Social Movements
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The Guy in the Green Truck
John St. Amand – A Biography
James N. McCrorie
Few mature men and women choose to abandon secure employment with handsome health and retirement benefits for a cause and an uncertain future. This biographical memoir is about a man who did just this, abandoning a promising career as a sociologist at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, for the turbulent life of union organizer in Nova Scotia. In one of his first organizing campaigns, John St. Amand crisscrossed industrial Cape Breton signing up workers to the new Canadian Miner’s Union… (more information)
@ is for Activism
Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture
Joss Hands
@ is for Activism examines the transformation of politics through digital media, including digital television, online social networking and mobile computing. Joss Hands maps out how political relationships have been reconfigured and new modes of cooperation, deliberation and representation have emerged. This analysis is applied to the organisation and practice of alternative politics, showing how they have developed and embraced the new political and technological environment. Hands offers… (more information)
Activism that Works
Edited by Avery Calhoun, Elizabeth Whitmore, Maureen Wilson
How can we understand “success” in relation to social justice and environmental activism? How do activists themselves determine or define their effectiveness? Activism That Works shares the stories of eight diverse social justice movements, from Oxfam Canada, to the Calgary Raging Grannies, to the Youth Project of Halifax, as they contemplate their own successes. What we discover is that success is not measured only in large-scale social reform but is also found in moments of connection… (more information)
Activist’s Handbook
Aidan Ricketts
’The Activists’ Handbook’ is a powerful guide to grassroots activism. A priceless resource for everyone ready to make a difference, environmental activist Aidan Ricketts offers a step-by-step handbook for citizens eager to start or get involved in grass-roots movements and beyond. Providing all essential practical tools, methods and strategies needed for a successful campaign and extensively discussing legal and ethical issues, this book empowers its readers to effectively… (more information)
Alternative Budgets
Budgeting as if People Mattered
John Loxley
Alternative budgets are becoming an increasingly popular form of political action both in Canada and internationally. They are a means of advancing an alternative social and economic perspective to the neo-conservative agenda of slashing social services, reducing the role of the government and cutting taxes for the rich, all in the name of “necessity.” Alternative budgets demonstrate that there really are more enlightened alternatives which are, at the same time, fiscally responsible… (more information)
Another World is Possible
Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum
Edited by William Fisher, Thomas Ponniah
The collection explains the history and significance of the World Social Forum, held each year in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and brings together the most important themes and voices expressed by the 30,000 members of citizens’ movements who take part. Their power emerges from the range of disparate activists and organizations — indigenous groups, trade unions, environmentalists, women’s organizations, church groups, students — that make up the global justice movement. This book… (more information)
Between Hope and Despair
Women Learning Politics
Donna M. Chovanec
This book is an empirical account of political learning in social movements based on a study of a women’s movement in Arica, Chile. In the first part of the book the author tells the story of how the women of Arica organized to oppose the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. This gripping narrative, told through the women’s own words and experiences, paints a graphic picture of their courage and determination. The second part focuses on the political learning and educational processes… (more information)
Broke but Unbroken
Grassroots Social Movements and Their Radical Solutions to Poverty
Augusta Dwyer
In Broke but Unbroken, journalist Augusta Dwyer takes us on an inspiring journey through the slums and villages of Brazil, Indonesia, India and Argentina as she meets with organizers from some of the most successful grassroots social movements struggling against poverty. These organizers are not representatives from NGOs or aid organizations based in developed nations but the poor themselves — people who know intimately the reality of struggling for land, food, housing and the right… (more information)
Committing Theatre
Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada
Alan Filewod
Committing Theatre offers the first full-length historical study of political intervention theatre and theatrical spectatorship in English Canada. Building on twenty years of research and engagement in the field, this book’s historical narrative frames close-up examples of how theatre artists have intervened in and engaged with political struggle from the mid-19th century to the present. Lumber-camp mock trials, Mayday parades and street protests, the Workers Theatre Movement, agitprop… (more information)
Community Organizing
A Holistic Approach
Joan Kuyek
“History is full of stories of the oppressed rebelling against the oppressor, only to reinstate an equally oppressive system. What we learn from oppression is how to oppress. If we want a truly transformative politics, then we must take up methods that embody the kind of world we want to create; we have to change deeply embedded beliefs and behaviours.” (from the Introduction) In this engaging and passionate book, long-time community organizer Joan Kuyek offers important insights… (more information)
