Fear in Military Regimes

Author(s): Manual Antonio Garreton

In: Corradi, Weiss Fagen, and Garreton, eds., Fear at the Edge (719, E.IV.1), pp. 13-23

Distinguishes between phases of military regimes: the first of terror not a time for direct confrontation but for survival and assistance to others, although human rights activists may link up with international networks. In the second phase the opposition have more scope for promoting organisation and indirect forms of resistance.

Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age

Author(s): Manuel Castells

Polity, Cambridge, 2012, pp. 200

Well known theorist of global networks examines the mass uprisings across the world in 2011, giving account of events in ‘Arab Spring’ and the reaction to the bank collapse and austerity policies in the west in Iceland, Spain, Greece and the USA, and stressing the causal role of the internet.

Armenia's Revolution: A Flickering Light in a Darkening Europe

Author(s): Marc Cooper

In: The Nation, 2018

Cooper celebrates this under-reported 'velvet revolution' that 'boiled up from the streets' and was not influenced by outside forces. He notes that although there had been limited protests in the previous decade on specific economic, environmental or gender issues, no one expected a major political revolt. 

See also: Avedissian, Karina, 'A real revolution? Protest leader Armen Grigoryan on what's happening in Armenia', Open Democracy, 30 April 2018. 

Nobody: Casualties Of America’s War On The Vulnerable, From Ferguson To Flint And Beyond

Author(s): Marc Lamont Hill

Atria , New York, 2016, pp. 273

African-American Studies scholar and policy analyst Marc Lamont Hill examines the interlocking mechanisms of unregulated capitalism, public policy, and social practice in the US. His work starts recounting one of the most salient event that gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement: the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. More precisely, the narration spans different periods of time, starting with the grand jury testimony of Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Michael Brown, and then looks back at the 1939 World’s Fair and Le Corbusier’s lofty ideas about urban renewal. It moves forward in time again to the development of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing projects in St. Louis, completed in 1955 and demolished twenty years later, with many of the displaced residents having to move to Ferguson and face a climate of socio-cultural deprivation. Hill terminates his narration in Flint, Michigan, where the American city’s population ended up being poisoned by lead in the water.

Hill’s work is an account of the systematically disadvantaged identities - “those marked as poor, black, brown, immigrant, queer, or trans” – by a system that treats them as nobody, and makes them disposable, vulnerable and invisible. This work has been praised for enriching the contemporary canon of US civil rights literature not only because it captures the systemic nature of inequality in US society, but also because of his positive conclusion on the transformative power of organising, the most recent version of which lies in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Birth of the Lesbian Rights Movement

Author(s): Marcia M. Gallo

Seal Press (Avalon Publishing), Seattle WA, 2007, pp. 274

Originally published: 2006

‘DOB’ was founded in 1955 as a social group in San Francisco, but developed over two decades into a national organization. See also  ‘Del’ (Dorothy L. Taliaferro) Martin, Phyllis Lyon, Lesbian/Woman (G.1. The 'Homophile' Movement and Rise of Gay Liberation in the West: 1950s-1970s) .

Una Libertà Felice. La Mia Vita

Author(s): Marco Pannella, and Matteo Angioli

Edizioni Mondadori , Milano, 2016, pp. 180

In this work, Marco Pannella, Italian journalist and politician, founder of the Partito Radicale Nonviolento Transnazionale e Transpartito (Nonviolent Radical Party, Transnational and Transparty (PRNTT)), narrates the story of his political life and devotion to nonviolence as the core principle of his political programme. He also narrates the hunger-strikes and dialogues he engaged in to pursue political objectives.

Further information about the Party can be found at http://www.radicalparty.org/, which is available in Italian, English, French, Russian, and Arabic.

The page dedicated exclusively to him can be found at https://www.partitoradicale.it/marco-pannella/ 

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