Nigeria's Next Generation Protest Movement

Author(s): Nelly Aung

In: Foreign Policy, 2020

Aung reports on the protests that erupted in Nigeria on 2 October 2020, after a video circulated showing a man killed by police. The protests broke out three years after the online campaign #EndSARS was launched, demanding an end to the squad's indiscriminate violence against young people. She notes the role of two Afro-Pop musicians and feminists in promoting protests, and the rapid extension of demands to encompass misuse of public funds, the unemployment crisis. poor economic infrastructure and bad government.

Available online at:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/28/nigerias-youth-protest-movement-end-sars/

Activism Amid Disappointment: Women’s Groups and the Politics of Hope in Egypt

Author(s): Nermin Allam

In: Middle East Law and Governance, Vol 10, No 3, 2018, pp. 291-318

The author investigates two questions: How did the politics of disappointment unfold among female activists after the 2011 Egyptian uprising and specifically under the current regime? What were the effects of the strong sense of emotional disappointment on women’s activism and collective action? She argues that disappointment did not mark the end of politics and activism among women’s groups in Egypt. Although the situation is complicated and activism is restricted in Egypt, in this research participants affirm that their experience in the uprising has changed them, and that “things cannot go back to the old days.” A focus on hope and disappointment makes the experiences of activists central to the analysis. It allows researchers to reclaim the voices of female activists in explaining the challenges and opportunities that developed after the uprising, and how these developments influenced and shaped their experience, movement, and mobilization.

From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles

Author(s): Niall O’Dochartaigh

Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2005, pp. 332

Originally published: 1997

Describes the trajectory of resistance from largely nonviolent demonstrations, modeled on the US Civil Rights movement, to riots and finally to virtual civil war in Derry/Londonderry. O’Dochartaigh subscribes to the view that in conditions of civil disorder and conflict ‘the local environment becomes ever more important as a focus of political activity.’ A central thesis of the book is that ‘occasions of violent confrontation play a crucial role in promoting the escalation and continuation of conflict’.

Why Are We Waiting?: The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate-Change. Lionel Robbins Lectures

Author(s): Nicholas Stern

MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2016, pp. 448 (pb)

Economist Nicholas Stern led research for the British government on the economic costs of tackling climate change and implications for the global economy and compared these costs with those resulting from unchecked global carbon emissions. His 700 page highly technical report of 2006 concluded that cutting carbon emissions would be very significantly less economically harmful than the impact of unchecked emissions. This book, published 10 years later, warns that the risks and costs of global warming are more serious than he estimated in 2006, and argues strongly for a comprehensive low-carbon transition. 

See also: Kahn, Brian '10 Years on, Climate Economists Reflect on Stern Review', Climate CO Central, 28 October 2016 (Climate Central describes itself as an independent body of scientists and journalists focusing on climate change).

US Climate Breakthrough: How young activists in the Sunrise movement turned the old idea of a Green New Deal into a powerful movement

Apr-May 2019

Author(s): Nick Engelfried

In: Peace News, No 2628-2629 , 2019, pp. 14-15

First published on Waging Nonviolence website: www.wagingnonviolence.org

See also: Horton, Adrian, Dream McClinton and Lauren Aratani, 'Adults Failed to take Climate Action. Meet the young activists stepping up', The Guardian, 4 Mar. 2019.

Interviews with young activists in the Sunrise Movement.

Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance

Author(s): Nick Estes

Verso, London, 2019, pp. 320

This book is an account of the prolonged and multi-faceted Sioux resistance to the 1,172 mile Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) which in 2014 was rerouted through their territory, threatening their ancestral burying grounds and archaeological sites. In addition to violation of their rights over the land, the Sioux Nation feared that oil spills would pollute their land, and especially the water supply. The protest began in April 2016 with the setting up of a camp as a centre for direct action and the expression of spiritual resistance, and was supplemented by a social media campaign. Surrounding Native American communities joined in the protest, as did many environmentalists, so that thousands were involved by the summer. The local police were criticised for using unnecessary force against protesters and there were many arrests. The story of Standing Rock is set within the context of the much longer history of indigenous resistance to colonization and struggle to maintain their culture.

See also: Treuer, The Heartbreak of Wounded Knee (under Vol. 2. B.1.d.) which includes an account of Standing Rock at the end of the book. 

See also: 'What is Standing Rock and Why are 1.4m 'checking in' there? - BBC News, 2 Nov. 2016. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37834334

Protesters were worried that they were being individually traced by the police through social media (denied by the local police) and asked for supporters to check-in to the SR Facebook site to overwhelm police efforts to identify protesters that way.

Socialist feminism in post-socialist China

Author(s): Nicola Spakowsky

In: Positions, Vol 26, No 4, 2018, pp. 561-592

Discusses the new theoretical strand within Chinese feminism that has been forming since 2010 up to 2018, which, for lack of a programmatic label, the author calls “socialist feminism.”

The Chilean Student Movement of 2011-2012: Challenging the Marketization of Education

Author(s): Nicolas M. Somma

In: Interface: a journal about social movements, Vol 4, No 2 (Nov), 2012, pp. 296-309

The author is assistant professor of sociology at the Catholic University of Chile. Examines causes of protests and educational system, ‘horizontalism’ of student organization, tactics, use of media and maintenance of internal unity.

Available online as PDF at:

http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Interface-4-2-Somma.pdf

Pages