Direct Action

"Direct Action" chronicles the thrilling fast-paced action of the Guerrilla group that blew up the political activist scene of the 80's. Hansen and her Anarchist group Direct Action were responsible for numerous dramatic political acts, including the bombing of the Litton Systems plant in Toronto. After legal protest actions failed to stop Litton from making guidance systems for Cruise missiles, Direct Action defended the Earth, explosively. Additionally, Hansen with other radical feminists showed the Red Hot Video chain just how hot their illegal films depicting rape could become after being firebombed. Ann Hansen served seven years in prison and is now quite at home in Vancouver with her three horses, three dogs, one cat and a bird.

A radical anthropologist studies the global justice movement.

A longtime insider explores the origins of modern protest movements like Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street, offering a groundbreaking history of disruptive protest and American radicalism since the Sixties As Americans take to the streets in record numbers, L.A. Kauffman’s timely, trenchant history of protest offers unique insights into how past movements have won victories in times of crisis and backlash and how they can be most effective today. This deeply researched account, twenty-five years in the making, traces the evolution of disruptive protest since the Sixties to tell a larger story about the reshaping of the American left. Kauffman, a longtime grassroots organizer, examines how movements from ACT UP to Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter have used disruptive tactics to catalyze change despite long odds. Kauffman’s lively and elegant history is propelled by hundreds of candid interviews conducted over a span of decades. Direct Action showcases the voices of key players in an array of movements—environmentalist, anti-nuclear, anti-apartheid, feminist, LGBTQ, anti-globalization, racial-justice, anti-war, and more—across an era when American politics shifted to the right, and a constellation of decentralized issue- and identity-based movements supplanted the older ideal of a single, unified left. Now, as protest movements again take on a central and urgent political role, Kauffman’s history offers both striking lessons for the current moment and an unparalleled overview of the landscape of recent activism. Written with nuance and humor, Direct Action is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the protest movements of our time. “The best overview of how protest works—when it does—and what it’s achieved over the past 50 years.” —Rebecca Solnit, The New York Times

Art has always played a significant role in the history of the labour movement. Songs, stories, poems, pamphlets, and comics, have inspired workers to take action against greedy bosses and helped shape ideas of a more equal world. They also help fan the flames of discontent. Radical social change doesn't come without radical art. It would be impossible to think about labour unrest without its iconic songs like "Solidarity Forever" or its cartoons like Ernest Riebe's creation, Mr. Block. In this vein, The Graphic History Collective has created an illustrated chronicle of the strike--the organized withdrawal of labour power--in Canada. For centuries, workers in Canada--Indigenous and non-Indigenous, union and non-union, men and women--have used the strike as a powerful tool, not just for better wages, but also for growing working-class power. This lively comic book will inspire new generations to learn more about labour and working-class history and the power of solidarity.

Direct Action in Montevideo is the astonishing tale of anarchists willing to use extraordinary methods to achieve their goals. Seen as mere criminals by the legal system, the author met many of them in prison, where he was serving his own sentence. Politicized by his experiences, he went on to eventually write their story, which was also the story of a culture of solidarity and resistance in the face of oppression. These men were rebels who violated the norms of a social order they considered unjust, often responding to the violence of exploitation and immiseration with a violence of their own, robbing banks to fund revolutionary activities, planting bombs, fighting strikebreakers, aiding fugitives, and attacking, even assassinating, bosses and political figures.

Direct Action in British Environmentalism is the fulllest scholarly analysis available of this phenomenon. It is essential reading for students of politics and environmental studies.

One of the most significant shifts in contemporary art during the past two decades concerns artists and collectives who have moved their artistic focus from representation to direct social action. This publication shows why this transition might change our understanding of artistic production at large and make us reconsider the role of art in society. The book gathers internationally recognized artists, scholars, and experts in the field of socially engaged art to reflect upon historical developments in this field and explore the role that German artist Joseph Beuys?s concept of social sculpture played in its evolution. The contributions provide theoretical reflections, historical analysis, and frame critical debates about exemplary socially engaged art projects since the 1970s in order to examine the strategies, opportunities, and failures of this practice--Back cover.

Direct Action tells the story of how a small group of "radical pacifists"—nonviolent activists such as David Dellinger, Staughton Lynd, A.J. Muste, and Bayard Rustin—played a major role in the rebirth of American radicalism and social protest in the 1950s and 1960s. Coming together in the camps and prisons where conscientious objectors were placed during World War II, radical pacifists developed an experimental protest style that emphasized media-savvy, symbolic confrontation with institutions deemed oppressive. Due to their tactical commitment to nonviolent direct action, they became the principal interpreters of Gandhism on the American Left, and indelibly stamped postwar America with their methods and ethos. Genealogies of the Civil Rights, antiwar, and antinuclear movements in this period are incomplete without understanding the history of radical pacifism. Taking us through the Vietnam war protests, this detailed treatment of radical pacifism reveals the strengths and limitations of American individualism in the modern era.