American Protest Literature

For this activity, please submit a one-page minimum outline detailing your plans for your final research essay. Please refer to the final essay guidelines in Unit 8 for details and to ensure that you fully understand the scope and nature of the essay. You will want to prepare each of the required pieces in subsequent units. This is your opportunity to expand and give more detail to your proposal and make any changes and additions to your original plan if you have them. Please use a standard outline format giving main points, relevant texts, and a detailed plan for your final essay.

Your outline should introduce and offer background for your topic, present a clear thesis, include your primary readings and literature to include, cover the main points you intend to explore and research, and list your final references.

For this assignment, please also submit a complete “Works Cited Page” listing all of the sources you will be citing in your research essay. Please make sure it is in proper MLA format and alphabetized for a Works Cited page.

In addition to your textbook sources, here is a resource list from TV Reed to expand your bibliography for this final essay assignment:

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Resources from TV Reed:

T.V. Reed

The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movements to the Streets of Seattle.

University of Minnesota Press, 2005, 216 pp.

$US 24.95 paper (0-8166-3771-7), $US 74.95 hardcover (0-8166-3770-9)

In the past twenty years or so, students of social movements have rediscovered the importance of culture. European theorists of post-industrial movements (like Touraine or Melucci), whose works were translated into English in the 1980s, have helped to inspire researchers to rethink their commitment to mobilization and political process approaches through a rediscovery of culture. Even some theorists most associated with the mobilization paradigm (Gamson, Oberschall, McCarthy) have recognized the importance of culture in protest.

In The Art of Protest, T.V. Reed focuses on the dramatic actions of U.S. social movements. His book serves as an introduction to the movements, but also offers a new perspective. The author’s claims are modest, his goal being to reinterpret and synthesize elements already available in the large body of literature through cultural issues. By doing so, he challenges easy distinctions between culture and politics, and questions how culture works in and around movements. From “We shall overcome” to cyberculture, Reed pairs each movement with a defining cultural practice: singing with the Civil Rights movement, drama with the Black Panthers, poetry with Women’s Rights, murals with Chicano/a movements, movies with the American Indian Movement, rock music with actions against famine and apartheid, graphic arts with action against AIDS, literature with the environmental movement, and cyberculture with the Global Justice movement.

The book’s main focus is the civil rights movement, with music and religion as the forms of culture at its centre. Although measuring subjective change or a change in consciousness is a challenge, Reed believes that “freedom songs are one of the best records we have of the transformation of consciousness in the ordinary people, the masses, who took part in the movement” (p. 14). Yet music did not enter the movement spontaneously. A legacy had to be uncovered and reworked, sometimes with radical alterations, adding political content to the emotional content. “Three clusters of events

in particular are key to the rise of both the music and the movement: the Montgomery bus boycott, the student-led sit-ins, and the Albany, Georgia, movement” (p. 16). A musical group from Albany, the Freedom Singers, played a role in singing the movement’s story and raising funds through their concerts, thereby bringing the movement’s messages to the North and to young people while helping to create a network for the Freedom Summer of 1964. Freedom songs brought people together and became “litanies against fear” (p. 25). Music transformed the personal and collective identities of the

movement’s activists; it was not the only force shaping the movement’s identities, but it was certainly a strong one.

Taking a more radical approach, the black power movement used drama to change society, often through the media, which loved the highly dramatic, stylized confrontations. The cultural front of the black power movement managed to launch new messages of black pride and empowerment that exerted considerable influence. The television screens in the late 1960s United States were filled with images of the Panthers “looking both black and powerful” (p. 53). A new black aesthetic was spreading not only in the arts, but in everyday life (clothing, hairstyle, gestures) as well. Today this legacy is audible (and visible) in certain rap groups and artists who borrow some of their messages from the Black Panthers, not without some ideological confusion.

No social movement in the past fifty years has had a greater cultural impact than the women’s movement, which has tremendously changed everyday life, including laws and political institutions, and it used poetry as a medium for doing so. Poetry is particularly well equipped to challenge two dichotomies: the separation of private and public spheres, and the split between “emotion” and “intellect” (p. 91). More than any other movement, the women’s movement has challenged the division between the cultural and the political. According to Reed, “Some social scientists divide social movement activity into (serious) ‘instrumental’ social and political action, and (merely) ‘expressive’ cultural activity. We will never find the real women’s movement if we use these categories. Culture was a prime ‘instrument’ of change for the movement, not some decorative, ‘expressive’ addition” (p. 79).

