It was the most unlikely victory-and-a-half.
In October 2006, direct action trainer and activist Daniel Hunter got a call from a friend, Jethro Heiko, asking him to join a campaigning group trying to stop two multi-million-dollar casinos being built in residential areas in Philadelphia where they both lived.
The backers of the projects were billionaires, the political establishment was solidly in favour of…
Yes, this review is a bit late, for a book published in 2009, but this is a book we really didn’t want you to miss out on.
If you’re interested in Israel, then finding out that the foundation stones of the new society, the co-operatives known as kibbutzim, were explicitly as well as implicitly inspired by anarchism is pretty extraordinary.
If you’re interested in anarchism, then learning how these super-egalitarian communes have evolved over the last century (in very…
Here is a literary biography that gripped me all the way to the end. Robert Leach describes the individual lives of the playwrights John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy, but the core of this study is their creative relationship. John started his adult life as an architect and Margaretta as an actress. In Leach’s narrative, on an evening in 1956, as John was beginning his career as a highly regarded young writer creating plays for the prestigious Royal Court Theatre, the pair made a pact that they would use drama to liberate theatre, explore…
Patrolling the pavement of one of Mexico City’s “red-light” districts, a group of heavily made-up women wearing short skirts and high heels hold placards up to potential clients. These placards read – in words daubed on in menstrual blood – “I am your mirror”. Intermingling with clients and other passers-by, they reflect back their responses, whether puzzled facial expressions or cries of surprise.
This performance piece — put on in February by a group of Mexico City activists —…
Black women’s movement and civil rights activist Olive Morris – who became a symbol of the squatting movement in ’70s Brixton – is one of 30 women profiled and ‘icon-brush[ed] ... with Che Guevara glam’ in the Queen of the Neighbourhood Collective’s book of stencil designs, Revolutionary Women, inspired by the question ‘Who and where are our revolutionary women icons?’ Others featured include Egyptian feminist Doria Shafik, who led the 1951 storming of the Egyptian parliament by 1,500 women, and Dutch resistance fighter Hanni Schaft, the…
Utopia is the second of Five Leaves’ annual journals and features contributions from 23 writers, essayists, songwriters, poets – some living, some dead – loosely based on the subject of utopia; although Utopias (plural) might read more accurately.
Books about Utopia(s) are always necessary, but with our supine parliament and the monumental lack of inspiration and aspiration exhibited by its constituent MPs, how absolutely necessary this one is now. Mike Marqusee’s opening essay is inspirational and he reminds us that ‘for William…
Taking its cue from Martin Luther King’s famous 1967 speech denouncing the war in Vietnam, We Have Not Been Moved focuses on the resistance to both racism and militarism in the United States.
The three editors — all experienced activists — have collated 90 contributions looking at the connections and cleavages between the two issues, including the over-representation of ethnic minorities fighting in the armed forces, government money funding aggressive wars overseas rather than domestic social programmes and the overwhelmingly…
I knew this book was going to be worth reading when the introduction began by quoting this intercept from a police radio report: ‘The clowns are organising. They are organising. Over and out.’
Aimed at activists – particularly those jaded at the prospect of another boring protest, just like the last one, or disheartened at the prospect of handing out leaflets on a Saturday afternoon to busy shoppers – it suggests that we blend art and politics to make activism more ‘compelling and sustainable’, and provides a friendly non-…
‘When I hear the word gun I reach for my culture’, quipped Malcolm Muggeride in response to Nazi playwright Hanns Johst’s infamous (and often misquoted) line that ‘When I hear the word culture... I release the safety on my Browning!’
‘When I hear the word social theory, I reach for clarity, simple prose and common sense’ could be the catchphrase for this volume, the first of three volumes about ‘winning social changes that reorient whole societies by altering institutions at the heart of the lives of all people’ (the second and third…
Formerly the Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief – and with over thirty years of reporting on Afghanistan with distinction — Jonathan Steele makes a comparative analysis of the US and Soviet occupations the backbone of his latest book. Alternating reportage with a careful dismantling of ‘Thirteen Myths About Afghanistan’ he finds many similarities and at least one crucial difference.
Both were essentially interventions in a civil war, pitching a high-tech military against a poorly-armed insurgency with disastrous consequences for…
Written in response to an international rising tide of anti-Roma racism, this collection of articles analyses the shift towards the politics of the far Right in Europe over the past six or seven years. A timely contribution to the much-neglected study of this oppression, it ranges from detailed case studies of the effects of state policy, to the examination of how the discourse of neo-Nazism divides communities.
Europe’s largest minority, with an estimated population of 10 million, Roma have suffered endemic persecution for centuries…
Polymath John Gittings – a Guardian journalist and associate editor of The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace, is a Sinologist, literary critic and classicist. He crams his considerable knowledge of history, art, literature, and languages into this personal review of peace through the ages, arguing for a ‘peace discourse’ to counter our current one obsessed with the glory of war and the culture of death.
Indeed, for Gittings ‘The study of peace can be as exciting as the study of war and, far from [there] being little…
The dominant view of Somalia today is of a failed state riven by war, terrorism, piracy, poverty and hunger.
Mary Harper, a BBC journalist who has been reporting from Somalia since 1991, argues these images and labels act as a barrier to a more nuanced and deeper understanding of the country.
Citing numerous Somali voices, Harper maintains that continual conflict and crisis have forced Somalis to invent surprisingly workable and resilient alternative political and economic systems. They have enthusiastically taken up modern…
Platform is a unique organisation combining art, activism, research, and education. Based in London, for over a decade it has been exploring the multi-dimensional reach of the oil industry into society, a ‘Carbon Web’ that encompasses governments, giant oil companies, banks, and a myriad other organisations, from law firms to universities, NGOs to cultural institutions. Written by two members of Platform, The Oil Road is an important component of this project, focussing on the story of how Azerbaijani crude oil ends up on the garage…
Fly and be Damned is nothing if not ambitious. It outlines what the author, Peter McManners, believes are measures which could usher in 'the third golden age of aviation'. An era where we could enjoy all the advantages flying brings without destroying the climate. He argues that the technology to make this possible could be developed if the aviation industry was incentivised to do so.
The key to facilitating change, McManners argues, is to make the necessary resources available to the aviation industry by hypothecating the money…
