No name

Report of conference of that title bringing together nonviolent activists from different campaigns and different generations.

Interview with Fatima Sadiqi, professor of Linguistics and Gender Studies, on the discourse around feminism, Islam, gender equality, social justice and democracy in Morocco.

The author’s research spans the period 1998 -2012 to chart the impact of the economic reforms on rural women drawn into urban areas, often employed in domestic service or in hotels and office cleaning. She notes how this migration of cheap and flexible labour from the countryside has underpinned high levels of urban consumption, and both helped to empower the women migrants and to perpetuate gendered forms of difference and inequality.

See also: Chang, Leslie T., Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, New York, Penguin Random House, 2009, pp. 448 (pb).

Chang, who was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal inside China, revealed the lives of migrant women working on assembly lines in an industrial city, primarily by focusing on the experiences of two young women for three years.  Her book which won awards in the USA, threw light on a previously unknown area, and illustrated the very mixed impact of the economic reforms and migration from the countryside on women’s opportunities.

Scholarly, interdisciplinary analysis of the Assad regime and of the first two years of the uprising. The book explores the nature of the uprising, reasons for the lack of success, and why it turned into an increasingly sectarian civil war.

See also: Hinnenbusch, Raymond, Omar Imady and Tina Zintl, 'Civil Resistance in the Syrian Uprising: From Peaceful Protest to Sectarian Civil War', in Adam Roberts, Michael J. Willis, Rory McCarthy and Timothy Garton Ash, eds. Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring  (E.V.B.a.), pp. 223-47.

An overview with a focus on the role, possibilities and limitations of civil resistance in the specific context of the Assad regime, and the realities of the civil war from 2012 and the rise of ISIS.

Critical assessment of western support for civil society groups, noting that it can create a backlash and needs to be considered in the historical, social and cultural context of the country involved. Also makes comparisons with other post-Soviet states.

Firsthand account from Irish libertarian socialist, looking beyond parties and discussing agrarian and urban social struggles.

Covers the London Squatters Campaign 1968-71, but notes background of the mass movement by homeless people in Britain at the end of the Second World War to occupy military bases, and later luxury flats, in 1945-46.

Traces the growth of disillusionment with the war amongst American GIs and the increasingly militant opposition within the US forces. Extracts published as pamphlet ‘GI Revolts: The Breakdown of the US Army in Vietnam’, available online: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/richard-boyle-gi-revolts-the-breakdown-of-the-u-s-army-in-vietnam

Includes chapters on political unionism, the township revolts, student politics (school and university). Earlier version of the much-cited article  Mark Swilling, The United Democratic Front and the township revolt, Durban, South Africa, South African History Archives (SAHA), 1987 , pp. 23 , reprinted here on pp. 90-113, are available online.

Examines scale of crisis created in Greece by austerity programme and the growing movement Solidarity for All (promoted by the left coalition Syriza) creating support networks supplying food, health, education, cultural activity and legal advice, and setting up informal exchanges of goods and services.