In an effort to cover a larger cultural and political spectrum, Reed evokes a heritage of struggle and art celebrated in the Chicano Murals of the Los Angeles area. The author finds multiple levels of interpretation: this art form can be seen as a way to reclaim space; it can express pride and celebrate culture; or it can serve as a tool to expose violence, exploitation or other problems. He then discusses three fictional films that deal to one degree or another with the American Indian Movement (AIM), the “most famous and infamous native organization of the red power era” (p. 129), a group which used high drama and staged events to bring its oppression to light, culminating in the two-and-a-halfmonth Indian occupation of the village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota in spring 1973.

The next cultural act of protest is embodied in mid-1980s rock and roll activism. Despite their contradictions and limitations, “‘benefit rock’ events are important because they are among the most compelling attempts to create moments of ‘popular global culture,’ in contrast to ‘global pop culture’” (p. 157). Reed’s affirmation leads us to believe that he sees popular culture as a zone of significant political resistance when in this case, and he shows that without question, these efforts carried one of the most problematic humanist ideas: patriarchal charity. Did the insipid song “We Are the World” change the world? No. It reinforced Western ethnocentric racism by presenting

Africans not as capable social actors, but rather as victims (of natural disasters or of their own technical inabilities).

One key argument of this book—that all movement politics involves a degree of cultural politics—owes much to recent activist groups like ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). In the early 1980s, a new disease, which came to be known as AIDS, emerged in the United States, while the social disease of homophobia was on the rise in a time of right-wing ascendancy in national politics. In the face of neglect by government and the medical system, the gay community had no choice but to self-organize, tying the AIDS crisis to the politics of lesbian and gay liberation. In addition to fighting visible “enemies” such as government or media bias, ACT UP recognized that they were also fighting an invisible force: social norms that define what is normal/abnormal, natural/unnatural

and appropriate/deviant. Strategies developed accordingly, aimed at bringing these invisible norms out into the open where they could be challenged. People discovered a playful cultural coding (graphic images, slogans, costumes and highly theatrical demonstration style) interlaced with controversial actions. Canadian Journal of Sociology Online January-February 2006 Reed, Art of Protest – 3

This playfulness was also visible in anti-globalization activism, in the carnival atmosphere of some gatherings, from the “Battle of Seattle” to more recent events. As Seattle was a turning point in the corporate antiglobalization movement(s), Reed dedicates his last analysis to what is new in cultural resistance. Independent media and protest art groups are described as quite inventive in bringing global justice issues to light. Renowned cultural and literary critic Edward W. Said once said that “culture is a way of fighting

against extinction and obliteration.” Culture has also been a way of fighting against all forms of oppression. For sociologists at the beginning of the twenty-first century, social movements are no longer theorized as corresponding solely to the concrete interests of organized social groups; they combine in a creative and challenging way political action with cultural motivations (and cultural practices with political motivations).

T.V. Reed obviously has an in-depth knowledge of the subject and provides the reader with a lot of facts and descriptions. However, the dual intention of the book (to serve as an introduction and to renew cultural analysis of the social movements of the twentieth century) is not always well served: novices will not necessarily have the tools to follow the analysis and scholars will find a lot of déjà vu.

Caroline Désy

Université du Québec à Montréal

desy.caroline@uqam.ca

Caroline Désy specializes in social movements, ideologies and discourse analysis; her current research

examines the discourse of political protest and the cultural practices associated with antiglobalization

movements.

http://www.cjsonline.ca/reviews/artofprotest.html

March 2006

http://www.upress.umn.edu/artofprotest

http://art-of-protest.net/chapterintro.html

http://culturalpolitics.net/social_movements/

Imagine the civil rights movement without freedom songs or the politics of women’s movements without poetry. More difficult yet, imagine an America unaffected by the cultural expressions of the twentieth-century social movements that have shaped our nation. The first broad overview of social movements and the distinctive cultural forms that helped shape them, The Art of Protest shows the vital importance of these movements to American culture.

In comparative accounts of movements beginning with the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and running through the Internet-driven movement for global justice of the twenty-first century (“Will the revolution be cybercast?”), T. V. Reed enriches our understanding of protest and its cultural expression. Reed explores the street drama of the Black Panthers, the revolutionary murals of the Chicano movement, the American Indian Movement’s use of film and video, rock music and the struggles against famine and apartheid, ACT UP’s use of visual art in the campaign against AIDS, and the literature of environmental justice. Throughout, Reed employs the concept of culture in three interrelated ways: by examining social movements as sub- or countercultures; by looking at poetry, painting, music, murals, film, and fiction in and around social movements; and by considering the ways in which the cultural texts generated by resistance movements have reshaped the contours of the wider American culture.

