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This long article highlights the three different periods of time that defined the anti-mafia movement, namely from 1891-1894 until 1950s; 1960s and 1970s; and from 1980s up to now. The analysis provides an initial understanding of the typology and tools of the anti-mafia struggle in each of these phases, alongside the ethical and cultural factors that supported it. The article also elucidates the social, economic and cultural composition of the mafia organisation as well as the anti-mafia movement and touches upon its development as a national movement, rather than configuring it as an issue concerning solely the island of Sicily. Finally, it depicts the peculiar characteristics of the anti-mafia movement and what differentiates it from social movements as traditionally considered, by contextualising the analysis within power relationships in Italy.
This paper explores twenty years of legislation to protect women and the progress made. It also examines the attitudes towards women and girls that have been fueled by the thirty-six year internal conflict (1960-1996).
The author, drawing on fieldwork in unofficial labour organizations, examines how, rather than stage risky collective protests, these groups quite often assist individuals to demand their rights by appealing to officials. She concludes that 'disguised collective action' can secure concessions for participants and enable activists to find 'a middle ground between challenging authorities and organizational survival'.
This supplement on Syria provides a time line and other helpful contextual information about the complex developments in Syria from 2011-15, as well as an analysis of the role of civic activism in rebel held territory. The issue includes a discussion of artistic creativity since 2011, stories of individual journalists opposing Assad or ISIS, of a doctor treating victims of chemical attack, a teacher under ISIS, and an article on the White Helmets.
See also: Abbas, Omar, 'Dr Jalal Nofal: Connecting Relief Work and Civil Activism in Syria', War Resisters’ International, 11 Nov, 2016
https://wri-irg.org/en/story/2016/dr-jalal-nofal-connecting-relief-work-and-civil-activism-syria
An account of the leftist political background of Dr Nofal, his nonviolent resistance (including arrests and imprisonment), and his medical initiatives as a psychiatrist in Damascus from 2011-14. He was smuggled out of Syria early in 2015, but continued from a border town in Turkey to broadcast, to offer training for social workers and support for refugees, and also to help social workers inside Syria.
By leading Pan African activist and close associate of Nkrumah. Chapter 5 covers the 1950 Positive Action campaign.
Reports on the wave of student protests across the country since the July 18 rally in front of the Democracy Monument. Focuses particularly on a protest on 19 August by thousands at Thammasat University in Bangkok (which has iconic significance in the history of Thai pro-democracy struggles), the largest of many student-led protests that day.
Analysis by the Guardian Middle East editor of Lebanese politics.
Issue on ‘Squatters’ covering London campaign starting in 1968, including extract from Kropotkin on ‘The expropriation of dwellings’.
Discusses early resistance in 19th and 20th centuries and contemporary campaigns against destruction of forests, dams, pollution and over-fishing of seas, and mining. Akula also describes Jharkand separatist ‘tribal’ struggle to own their historic land and promote sustainable use of resources.
Diary of a participant in this defiance of the US prohibition on taking supplies to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Report by a Vice-President of Endowment for Democracy covering the developments of Ukraine's demonstrations until the end of December 2014. It stresses the creative and disciplined popular organisation; the unwillingness to rely on politicians; the breadth of support not only in Kiev but in other cities of eastern Ukraine; how provocateurs have been kept out of Maidan and how violence was avoided when responding to brutal attempts to clear the square. Available on line: http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/euromaidan-ukraine%E2%80%99s-self-organizing-revolution
PowerPoint presentation where Margot Cohen briefly addresses which factors can explain institutional responses to gender-based violence; how state institutions have responded to femicide in Chile up until 2017, and what are the implications of these responses for reducing levels of femicide.
References to the Sebastian Acevedo Movement also occur in Inger Agger, Søren Buus Jensen, Trauma and Healing Under State Terrorism, London, Zed Books, 1996 , pp. 246 , who see it as ‘an expression both of psychological counter-strategies at the private and political level and of healing strategies at the societal level’ (p. 184) but do not describe its methodology. Vincent W. Lloyd, The Problem with Grace: Reconfiguring Political Theology, Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 2011 , pp. 256 , pp. 109-11, discusses its liturgical aspects in comparison with contemporary Critical Mass bicycle rides.
(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.
Puts the case, following the publication of the report of the New Ireland Forum, for an independent Northern Ireland
Presents an 'ideal type' of nonviolence (the power of good) which synthesizes the approaches developed by the Catholic Hildegard Goss-Mayr, the Hindu Gandhi and the atheist de Ligt. Attempts to describe the common core of the various traditions of nonviolence: the conception of how nonviolent action typically works. Differentiates between nonviolence as a pattern of interaction, a model of behaviour and a human potential. 'The power of good' chiefly has an impact through action by committed individuals, 'contagion' and the evolution of both in mass noncooperation.
A year after the eruption of the #MeToo movement, historian Mary Beard traces the roots of misogyny in the West to Athens and Rome and explores the relationships between women and power and how this intersects with issues of rape and consent.
Examination of the history of how the US Federal Government mistreated the First Nations since the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, brought right up to date, with an emphasis on the militancy of the 1970s and the subsequent improvements in the condition and role of Native Americans. The book ends with an account of the dramatic Standing Rock protest by a large gathering of different tribes over a proposed pipeline in 2016. This important history by a member of the Ojibwe, who is also a social anthropologist, appeared just after two Native American women were for the first time elected to Congress in 2018.
Conversation with Alfred Brownell, Liberian environmental lawyers recorded by Veronique Mistiaen. Brownell has been involved in a seven year campaign which succeeded in protecting half a million acres of Liberia's tropical rainforest from the Southeast Asia-based Golden Veroleum company, which had been granted the right by the government to clear and use the land to grow palm oil. He took up the cause of the indigenous community in Sinoe County whose forests and cultural sites were being destroyed by the company. The article outlines how the campaign succeeded and Brownell's wider role in creating the Alliance for Rural Democracy throughout Liberia to work for environmental justice. He had been forced by death threats to move with his family to the USA.