Towards Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement 1971 to the Present

Author(s): Lawrence S. Wittner

Vol 3, Stanford University Press, Stanford CA, 2003, pp. 657

Traces the development of the movement in the 1970s, the rise of a new activism in the 1980s, the ‘breakthrough’ of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Agreement of 1987, and the end of the Cold War. While noting later more worrying trends, Wittner concludes that ‘This study – like its predecessors – indicates that the nuclear arms control and disarmament measures of the modern era have resulted primarily from the efforts of a worldwide citizens’ campaign, the biggest mass movement in modern history’.

The power of protest

Author(s): Lawrence Wittner

In: The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 2, No 7, 2004, pp. 1-6

A reflection on how the anti-nuclear weapons movements worldwide have prevented a nuclear war after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the lessons that can be drawn for the future.

Where is the nuclear abolition movement today?

Author(s): Lawrence Wittner

United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), New York, 2012

Examines anti-nuclear weapons activist campaigns, as well as public opinion. Wittner also explores some of the obstacles faced by disarmament activists and discusses how the efficacy of their anti-nuclear campaign might be improved.

A Way of Hope

Author(s): Lech Walesa

Henry Holt and Pan Books, New York and London, pp. 325

Memoir by central (but increasingly controversial) figure in Solidarity.

The Paradox of Repression and Nonviolent Movements

Author(s): Lester Kurtz, and Lee Smithey

Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY, 2018, pp. 368 pb

The focus of this study is on how movements using nonviolent tactics can respond to repression, and increase the potential for repressive and violent measures to backfire.  The contributors include both social scientists and activists who have experienced repression, providing an analysis of the different forms of repression possible, and of methods protesters might use in response.

Media Mobilization and the Umbrella Movement

Editor(s): Lee, Francis L.F.

Routledge, London, 2016, pp. 152

This study covers both international and local media, as well as the role of conventional as well as digital media, in both publicizing and mobilizing the Hong Kong protests. It discusses, for example, the impact of TV, but also deliberate social media strategies. The editor is a Professor in the School of Journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

A Quiet Revolution

Author(s): Leila Ahmed

Yale University Press, Newhaven CT, 2012, pp. 360

Discusses reasons for the resurgence of veil-wearing among Muslim women, and the social and political implications. Argues (contrary to author’s own earlier position) that Islamists rather than secularists often prominent in struggle for social justice and women’s rights.

The Persistence of Transnational Organizing: The Case of the Homophile Movement

Author(s): Leila Rupp

In: American Historical Review, Vol 116, No 4 (Oct), 2011, pp. 1014-1039

Study of the reformist groups which were active in Scandinavia, West Germany, France, the UK, Canada and USA, primarily in the 1950s and 1960s, which joined in the International Committee for Sexual Equality (1951-1963) founded by the Dutch COC (the first ‘homophile’ group).

Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence

Author(s): Leo Tolstoy

New Society Publishers, Philadelphia PA, 1987, pp. 426

Collection illustrating Tolstoy’s Christian anarchist-pacifist perspective, stresses individual refusal to fight in wars. Omits ‘Letter to a Hindu’, which reflects on why millions of Indians submit to a small number of British rulers and which is available in Peter Mayer, ed.,The Pacifist Conscience, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1966, pp. 166-76. See also Leo Tolstoy, Government is Violence, Phoenix Press, 1990, which includes essays on anarchism and nonviolence.

Second rate victims: the forced sterilization of Indigenous peoples in the USA and Canada

Author(s): Leonardo Pegoro

In: Settler Colonial Studies, Vol 5, No 2, 2015, pp. 161-173

The author examines the decades of enforced sterilization of Indigenous women in North America in the 20th century and the influence of eugenics ideologies on this policy.  Use of sterilization was most common from the 1940s to the 1970s, when the Indigenous populations began (after centuries of decline) to increase in numbers. This trend alarmed both eugenicists anxious to maintain racial ‘purity’, and corporations seeking to exploit resources on indigenous lands. 

See also: Howard-Hassmann, Rhoda, ‘Forced sterilizations of Indigenous women: One more act of genocide’, The Conversation, 4 March 2019.

https://theconversation.com/forced-sterilizations-of-indigenous-women-one-more-act-of-genocide-109603

See also: Virdi, Jaipreet, ‘The coerced sterilization of Indigenous women’, New Internationalist, 30 November 2018.

https://newint.org/features/2018/11/29/canadas-shame-coerced-sterilization-indigenous-women

Both links expose the forced sterilization of Canadian Indigenous women for several decades, up to the 2000s.

Pages