Cultivating Utopia
Organic Farmers in a Conventional Landscape
Kregg Hetherington
This study begins with the questions “what draws people to become organic farmers?” and “why do so many leave farming in short order?” Organic farmers speak of a “wake-up call” or a moment, usually several years after buying and moving onto a farm, in which they question what they are doing and why. By most reports, most organic farmers then quit the field, or at least quit trying to farm commercially. The book examines what causes this wake-up call. One central… (more information)
Dark Matter
Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise
Gregory Sholette
Art is big business, with some artists able to command huge sums of money for their works, while the vast majority are ignored or dismissed by critics. This book shows that these marginalised artists, the ‘dark matter’ of the art world, are essential to the survival of the mainstream and that they frequently organize in opposition to it. Gregory Sholette, a politically engaged artist, argues that imagination and creativity in the art world originate thrive in the non-commercial sector… (more information)
Economic Democracy
The Working Class Alternative to Capitalism
Allan Engler
Identifying capitalism as a system of socialized labour, privately owned capitalist collectives (corporations) and workplace (dictatorships), this book proposes economic democracy as an alternative form of organization. Unlike the capitalist system, which centralizes power with a small elite, economic democracy entitles everyone to a voice and equal vote in their communities’ economic and political decisions. Workplace and community democracy will replace capitalist (corporate) dictatorship… (more information)
Edible Action
Food Activism and Alternative Economics
Sally Miller
Hunger is up, obesity is up, food-borne illness is up, farms are lost to debt and despair; the food system fails growing numbers of people across the world every day. Yet if we adjust our lens, we see ubiquitous commitments to change: food movements and enterprises dedicated to making the world a better place to eat and to live. Food initiatives—from farmers’ markets to fair trade coffee—offer a pattern of powerful alternatives to conventional food economics, which benefit only… (more information)
From Clients to Citizens
Communities Changing the Course of Their Own Development
Edited by Gordon Cunningham, Alison Mathie
Communities worldwide act on their own initiative, drawing on their own resources of leadership and solidarity and, in spite of poverty, to achieve their own goals. Development practitioners have too often viewed poor communities as helpless and disadvantaged and have encouraged their dependency. Yet if instead communities are recognized as having social and cultural as well as material assets, then their capacity to negotiate external assistance on their own terms will be strengthened. &ldquo… (more information)
Grassroots Leaders Building Skills
The Henson College Certificate in Community Development
Anne Bishop
“Empowerment is the word. I’ve been forced to break out of my own circle and see more. I have a direction now in my community, more involvement in activism.”—student evaluating the Henson College Certificate in Community Development. This course was designed to sharpen social analysis and develop skills in leaders of low-income and marginalized communities in Nova Scotia. Taught by two experienced community workers and funded by two major Canadian foundations, it graduated… (more information)
Identity, Place, Knowledge
Social Movements, Contesting Globalization
Janet M. Conway
Grassroots organizations have long been involved in the education and mobilization of local populations. Through the development of coalition formation, broad-based campaign-organizing and popular and activist education, information and experiences are shared amongst activists and interested individuals. Janet M. Conway looks at how social justice organizations struggle to build momentum when many of the groups are disparate and the development of ideas are often articulated through actions. Conway… (more information)
Illusion or Opportunity
Civil Society and the Quest for Social Change
Henry Veltmeyer
The failure of development strategies in the past few decades has given rise to a worldwide movement in the direction of “another development.” This is a form of development that is social as well as economic, oriented towards people’s basic needs, people-centred and initiated from below. It is human in scale and form, equitable and socially more inclusive, capacitating and empowering of the poor, sustainable in terms of both the environment and livelihoods, participatory and community… (more information)
Keeping the Land
Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Reconciliation and Canadian Law
Rachel Ariss
When the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug’s traditional territory was threatened by mining explora- tion in 2006, they followed their traditional duty to protect the land and asked the mining exploration company, Platinex, to leave. Platinex left — and then sued the remote First Nation for $10 billion. The ensuing legal dispute lasted two years and eventually resulted in the jailing of community lead- ers. Ariss argues that though this jailing was extraordinarily punitive and is indicative… (more information)
La Vía Campesina
Globalization and the Power of Peasants
Annette Aurélie Desmarais
In 1993, 46 farm leaders from various countries met in Mons, Belgium, determined to develop a strategy to challenge the devastation caused to their communities by a neoliberal international economic agenda. Over the next decade they and millions of peasants and small-scale farmers around the world used La Vía Campesina to forge a powerful and radical force of opposition. Where did they find the capacity and strength to challenge multinational agribusiness corporations and international institutions… (more information)
