive idioms of gender and sexuality. These ideals are moreover channelled through a series of organisational and cultural practices that aim at the emergence of queer as a collective identity. Through the study of festivals in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Copenhagen, and Oslo, Queer Festivals: Challenging Collective Identities in a Transnational Europe thoughtfully analyses the role of activist practices in the building of collective identities for social movement studies as well as the role of festivals as significant repertoires of collective action and sites of identitarian explorations in contemporary Europe.

From sites like Hollaback! and Everyday Sexism, which document instances of street harassment and misogyny, to social media-organized movements and communities like #MeToo and #BeenRapedNeverReported, feminists are using participatory digital media as activist tools to speak, network, and organize against sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. As the first book-length study to examine how girls, women, and some men negotiate rape culture through the use of digital platforms, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and mobile apps, the authors explore four primary questions: What experiences of harassment, misogyny, and rape culture are being responded to? How are participants using digital media technologies to document experiences of sexual violence, harassment, and sexism? Why are girls, women and some men choosing to mobilize digital media technologies in this way? And finally, what are the various experiences of using digital technologies to engage in activism? In order to capture these diverse experiences of doing digital feminist activism, the authors augment their analysis of this media (blog posts, tweets, and selfies) with in-depth interviews and close-observations of several online communities that operate globally. Ultimately, the book demonstrates the nuances within and between digital feminist activism and highlight that, although it may be technologically easy for many groups to engage in digital feminist activism, there remain emotional, mental, or practical barriers which create different experiences, and legitimate some feminist voices, perspectives, and experiences over others.

Originally published in 1847, William W. Brown offers a first-person narrative that details his enslavement and the daring escape that ultimately led to his freedom. It's a captivating tale and testament to the perseverance and strength of the human spirit. In this narrative, William W. Brown presents the true story of his birth and life as an enslaved African American. He provides a truthful look at his origins, noting the unfortunate dynamic between his Black mother and white father. Brown goes into great detail explaining the rules and regulations of plantation life. He also discusses working on a steamboat, which eventually leads to his escape. Narrative of William W. Brown is a sobering story that illuminates the horrors of an inhumane institution. It's personal and vital record that gives insight into the darkest time in American history. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Narrative of William W. Brown is both modern and readable.

Josephine Brown presents a detailed biography of her father, William Wells Brown, who was born on a plantation but escaped to become a successful abolitionist. Biography of an American Bondman by His Daughter is a viable supplement to the original Narrative of William W. Brown: A Fugitive Slave Biography of an American Bondman by His Daughter gives new insight into William Wells Brown's eventful life. Josephine Brown presents a vivid account of his origins which began on a Kentucky plantation. She explains the glaring power imbalance between enslaved people, their overseers and plantation owners. She also explains how her father was hired out to perform various odd jobs including innkeeper, steamboat captain and even slave trafficker. It was a brutal existence where patience and persistence were key to survival. An illuminating record of one of the most prominent figures in the abolitionist movement. Josephine Brown provides an updated history of her father's personal and professional achievements. It's an eye-opening account of William Wells Brown's revolutionary life. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Biography of an American Bondman by His Daughter is both modern and readable.

In British political discourse the idea that in the 1970s trade unions 'ran the country' has become a truism, a folk mythology invoked against the twin perils of socialism and strikes. But who exactly wielded power in Britain's workplaces and on what terms? Assembling cultures takes a fine-grained look at factory activism in the motor industry between 1945 and 1982, using car manufacturing as a key case for unpicking important narratives around affluence, declinism and class. It traces the development of the militant car worker stereotype and looks at the real social relations that lay behind car manufacturing's reputation for conflict. In doing so, this book reveals a changing, complex world of social practices, cultural norms and shared values and expectations. From relatively meagre interwar trade union traditions, during the post-war period car workers developed shop-floor organisations of considerable authority, enabling some to make new demands of their working lives, but constraining others in their more radical political aims. Assembling cultures documents in detail a historic process where, from the 1950s, groups and individuals set about creating and reproducing collective power and asks what that meant for their lives. This is a story of workers and their place in the power relations of post-war Britain. This book will be invaluable to lecturers and students studying the history, sociology and politics of post-war Britain, particularly those with an interest in power, rationality, class, labour, gender and race. The detailed analysis of just how solidarity, organisation and collective action were generated will also prove useful to trade union activists. -- .

