social change

Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property

mandy — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Gaëlle Krikorian, Amy Kapczynski

A2K. Robot or revolution? A2K is a movement dedicated to dissemination of information to increase access to knowledge; hence, the acronym. Encompassing HIV/AIDS activists working for access to antiretroviral therapy in developing countries to college students downloading music for free, A2K is, at its heart, challenging intellectual property rights to enhance to fit our changing world.

Every time a group of people with similar ideas in the same moment come to together to form a “movement,” it seems they forget to record their experiences. Giving multiple perspectives on the history of A2K and the current situation on the ground, in Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property we hear the real story through the voices of academicians and activists. Speaking to the wide scope of A2K, this intensely comprehensive tome of a book runs about 650 pages. It is not subway friendly, nor is it easy to read for more than twenty-minute chunks of time. Everything is dense but readable, and intensely thought provoking. Who knew intellectual property could be interesting?

Conceiving scarcity as a thing of the past persisted throughout the book; good riddance Econ 101. Information commons topple the Left-Right divide. (Perchance creating the space for bipartisanship, so perchance a single piece of legislation could be passed this term.) Th existence of boundless immaterial goods. What a tantalizing future. But could it be real?

The authors not only believe this to be so but they share the stories of this reality as it is progressing in our very real world. Think beyond the old confines of Napster to a place where access to lifesaving medicines is universal simply because they should be. Now that is freedom to knowledge and a future I could believe in.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, March 16th 2011

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

mandy — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Josh MacPhee, Dara Greenwald

AK Press

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 book itself is divided into different movements, ranging from struggles for political independence to freedom from persecution and bias to women’s rights. Like the social movements themselves, the art is truly international, representing places as diverse as Eastern Europe, South Africa, Latin America, and the United States.

Without taking sides or making moral judgments, Signs of Change effectively explores each of these critical uprisings through the art that symbolizes them. The artists are as diverse as the issues and the book comes across as a comprehensive look at the people who were involved in these social movements as well as the conflicts themselves.

If you were unable to attend any of the art shows where these materials were showcased, all you need to do in order to be awed by the talent and passion of the artists is to pick up this book. And if you want to re-live your own activist days without leaving the comfort of your couch, Signs of Change is the art book for you.

Written by: Kari O’Driscoll, March 7th 2011

Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas

tina — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Jessica Taft

New York University Press

Of the many things I accomplished in high school, “leading a political uprising” was suspiciously absent. Yet around the world, teenage girls are organizing their own social revolutions, a trend largely undocumented and unanalyzed before Jessica Taft’s Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas.

Taft’s interviews with teenage women engaged in progressive social justice work in Buenos Aires, Caracas, Mexico City, the San Francisco Bay area, and Vancouver reveals scores of young women active in sophisticated community organizing and creative political protests. These are girls shutting down their school systems to combat harassment; hosting workshops on challenging white supremacy; and railing against toxic waste facilities poisoning their communities.

Rebel Girls isn’t a critique of the culture of girlhood—a blossoming field dedicated to analyzing the psychosocial experiences of teenage women as they develop. Instead, Taft investigates young women engaged in social activism (either through community organizations or through their own initiatives) – a group whose power and accomplishments have been relatively ignored by the broader social justice movement. Taft not only recognizes this, but seeks to rectify it by placing the voices of the girls front and center in her research, creating a book that is simultaneously captivating and insightful.

It would be easy to stereotype the girls’ work based on their identities as teenagers or as young women. Taft astutely resists the temptation. For example, an interview with two Buenos Aires women building a community center examines how gender influences the women’s political work, but does not stray into potentially counterproductive stereotypes about girls. Observations that many of the girls featured strove to make politics “fun” does not smack of derision; rather, Taft places the girls’ “pleasurable politics” in the context of social justice movements throughout history.