Life without Money
Building Fair and Sustainable Economies
Edited by Anitra Nelson, Frans Timmerman
The money-based global economy is failing. The credit crunch undermined capitalism’s ability to ensure rising incomes and prosperity while market-led attempts to combat climate change are fought tooth and nail by business as environmental crises continue. We urgently need to combat those who say ‘there is no alternative’ to the current system, but what would an alternative look like? The contributors to Life Without Money argue that it is time radical, non-market models were… (more information)
Maldevelopment
Anatomy of a Global Failure, 2nd edition
Samir Amin
In this updated edition of his 1990 book Samir Amin explains with great clarity the complex changes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including the transformations in Eastern Europe and in the world economy, the growth of capitalism in China and, despite the West riding on the crest of new technologies, its materialist goals being increasingly questioned by new social movements including the Greens. In this context, Amin examines the failure of development from a political stand-point… (more information)
Mobilizations, Protests and Engagements
Canadian Perspectives on Social Movements
Marie Hammond-Callaghan, Matthew Hayday
This book addresses many questions in evaluating social movements and is the first in a series being developed by The Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University. What lessons can we learn from protest movements and social mobilizations of the past? Do newer movements differ from those of the past in process or outcomes? How have globalization and international events changed and shaped the way Canadian social movements operate? How effective are (and have been) social movements as agents… (more information)
Muriel Duckworth
A Very Active Pacifist
Marion Douglas Kerans
”Muriel is an extraordinary woman whose life and work has enriched many–through her faith and her practice. A feminist, a pacifist and a compassionate Canadian, her life is an example of what love and selfless intelligence can do.”–Ursula M. Franklin C.C. FRSC ”Muriel Duckworth inspires me. She is living, walking proof that age need not destroy one’s commitment to progressive social ideals. Muriel is a true humanitarian who freely gives herself to others regardless… (more information)
Paved with Good Intentions
Canada’s Development NGOs on the Road from Idealism to Imperialism
Nik Barry-Shaw, Dru Oja Jay
“NGOs are as Canadian as hockey,” declared a 1988 Parliamentary report. Few institutions epitomize the foundational Canadian myth of international benevolence like the non-governmental organization devoted to development abroad. This book raises important questions about these organizations and their development projects: Just how “non-governmental” are organizations that get most of their funding from government agencies? What impact do these funding ties have on NGOs… (more information)
Penny Red
Notes From the New Age of Dissent
Laurie Penny
In the space of a year, Laurie Penny has become one of the most prominent voices of the new left. This book brings together her diverse writings, showing what it is to be young, angry and progressive in the face of an increasingly violent and oppressive UK government. Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent collects Penny’s writings on youth politics, resistance, feminism and culture. Her journalism is a unique blend of persuasive analysis, captivating interviews and first-hand… (more information)
Perils and Possibilities
Social Activism and the Law
Byron Sheldrick
This book argues that law is a political resource that carries with it both opportunities and dangers for social activists. As such, activist groups must carefully navigate the contradictions within law to evaluate the strategic and tactical issues raised by law and legal institutions. Perils and Possibilities provides a guide to these issues and explores the types of questions activist groups need to ask themselves before embarking on a campaign of legal mobilization. In addition to a brief exploration… (more information)
Playing Left Wing
From Rink Rat to Student Radical
Yves Engler
What makes a student radical? Can students in the 21st century play a part in changing the world? What were those troublemakers thinking when they blocked former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking at Concordia University in Montreal? Playing Left Wing answers these and other questions by telling the story of how a former junior hockey player became media spokesperson for the “most radical” university students in Canada. An entertaining read, Playing Left Wing is… (more information)
Poverty, Regulation & Social Justice
Readings on the Criminalization of Poverty
Edited by Diane Crocker, Val Marie Johnson
Emerging from a public colloquium on the criminalization of poverty, this volume critically interrogates how state and private practices have increasingly come to over-regulate people with severely limited economic resources, and understands this regulation as part of the dynamics of liberal capitalism. Exploring issues such as homelessness, social assistance and single mothers, and written from a diversity of perspectives from academics to frontline workers, policy-makers and those affected first… (more information)
Protest and Globalisation
Prospects for Transnational Solidarity
Edited by James Goodman
Protest and Globalisation describes the formation of transnational strategies, particularly between “First” and “Third” worlds, by developing theoretical perspectives and examining practical issues encountered by movements that challenge corporate globalisation. In this way, the authors provide a deeper understanding of global protest movements and suggest models for these transnational movements. (more information)
Raise Shit!