The United States is a nation that began with a protest. Through the kaleidoscopic lens of artistic and cultural expression, Reed reveals how activism continues to remake our world.

The Art of Protest
Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle

V. Reed

The first overview of social movements and the cultural forms that helped shape them, The Art of Protest shows the importance of these movements to American culture. In comparative accounts of movements beginning with the African American civil rights movement through the Internet-driven movement for global justice, T. V. Reed enriches our understanding of protest and its cultural expression.

This companion website provides summaries of each chapter, updated print and multimedia resources for further study, and a bonus chapter on anti-war poster art.

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1 argues that music played a crucial role in virtually every dimension of the African American Civil Rights movement. It traces the rise and varied use of the “freedom songs,” as activists transformed deep-seeded Black religious and secular musical traditions into a major resource for the struggle against racial injustice.

Chapter 2 focuses on the Black Power phase of the African American liberation struggle, demonstrating that the Black Panther Party can be seen as engaging in a deadly serious form of political drama on the national and world stage. The chapter, like most, challenges easy distinctions between culture and politics, in this case between literary dramas and the “theater” of politics.

Chapter 3 looks at the emergence and development of a new radical wave of women’s movements beginning in the mid-1960s. Here I focus on the role of poetry as one site of feminist consciousness-raising action, and as a resource in the formation of a variety of contested feminist identities rooted in differences of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and nationality, as they have evolved up to the present.

Chapter 4 treats the Chicano/a Movement, focusing on the ways in which the thousands of murals produced in and around the Brown power movimiento embody and reflect the political and cultural changes the movement generates in its efforts to bring justice to U.S. communities of Mexican descent.

Chapter 5 focuses on the group that called itself the American Indian Movement (AIM), one of the key organizations in the wider Native American Red Power Movement. This chapter examines the ways in which the movement‚s story has been told through the widely circulated, if inevitably distorting, medium of the Hollywood film.

Chapter 6 takes a look at the role played by pop and rock music in movements of the mid 1980s, especially the student-based anti-apartheid movement. Student movements, from the 1930s to the 1960s to the 1980s and into the present have used popular culture as an organizing tool. In focusing on one of these waves of student activism, I try to show the important potential, as well as the limits, of using pop culture as a force in the promotion of social movements.

Chapter 7 analyzes the brilliant use of graphic arts (posters, T-shirts, banners, stickers, etc.) by ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), the movement group at the forefront of the fight against HIV/AIDS. I focus on how the group mobilized both the gay community and other affected populations through a direct action campaign illustrating how homophobia, racism, sexism, and class prejudice had created a deadly “epidemic of signification” that stalled progress in saving lives.

Chapter 8 addresses the relationship between academia and social movements by describing an emerging trend in the academic literary and cultural study that I call “environmental justice eco-criticism.” The environmental justice movement has shown over two decades how environmental dangers have unevenly fallen upon poor whites and people of color, and demonstrates how the field of ecocriticism needs to expand beyond its concern with wilderness appreciation to treat these complex issues.

Chapter 9 rounds out the movement story by focusing on the broad, coalitional movement against corporate globalization. Here I analyze the ways in which the new medium of the Internet has helped foster a global culture of resistance to the poverty, environmental degradation, and human rights abuses brought about by forms of globalization which attend only to the rights of corporations and nation-states.

Chapter 10 offers some concluding “Reflections on the Cultural Study of Social Movements.” It raises more systematic questions about various relations between culture(s) and movements that are discussed and exemplified in the course of the book. Those seeking a more explicit framework of analysis through which to think culture-movement relations may wish to read this final chapter first. It is aimed a bit more at academic movement scholars than the other chapters, but I think it can be useful to all readers.

Resources for Learning More about Social Movements and Culture

This website is designed to provide supplementary material for the book The Art of Protest. The site consists of ten sections corresponding to the ten chapters of the book. Each section includes general works as well as materials geared more specifically to cultural dimensions of each movement, and is divided into three categories: Books and Articles, Multimedia, and Websites. Many other useful resources exist, but these are the most relevant for readers who want to do further research. In addition to listing current sources about each movement, the site will be updated regularly as important new materials emerge. We welcome suggestions for corrections, additions, or other changes to the site; send e-mail to the author.