The fact that teenagers are largely excluded from the standard markers of political engagement—being able to vote and run for office—colors their engagement as well as their political philosophies. The girls Taft interviews have largely circumvented these political avenues in favor of more direct and in many instances, more transformative social work. While Taft notes that ignoring the macro-level influences at the root of injustice may hinder lasting social change, her reluctance to investigate this further is one of very few weak points in Rebel Girls.

Through her meticulous interviews interwoven with historical background, Taft presents a work that is both a rigorous academic analysis and a thoughtful portrait of the intimate details of these women’s work.

Written by: Gwen Emmons, February 24th 2011

Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change

beth — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Nick Cooney

Latern Books

At times, the mind can be one's own worst enemy. When our ego feels threatened, it is wired to convince us of almost anything. And when certain unpleasant emotions arise at passing a homeless man on the way to work or seeing African children on TV with flies on their faces, we are accustomed to look away. How do certain people and organizations persuade us and our ego to donate time and money to their cause, while others don't seem to reach us enough? And what differentiates the two?

In Change of Heart, Nick Cooney explains the intricate psychology of the human mind and how activists can successfully manoeuvre their way through it. The author provides a complete compilation of key negotiating strategies, with numerous examples to reveal many forms of activism.

Fascinating and detailed, this book is designed for the hardcore activist who is looking to bring change to his/her cause, whatever their goals may be: boosting donations, recruiting volunteers, creating pamphlets, or simply creating awareness. The author spends very little time on personal anecdotes and instead goes straight to the facts of being effective in whatever your line of activism is. I enjoyed learning about real organizations and the strategies they used to convince more participants to join their cause, with examples that were interesting and professional. Nick Cooney encourages creativity and persistence when looking to initiate real changes in others lives.

The author really puts the reader in the shoes of an activist and I found that the text itself was a form of activism since the book takes the opportunity to educate the reader about animal rights, environmentalism, and poverty.

Change of Heart brings a new approach to activism with a new comprehension of the human mind. For activism, opening up the mind is just as important as opening up the heart.

Written by: Cinthia Pacheco, December 23rd 2010

Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists

farhana — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Courtney E. Martin

Beacon Press

Though editor Courtney E. Martin’s new book means to school baby boomer types who mock the millennial generation for their perceived apathy, Do it Anyway: The New Generation of Activists is a balm for burned out justice advocates of any age. Even its title acknowledges the enormous gap that lies between the fervent desires for “that hopey-changey thing” (as Sarah Palin joked) and the hard work needed to make it happen.

Do it Anyway shares the stories of eight young American activists, beginning with Rachel Corrie, the twenty-year-old crushed to death in 2003 by Israeli tanks when she attempted to defend Palestinian homes on the Gaza Strip. While Martin sympathizes with Corrie's idealism, she is blunt in her appraisal: “I am reminded,” Martin writes, “of how irresistible and yet how deeply false the romance of young death really is.” Corrie's death ought to be seen as a waste of unrealized talent, not as a paragon of youthful heroism. Martin implores her readers to consider, as she puts it, “'live people' for our inspiration.”

And what “live people” they are. The rose-colored outlook of a middle-class white girl like Corrie contrasts sharply with that of Maricela Guzman, a daughter of illegal immigrants who joined the military to climb out of poverty. Instead, her brutal rape at the hands of a superior officer sparked a new mission: advocating for survivors of sexual violence as co-founder of the Service Women's Action Network. Philanthropist Tyrone Boucher and filmmaker Emily Abt both renounce material privilege in their justice work; actress Rosario Dawson leverages her celebrity to draw attention to little-served causes.

All seven “live people” in the book open their mouths, hearts, and lives to Martin, granting her access to public schools in the Bronx and gang-riddled streets in Los Angeles (Martin, as learned as any Third Waver on the messiness of identity politics, is careful to balance her subjects’ races, genders, social classes, and areas of activist expertise).