Social Action Saving Lives
Susan C. Boyd, Donald MacPherson, Bud Osborn
This book tells a story about community activism in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side (DTES) that culmi-nated in a social justice movement to open the first official safe injection site. This story is unique: it is told from the point of view of drug users — those most affected by drug policy, political decisions and policing. It provides a montage of poetry, photos, early Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) meetings, journal entries from the Back Alley, the “unofficial&rdquo… (more information)
Re:Imagining Change
How to Use Story-based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements, and Change the World
Doyle Canning, Patrick Reinsborough
Re:Imagining Change provides resources, theory, hands-on tools and illuminating case studies for the next generation of innovative change makers. This unique book explores how culture, media, memes, and narrative intertwine with social change strategies, and offers practical methods to amplify progressive causes in the popular culture. Re:Imagining Change is an inspirational inside look at the trailblazing methodology developed by the non-profit strategy and training organization, smartMeme… (more information)
RESIST!
A Grassroots Collection of Stories, Poetry, Photos and Analysis from the FTAA Protests in Québec City and Beyond
Edited by Jen Chang, Steve Daniels, Darryl Leroux, Bethany Or, Eloginy Tharmendran, Emmie Tsumura
In late April, tens of thousands of people gathered to protest at the Second People’s Summit of the Americas (the FTAA Summit). RESIST! is a collection of young peoples’ experiences from Quebec City. Surprising in their honesty, these accounts, including poems, photos and essays, look at what happened during the FTAA weekend. The contributors seek answers to explain the treatment of the protesters, marvel at the strength of character of those that they encountered, and celebrate many… (more information)
Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada
Edited by Stephanie Ross, Larry Savage
Though the Canadian labour movement’s postwar political, economic and social achievements may have seemed like irrevocable contributions to human progress, they have proven to be anything but. Since the mid-1970s, labour’s political influence and capacity to defend, let alone extend, these gains has been seriously undermined by the strategies of both capitalist interests and the neoliberal state. Electoral de-alignment and the decline of class-based voting, bursts of unsustained extra… (more information)
Sociology for Changing the World
Social Movements/Social Research
Edited by Caelie Frampton, Gary Kinsman, Andrew Thompson, Kate Tilleczek
This book for activists and researchers on building connections between social movements and social research sets out practical ways activists can map the social relations of struggle they are engaged in and produce knowledge for more effective forms of activism for changing the world. Grounded in political activist ethnography, this work does not see social movements as “objects” to be studied from the outside. Rather they are to be analyzed from the standpoint of insiders’ knowledge… (more information)
Solidarity
Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism
David Featherstone
In Solidarity, David Featherstone addresses a necessary and timely topic. Despite the frequency with which the word ‘solidarity’ is invoked, it has in fact rarely been the subject of rigorous analysis. Instead, the forms that solidarities take are frequently taken as given. This book redresses this situation by drawing on an innovative combination of archival research, oral histories and first-hand participant observation with political movements. Throughout, Featherstone invokes a… (more information)
Something’s Wrong Somewhere
Globalization, Community and the Moral Economy of the Farm Crisis
Christopher Lind
“Recalling the fascinating history of rural protests in seventeenth to nineteenth century England, (Lind) argues that today’s crisis has as much to do with morals and ethics as with economics.”–Kim Cariou, People’s Voice (more information)
The 21st Century Motherhood Movement
Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change the World and How to Do It
Edited by Randle W. Nelsen, Andrea O’Reilly
This anthology, the first on the 21st century motherhood movement, includes seven sections: Becoming a Mother; Maternal Identities; Maternal Advocacy; Maternal Activism; Violence, Militarism, War and Peace; Social Change and Social Justice; Writing/Researching/Performing Motherhood—and features more than eighty motherhood organizations from around the globe. Each chapter discusses the context, history, mandate of the organization and examines the organization’s activities, challenges… (more information)
The Global Women’s Movement
Origins, Issues and Strategies
Peggy Antrobus
The spread and consolidation of the women’s movement in North and South over the past 30 years looks set to shape the course of social progress over the next generation. The author draws on her long experience of feminist activism to set women’s movements in their changing national and global context. Her analysis will be an invaluable aid to reflection and action for the next generation of women as they carry through the unfinished business of women’s emancipation. (more information)