Resources for Learning More about Social Movements and Culture

Chapter 1. Singing Civil Rights: The Freedom Song Tradition

Books and Articles

Burns, Stewart, ed. Daybreak of Freedom. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1997. Excellent book that tells the story of the pivotal Montgomery bus boycott through firsthand accounts and documents from many perspectives.

Carawan, Guy, and Candie Carawan, eds. Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement through Its Songs. New York: Sing Out, 1990. Fine compilation of lyrics and songs with commentaries on each by the editors and other movement activists.

Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. 1981; repr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Best overview of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.

Collier-Thomas, Bettye, and V. P. Franklin, eds. Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women of the Civil Rights–Black Power Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2001. Extends, updates, and deepens the work begun in Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement, edited by Crawford, Rouse, and Woods.

Crawford, Vicki, Jacqueline Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds. Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Pathbreaking volume in the ongoing task of correcting the distorted gender picture in histories of the civil rights movement. Includes women foremothers preceding the 1950–60s movement.

Denisoff, R. Serge. Sing a Song of Social Significance. Bowling Green, KY: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1983. Includes much analysis of freedom songs, as well as other related protest songs, before and after the civil rights movement.

Dittmer, John. Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Important study focuses on ordinary folks struggling in one of the most dangerous areas the movement entered.

McDonnell, John. Songs of Struggle and Protest. Dublin: Mercier Press, 1979. Places freedom songs in the wide tradition of folk rebellions going back centuries.

Morris, Aldon. Origins of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Free Press, 1984. Excellent treatment of church culture and politics of the early civil rights movement.

Payne, Charles. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. The best book on the movement culture of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Deep South, and the richest treatment of the radically democratic culture growing out of the “organizing tradition” nourished by folks like Ella Baker.

Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Excellent biography of the great antileader of the civil rights movement.

Reagon, Bernice Johnson. “Songs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1955–1965: A Study in Culture History.” PhD diss., Howard University, 1975. Ann Arbor, MI: Xerox University Microfilms, 1975. The major study of music in the civil rights movement by the great participant-observer member of the SNCC Freedom Singers.

———. “The Power of Communal Song.” In Cultures in Contention, ed. Douglas Kahn and Diane Neumaier. Seattle: Real Comet Press, 1985. Condensed statement of Reagon’s wisdom on music in movement struggles.

Sanger, Kerran L. “When the Spirit Says Sing!”: The Role of Freedom Songs in the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Garland, 1995. Solid, detailed study.

Seeger, Pete, and Bob Reiser. Everyone Says Freedom. New York: Norton, 1989. Collection of freedom song lyrics and music with commentary.

Walker, Alice. Meridian. New York: Pocket Books, 1976. Powerful novel about the civil rights movement and its transition into the black power phase.

Multimedia

Eyes on the Prize (first series). Directed by Henry Hampton. Blackside, 1987. Six great one-hour documentaries tracing the whole history of the civil rights movement. Bernice Johnson Reagon did the music for the series, and it is therefore rich in freedom songs. See also the excellent companion PBS website.

A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict. Directed by Steve York and Peter Ackerman. York Zimmerman/WETA Production, 2000. PBS documentary that places the civil rights movement in relation to the long tradition of nonviolent struggle. Includes some freedom song audio clips.

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Songs of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. Various Artists. Folk Era Records, 1994.

Freedom on My Mind. Directed by Connie Field and Marilyn Mumford. California Newsreel, 1994. Excellent documentary film using organizing in the crucial state of Mississippi as the lens through which to tell the movement story.

Freedom Song. Directed by Phil Alden Robinson. Turner Television Movies, 2001. One of the few good fiction films about the civil rights movement era, the film focuses on ordinary folks doing extraordinary things. See the online educator’s guide.

Fundi. Directed by Joanne Grant. Icarus Films, 1986. Documentary film on the life of the great organizer Ella Baker.

The Story of Greenwood Mississippi. Smithsonian Folkways Records. Traces the impact of freedom songs on one particular community in struggle.

Strange Fruit. Directed by Joel Katz. PBS Independent Lens, 2003. Places Billie Holiday’s antilynching song “Strange Fruit” in the context of the wider history of freedom songs.

Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs, 1960–1966. Smithsonian Folkways Records. Excellent, extensive set of recordings.