Martin's concluding chapter is her masterstroke: called “Good Failure,” it offers practical lessons learned in the field and on the ground that, while not claiming to be lifesaving (Martin is uncertain that Rachel Corrie was interested in anyone's advice), will go a long way towards avoiding the burnout that can derail any activist's career. “I was repeatedly shattered,” Martin writes, “at how much emotional pain all of these people have had to endure in order to do their work.” Ultimately, a greater truth was revealed: “our charge is not to 'save the world' after all; it is to live in it, flawed and fierce, loving and humble.”

For anyone already committed to or just beginning to enter the world of social justice, Do it Anyway is a must-read.

Written by: Shannon Drury, November 29th 2010

Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Belle Yang

W.W. Norton

I jumped at the chance to review Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale, an unconventional graphic memoir from writer/artist Belle Yang. While I am no expert on graphic literature, I did devour Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis series. With this medium, I enjoy (and envy) the way an artist can show emotions through inked illustrations, and use words more sparingly. Further, there is an intimacy created on the page, because the typeface and conversational style evoke a personal journal lying on a nightstand.

Yang is a Chinese-American woman, and her story, in part, tells of the identity struggles she experiences in separating from the Chinese traditions of her immigrant parents. When she travels to Beijing for art school, Yang has a chance to learn cultural history while not being bound to it.

At the outset of her tale, we see the source of Yang’s title: her Chinese name, Xuan, means “Forget Sorrow.” When Yang was thirty years old, she sought shelter from a violent boyfriend by moving back to her parents’ home. While there, she began to give shape to her father’s childhood stories in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, World War II, and Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Yang writes, “I have a voice in America. I won’t waste it.”

The art in Forget Sorrow is tender, powerful, and moving. One ink illustration that stands out is Yang’s nightmare about her abuser, which captures a feeling of stark terror. In contrast, Yang’s illustrations also evoke tenderness between father and daughter, a feeling of comfort for him as he shares painful memories.

Yang’s story demonstrates ways in which strength comes from relationships. Her father’s tales are painful at times. Under communism, family relationships were made subordinate to party affiliation. Important aspects of tradition, such as honoring elders, did not apply if those elders were deemed to be landlords or capitalists. The political side of Yang’s family story makes it very clear that social change should not come at the cost of human life or dignity.

Through telling her family’s story as well as exercising her voice and her artistic vision in Forget Sorrow, Yang found new freedom. As a writer, artist, and woman, she shapes her own future.

Written by: Lisa Rand, August 23rd 2010

Reforming the World: Social Activism and the Problem of Fiction in Nineteenth Century America

admin — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:49:00 +0000

By Maria Carla Sanchez

University of Iowa Press

Reforming the World: Social Activism and the Problem of Fiction in Nineteenth-Century America explores the complex relationship between American social activism and literature in the nineteenth century. At times symbiotic, at times turbulent, this relationship was formed both by the power of literature and by the hopes and dreams of American social reformers for their country. In perhaps the most compelling argument of the book, Maria Carla Sanchez describes the many ways in which period writers both used fiction as a tool of reform, and used reform as an excuse to write fiction. Sanchez argues that the beliefs and views of these antebellum reformers indelibly shaped literature, literary criticism, and the literary canon.

Sanchez skillfully depicts the “reform culture” of the antebellum period, at the apex of the temperance and abolition movements. In addition to the popular moral initiatives, groups of nineteenth century reformers tackled many niche issues such as prison reform, vegetarianism, and Indian rights. Sanchez posits that though Christian preachers and other religious figures played an unmistakably important role in the movements, the antebellum period truly came to be the first time in American history when social reform was carried out by groups of people with diverse philosophical, class, race, creed, and educational backgrounds. Sanchez also makes special note of the fact that women used the social reform movements as a vehicle to “resist the confines of domesticity.” Their activism thrust them into the public sphere and allowed them to participate in a discourse to which they had been previously unwelcome. An important part of the way they participated, of course, was through the written word.

