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Answer to critics during the major campaign to desegregate Birmingham Alabama. President Kennedy intervened to get King released.
Includes chapters on student activism in 1960 and 1971.
Takes Chile as case study of Christian response to torture. The Catholic Church’s Vicaria de la Solidaridad (pp. 264-7) was the major human rights monitoring body in the country, while the more ecumenical Sebastian Acevedo Movement against Torture (pp. 273-7) organized lightning protests to hightlight places or institutions implicated in torture.
Benefits from firsthand research in Western Sahara. For links to other writing by Zunes and Mundy, see http://wsahara.stephenzunes.org.
Examines lack of a constitutional right or political tolerance for selective refusal to take part in particular wars.
Account of feminist organization founded in 1977, which uses literacy classes, underground papers and pamphlets and demonstrations, based on more than 100 interviews with key activists by author, a US feminist scholar. The founder of the Association, who left university in Kabul to struggle for women’s rights, was assassinated in 1987.
Aims, in words of editor, ‘to give its readers a reasonably broad critical introduction to the Northern Ireland conflict’. Most of the 13 contributors to the book are academics working in the field of sociology, politics and media studies, plus writers and journalists. The thrust of the argument in the book is that the conflict needs to be understood as an anti-colonial struggle, not as a religious or ethnic one, and that tackling the inequalities brought about by colonialism is the key to securing a lasting peace.
The 2018 referendum to overturn Ireland’s abortion ban had worldwide significance. The campaign to repeal the Eight Amendment succeeded against a background of religious and patriarchal dogmatism, representing a major transformation of Irish society itself. This work explores both the campaign and the implications of the referendum result for politics, identity and culture in the Republic of Ireland. It explores activism, artwork, social movements, law, media, democratic institutions, and reproductive technologies in the country and beyond.
Introduction to the December 2018 issue, which presents, amongst other topics, essays and articles on the daily resistance against anti-Black state violence in Brazil; the demonstration of women wearing green handkerchiefs and claiming spaces in Argentina; the role of Ixil women in rebuilding communal structures post-genocide; the searches for the disappeared in Mexico; women’s struggle against oil exploitation; the organisation of LGBTI+ community members’ forms of resistance for immigrant justice; and the revisitation of the #NiUnaMenos movement.
On July 7, 2017, at the UN General Assembly, 122 states voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the culmination of pressure from a global network of states and grassroots activists. This article traces the history of the ban movement from 2005. It identifies six factors that led to the successful adoption of the treaty: a small group of committed diplomats; an influx of new coalition members; the contribution of civil society; the reframing of the narrative surrounding nuclear weapons; the pursuit of a simple ban treaty; and the context provided by the Barack Obama Administration.
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.
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.
Analysis of a selection of predominantly nonviolent struggles from Russia 1905 to Serbia 2000, arguing against ‘the mythology of violence’. Some of the case studies are standard in books on civil resistance, others – for example the 1990 movement in Mongolia – less familiar. Each chapter has a useful bibliography. The book arose out of a 1999 US documentary television series ‘A Force More Powerful’, now available on DVD, and therefore includes, in the more recent cases, information from interviews.
A clear summary of developments from 1989-1997, that also lays emphasis on the role of popular mobilization and protests.
Personal account by Guardian journalist of Zimbabwe’s politics and people since 1980. Chapters 12-19 (pp. 114-241) cover the rise of the MDC, the debate about the new constitution, resistance and repression, and Chapter 20 describes his own expulsion from the country.
By US journalist in Spain. See chapter 7, ‘The Opposition’, pp. 185-228.
Study of the militant US movement founded in 1980, which split between what the author terms ‘millenarian’ and ‘apocalyptic’ wings, the former seeking to educate others and the latter trying to save biodiversity before it is too late.
This article, incorporating an interview with Tikhanovskya, the leader of the opposition to the Lukashenko regime in exile, provides a useful summary of the resistance to the rigged election in 2020 and the subsequent repression. Vock notes the ruthlessness of Lukashenko against the opposition internally and those in exile in EU countries, and his unscrupulous use of refugees from the Middle East to challenge the Polish/EU borders. He also indicates that the Belarus opposition, which initially did not challenge ties to Russia, has become explicitly hostile to Putin's backing for Lukashenko and more dependent on EU and western support. Vok also reports that a leaked poll from inside Belarus indicates that although Tikhanovskya has significant support, two of the jailed opponents of the regime, Babaryko and Kolesnikova, are more highly regarded.
Account of four transnational teams going to Warsaw Pact capitals to protest against the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion.
Largely based on the author’s PhD thesis, this book analyses three historical approaches to civil disobedience, from conservatives and liberal philosophies to the applied theory of disobedience derived from Gandhi and Martin Luther King.