Edited by Wende Marshall and Matt Meyer
Daraja Press
3/4/2023, paperback
SKU: 9781988832999
The volume includes two sections exploring nonviolence in the long Black freedom struggle within the US. From Ella Baker to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer, from Vincent Harding and Grace Lee Boggs to Colin Kaepernick, the two sections on the Black liberation movement highlight the theory of nonviolence in direct and indirect ways and foreground the relevance of these historic texts for the present moment of political uprisings on both the left and the right. Black strategies for survival and power are analyzed in terms of the ongoing US economic and epidemiological crises as well as the global climate crisis and ecological collapse.
A section on revolutionary nonviolence in Africa presents a previously unpublished piece on the role of armed struggle by Franz Fanon, as well as essays by Amilcar Cabral, Barbara Deming, Graca Machel, Kenneth Kaunda, and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge This section clearly contextualizes the continent's anti-colonial struggles with the practical thinking about military and unarmed tactics which those movements faced over the course of a half-century.
The section on nonviolence and feminist struggle highlight the work of Grace Paley, Audre Lorde, and Arundhati Roy, along with a little-read piece by Johnnie Tilmon, a leader of the 1960s welfare rights movement. The section on resistance against empire tilts toward Latin American scholars/activists with essays by Maria Lugones, Anibla Quijano and Berta Caceres. This section includes pieces that draw from current debates about the role of state power in building towards radical change and the push to build holistic perspectives on what liberation means for all peoples.
The final section on social change in the 21st Century reflects on specific aspects of organizing that are facing campaigns and movements of today and tomorrow. Our goal is to provide challenges and insights for building effectively against all forms of oppression! Though primarily compiling key texts not often seen or contextualized together, the book also provides new strategic commentaries from key leaders including Ela Gandhi, Ruby Sales, ecofeminist Ynestra King, Africa World Press' Kassahun Checole, and Palestinian Quaker Joyce Ajlouney, Hakim Williams, and Mireille Fanon Mèndes-France.
Reviews:
"This is a book you will want to keep readily accessible as we all struggle through these most challenging of times, this is a book you will want to share with others." -- Leslie Cagan, former national coordinator, United for Peace and Justice; former co-chair, Pacifica Radio
"This book should awaken everyone to the call for action in the struggle to birth a just new world. It is either we act now in solidarity or we descend deeper into the pit of barbarism." -- Nnimmo Bassey, Right Livelihood laureate, 2010
"An amazing collection of thinkers from around the world." -- Binalakshmi Nepram, founder, Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice, and Peace; Board member, 1910 Nobel Peace laureate International Peace Bureau
"I've often said that actions which grow out of love have the most power... This powerful book brings together both classic and new works which will help empower future generations in building for peace and decolonization." --Oscar Lopez Rivera, Puerto Rican former political prisoner
About the Editors:
Wende Marshall has been an activist in southern African liberation support work and anti-apartheid organizing, was a tenant organizer in Harlem NYC, a volunteer and board member of the first needle exchange program in Philadelphia, an ethnographer of the decolonization movement in Hawaii, a living wage activist, and a leader/organizer with Stadium Stompers, a North Philadelphia-based campaign of community residents, students and workers who fought to stop Temple University's proposed football stadium. As an adjunct at Temple, Marshall was a leader in the effort to unionize adjuncts, served as Chair of the Adjunct Constituency Council and Member of the Executive Committee. Currently, she is on the National Organizing Committee of Peoples Strike.
Matt Meyer, a native New York City-based educator, activist, and author, is the War Resisters International Africa Support Network Coordinator, and a United Nations/ECOSOC representative of the International Peace Research Association. The founding chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association and former Chair of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development (COPRED), Meyer has long worked to bring together academics and activists for lasting social change. A former public draft registration resister and chair of the War Resisters League, he continues to serve as co-convener of the War Resisters International Africa Working Group.