Reform culture in antebellum America was both fearful of and excited by the power of fiction, and Sanchez deftly demonstrates the complicated maneuverings that period authors went through to ensure the respectability of their work. This was especially true for women writers, who had to prove both that the writing they did was truthful and morally upstanding, but also that it had an “uplifting or edifying” purpose. Reading or writing for pure pleasure was not something that could be admitted to. Sanchez contend convincingly that the reform culture of the antebellum period gave women the chance both to enter the public sphere as readers and writers, and as champions of causes they believed in.

Written by: Jennifer Wedemeier, June 20th 2009

Dreams from the Monster Factory: A Tale of Prison, Redemption, and One Woman’s Fight to Restore Justice to All

admin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:41:00 +0000

By Sunny Schwartz, David Boodell

Scribner

I have been in a fairly low-key battle with my landlord over him not fixing the gutter that fell of the house in a windstorm a month ago. Before that, I was engaged in a fight against the post office for delivering our mail to the apartment below us. I’ve realized that I have a hair trigger for injustice; though, up until now, my causes have been a bit, shall we say, unimportant. When I read Dreams from the Monster Factory: A Tale of Prison, Redemption, and One Woman's Fight to Restore Justice to All, by Sunny Schwartz with David Boodell, I discovered someone who had found a fight worth fighting.

Schwartz worked in the prison system as a legal intern in San Francisco in the 1980s. A man approached her, asking her to help him; he was in prison for child molestation and confessed that he was planning on doing it again after he was released in two weeks. He wanted her to stop him, but there was no legal way to keep him in custody. After his release, he molested a six-year old girl.

Fed up with the cycle of repeat offenders, Schwartz struggled with what to do. Not only was her professional life full of stress, her family life was tense. She grew up on the south side of Chicago in a Jewish family. She didn’t do well in school, and she was continually struggling with finding a place in the world as a woman, a lesbian, a lawyer, a sister, and a daughter.

Despite her struggles growing up, her brother’s suicide, a leak in an artery in her brain, and the bureaucracy and stress in the prison system, she begins developing a program called the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP). This program was designed to stop the cycle of the “monster factories”—a jail system that kept releasing still violent individuals into the community.

RSVP teaches inmates compassion and holds them truly and emotionally accountable for their actions. The goal is to “reprogram” the inmates into healthier and non-violent additions to society. It also provides a voice to victims; an extraordinarily touching scene in the book is the story of Jean. Jean’s daughter, daughter’s boyfriend, and grandchild were all murdered in cold blood. She told this story, and the impacts that the event continued to have on her life, to an audience of violent criminals, many of whom were moved to tears.

Dreams from the Monster Factory is a direct and impassioned look at the prison systems and the possibilities for change. Schwartz is also at times brutally honest with herself and her actions. It is an intense look at a part of society many of us tend to overlook. It will put your life into perspective, and give you a new way to look at issues of justice and forgiveness.

Written by: Kristin Conard, April 19th 2009

How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism

admin — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:17:00 +0000

By Tina Fetner

University Of Minnesota Press

While leftists and gay rights activists occasionally discuss the notion that left wing battles, and particularly GLBTQ struggles, are too influenced by the religious right, the complaint is always frustrated and dismissive, never a serious consideration. Tina Fetner approaches the notion differently, addressing how the influence of religious right was, in fact, invaluable in shaping, and in rendering more powerful, the lesbian and gay movement. (Both “religious right” and “lesbian and gay movement” are often used casually and defined vaguely, a notion that would normally bother me as a reader, but in the introduction Fetner skillfully clarifies the definitions she is using.)

How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism is an intriguing piece of research, full of facts to which I would otherwise have had no access. Though a self-proclaimed liberal, Fetner has done impressive work on all sides of the problem. She tracks the rise of the religious right even before it took on a formal anti-gay stance, discusses the state of the lesbian and gay movements before the identification of one clear antagonist, and takes us through Stonewall and the rise of Anita Bryant up to the contemporary gay marriage debates. Each chapter chronicles about a decade of the activist conflict, concluding with the notion that “[t]he religious right brought both new challenges and new opportunities to the lesbian and gay movement.”

