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Volpi explores the advantages and disadvantages of leaderless mass movements such as the Hirak. Their ability to challenge the 'pseudodemocratic' mechanisms used by authoritarian elites is a strong point, but a key weakness is inability to create alternative institutional approaches. He also argues that the December 2019 election ensured the ruling elite remained in power, but undermined their legitimacy.
Combines statistical analysis with case studies of unarmed resistance to argue that since 1900 nonviolent resistance campaigns have been strategically more effective than violent campaigns. Also analyses factors that promote success or failure of nonviolent campaigns. An earlier version of their overall argument was published as Erica Chenoweth, Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, 2008 , pp. 7-44 , including useful case studies of East Timor, the Philippines and Burma 1988-1990.
This study, whilst explaining the historical and political context of the civil resistance, focuses primarily on the strategy, institutions and weaknesses of the nonviolent struggle.
Also Howard Clark, Kosovo: Civil Resistance in Defence of the Nation – 1990s, In Maciej J. Bartkowski, Recovering Nonviolent History: Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles (A. 1.b. Strategic Theory, Dynamics, Methods and Movements) Boulder CO, Lynne Rienner, 2013 , pp. 279-296 , pp. 279-96, and Howard Clark, The Limits of Prudence: Civil Resistance in Kosovo, 1990-98, In Timothy Garton Ash, Adam Roberts, Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present (A. 1.b. Strategic Theory, Dynamics, Methods and Movements) Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009 , pp. 277-293 , pp. 277-94.
Analyses rise of nationalist movements, how the regimes in newly independent Croatia (1991) and Slovakia (1992) promoted nationalism and the subsequent decline of nationalism and rise of democratic civil society and opposition movements.
In addition to detailed analysis of Argentine, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, has comparative discussion with European dictatorships – Greece, Portugal, and Spain.
Well researched account of MST.
Focus on the presidents and their relationship with the Vietnam Anti-War Movements between 1961 and 1975.
Useful and well referenced analysis of student phase of protests, in context of earlier student protests in 1997 and wider national demonstrations in 2013.
A front-line account of the police killings and the Black, young activism that sparked the birth of the racial justice movement Black Lives Matter. Lowery, a Washington Post reporter, provides the narration of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, and the weeks of protests and rioting that broke out in the aftermath. He also challenges readers with the question of why so little progress has been made on the racial front during Barack Obama’s presidency, despite its promise and potential for such a transformative advancement.
Wesley Lowery became renowned, together with other of his colleagues at The Washington Post, for establishing an informal database that collects information about the shooting of Black people by police officers in 2014 and 2015, in the absence of a comprehensive federal government database.
Lowery, Wesley, 'The Birth of a Movement', Guardian (17 Jan 2017), pp. 23-25.
This Guardian 'Long Read' article is an adapted extract from Lowery's book They Can't Kill Us All, London, Penguin, 2017. The article is available (free) at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/17/black-lives-matter-birth-of-a-movement
Since the Supreme Court seems likely to reverse Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion decision, American debate appears fixated on clashing rights. This work draws attention to an entirely different and unexpected shift in the terms of debate: instead of simply championing their own rights, those on opposing sides debated about the policy costs and benefits of abortion vs. the laws restricting it. This mostly unrecognized development deepened polarization. Whilst maintaining their constitutional demands, pro-choice and pro-life advocates increasingly disagreed about the basic facts. Drawing on unexplored records and interviews with key participants, Ziegler challenges the view that the Supreme Court is primarily responsible for the escalation of the conflict and charts social-movements divides and crucial legal strategies.
Laffin, a Plowshares activist and member of the radical Catholic Worker organization, gave this talk to 100 supporters of the seven protesters on trial that week for entering the Kings Bay naval submarine base in Georgia in 2018 and symbolically damaging weapons systems. They were found guilty of conspiracy, damaging government property and trespassing. The first Plowshares protest in 1980 involved eight Catholics trespassing on the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in the King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and taking action that became characteristic of later protests: they damaged nuclear warhead cones and poured blood on files, before publicly announcing their actions and being arrested. Laffin notes that Plowshares (drawing on the biblical injunction 'beat your swords into plowshares') grew out of the Catholic protests at draft offices during the Vietnam War, when draft records were destroyed. The Berrigan brothers took part in both.
See also: Cohen-Joppa, Jack, ‘They Came to Stop a Crime: The Trial of the Kingsbay Plowshares 7’, Peace News, 2636-2637, Dec. 2019-Jan. 2020, p.7.
(Article first published on 10 Nov. 2019, on Beyond Nuclear International: beyondnuclearinternational.org)
The article provides brief background on Plowshares and outlines the testimony by defendants during their trial. It also records the jury decision to convict each of the seven on four counts: trespass, destruction of government property, ‘depredation’ of government property on a military installation; and conspiracy to commit these illegal acts.
Account of the emergence of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War and the Committee of 100 in Britain. Describes the main actions and internal debates within the movement.
Examines role of women’s organizations in civil wars in former Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka.
Discusses competing theoretical perspectives on the causes of the conflict and the political parties and paramilitaries involved. Records the various reforms and constitutional initiatives from the 1970s to the 1990s to find a settlement which culminated in the Good Friday Agreement, the setting up of a power-sharing Executive and Assembly, and finally, following the suspension of the Assembly between 2002 and 2007, the agreement between the DUP and Sinn Fein to co-operate in a power-sharing government.
Explores women’s fight against oil extraction in the Bolivian Tariquía Reserve and the threat against forms of self-governance, of dispossession from the land and the environment this constitutes. The authors bring into the analysis the false division between the public and the private sphere. The threat of dispossession, in fact, is projected in daily life, as when women have to endure divisions within their families, occurrence that is considered a form of private and public violence.
Studies how the focal points of resistance by prisoners, hunger strikes, are made possible by longer term lower key strategies. These included encouraging forms of communication between prisoners, development of political education, and by less dramatic acts of ‘everyday’ noncooperation, for example with strip searches or some prison routines. The article is based on interviews with former Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank and some interviews with lawyers and NGOs supporting prisoners.
In this interview Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN Special Envoy on Climate Change, talks about the Mary Robinson Foundation-Climate Justice. She discusses how climate change disproportionately affects women, especially through undermining food security, and notes that many women are farmers in developing countries.
See also: Editorial spotlight: Climate action with women, UN Women, 13 September 2019.
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2019/9/spotlight-climate-action-with-women
Link to women-led initiatives in Bolivia, the Caribbean and Cambogia to tackle climate change.
See also: Empowering women on the frontlines of climate change, UN Environment Programme, 8 March 2019.
https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/empowering-women-frontlines-climate-change
Brief introduction to “Promoting Gender-Responsive Approaches to Natural Resource Management for Peace”, a Sudanese project implemented by UN Environment, UN Women and the United Nations Development Programme.
Article discussing Kyrgyz protests in 2019 against migrant Chinese workers (both illegal and legal), in the context of alarm about Chinese government treatment of ethnic Kyrgyz inside China. The author considers how far fears of large numbers of migrants could be substantiated and what the relationship was between protesters and state bodies.
Sympathetic, but not uncritical, assessment of Gandhi’s style of politics, his conflicts with the Raj and opposition groups and critics within India, and his impact on later movements. The author studied ‘subaltern’ movements in India for many years before engaging with Gandhi.
based on interviews with 60 people and includes photos and map of Belgrade.