Endurance activism: transcontinental walking, the great peace march and the politics of movement culture

Author(s): Dain TePoel

Vol Doctoral Thesis, University of Iowa2018, pp. 285

This thesis focuses on the 1986 Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament that lasted nine-month and covered 3,325 miles, from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The author coins the term ‘endurance activism’ and explores two central questions: What is the relationship between long-distance walking and the politics of social movements? To what extent does ‘endurance’ shape meanings of the March’s related but twin goals: the building of a “prefigurative” community, and a mass movement capable of attaining media coverage and achieving concrete, or “strategic” political outcomes?

Street Illegal: XR Ponder Diminishing Returns from Guerrilla Protest

Author(s): Damien Gayle, and Damian Carrington

In: Guardian Weekly, 2021

The article describes the change in police tactics from earlier protests, including immediate intervention to stop obstruction of roads and the use of batons. It then discusses briefly the changes in XR's own approach: the emphasis shifting from 'sounding the alarm' to demanding why there is not 'an emergency response'.

See also: 'XR's Latest Rebellion', Peace News, October-November 2021, p.7.

Outlines briefly plans for a fortnight of action directed at stopping fossil fuel investment and focused mainly on the City of London.  On the same page there is a brief report on XR Scotland's appeal to all XR activists to respect XR Scotland's 'COP 26 Rebel Agreement' to show respect for the most vulnerable local communities and to demand a just transition for workers and local communities.

A Challenge to Trident

Author(s): Dan Barron

In: Red Pepper, 2015, pp. 30-31

This brief, but informative, article focuses on the campaign by the Marshall Islands to arraign the UK before the International Court of Justice for failure to fulfill its legal and moral obligations under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty: to negotiate for nuclear disarmament. Barron notes that the 70,000 inhabitants of the Marshall Islands suffered the effects of 67 US nuclear weapons tests from 1946-58, and as a UN Trust Territory only achieved independence from the US in 1990.

The woman breaking Bolivia's culture of silence on rape

Author(s): Dan Collins

In: The Guardian, 2018

Covers the story of Brisa De Angulo, now in her 30s, who was raped at the age of 15 and, two years after, opened the first – and only – comprehensive support centre for child survivors of sexual violence. This led to creation of the charity A Breeze of Hope and prompted support from Bolivian society and local NGOs.

See also https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/07/bolivia-measures-counteract-gender-violence-160711135302912.html

Available online at:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/dec/28/teenager-reform-bolivia-broken-record-justice-brisa-de-angulo-breeze-of-hope

The Village Against the World

Author(s): Dan Hancox

Verso, London, 2013, pp. 252

(Successor to ebook Dan Hancox, Utopia and the Valley of Tears, 2012 , pp. 76 , on same topic.)
Discusses the small village, Marinaleda, in southern Spain that has battled for decades with the state and capitalist policies, but gained international attention in 2012 when its mayor (and farmers union leader) organized the filling of ten shopping trolleys, refused to pay, and distributed them to the poor from a military base and mansion of a local large landowner.

The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup

Author(s): Dana Frank

Haymarket Books, Chicago, IL, 2018, pp. 344 pb

The immediate popular resistance to the military coup in 2009, that ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelava, did not defeat the coup, but a sustained and impressive movement continued under the National Front for Popular Resistance, which brought together trade unions, church leaders, academics and teachers and others, despite violent repression by the military and police. Frank also examines the role of  the US government in supporting the coup and  describes the support offered to the resisters by the US organization she founded.

See also: Main, Alexander, 'Honduras: The Deep Roots of Resistance', Dissent, Spring 2014,

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/honduras-the-deep-roots-of-resistance

Focuses particularly on role of the National Front of Popular Resistance in creating in 2011 a new political party Liberty and Refoundation with the aim of winning power and creating a new constitution.  Main sets this development in the context of socialist parties winning power through elections in other Latin American countries.

See also: Portillo, Suyapa, ''Honduran Social Movements: Then and Now', Oxford Research Encylopedia of Politics, 28 September 2020.

https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9781190228637.013.1774

Examines historic bases of social movements: political parties, both moderate and radical unionism and land struggles, the reaction against neoliberal economic policies of the 1990s  undermining earlier economic and political gains. The article concludes by assessing the remarkable mobilization against the 2009 coup by almost all sections of society, including feminists, Black and indigenous groups.

Until the World Shatters

Author(s): Daniel Combs

Melville Press, New York and London, 2021, pp. 400

Combs, a US researcher, travelled throughout Myanmar after 2011 when people were becoming more willing to talk, and interviewed a wide range of people from a punk rocker to a monk. He also observed the role of Buddhism in society and politics, including the fear and hostility towards Muslim minorities. 

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