In Political Dynamics of Grassroots Democracy in Vietnam, Hai Hong Nguyen investigates the correlation between independent variables and grassroots democracy to demonstrate that grassroots democracy has created a mutually empowering mechanism for both the party-state and the peasantry.

This collection promises to be a cornerstone in the field of performance studies and human rights activism. By mixing scholarly chapters with artists' manifestos or "interruptions" it promotes the idea of the collective work between academia and social movements. Not only is it very timely, theoretically savvy, and well written, it also brings together scholars, activists, artists, and artivists in a very fluid, collective approach, something many of us strive to do." - Paola S. Hernandez, University of Wisconsin, USA This book charts the changing frontiers of activism in the Americas. Travelling Canada, the US, the US-Mexico border, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, and Indigenous territories on Turtle Island, it invites readers to identify networks, clusters, and continuities of art-activist tactics designed to exceed the event horizon of the performance protest. Essays feature Indigenous artists engaging in land-based activism and decolonial cyberactivism, grass-roots movements imagining possible futures through cross-sector alliance building, art-activists forwarding tactics of reinvention, and student groups in the throes of theatrical assembly. Artist pages, interspersed throughout the collection, serve as animated, first-person perspectives of those working on the front lines of interventionist art. Taken together, the contributions offer a vibrant picture of emergent tactics and strategies over the past decade that allow art-activists to sustain the energy and press of political resistance in the face of a whole host of rights emergencies across the Americas. Winner of the Excellence in Editing Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and recipient of an Honourable Mention for the Patrick O'Neill Prize administered by the Canadian Association for Theatre Research. Project Artists:- The Great Collective Cough-In - L.M. Bogad - Le Temps d'une Soupe - ATSA - For Freedoms - Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman - Down with Self-Management! Re-Booting Ourselves as Feminist Servers - subRosa - Journey for Activism and Sustainability Escola de Ativismo - Unstoppable - micha cardenas, Patrisse Cullors, Chris Head and Edxie Betts - Listen to Black Women - Syrus Marcus Ware - Notes on Sustainable Tools - Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, with Sune Woods - The Mirror Shield Project - Cannupa Hanska Luger - The Human Billboard Project - Leah Decter, with Stop Violence Against Aboriginal Women Action Group

The last decades have witnessed a steady increase in popular discontent with prevailing neoliberal approaches to economy, policy and society. And yet neoliberalism remains dominant, even in the context of the ongoing financial crisis. The anti-neoliberal movement seems disorientated. Typical explanations of this current contradicatory situation highlight that anti-neoliberal movements are unwilling to commit to a policy programme, enact effective political tactics, or challenge state institutions. This book argues that a more deep-seated problem lies at the heart of these deficiencies: how the movement approaches the role of ideology in political action. Reflecting a widely-held belief that ours is a post-ideological age, ideology has been marginalized or altogether rejected by the majority of the movement's activists and intellectuals. The dismissal of ideology has hindered the politics of resistance and it now becomes clear that a firm ideological vision is what activists urgently require to defy neoliberal domination. This book shows the useful nature of ideology, by exploring continuities between current anti-neoliberal positions and well-known past ideological arguments that changed the world.

This book traces the evolution of organisational activism among Muslim women in India. It deconstructs the 'Muslim woman' as the monolith based on tropes like purdah, polygamy, and tin talaq and compels the reader to revisit the question of Muslim women's individual and collective agency. The book argues that the political field, along with religion, moulds the nature and scope of Muslim women's activism in India. It looks at the objectives of four Muslim women's organisations: the Bazm-e-Niswan, the Awaaz-e-Niswaan, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan and the India International Women's Alliance (IIWA), in close interaction with the political landscape of Mumbai. The book explores the emergence of gender-inclusive interpretation of Muslim women's rights by Muslim women activists and challenges the dominant and reductionist stereotypes on Muslim women, community, and absolutist ideas of Islam. It argues that Muslim women are not passive victims of their culture and religion, rather they can develop a critique of their marginality and subjugation from within the community. Revisiting Muslim Women's Activism traces the evolution of a community-centric approach in women's activism and records a fragmented view on women's rights from within the community and religious leadership. It also delineates the distinctiveness of this activism that considers religion and culture as resources for empowerment and as sites of contestations. Moreover, the book documents the narratives of Muslim women's struggle and resistance from their location and lived experiences. It will be of interest to students and researchers of women's studies, gender studies, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, and Islamic studies.