We Shall Overcome. Directed by Jim Brown. California Newsreel, 1989. Documentary using the story of the most famous freedom song to trace the role of music in the labor and civil rights movements.

Websites

African American History: The Civil Rights Movement. List of some additional civil rights movement links beyond the ones listed below.

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Exhibits and documents from one of the battlegrounds of the movement.

The Civil Rights Era. Overview site from the American Memory Project, rich in images and sound.

Civil Rights in Mississippi: Digital Archive. Get a sense of the daily life struggles of ordinary folks in the civil rights movement.

Civil Rights Movement Veterans. Direct commentary from dozens of participants in the movement. Includes excellent bibliography and many useful links on specific figures, organizations, events, and ideas of the movement.

Educator’s Guide to “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” Tells the story of how song was used in the Underground Railroad to lead folks out of slavery.

Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Carrying on in the tradition of “Miss Baker’s” group-centered organizing methods.

Freedom Songs. Includes audio tracks and lyrics, focused especially on the important Nashville movement.

Greensboro Sit-ins: Launch of a Civil Rights Movement. Pictures, audio, and documents about the rise of the sit-in phase of the movement in the town where it was born.

Guy and Candie Carawan: A Personal Story through Sight and Sound. Civil rights story in song. Civil rights movement singer-activists Guy and Candie Carawan discuss the movement and the role of music they did so much to foster.

The King Center, Atlanta. Not only a documentation of King’s work and the wider movement, but an ongoing resource for nonviolent resistance to oppression.

Lift Every Voice: Protest Songs. University of Virginia Library. Words, images, and audio on the place of protest songs in wider U.S. musical culture.

Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project. Stanford University. Includes video and audio clips of speeches, documents, chronology, and bibliography.

National Civil Rights Museum. Memphis. Located in the motel where King was assassinated, this museum includes many interactive features on civil rights movement history. Exhibits have included “Music and the Movement.”

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. These three Folkways Records sites include sample audio clips of the songs:
Voices of the Civil Rights Movement.
Freedom Songs: Selma, Alabama.
The Story of Greenwood, Mississippi.

SNCC: 1960–1966. Provides a solid overview of this key group and has links to many SNCC documents and other resources.

Southern Freedom Movement Links. Good list of additional civil rights movement–related websites.

Chapter 2. Scenarios for Revolution: The Drama of the Black Panthers

Books and Articles

Acham, Christine. Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. Explores the way TV performers like Richard Pryor, Diahann Carroll, and Redd Foxx were influenced by and in turn popularized certain black power ideas via mainstream television in the late 1960s and early 1970s. See also chapter 2 on news coverage of the black power movement.

Bambara, Toni Cade. Black Woman, An Anthology. New York: New American Library, 1970. Classic set of creative and critical writing offering a feminist or womanist take on black power and the Black Arts.

———. The Salt Eaters. New York: Random House, 1980. Great novel about the aftermath of the black power movement among black activists, especially women.

Baraka, Amiri (Leroi Jones). Selected Plays and Prose of Amiri Baraka. New York: Morrow, 1979. Traces the evolution of Baraka’s black power aesthetic.

Brown, Elaine. A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story. New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1992. Autobiography of one of the most influential women in the Black Panther Party.

Bullins, Ed, ed. New Plays for the Black Theater. New York: Bantam, 1969. Selection of black power plays by a variety of playwrights.

———. The Theme Is Blackness. New York: Morrow, 1973. Collected black power era plays of this onetime Black Panther Party member and key black playwright.

Chapman, Abraham ed. New Black Voices. New York: Penguin/Putnam, 1972. A key anthology from the era, including black power poetry, drama, fiction, and criticism.

Cleaver, Eldridge. Soul on Ice. New York: McGraw-Hill/Ramparts Book, 1967. One of the most widely read books of the black power era. Sensationalist and powerful.

Cleaver, Kathleen, and George Katsiaficas, eds. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy. New York: Routledge, 2001. Reconsideration of the Black Panther Party by members and scholars. See especially the essays by Churchill, K. Cleaver (chapter 8), and Doss.

Fabvre, Geneviève. Drumbeats, Masks, and Metaphor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. Sophisticated study of black theater, especially the black power phase.

Foner, Philip S., ed. The Black Panthers Speak. New York: Da Capo Press, 2002. Reprint of a key book introducing the Black Panther Party to a wider audience than when originally published in 1970.

