The Great March of Return: An Organizer's Perspective

Author(s): Jehad Abusakim

In: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol 47, No 4, 2018, pp. 90-100

The author argues that the March was an opportunity for ordinary Palestinians in Gaza to take the political initiative and that the March organizers tried hard to maintain the momentum. The problems of organizing in a politically divided context, and lack of international support, as well as the ruthlessness of the Israeli response meant however that momentum was lost. The March also raised many questions about how nonviolent methods could work when faced with serious military force. 

Ni Una Menos stares down conservative reaction

Author(s): Jelke Boesten

In: NACLA, 2018

Discusses the development of a new wave of feminism in Latin America, with particular regard to the ‘Ni Una Menos’ movement, and notes its main differences from ‘Me Too’ in the US, particularly in the type of testimonies relayed, and the inclusion and diversity within the Latin American movement. Boesten also reports on the harsh backlash against the newly developing feminist movements, provoked by conservative Catholicism and pays tribute to Colombian writer Emma Reyes, who symbolises the hidden contribution to literature women in Latin America can offer, providing a different perspective on the pervasive violent misogyny in the country.

Available online at:

https://nacla.org/news/2018/07/03/ni-una-menos-stares-down-conservative-reaction-ni-una-menos-enfrenta-una-reacci%C3%B3n

Touch the Earth

Author(s): Jen Wilton

In: New Internationalist, No March, 2014, pp. 24-25

Provides snapshots of struggles by local people against chromite, bauxite, copper, silver and gold mining in Canada, Guinea, Burma, Mexico, Papua New Guinea and Mozambique, and notes movement in northern Peru, beginning 2008 and erupting into mass blockades in 2009, against logging and oil drilling.

How Latin American Activists are Harnessing the Black Lives Matter Movement

Author(s): Jennifer Bitterly

In: The Progressive, 2020

The article starts with protests about police killing of an Afro-Columbian man in Bogota the same week George Floyd was killed, noting the general impact of the BLM movement on anti-racist and Afro-Latino organizations. The author also sketches in the historical background of the Spanish colonies enslaving millions of Africans, and subsequent treatment of racial issues, including the 'myth' of multiculturalism.

See also:

Valencia, Jorge, 'Black Lives Matter Protests Renew Parallel Debates in Brazil, Columbia', The World, 15 June 2020

https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-06-15/black-lives-matter-protests-renew-parallel-debates-brazil-colombia

Across the Americas police violence disproportionally targets young Black men.  The protests sparked by Floyd's death in Minneapolis shone a light on police brutality in South America and led to demonstrations in Brazil and other countries.

Available online at:

https://progressive.org/latest/latin-american-activists-harnessing-blm-bitterly-200716/

Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism

Author(s): Leslie Heywood, and Jennifer Drake

University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis MN, 1997, pp. 232

Wide range of theoretical perspectives organized in 3 parts: Generations and Genealogies; Locales and Locations; Politics and Popular Culture. Part II includes essays on ‘Imagining Feminist Futures: The Third Wave, Postfeminism and Eco/feminism’ by N. Moore, and ‘Global Feminism, Transnational Political Economies, Third World Cultural Production’ by W. Woodhull.

Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement

Author(s): Jennifer Holland

University of California Press, Oakland, CA, 2020, pp. 324

Account of the growth of the grassroots campaign against legalised abortion in the US. Whilst other socially conservative movements have lost young activists, the pro-life movement has successfully recruited more young people to its cause. Jennifer Holland explores why abortion dominates conservative politics. She studied anti-abortion movements in four US western states since the 1960s and argues that activists made foetal life feel personal to many Americans. Pro-life activists persuaded people to see themselves in the pins, images of embryos, and dolls and made the fight against abortion the primary day-to-day issue for social conservatives. Holland concludes that the success of the pro-life movement derives from the borrowed logic and emotional power of leftist activism.

Chile's Constitutional Moment

Author(s): Jennifer Piscopo, and Peter M. Slavelis

In: Current History, Vol 120, No 823, 2021, pp. 43-49

The authors comment on the significance of the nearly 80 per cent support in the October 2020 referendum for a new constitution, to be decided upon by a special assembly. They also note the scale of the year-long movement which had achieved this concession by the conservative government, and the diversity of those demanding greater social and economic equality and political change.  The article then focuses on the problems of both satisfying the diverse socio-economic and ideological groups involved in the struggle and of changing the institutional context that maintained the legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship. 

Abortion Law and Political Institutions: Explaining Policy Resistance

Author(s): Jennifer Thompson

Palgrave Macmillan , Cham: Switzerland, 2018, pp. 248

This book, which covers the period from the early peace process in the 1980s to 2017, is a comprehensive study of abortion politics and policy in Northern Ireland. Adopting a feminist institutionalist framework, the author illustrates the ways in which abortion has been addressed at both the national level at Westminster and the devolved level at Stormont.

Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now

Author(s): Jenny Brown

Verso Books , Brooklyn, NY, 2019, pp. 208

As there is an anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court, and several states only have one abortion clinic, many reproductive rights activists are on the defensive, hoping to hold on to abortion in a few places and cases. This book explains abortion access in the United States, and makes the argument for building a militant feminist movement to promote reproductive freedom.

Also watch the launching of the book and related conference at this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhZfC0tGBpc

The Humanitarian Initiative and the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty

Author(s): Jenny Nielsen

In: in Doyle, James (ed.) Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation Achieving Security with Technology and Policy, pp. 37-58

The ‘humanitarian initiative’ in nonproliferation diplomacy leading to the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty — has its origins in a reference in the Final Document of the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference to the deep concern about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons. However, Nielsen notes that the international and civil society diplomacy that led to the success of the Ban Treaty have not yet changed the national policies of nuclear weapons states. It remains an open question if any of these states will ever support the Ban Treaty.

Available online at:

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-803271-8.00002-3

Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual

Author(s): Jeremy Brecher

pm Press, Oakland, CA, 2017, pp. 128

The author is an activist who sees the potential for a global movement to prevent disastrous climate change by forcing corporations and governments to adopt more radical policies, focusing in particular on ending use of fossil fuels. He gives examples of action from many parts of the world. But his primary emphasis is on developing a strategy (including civil disobedience) for activists in the USA, stressing the need to undermine support for fossil fuel industries but also to build parallel institutions such as popular assemblies.

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