In 1945, remnants of the Polish Home Army re-formed to counter brutal Soviet repressions. In July of that year, more than 7,000 HA freedom fighters were arrested in the northeastern Augustow region and held in barns, pigsties and warehouses where they were beaten and tortured. Two thousand of them were never seen again-their whereabouts remain a mystery. Seventy-five years later, their relatives still search for answers and the location of their mass burial. This book examines the fateful events of the Augustow Roundup (a.k.a. "little Katyn") through eyewitness testimonies.

In an era when capitalism leaves so many to suffer and to die, with neoliberal 'self-care' offering little more than a bandaid, how can we take health and care back into our hands? In The Hologram, Cassie Thornton puts forward a bold vision for revolutionary care: a viral, peer-to-peer feminist health network. The premise is simple: three people - a 'triangle' - meet on a regular basis, digitally or in person, to focus on the physical, mental and social health of a fourth - the 'hologram'. The hologram, in turn, teaches their caregivers how to give and also receive care; each member of their triangle becomes a hologram for another, different triangle, and so the system expands. Drawing on radical models developed in the Greek solidarity clinics during a decade of crisis, and directly engaging with discussions around mutual aid and the coronavirus pandemic, The Hologram develops the skills and relationships we desperately need for the anti-capitalist struggles of the present, and the post-capitalist society of the future. One part art, one part activism, one part science fiction, this book offers the reader a guide to establishing a Hologram network as well as reflections on this cooperative work in progress.

This book tells the story of Terania Creek - the world's first direct action blockade in defence of a forest, occurring in Australia in 1979. Contrary to claims that the Australian counterculture was a mere imitation of overseas models, the Australian movement, coalescing with a home-grown environment movement, came of age at Terania Creek. After five years of 'polite' campaigning failed to stop the logging of ancient Gondwanan rainforest, an organic and spontaneous blockade erupted that would see the forging of a number of ingenious blockading techniques and strategies. The activist repertoire developed at Terania Creek has since echoed across the country, and across the Earth. This book draws on extensive oral history interviews as well as photographs taken of the protest in 1979; such rich source material brings the story to life. Terania Creek and the Forging of Modern Environmental Activism will therefore appeal to both a scholarly audience as well as activists, practitioners, and counterculturalists.

'This extraordinary book is the roadmap for a new kind of effective activism' - Brian Eno 'This book is for people who are angry with the ways things are and want to do something about it; for people who are frustrated with the system, or worried about the direction the country is going. Maybe they've been on a march, posted their opinions on social media, or shouted angrily at something they've seen on the news but don't feel like it's making any difference. It is for people who want to make a change but they're not sure how.' - Matthew Bolton

A writer in self-imposed exile in London receives a call from the Prime Minister of his former country, inviting him to return to write the Prime Minister's biography. As he embarks from his small flat in west London to the modern Caribbean island he once called home, he immediately finds himself thrust into a world of exceptional wealth, power, and corruption. In the midst of this turmoil the writer falls deeply in love. As the love affair advances, the writer's passion for the island resurfaces, until the loss of a close friend propels him to make one final, potentially cataclysmic decision that will change everything.

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. -- .

This is the inside story of the National Women's Conference held in Houston in 1977. Although the federally funded meeting was featured on the cover of Time magazine twice, participant Gloria Steinem now describes it as "the most important event nobody knows about." In fact, the International Women's Year (IWY) Conference was America's most democratic, representative, and inclusive congress of citizens in our history. Conference delegates had been elected by 150,000 women at open meetings in every state and territory where they discussed the range of barriers to women's full equality, debated solutions, and proposed remedies. Anti-feminists also had their say. Despite heated disagreements over issues such as the ERA, abortion, lesbian rights, child care, and other hot topics of the day, the Houston delegates united to approve a National Plan of Action to achieve full equality for all women. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of that unique gathering, the high water mark of the "Second Wave" of American feminism, Shelah Leader and Pat Hyatt draw on their personal files and notes from their days on the staff of the IWY National Commission to share their behind-the-scenes account of how a very diverse group of Republican and Democratic feminists achieved consensus in the face of determined opposition from political and religious conservatives. Since that landmark event, there has been marked progress in many aspects of women's lives, but a number of key goals in the IWY Plan of Action remain unfulfilled. As American politics and popular culture have grown more polarized, sexist, and toxic, it became clear to Leader and Hyatt that they were compelled to share their eyewitness story of "American Women on the Move." The book's final chapter assesses what strides have been made, what's yet undone, and lessons learned.