The People’s Co-op
The Life and Times of a North End Institution
Nancy Kardash, Jim Mochoruk
Located in the heart of Winnipeg’s Northend, the most class-conscious and ethnically diverse part of the city, the People’s Co-op was always a different kind of institution. Founded and then successfully run for over sixty years by members of Winnipeg’s vibrant left-wing Eastern-European community, this co-op mixed Marx, milk and the masses into a heady brew of social activism and co-operative enterprise. Beginning with a small coal and fuel yard in 1928-and a much larger dream… (more information)
The Porto Alegre Experiment
Learning Lessons for Better Democracy
Marion Gret, Yves Sintomer
Porto Alegre presents an apparent alternative to the world. With its experiment in participative budgetmaking over the past decade, this city has institutionalised the direct democratic involvement, locality by locality, of ordinary citizens in deciding spending priorities. The Porto Alegre Experiment gives a down to earth description of the practice of democratic innovation while asking the difficult questions. Can local participation in public management really strengthen its efficiency? Is… (more information)
Transforming Communities
William L. Luttrell
An extraordinary exploration of the dangers, and possibilities, facing human communities today, Transforming Communities rejects the current myth that capitalism, led by global corporations, is providing the solutions we require to survive and prosper in the decades ahead. Quite a different path is offered to us by Mother Earth, Dr. Luttrell suggests, and it is the best hope for life on this planet, our own lives included. The book is an effort to outline the direction this path would take us, and… (more information)
Transforming Ourselves/Transforming the World
An Open Conspiracy for Social Change
Brian K. Murphy
We live in an age where unprecedented numbers of people have joined organizations and involved themselves in social action. Yet many of us are pessimistic when confronted by the powerful forces of big corporations and big government. This book is for all those community workers, adult educators, and social activists of every kind who want to overcome pessimism and play a part in changing society in the direction of peace, justice and dignity for all human beings. Murphy explains the social and personal… (more information)
Victim No More
Women’s Resistance to Law, Culture and Power
Edited by Ellen Faulkner, Gayle MacDonald
This book challenges the idea that women are simply victims. It celebrates women’s resistance. It explores the moments beyond victimization. It argues that women do not stay crushed and broken, but move on, build and grow. The contributors to this edited edition celebrate the various forms of resistance: political resistance at both the collective and individual levels, legal resistance and resistance to cultural forms and labels. The editors argue that “Women-as-victim is not an emancipatory… (more information)
Viva
Community Arts and Popular Education in the Americas
Deborah Barndt
With examples from community arts projects in five countries, this collection will inform and inspire students, artists, and activists. ¡VIVA! is the product of a five-year transnational research project that integrates place, politics, passion, and praxis. Learn from Central America: Kuna children’s art workshops, a community television station in Nicaragua, a cultural marketplace in Guadalajara, Mexico, community mural production in Chiapas; and from North America: arts education… (more information)
Whose Streets?
The Toronto G20 and the Challenges of Summit Protest
Edited by Tom Malleson, David Wachsmuth
In June 2010 activists opposing the G20 meeting held in Toronto were greeted with arbitrary state violence on a scale never before seen in Canada. Whose Streets? is a combination of testimonials from the front lines and analyses of the broader context, an account that both reflects critically on what occurred in Toronto and looks ahead to further building our capacity for resistance. Featuring reflections from activists who helped organize the mobilizations, demonstrators and passersby… (more information)
Women, Gender and Development Reader
2nd edition
Edited by Lynne Duggan, Laurie Nisonoff, Nalini Visvanathan, Nan Wiegersma
Third World women were long the undervalued and ignored actors in the development process but are now recognized as playing a critical role. This book is a comprehensive reader presenting the best of the now vast body of literature that has grown up alongside this acknowledgement. Divided into five parts, this book incorporates readings from the leading experts and authorities in each field. The first part acts as an introduction to the field, examining the key theoretical debates and discourses… (more information)
Zapatistas
Rebellion from the Grassroots to the Global
Alex Khasnabish
In 1994 a guerilla army of Indigenous Mayan peasants in Southeast Mexico emerged and declared ‘Enough!’ to 500 years of colonialism, racism, exploitation, oppression and genocide. The effects of the Zapatista uprising were profound and would be felt beyond the borders of Mexico. At a time when state-sponsored socialism had all but vanished and other elements of the left appeared defeated in the face of neoliberalism’s ascendancy, the Zapatista uprising sparked a powerful new wave… (more information)