Gayle, Addison, ed. The Black Aesthetic. New York: Doubleday, 1971. Key text of essays from the era trying to define a black power aesthetic.

Hilliard, David, and Donald Weise, eds. Huey P. Newton Reader. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002. Key selections from Newton’s writings that give a sense of his intellectual and ideological range.

Jones, Charles, ed. The Black Panther Party Reconsidered. Baltimore: Black Classics Press, 1998. Excellent collection of analytic essays. See especially pieces by Singh, Abron, and all of section 4 on gender dynamics in the party.

Newton, Huey P. To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton, ed. Toni Morrison. 1972; repr. New York: Writers and Readers Publishers, 1995. This collection gives a sense of Newton’s writings as published during the black power era.

Van Deburg, William. New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. The most comprehensive examination to date of the impact of black power and the Black Arts movement on all aspects of U.S. culture.

Multimedia

All Power to the People! The Black Panther Party and Beyond. Directed by Lee Lew Lee. Filmakers Library, 1996. Documentary film placing the Black Panther Party in the wider context of black liberation struggles.

Eyes on the Prize (second series). Directed by Sheila Curran Bernard and others. Blackside, 1990. Eight-part series that takes up the story of the movement where the first Eyes on the Prize series ends, as the black power phase emerges.

Huey P. Newton. Directed by Spike Lee. Luna Ray Films, 1990. Film based on Robert Guenveur Smith’s one-man play. Newton’s political brilliance and street craziness seamlessly abide side by side. See the PBS site for the film.

Panther. Directed by Mario Van Peebles. Polygram/Tribeca Productions, 1990. Not always good history but often good drama, this fiction film introduced the Panthers to new generations.

Public Enemy. Directed by Jens Meurer. Icarus Films, 1990. Tells the story of the Black Panthers via memories and analysis by former party members Bobby Seale, Kathleen Cleaver, Nile Rogers, and Jamal Joseph.

Websites

Amiri Baraka home page. Includes bibliography and links to articles and audio clips of readings by the black power poet, critic, and playwright.

Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones, “The Revolutionary Theatre.” Complete text of this pivotal 1965 essay.

Black Arts Movemen t. Essay by two University of Michigan scholars, with hyperlinks on various aspects of the cultural arm of the black power movement.

Black Panther, 1967–70. Online access to all the articles from this Black Panther Party newspaper.

Black Panther Party. Site from the Huey P. Newton Foundation, with history, documents, photographs, and other useful resources.

Civil Rights Songs. Focused not on the better-known freedom songs, but on soul music as an expression of civil rights and black power.

Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner. Useful site from which to trace the impact of politics of black power on such hip-hop artists as Public Enemy, Roxanne Shante, Paris, Dead Prez, Tupac (whose parents were both Panther members), and many others.

Good for a Girl. Resource site for womanist/feminist work on and in the form of hip-hop and rap.

Modern American Poetry: Black Arts Movement. New American poetry site with documents, links, bibliographies, biographies of artists, and excerpts from the writings of key Black Arts movement figures.

Panther Photo Archive. Great photos of the Black Panther Party by Roz Payne.

The Sixties Project: “The Basis of Black Power.” Complete text of SNCC manifesto on the meaning of black power.

Social Activism Sound Recording Project: The Black Panther Party. University of California, Berkeley. Includes texts, videos, and audio recordings relating to Black Panther Party activities in California.

“To Serve the People.” Site from the California Heritage Society with bibliography, history, photos, links, and more.

World History Archives: The History of the Black Panther Party. Links to member bios, documents, and articles about the Black Panther Party.

Chapter 3. The Poetical Is the Political: Feminist Poetry and the Poetics of Women’s Rights

Books and Articles

Anzaldúa, Gloria, and Cherríe Moraga, eds. This Bridge Called My Back. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Press, 1981. Pioneering anthology of Chicana, black, Asian, and Native American feminism that includes essays, poetry, and short fiction.

Fisher, Dexter, ed. The Third Woman. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1979. Collection of poetry and fiction by feminist women of color that helped signal the greater visibility of woman of color feminisms in creative work.

Howe, Florence, ed. No More Masks: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Women Poets. New York: Perennial, 1993. Newer edition of the groundbreaking anthology that did much to propel the feminist poetry movement.

Hull, Gloria, Patricia Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. New York: Feminist Press, 1982. Classic anthology that did much to define a black feminist aesthetic and politics.