From the anti-segregation sit-ins of the 1960s to the protests in response to the killing of Breonna Taylor, the rest of the nation - and often the world - has watched as Kentuckians boldly fought against instances of injustice. In Resistance in the Bluegrass, Farrah Alexander outlines the ways in which Kentucky's citizens have been models in the fight against intersectional issues of racial injustice, economic inequality, education, climate change, immigration, political representation, LGBTQ+ rights, and women's rights, while exploring and celebrating decades of Kentucky's contributions to social justice movements and the names behind them. Resistance in the Bluegrass gives engaged citizens-or those wishing to become more engaged-both inspiration and guidance on how they too can make a difference across the commonwealth. Together with interviews and issue-by-issue action items, Alexander reminds her readers that at the heart of all social change are everyday citizens who step up to make a difference. Optimistic and accessible, this people's history and guide calls Kentuckians of all backgrounds to action.

The dangers of political violence and the possibilities of non-violence were the central themes of three lives which changed the twentieth century-Leo Tolstoy, writer and aristocrat who turned against his class, Mohandas Gandhi who corresponded with Tolstoy and considered him the most important person of the time, and Nelson Mandela, prisoner and statesman, who read War and Peace on Robben Island and who, despite having led a campaign of sabotage, saw himself as a successor to Gandhi. Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Mandela tried to create transformed societies to replace the dying forms of colony and empire. They found the inequalities of Russia, India, and South Africa intolerable yet they questioned the wisdom of seizing the power of the state, creating new kinds of political organisation and imagination to replace the old promises of revolution. Their views, along with their ways of leading others, are closely connected, from their insistence on working with their own hands and reforming their individual selves to their acceptance of death. On three continents, in a century of mass mobilization and conflict, they promoted strains of nationalism devoid of antagonism, prepared to take part in a general peace. Looking at Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Mandela in sequence, taking into account their letters and conversations as well as the institutions they created or subverted, placing at the centre their treatment of the primal fantasy of political violence, this volume reveals a vital radical tradition which stands outside the conventional categories of twentieth-century history and politics.

Willem Assies died in 2010 at the age of 55. The various stages of his career as a political anthropologist of Latin American illustrate how astute a researcher he was. He had a keen eye for the contradictions he observed during his fieldwork but also enjoyed theoretical debate. A distrust of power led him not only to attempt to understand "people without voice" but to work alongside them so they could discover and find their own voice. Willem Assies explored the messy, often untidy daily lives of people, with their inconsistencies, irrationalities, and passions, but also with their hopes, sense of beauty, solidarity, and quest for dignity. This collection brings together some of Willem Assies's best, most fascinating, and still highly relevant writings.

Jane Addams, the co-founder of Hull House, the famous settlement home, writes about her experiences and insights in her autobiography, Twenty Years at Hull House. As a child growing up in Illinois, Addams suffered from Pott's Disease, which was a rare infection in her spine. This disease caused her to contract many other illnesses, then because of these aliments, Addams was self-conscious of her appearance. She explains that she could not play with other children often due to a limp, a side effect to her illnesses. Still, she is able to provide relatable and even amusing childhood anecdotes. Addams was very close to her father. She admired him for his political work, which likely inspired her own interest and attention to the social problems of her society. In a time invested with xenophobia and cruelty towards immigrants, Addams bought land in Chicago and co-founded a settlement house named Hull House. There, Addams sought to improve the lives of immigrants and the poor by providing shelter, essential social services, and access to education. Addams served as an advocate not only for the impoverished and immigrants, but also for women. She was a leader within the women's suffrage movement, determined to expand the work she did for her community to a national scale. Twenty Years at Hull House provides both a conversation about social issues and an example of how to act against them. Though originally published in 1910, Addams autobiography provides social discourse that is not only still relevant, but also considered radical by some. Addams' autobiography was well received when it was first released, impacting many key reform movements. Twenty Years at Hull House still carries that effect today, inspiring its readers to improve their community and advocate for those in need. This edition of Twenty Years at Hull House by Jane Addams features a new, eye-catching cover design and is printed in a readable font, ready to inspire readers to follow the footsteps and musings of activist Jane Addams.