Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged radical

Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures, 1960s to Now

Signs of Change is both a coffee table book and a full-color history lesson. For those who prefer an alternative to a boring textbook, this book is the ticket. In September of 2008, Exit Art began a traveling art exhibit to showcase the works of artists whose materials reflect cultural and social uprisings around the world, including posters, photographs, and graffiti. The pages are full-color and let the art take center stage, but historical context is provided in a way that is educational without being stifling.

The Young Lords: A Reader

Before reading The Young Lords: A Reader, I had never heard of the Young Lords Party. The original Young Lords were a loosely organized group that emerged from a street gang fighting the gentrification of Puerto Rican neighborhoods in Chicago.

If It Ain’t Cheap, It Ain’t Punk: Fifteen Years Of Plan-It X Records

If It Ain’t Cheap, It Ain’t Punk is a sweet, well put together documentary film that captures the spirit and feel of the do-it-yourself, underground punk scene that has grown up around Plan-it X Records in Bloomington, Indiana. The film began as part of a filmmaking workshop at Plan-it X’s weeklong festival in Bloomington in 2006.

Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832-1919

Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832-1919 is a plethora of facts, evidence, and tightly woven themes that are well-researched by Harris, yet the book isn’t boring or dry. I found it inspirational and enraging at the same time. Women of the past made it easier for women today by tirelessly battling for women’s rights (and for men who were not white property owners). Walker was a dutiful and energetic soldier.

2010 Slingshot Organizer

It warms my heart that the Slingshot Collective is still producing this legendary anarchistic day planner. Although this is the sixteenth year that the Slingshot organizer is in print, I am pretty sure that the first time I ever saw one was after the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle. Unfortunately I didn’t go to the protests (because I was in high school and my parents wouldn’t let me). Luckily, my boyfriend at the time brought one back for me as a protest souvenir.

2010 Slingshot Desk Organizer

I am an INFJ, which means that among my other characteristics is the somewhat innate desire to plan. Since discovering them several years ago at the Lucy Parsons Center, I have been hooked on Slingshot planners.

Arm the Spirit: A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back

Upon finishing the initial chapters of the memoir Arm the Spirit, I was caught off guard by how different the experiences of Diana Block were from my own. Written from her memories of participating in revolutionary movements and subsequently shifting to life underground, Block’s stories did not reflect the political landscape that I am familiar with today.

The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities

The Revolution Starts At Home is not your usual zine. At 111 pages, it qualifies as a book, and I’m excited to say the editors are looking for a publisher. Pending publication*, it will soon be available on the INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence website. Don’t be turned off by the bulk; this is an important zine that needs to be read by all activists of any sort. Contributors include Alexis Pauline Gumbs of UBUNTU, collective members of Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA), Vanessa Huang, Gina de Vries, and a collection of women from the Mango Tribe.

2009 Slingshot Organizer

It all started for me in 2007. That was the first time I put my daily activities in order with the help of the Slingshot Organizer. We're coming up on year three of my making use of this invaluable resource (produced thanks to the efforts of Berkeley, California's Slingshot Collective volunteers), and I cannot imagine going a day without it.

Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances

In the past year, I’ve noticed a trend towards bashing the contemporary Women’s Studies programs of U.S. universities. Mostly, I’ve heard critiques of this brand of academic feminism coming from (perhaps not surprisingly) communities of radical feminists, many of whom do not identify as scholars bound by an institution or a set of initials after their names. Myself both in the radical feminist category and also the past recipient of a gendered bachelor’s degree, I can sympathize with the range of emotions this topic can elicit.

Red Letter Year

Red Letter Year is one of those records about—dare I say it?—hope. Its folksy tunes praise Mother Earth and the blessings we all share at the end of a devastating political era. You don't have to be a longtime fan of Ani DiFranco to be convinced that it is desirable—hell, even possible—to live in the woods, knit your own socks, grow your own food, and exist in a woman-centric world (assuming you don't already).

Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction

Rosemarie Tong’s Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction offers a clear, thorough introduction to feminist theory.

Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland

As we enter the final countdown to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, we will hear political pundits talk in red- and blue-state terms. The shorthand goes like this: blue states are progressive and urban, while red states are conservative and rural. And those purple states? Well, forget about those states; they're the bisexuals of electoral politics. We just don't know what to do with them. (wink) As someone who has spent most of her life participating in radical social movements in the red states I call home, I was hoping Joshua Frank and Jeffrey St.

When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: A True Story in the Movement for Prison Abolition

Those of us who spend a lot of time lollygagging in the distant pass frequently encounter scenes of horror — people being tortured for their religious beliefs or identities, for example - and find ample evidence of our capacity for cruelty and inhumanity littering the landscape of human history.

Fabric 39

Robert “Noise” Hood is one of the original members of the Detroit collective Underground Resistance (UR) and a solo DJ with an incredible discography. His work is informed by militant politics of music as a tool for social chance, and coming out of Reagan-era inner city Detroit, his radical views are personally informed.

In Black and White: An Interpretation of the South

From 1888 to 1925, Lily Hardy Hammond accurately predicted the future. In that time period, the prominent activist said and wrote just about everything that progressives and left-leaning people are saying across the United States now. This is simultaneously inspiring and deeply upsetting to read as a young radical in 2008. In Black and White traces Hardy Hammond’s political writings and presentations over the course of her lifetime.

Six Radical Politics Buttons

Making nice is not the focus of Bitter Pie’s products. Instead, with such loudmouth, all-CAPS statements as “Shut Your Pie Hole” and “You’re the Reason for the Jihad,” these buttons are certainly radical and proud with their politics. These buttons are small enough to place on a bag strap or on a lapel, and grouped together, they could be quite stunning, especially for the politically conscious. The one downfall to these pieces is that the images are not always crisp and the font is not always clear.

Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones

Still unknown to many, the life story of Claudia Jones is equally inspiring and heartbreaking. Guilty of being everything she was labeled, Jones maintained many overlapping identities—feminist, Black Nationalist, Communist, and journalist—working in the early to mid-twentieth century on a wide array of equal rights causes. Her activism a precursor to much of the 1960s American counterculture resistance, for which we often remember recent history’s leaders of color.

Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman

Despite the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan no one mistakes the rallying cry of today's Starbucks-toting, Hot Topic sporting protesters with the mobilized and systematic protests of the 1960s and 1970s. With not a small touch of nostalgia, those who were there for Vietnam, Civil Rights and Cambodia lament the laziness of present-day youth to fully posit themselves in the movement (as if that responsibility belongs solely to folks without many responsibilities), while young people today tune-out the nagging and lectures of their middle-class, once hippie parents.
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