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In this special issue on race in the US, Michele Morris recounts how demographic changes across the US are challenging white Americans’ perception of their majority status. She also discusses attempts to re-create a narrative that could reflect more than white Christian ethnicity as the only identity framework of US history. Michael A. Fletcher reports the personal stories of people of colour who had suffered traumatic experiences of stop-and-search by police officers on the basis of their racial profile. Clint Smith examines two major and prestigious colleges that have experienced a recent surge in enrolment of black youth and the rise of new forms of Black activism. Finally, Maurice Bergers reports on the work by photographer Omar Victor Dopi on slave revolts, independence movements, social justice quests. The events represented range from 18th century’s Queen Nanny of the Maroons, known for her ability to lead Jamaican slaves to liberation from British colonialism, to 21st century’s 12 year-old Trayvon Martin, whose shooting by a white neighborhood watch volunteer inspired the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
(A Penguin Special and one in a series on Hong Kong)
The author charts the attitudes of the generation who grew up since 1997, arguing that they have a distinctive Hong Kong identity, detached from Britain's legacy and far from identifying with mainland China, but aware of pressure from Beijing. He follows the stories of 'activists turned politicians', 'artists resisting censorship' and. some connected with the world of high finance, making comparisons with other Asian countries he has covered as a journalist.
This paper argues for a conceptualisng denial of abortion as the patriarchal policing of women’s bodies and their sexuality. The authors briefly review international trends regarding abortion politics, including many thousands of abortion related deaths, injuries and loss of fertility, and then analyze women’s access to abortion in two countries, the United States and Bangladesh, which represent two very different contexts: the developed and developing world. They argue that abortion services are being constrained by misogynistic politics that deny women control over their bodies. Finally, the paper reviews recent international efforts to establish abortion rights in the context of human rights. In particular, a recent United Nation’s report describes moves to recriminalise both contraception and abortion in the U.S. and Europe as the deliberate denial of medically available and necessary services and hence a form of “torture.”
A ruling by South Korea’s Constitutional Court in April 2019, that the country’s abortion laws were unconstitutional, effectively decriminalised abortion. The court required the National Assembly to reform the law by December 2020.
See also https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47890065; https://time.com/5567300/south-korea-abortion-ban-ruling/ and https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/south-korea-court-strikes-down-six-decade-old-abortion-ban/2019/04/11/0200f028-5c43-11e9-842d-7d3ed7eb3957_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.66acd94bf340
The authors comment on the impressive revival of Black LivesMatter in May/June 2020, reforms to policing already agreed in some cities and the new prominence of the demand to ‘defund the police’. They also discuss the importance of combining a range of approaches and tactics to complement direct action: doing research; making the ‘invisible visible’; using symbolic ritual (for example turning the fence around the White House into a shrine); and encouraging artistic creativity to promote joy and healing.
Answers by range of peace activists to questions about the future of the movement, including whether it should focus on the arms race or more broadly on US foreign policy, its relationship to electoral politics, the role of civil disobedience and issues related to feminist separatism.
Feminist analysis of the conscientious objection movement in South Korea in which women activists challenge dominant militarized conception of masculinity.
Author was active in PD, but this nonetheless is a dispassionate and sometimes critical account of the movement, which had its origins among student activists at Queens University Belfast in 1968. Recounts internal debates and divisions and shows how PD moved from being a purely civil rights campaign to taking a radical socialist position, and campaigning for a workers’ republic in a re-united Ireland.
Story of the 'Feminist Five' who were jailed in 2015 for a protest against sexual harassment, and the art and activism of their supporters. The book also examines the official gender equality policy of the Communist Party since 1949, and the recent suppression of dissidence and bans on foreign support for NGOs.
See also ‘Talking policy: Leta Hong Fincher on feminism in China’, World Policy, 2 June 2017: https://worldpolicy.org/2017/06/02/talking-policy-leta-hong-fincher-on-feminism-in-china/
Leta Hong discusses her book Leftover Women: The Resurgence of gender Inequality in China and the development of feminism in China from the post- socialist era up to today.
To read the first-hand account on the arrest of one activist of the ‘Feminist Five’ and other initiatives to free them, see this comprehensive article https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/08/feminist-stickers-china-backash-women-activists
See also https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2093973/fight-against-gender-violence-goes-chinas-feminist-five and https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/02/people-week-feminist-five/
Following the #MeToo movement and #TimeIsUp campaign, Rottenberg argues that the current neoliberal context that reduces everything to market calculation requires that a new wave of feminism should reorient and reclaim itself as a social justice movement.
Describes the history of the atom in the US and the UK; the combination of civilian/military use and how people and movement developed an understanding of the risks associated with nuclear power since the 1960s.
The authors note that the Cameroon government had announced the goal of restoring 12 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 and had applied for support from the Bonn Challenge and AFR100 initiatives. They argue that women, who constitute over 60% of the rural workforce in Central Africa, have a crucial role to play, and examine some forms of restoration so far undertaken by women’s groups in Cameroon.
This introduction to a substantial report on the latest phase in Kyrgyz politics provides an analysis of the events of October 2020 to February 2021 against the background of the recent political past, including the legacy of the anti-Uzbek violence in 2010.
Scholarly critical biography drawing on 90 volumes of Gandhi’s writings, arguing Gandhi aspired to be a world saviour. Author comments on inaccuracies in Gandhi’s own account of the South African campaigns, and provides incisive analysis of Gandhi’s political role and campaigns in India.
Examines destalinization in Poland and why the Polish 1956 uprising avoided bloodshed, making comparisons with Hungary and its 1956 Revolution, see pp. 79-80 and 87-123. These events are set in the wider context of Soviet and bloc politics.
Similar material is contained in: Vladimir Ilic, Otpor - An Organization in Action, 2002 , pp. 54 .
Biography by British journalist. Covers the major protests of 2007 as well as 1988.
Documents from the soldiers’ resistance to the Lebanon War, the First Intifada and the Second Intifada.
Discusses community campaign in County Mayo on west coast of Ireland against a planned gas pipeline and refinery. The campaign involved fasting, blockades and civil disobedience by five men who defied compulsory purchase orders and went to jail. (See also Rossport 5 and Siggins below)
General analysis of impact of opencast (strip) mining which spread in Britain in the 1980s. Chapter 7 ‘Changing Patterns of Protest’ (pp. 167-206) looks at the collaboration between the National Union of Miners’ Support Groups and environmental groups to oppose mines creating pollution, and examines the turn from conventional protest to direct action.
Chapter 6, ‘Feminists fight back’ (pp.169-224) covers the protests in Britain against male violence, and also constructive organizational responses and the campaign for legal change and challenges to prevailing attitudes.
Ockey notes that the Covid pandemic interrupted student-led protests for constitutional reform. When they resumed students demanded not only constitutional amendments already being considered by parliament, but the resignation of the prime minister, dissolution of parliament and reform of the monarchy. He notes fears of violence between students and royalists or security forces.