No name
Revisionary analysis of Gandhi’s 608 day campaign to secure right of untouchables to use road by a Brahmin temple, challenging claims in earlier accounts that a solution was reached because the Brahmins were ‘converted’. The author criticises both Gandhi’s belief that self-imposed suffering can convert the opponent and his leadership of this campaign.
The author argues that the historical preoccupation with the anti-apartheid struggle, which has also focused on the role of men as agents of change, has obscured both the role of women from all races and classes who joined in the national struggle, and women’s campaigning for their own rights. She uses oral histories, South African newspaper reports and materials from organisations such as the Black Sash to show women’s influence on legislation passed under and immediately after apartheid. She also notes how women created their own political spaces and, at times, transcended race and class divides.
The authors examine how far peace movements can stop wars, summarizing a number of attempts to do so in the past – for example in the 1905 conflict between Norway and Sweden – as well as more recent better known movements: against the Vietnam War, and against the Iraq wars of both 1991 and 2003. Their case studies include the movement to resist US support for the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s, and the Women in White in Liberia 2002-2003.
Roberts discusses the 2011 uprisings in their broader historical context of the breakdown of empires and problems of creating order, and then summarizes the key events in the Arab Spring, with a particular emphasis on the role of civil resistance.
Based on fieldwork since 1994 on local instances of rights-based opposition. Chapter 4, ‘Tactical Escalation’, pp. 67-94, is especially rich in examples
See also Daniel Conway, Contesting the Masculine State: White Male War Resisters in Apartheid South Africa, In Jane L. Parpart, Marysia Zalewski, Rethinking the Man Question: Sex, Gender and Violence in International Relations, London, Zed Books, 2008 , pp. 240 , pp. 127-142 .
Arrarte is the most famous of the Uruguayan soldiers who refused to torture, and served a total of 10 years in prison for his conscience. After the dictatorship, he went on to become a general and an active member of Amnesty International.
Examines the militant American Indian Movement (AIM). from the seizure of Alcatraz in 1969 to Wounded Knee in 1973, assessing failures as well as successes.
Story of the successful ten-year struggle of French farmers in Larzac to protect their land from military encroachment. The Gandhian pacifists at the Community of the Arch, and industrial and professional unions played a role in the struggle. An earlier account is: Roger Rawlinson, Larzac: A Victory for Nonviolence, London, Quaker Peace and Service, 1983 , pp. 43 . See also: Roger Rawlinson, The battle of Larzac, In A. Paul Hare, Herbert H. Blumberg, Liberation without Violence: A Third Party Approach (A. 5. Nonviolent Intervention and Accompaniment) London, Rex Collings, 1977 , pp. 58-72
Examines struggle for gay rights in USA from 1950s to early 1970s, charting the different political and cultural issues and types of campaigning and the contradictions between political reformism and radical hippy culture. Part III covers the Lesbian Feminist Movement.
Report monitoring the political participation of women in Honduras, and investigating the causes and implications of women’s absence from institutions and public decision-making processes.
After the explosion of the anti-SARS protests, this analysis argues that the way the Nigerian government responds to these emphatic demands for government accountability and an end to police violence will influence similar struggles across much of Africa, and impact especially on the young.
See also: https://urbanviolence.org/why-nigerias-youth-are-protesting-for-police-reform/
Official website of ‘Back From the Brink’, a grassroots movement that aims to involve local councils and Members of Congress in the U.S. and pressure them to change U.S. nuclear policies. Their demands are:
- Renounce ‘first use’ option;
- End the sole presidential authority to launch a nuclear attack;
- Take U.S. nuclear weapons off ‘hair-trigger’ alert;
- Cancel U.S. plan to replace its entire nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons;
- Pursue total abolition.
See also http://www.nuclearban.us/back-from-the-brink-a-call-to-prevent-nuclear-war/ and https://www.wagingpeace.org/.
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.
(published in the USA as Rosa Parks, New York, Viking, 2000)
Parks is famous for her role in sparking the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, but had a long history of engaging in the struggle for civil rights.
Memoir by central (but increasingly controversial) figure in Solidarity.
Narratives based on interviews with 12 Papuans.