Fascinating though the concept is, Fetner’s book—a clear doctoral dissertation—is bloodless, the prose dry and uncompelling, the powerful stories rendered inaccessible. The book demonstrates the need for good prose style; the ideas in How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism are notions that all self-styled activists, left and right, should consider, but Fetner’s dry writing makes it tremendously difficult to get through the book.

Nevertheless, the relationship Fetner is examining makes her book worth the effort. Though her book itself may not be a substantive addition to the non-fiction canon, her ideas make a substantial and interesting contribution to queer thought and to social movement theory, whether its consumers be academics or lay readers.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, October 13th 2008

The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

admin — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:23:00 +0000

Edited by Janet E. Kaufman, Anne F. Herzog

University of Pittsburgh Press

Before there was Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, there was Muriel Rukeyser. Before there were the Beats, there was Muriel Rukeyser. As Anne Sexton once pointed out, Rukeyser was the “mother of us all.” This is why a collection of her work is so important. Despite Rukeyser’s stature, and her prodigious output, she is not as often read or taught as her better known literary progeny. Furthermore, some of Rukeyser’s prime writing years were during the era of New Criticism, when politically charged poetry was not in vogue. Not only that, but according to the editors in their introductory note, the FBI had a file on Rukeyser that was over one hundred pages long. It wasn’t just the new formalist poets who turned a wary eye on her.

Even if Ginsberg, Plath, and Sexton are her inheritors, Rukeyser is different from them in that she is concerned with placing the self within a larger political, and more emotionally distanced, framework. A modernist with an obvious debt to Walt Whitman, she believed in the power of poetry to create positive political change. And if she has been somewhat overlooked, I think her time has come. Living as we are in the midst of a dangerous war, Rukeyser has the power to speak to us now. In her autobiographical poem, “Kathe Kollwitz,” her first lines are, “Held between wars/my lifetime/among wars, the big hands of the world of death.” Her concern with war resonates. Her poems “What Have You Brought Home from the Wars?,” “One Soldier,” and “Welcome from War” have something very personal to say to our time.

Rukeyser was also a feminist poet, and she is deeply concerned with what it means to be both a woman poet, and a woman in the world. And long before the Civil Rights era, Rukeyser was all-inclusive. Her poems “The Young Girl of the Mississippi Valley” and “Martin Luther King, Malcolm X,” evidence her interest in transcending her own experience as a white woman. In truth, Rukeyser is every type of poet—she wrote about sex, love, death, race, war, suicide, lesbian love, children, motherhood. Her breadth was profound. This collection of Rukeyser’s work should ensure her life within the canon. This she deserves.

Written by: Susan Melinde Dunlap, March 23rd 2007

Remembering Tomorrow: From SDS to Life After Capitalism

admin — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 18:30:00 +0000

By Michael Albert

Seven Stories Press

The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past. –William Faulkner

Michael Albert writes an in-depth political memoir, offering a formidable defense of the project to change global inequality. Albert is a veteran anti-capitalist and visionary leftist thinker. In his memoir, he retells his past of devotion, commitment and the struggle to bring forth social change, however difficult the journey, a small step at a time.

Albert separates his memoir into five intriguing parts. He begins with his college years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). An aspiring physicist, Albert seemed destined for a career inside laboratories and research facilities until politics seduced him away. Gradually, he began campus organizing, rallying and protesting. His political involvement began to shape his being as he later goes on to fight in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other vital American movements.

He recounts many tales from his friendship with Noam Chomsky, which has spanned their lifetimes. Chomsky’s personal and professional perspectives, complicated through his belief in the political world, strongly affected Albert’s way of interacting with others.

Albert explores various topics, both personal and professional. Whether commenting on marriage, racism, class, drugs, rock and roll or sexism, he qualifies his opinion with the personal experience to back up his view. Throughout his memoir, he reaches points of evolutionary thought and maturity. For decades, Albert has spent his time not only striving for social change, but also achieving it.

Written by: Mona Lisa Safai, February 17th 2007