The World We Are Fighting For

For their 51st edition, World War 3 Illustrated asked their artists and writers to bring heart and vision to two questions: What do we really care about? and What are we fighting for? Their comic strips and panels are cheerful or angry, prescriptive, or absurd. There is both humor and strong imagery. Some artists bring a roadmap for change. Others simply tell us what their values are, who their loved ones are, what they are clinging to and holding on to in the struggle to exist. Some lean into the mysterious, the poetic, the unfinished, or the unknowable. This book is really all about the "how" and the "why." Artists tell us about their personal experience of activism, whether it’s direct action, voting, or just talking with people.

Powerful tools for spreading peace in your community Unfounded beliefs and hateful political and social divisions that can cascade into violence are threatening to pull the world apart. Responding to fear and aggression strategically and with compassion is vital if we are to push back against the politics of hate and live in greater safety and harmony. But how to do it? Are We Done Fighting? is brimming with the latest research, practical activities, and inspirational stories of success for cultivating inner change and spreading peace at the community level and beyond. Coverage includes: An explanation of the different styles of conflict Cognitive biases that help explain polarized and lose-lose positions Practical methods and activities for changing our own and others' minds When punishment works and doesn't, and how to encourage discipline in children without using violence The skill of self-compassion and ways to reduce prejudice in ourselves and others Incredible programs that are rebuilding trust between people after genocide. Packed with inspiration and cutting-edge findings from fields including neuroscience, social psychology, and behavioural economics, Are We Done Fighting? is an essential toolkit for activists, community and peace groups, and students and instructors working to build dialogue, understanding, and peace as the antidote to the politics of hate and division. AWARDS SILVER | 2019 Nautilus Book Awards: Social Change & Social Justice

The age of austerity has brought a new generation of protesters on to the streets across the world, leading Time magazine to name "the protester" as its 2011 personality of the year. As the economic crisis meets the environmental crisis, a whole generation fears what the future will bring but also dares to dream of a different society. What Are we Fighting For? answers the question that the mainstream media loves to ask the protesters. The first radical, collective manifesto of the new decade, its brings together some of the key theorists and activists from the new networked, web-savvy and creative social movements. Contributors include David Graeber (who coined the term "the 99%"), John Holloway, Nina Power, the Knowledge Liberation Front, and Owen Jones, author of the best-selling Chavs. Chapters outline the alternative vision which animates the movement – from "new economics" and "new governance" to "new social imagination." The book concludes by exploring new "tactics of struggle."

Real stories of hard-fought battles for social change, told by those on the front lines—with clear lessons and tips for activists on gaining power from the ground up “As protests and demonstrations sprout across the land, young organizers and activists need to know why and how movements are sustained and how they grow. That resource has arrived.” —Mumia Abu-Jamal, author and activist In this visually rich and deeply inspiring book, the leaders of some of the most successful movements of the past decade—from the legalization of same-sex marriage to the Black Lives Matter movement—distill their wisdom, sharing lessons of what makes transformative social change possible. Longtime social activist Greg Jobin-Leeds joins forces with AgitArte, a collective of artists and organizers, to capture the stories, philosophy, tactics, and art of today’s leading social movements. When We Fight, We Win! weaves together interviews with today’s most successful activists and artists from across the country and beyond—including Patrisse Cullors, Bill McKibben, Clayton Thomas-Muller, Karen Lewis, Favianna Rodriguez, Rea Carey, and Gaby Pacheco, among others—with narrative recountings of their inspiring strategies and campaigns alongside full-color photos. It includes a foreword by Rinku Sen and an afterword by Antonia Darder. The recent nationwide explosion of protests has shown the power the people have when we join together with a common goal and compelling message. When We Fight, We Win! will give a whole generation of readers the road map to building resilient movements that can achieve real social justice.

Since the late 1940s, a violent African criminal society known as the Marashea has operated in and around South Africa’s gold mining areas. With thousands of members involved in drug smuggling, extortion, and kidnapping, the Marashea was more influential in the day-to-day lives of many black South Africans under apartheid than were agents of the state. These gangs remain active in South Africa. In We Are Fighting the World: A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999, Gary Kynoch points to the combination of coercive force and administrative weakness that characterized the apartheid state. As long as crime and violence were contained within black townships and did not threaten adjacent white areas, township residents were largely left to fend for themselves. The Marashea’s ability to prosper during the apartheid era and its involvement in political conflict led directly to the violent crime epidemic that today plagues South Africa. Highly readable and solidly researched, We Are Fighting the World is critical to an understanding of South African society, past and present. This pioneering study challenges previous social history research on resistance, ethnicity, urban spaces, and gender in South Africa. Kynoch’s interviews with many current and former gang members give We Are Fighting the World an energy and a realism that are unparalleled in any other published work on gang violence in southern Africa.

"In 2010, journalist Wen Stephenson woke up to the true scale and urgency of the catastrophe bearing down on humanity, starting with the poorest and most vulnerable everywhere, and confronted what he calls "the spiritual crisis at the heart of the climate crisis." Inspired by others who refused to retreat into various forms of denial and fatalism, he walked away from his career in mainstream media and became an activist, joining those working to build a transformative movement for climate justice in America."--Provided by publisher.

An urgent, on-the-ground look at some of the “new American radicals” who have laid everything on the line to build a stronger climate justice movement The science is clear: catastrophic climate change, by any humane definition, is upon us. At the same time, the fossil-fuel industry has doubled down, economically and politically, on business as usual. We face an unprecedented situation—a radical situation. As an individual of conscience, how will you respond? In 2010, journalist Wen Stephenson woke up to the true scale and urgency of the catastrophe bearing down on humanity, starting with the poorest and most vulnerable everywhere, and confronted what he calls “the spiritual crisis at the heart of the climate crisis.” Inspired by others who refused to retreat into various forms of denial and fatalism, he walked away from his career in mainstream media and became an activist, joining those working to build a transformative movement for climate justice in America. In What We’re Fighting for Now Is Each Other, Stephenson tells his own story and offers an up-close, on-the-ground look at some of the remarkable and courageous people—those he calls “new American radicals”—who have laid everything on the line to build and inspire this fast-growing movement: old-school environmentalists and young climate-justice organizers, frontline community leaders and Texas tar-sands blockaders, Quakers and college students, evangelicals and Occupiers. Most important, Stephenson pushes beyond easy labels to understand who these people really are, what drives them, and what they’re ultimately fighting for. He argues that the movement is less like environmentalism as we know it and more like the great human-rights and social-justice struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from abolitionism to civil rights. It’s a movement for human solidarity. This is a fiercely urgent and profoundly spiritual journey into the climate-justice movement at a critical moment—in search of what climate justice, at this late hour, might yet mean.