Insurrectionary Uprisings: A Reader in Revolutionary Nonviolence - Paperback

by Wende Marshall (Editor), Matt Meyer (Editor)

The volume includes two sections exploring nonviolence in the long Black freedom struggle within the US. From Ella Baker to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer, from Vincent Harding and Grace Lee Boggs to Colin Kaepernick, the two sections on the Black liberation movement highlight the theory of nonviolence in direct and indirect ways and foreground the relevance of these historic texts for the present moment of political uprisings on both the left and the right. Black strategies for survival and power are analyzed in terms of the ongoing US economic and epidemiological crises as well as the global climate crisis and ecological collapse. A section on revolutionary nonviolence in Africa presents a previously unpublished piece on the role of armed struggle by Franz Fanon, as well as essays by Amilcar Cabral, Barbara Deming, Graca Machel, Kenneth Kaunda, and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge This section clearly contextualizes the continent's anti-colonial struggles with the practical thinking about military and unarmed tactics which those movements faced over the course of a half-century. The section on nonviolence and feminist struggle highlight the work of Grace Paley, Audre Lorde, and Arundhati Roy, along with a little-read piece by Johnnie Tilmon, a leader of the 1960s welfare rights movement. The section on resistance against empire tilts toward Latin American scholars/activists with essays by Maria Lugones, Anibla Quijano and Berta Caceres. This section includes pieces that draw from current debates about the role of state power in building towards radical change and the push to build holistic perspectives on what liberation means for all peoples. The final section on social change in the 21st Century reflects on specific aspects of organizing that are facing campaigns and movements of today and tomorrow. Our goal is to provide challenges and insights for building effectively against all forms of oppression! Though primarily compiling key texts not often seen or contextualized together, the book also provides new strategic commentaries from key leaders including Ela Gandhi, Ruby Sales, ecofeminist Ynestra King, Africa World Press' Kassahun Checole, and Palestinian Quaker Joyce Ajlouney, Hakim Williams, and Mireille Fanon Mèndes-France.

Author Biography

Wende Marshall has been an activist in southern African liberation support work and anti-apartheid organizing, was a tenant organizer in Harlem NYC, a volunteer and board member of the first needle exchange program in Philadelphia, an ethnographer of the decolonization movement in Hawaii, a living wage activist, and a leader/organizer with Stadium Stompers, a North Philadelphia-based campaign of community residents, students and workers who fought to stop Temple University's proposed football stadium. As an adjunct at Temple, Marshall was a leader in the effort to unionize adjuncts, served as Chair of the Adjunct Constituency Council and Member of the Executive Committee. Currently, she is on the National Organizing Committee of Peoples Strike.

Matt Meyer, a native New York City-based educator, activist, and author, is the War Resisters International Africa Support Network Coordinator, and a United Nations/ECOSOC representative of the International Peace Research Association. The founding chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association and former Chair of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development (COPRED), Meyer has long worked to bring together academics and activists for lasting social change. A former public draft registration resister and chair of the War Resisters League, he continues to serve as co-convener of the War Resisters International Africa Working Group. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in commenting on Meyer's first book (co-authored with Pan-African pacifist Bill Sutherland), wrote that "Sutherland and Meyer have looked beyond the short-term strategies and tactics which too often divide progressive people . . . They have begun to develop a language which looks at the roots of our humanness."

Joyce Ajlouny has served as the General Secretary of the American Friends Service Committee (the 1947 Nobel Peace laureate), since September of 2017. A Quaker leader who is committed to help bring peace and justice to oppressed and vulnerable communities globally, Joyce is a Palestinian American who started her career working in international development in Palestine, focusing on minority and refugee rights, gender equality, economic development, and humanitarian support. She served as the country director for Palestine and Israel with Oxfam-Great Britain, chaired the Association of International Development Agencies, and worked as a program manager at various United Nations agencies. Prior to joining AFSC, Joyce served as the director of the Ramallah Friends School in Palestine for 13 years, where she led a diverse staff to transform the school academically, physically and financially.