A collective ethnography of grassroots mobilizations for community safety across the Silicon Valley
 
This is a narrative of struggle and solidarity and a collective toolkit for grassroots opposition to militarization, policing, and ongoing conditions of war in the current conjuncture of racial patriarchal capitalism. Grassroots researcher Annie Paradise presents here a collective ethnography of the mothers and community matriarchs whose children have been murdered by police across the San Francisco Bay Area as they develop and practice autonomous, creative forms of resistance.
 
The War on the Social Factory: The Struggle for Community Safety in the Silicon Valley maps local families’ struggles to reclaim their households and their communities—to create a social infrastructure of care, justice, and safety outside state- and market-determined modes of “security.” Practices such as sustained vigil, testimony, and the production and circulation of insurgent knowledges are shown here to be part of interconnected justice efforts to demilitarize and decarcerate communities in the face of the multiple forms of violence enacted under late racial patriarchal capitalism. Paradise examines the expanding carceral processes of enclosure, criminalization, dispossession, expropriation, and disposability that mark the neoliberal "security” regime across the Silicon Valley and offers counter-counterinsurgent strategies and practices of co-generative, dynamic resistance.

We Gon’ Be Alright: Resistance and Healing in Black Movement Spaces, 2012–2021 is a profound exploration of Black activism and organizing during a pivotal decade in American history. Rev. Dr. Stephanie M. Crumpton explores the practices of care, reflection, and creativity that Black activists employed to heal and resist amidst the sociopolitical turbulence from the Obama era through the first Trump presidency. This period, marked by the myth of a “post-racial” America, saw a resurgence in racial violence and hate crimes, culminating in the 2021 Capitol insurrection. Against this backdrop, Crumpton captures the resilience and ingenuity of Black movement workers as they navigated these challenges.

Drawing on oral histories and personal narratives, Crumpton provides an intimate look at the lived experiences of thirty-seven full-time community organizers. These activists and organizers share their strategies for maintaining an ethic of care that sustains them while fighting against both external oppression and internal community struggles. The book highlights how contemporary Black resisters have leveraged a growing understanding of trauma and healing to enhance their activism. This blend of historical knowledge and modern therapeutic practices has equipped them with a broader array of tools to support their communities.

Rooted in womanist practical theology, We Gon’ Be Alright emphasizes the interconnectedness of white supremacy with other forms of oppression such as sexism, homophobia, and classism. Crumpton’s work underscores the necessity of “deep, deep healing” to address these multifaceted threats to Black life. This book is an essential resource for scholars, activists, and anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of Black resistance and healing in contemporary America. Through its detailed examination of the past decade, it offers valuable insights into the ongoing struggle for Black humanity, dignity, and a thriving future.

Every four years, the Winter Olympics become a focal point for activism and resistance. But in the modern era, mere bids to host the Games have sparked fierce opposition from groups motivated by local or global concerns. Russell Field edits a collection that charts the evolution of protest around the Winter Games and illuminates the issues at the heart of anti-Olympic activism.

The essays collectively explore the shifting dynamics and power relations between the civic coalitions that pursue the Winter Olympics and the social movements that oppose their efforts. The contributors look at specific Games impacted by dissent and probe the issues that swirled around failed and withdrawn bids. In addition, contributions on the contemporary Olympics describe current or future bids while delving into the campaigns demanding host nations pay attention to economic, social, humanitarian, and environmental concerns.

A first-of-its-kind collection, Winters of Discontent profiles the wide range of activists and social movements that have organized against the Winter Olympics.

Womanism Rising concludes Layli Maparyan’s three-book exploration of womanist studies. The collection showcases new work by emerging womanist authors who expand the womanist idea while extending womanism to new sites, new problems, and new audiences.

Maparyan organizes the contributions around five key ideas. The first section looks at womanist self-care as a life-saving strategy. The second examines healing the Earth as a prerequisite to healing ourselves. In Part Three, the essays illuminate how womanism’s politics of invitation provides a strategy for enlarging humanity’s circle of inclusion, while Part Four considers womanism as both a challenge and antidote to dehumanization. The final section delves into womanism’s potential for constructing worlds and futures. In addition, Maparyan includes a section of works by womanist visual artists.

Defiant and far-sighted, Womanism Rising takes readers on a journey into a new generation of concepts, ideas, and strategies for womanist studies.

After China officially “decriminalized” same-sex behavior in 1997, both the visibility and public acceptance of tongzhi, an inclusive identity term that refers to nonheterosexual and gender nonconforming identities in the People’s Republic of China, has improved. However, for all the positive change, there are few opportunities for political and civil rights advocacy under Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule.

Words like Water explores the nonconfrontational strategies the tongzhi movement uses in contemporary China. Caterina Fugazzola analyzes tongzhi organizers’ conceptualizations of, and approaches to, social change, explaining how they avoid the backlash that meets Western tactics, such as protests, confrontation, and language about individual freedoms. In contrast, the groups’ intentional use of community and family-oriented narratives, discourses, and understandings of sexual identity are more effective, especially in situations where direct political engagement is not possible.

Providing on-the-ground stories that examine the social, cultural, and political constraints and opportunities, Words like Water emphasizes the value of discursive flexibility that allows activists to adapt to changing social and political conditions.

An unheralded union battle offers new insight into identity politics.

In 1991, Columbia University’s one thousand clerical workers launched a successful campaign for justice in their workplace. This diverse union-two-thirds black and Latina, three-fourths women-was committed to creating an inclusive movement organization and to fighting for all kinds of justice. How could they address the many race and gender injustices members faced, avoid schism, and maintain the unity needed to win? Sharon Kurtz, an experienced union activist and former clerical worker herself, was welcomed into the union and pursued these questions. Using this case study and secondary studies of sister clerical unions at Yale and Harvard, she examines the challenges and potential of identity politics in labor movements.

With the Columbia strike as a point of departure, Kurtz argues that identity politics are valuable for mobilizing groups, but often exclude members and their experiences of oppression. However, Kurtz believes that identity politics should not be abandoned as a component in building movements, but should be reframed-as multi-identity politics. In the end she shows an approach to organizing with great potential impact not only for labor unions but for any social movement.

Going well beyond graphic descriptions of death row's madness and suicide-inducing realities, Writing for Their Lives offers powerful, compassionate, and harrowing accounts of prisoners rediscovering the value of life from within the brutality and boredom of the row. Editor Marie Mulvey-Roberts brings together the writings of prisoners (many of whom are also prize-winning authors) and the words of those who work in the field of capital punishment, whose roles have included defense attorney, prison psychiatrist, chaplain and warden, spiritual advisor, abolitionist and executioner, as well as a Nobel Prize nominee and a murder victim family member. The material is presented through articles, journal extracts, letters, short stories, and poems.

Exposing little-known facts about the five modes of execution practiced in the United States today, Writing for Their Lives documents the progress of life on death row from a capital trial to execution and beyond, through the testimony of the prisoners themselves as well as those who watch, listen, and write to them. What emerges are stories of the survival of the human spirit under even the most unimaginable circumstances, and the ways in which some prisoners find penitence and peace in the most unlikely surroundings. In spite of the uniformity of their prison life and its nearly inevitable conclusion, prisoners able to read and write letters are shown to retain and develop their individuality and humanity as their letters become poems and stories.

Writing for Their Lives serves ultimately as an affirmation of the value of life and provides bountiful evidence that when a state executes a prisoner, it takes a life that still had something to give.

This edition features an introduction by the editor as well as a foreword by Jan Arriens. Dr. Mulvey-Roberts will be donating her profits from the sale of this volume to the legal charity Amicus, which assists in capital defense in the United States."