Into The Streets

What does it mean to resist? Throughout our nation's history, discrimination and unjust treatment of all kinds have prompted people to make their objections and outrage known. Some protests involve large groups of people, marching or holding signs with powerful slogans. Others start with quotes or hashtags on social media that go viral and spur changes in behavior. People can make their voices heard in hundreds of different ways. Join author Marke Bieschke on this visual voyage of resistance through American history. Discover the artwork, music, fashion, and creativity of the activists. Meet the leaders of the movements, and learn about the protests that helped to shape the United States from all sides of the political spectrum. Examples include key events from women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, occupations by Indigenous people, LGBTQ demands for equality, Tea Party protests, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, including the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020. Into the Streets introduces the personalities and issues that drove these protests, as well as their varied aims and accomplishments, from spontaneous hashtag uprisings to highly planned strategies of civil disobedience. Perfect for young adult audiences, this book highlights how teens are frequently the ones protesting and creating the art of the resistance. "[T]he text never loses sight of the fact that the right to assemble and protest is a basic American right. . . . Highly recommended for middle grade through high school collections in both school and public libraries."—starred, School Library Journal

A catalog of an exhibition that surveys the history of international graffiti and street art.

2017 American Book Award Winner from the Before Columbus Foundation In 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City took the lives of 146 workers, most of them young immigrant women and girls. Their deaths galvanized a movement for social and economic justice then, but today’s laborers continue to battle dire working conditions. How can we bring the lessons of the Triangle fire back into practice today? For artist Ruth Sergel, the answer was to fuse art, activism, and collective memory to create a large-scale public commemoration that invites broad participation and incites civic engagement. See You in the Streets showcases her work. It all began modestly in 2004 with Chalk, an invitation to all New Yorkers to remember the 146 victims of the fire by inscribing their names and ages in chalk in front of their former homes. This project inspired Sergel to found the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, a broad alliance of artists and activists, universities and unions—more than 250 partners nationwide—to mark the 2011 centennial of the infamous blaze. Putting the coalition together and figuring what to do and how to do it were not easy. This book provides a lively account of the unexpected partnerships, false steps, joyous collective actions, and sustainability of such large public works. Much more than an object lesson from the past, See You in the Streets offers an exuberant perspective on building a social art practice and doing public history through argument and agitation, creativity and celebration with an engaged public.

In this book, Yelena Bailey examines the creation of "the streets" not just as a physical, racialized space produced by segregationist policies but also as a sociocultural entity that has influenced our understanding of blackness in America for decades. Drawing from fields such as media studies, literary studies, history, sociology, film studies, and music studies, this book engages in an interdisciplinary analysis of the how the streets have shaped contemporary perceptions of black identity, community, violence, spending habits, and belonging. Where historical and sociological research has examined these realities regarding economic and social disparities, this book analyzes the streets through the lens of marketing campaigns, literature, hip-hop, film, and television in order to better understand the cultural meanings associated with the streets. Because these media represent a terrain of cultural contestation, they illustrate the way the meaning of the streets has been shaped by both the white and black imaginaries as well as how they have served as a site of self-assertion and determination for black communities.

Takin' It to the Streets is a comprehensive collection of primary documents covering political, social and cultural aspects of the 1960's. Drawn from mainstream sources, little-known sixties periodicals, pamphlets and public speeches, this anthology brings together representative writings many of which have been unavailable for years or have never been reprinted, from the Port Huron Statement and Malcolm X's "The Ballot or the Bullet" to Richard Nixon's "If Mob Rule Takes Hold in the U.S." and Ronald Reagan's "Freedom versus Anarchy on Campus." Introductions and headnotes by the editors help highlight the importance of particular documents while relating them to each other and placing them within the broader context of the decade. While paying particular attention to civil rights, anti-war activity, Black power, the counter-culture, the women's and gay/lesbian struggles for recognition, the authors also take into account the conservative backlashes these sparked and thus present a balanced portrait of a tumultous era. Covering an extremely popular period of history, Takin' It to the Streets stands out as a thorough and accessible collection of documents, an authoritative reader for a decade such as America had not seen before or experienced since.

Blends academic and activist perspectives to explore recent emancipatory struggles to win and transform state power. For decades, emancipatory struggles have been deeply influenced by the slogan “Change the world without taking power.” Amid growing social inequalities and the return of right-wing authoritarianism, however, many now recognize the limits of disengaging from government and the state. From the Streets to the Statechronicles many diverse and exciting projects to not only take state power but to fundamentally change it. A blend of scholars and activists explore issues like the nonsectarian relationships between new radical left parties, egalitarian social movements, and labor movements in Greece, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey. Contributors discuss municipal campaigns based in popular assemblies, solidarity economies, and independent political organizations fighting for racial, gender, and economic justice in cities such as Jackson, Vancouver, and Newcastle. This volume also studies the lessons learned from the Pink Tide in Latin America as well as the social movements of racialized and gendered workers transforming human rights across the United States. Finally, the book offers case studies from around the world surveying the role of state workers and public sector unions in radically democratizing public administration through coalitions between the providers and users of public services.

Stanley, William G. Tierney--Jamie Merisotis, Lumina Foundation, author of America Needs Talent: Attracting, Educating & Deploying the 21st-Century Workforce

THE TRIAL THAT IS NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE Reprinted to coincide with the release of the new Aaron Sorkin film, this book provides the political background of this infamous trial, narrating the utter craziness of the courtroom and revealing both the humorous antics and the serious politics involved Opening at the end of 1969—a politically charged year at the beginning of Nixon's presidency and at the height of the anti-war movement—the Trial of the Chicago Seven (which started out as the Chicago Eight) brought together Yippies, antiwar activists, and Black Panthers to face conspiracy charges following massive protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, protests which continue to have remarkable contemporary resonance. The defendants—Rennie Davis, Dave Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale (the co-founder of the Black Panther Party who was ultimately removed from the trial, making it seven and not eight who were on trial), and Lee Weiner—openly lampooned the proceedings, blowing kisses to the jury, wearing their own judicial robes, and bringing a Viet Cong flag into the courtroom. Eventually the judge ordered Seale to be bound and gagged for insisting on representing himself. Adding to the theater in the courtroom an array of celebrity witnesses appeared, among them Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, Arlo Guthrie, Judy Collins, and Allen Ginsberg (who provoked the prosecution by chanting "Om" on the witness stand). This book combines an abridged transcript of the trial with astute commentary by historian and journalist Jon Wiener, and brings to vivid life an extraordinary event which, like Woodstock, came to epitomize the late 1960s and the cause for free speech and the right to protest—causes that are very much alive a half century later. As Wiener writes, "At the end of the sixties, it seemed that all the conflicts in America were distilled and then acted out in the courtroom of the Chicago Conspiracy trial." An afterword by the late Tom Hayden examines the trial's ongoing relevance, and drawings by Jules Feiffer help recreate the electrifying atmosphere of the courtroom.