King, Katie. Feminist Theory in Its Travels. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Masterly book tracing relations between feminist theory and cultural production.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984. Brilliant, influential collection of essays redefining feminism through greater attention to intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender.

Montefiore, Jan. Feminism and Poetry. London: Rivers Oram/Pandora, 2004. Excellent introduction to a variety of issues in the relations between various feminisms and poetries.

Ostriker, Alicia. Stealing the Language. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. Places explicitly feminist poetry into the wider context of twentieth-century American women’s poetry.

Rich, Adrienne. Art of the Possible. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Collects many of Rich’s most influential essays, including several on relations between poetry and feminism.

Smith, Barbara, ed. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. 1983; repr. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Important follow-up volume to All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men.

Whitehead, Kim. The Feminist Poetry Movement. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986. The first full-length study of the connection between the feminist movement and feminist poetry.

Young, Stacey. Changing the Wor(l)d: Discourse, Politics, and the Feminist Movement. New York: Routledge, 1997. Analyzes and criticizes various histories of post–World War II U.S. feminism for their inattention to cultural factors, and offers a case study of the role of culture within the movement, especially poetry.

And books of poems by any of the following feminist poets: Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Lucille Clifton, Jayne Cortez, Toi Derricotte, Judy Grahn, Marilyn Hacker, Joy Harjo, June Jordan, Irena Kelpfisz, Audre Lorde, Janice Mirikitani, Cherríe Moraga, Grace Paley, Marge Piercy, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, and Mitsuye Yamada, among many others.

Websites

Academica: Resources for Chicana and Chicano studies. Includes annotated bibliographies, book reviews, articles, and links to other resource sites inside and outside academia.

African American/Black/Womanist Feminism on the Web. Annotated list of sites made by the University of Wisconsin.

African American Feminism. Includes links on many prominent black womanist/feminist theorists and creative artists.

Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s home page. Rich with syllabi and links on Chicana feminist theory, art, and popular culture.

Documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement. Excellent collection, from Duke University, of full text of historically influential essays.

Feminist Chronicles. Detailed, year-by-year history of social, economic, and political developments shaping feminism from 1953 to 1993.

Feminist Theory Website. The most comprehensive site on this topic.

Guerilla Girls. Lively site from the (in)famous feminist artists who have challenge sexist, racist, and homophobic elements in the visual art world.

National Organization for Women. NOW is one of the major organizational legacies of the new wave of feminism action in the 1960s and 1970s.

“The Politics of Black Feminist Thought.” First chapter of Patricia Hill Collin’s groundbreaking book, Black Feminist Thought.

Voices from the Gaps: Women Artists and Writers of Color. Great resource site for poets and novelists of color.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000. Site for Women and Social Movements journal, with many links to articles and resource sites.

Women of Color Web. Comprehensive site for feminisms pertinent to women of color.

Women’s Poetry: Selections. Includes excerpts from such key feminist poets as Shange, Piercy, Lorde, and Rich.

Chapter 4. Revolutionary Walls: Chicano/a Murals, Chicano/a Movements

Books and Articles

Anzaldúa, Gloria, ed. Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Cara: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Foundation Books, 1990. Excellent collection of woman-of-color creative theorizing in the spirit of Anzaldúa and Moraga’s classic This Bridge Called My Back.

Arredondo, Gabriela, et al., eds. Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Excellent collection. Most directly relevant isthe essay by Maylei Blackwell on Chicanas in the Chicano movement and Ana Nieto-Gomez’s response.

Chabram-Dernersesian, Angie. “I Throw Punches for My Race but I Don’t Want to Be a Man: Writing Us—Chica-Nos (Girl, Us) Chicanas—into the Movement Script.” In Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg. New York: Routledge, 1992, 81–96. Classic essay that includes reflection on Chicana murals as political theory.

Chavez, Ernesto. “¡Mi Raza Primero!” (My People First!): Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966–1978. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. First major study of the Los Angeles Brown Berets and their movement context.

Cockcroft, Eva, and Holly Barnet-Sanchez, eds. Signs from the Heart: California Chicano Murals. Venice, CA: Social and Public Art Resource Center, 1990. Four excellent, richly illustrated essays on the mural movement in the context of the Chicano/a movement culture.

García, Alma M., and Mario T. Garcia, eds. Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings. New York: Routledge, 1997. Traces the evolution of Chicana feminism from the early movement days to the 1990s.

García, Ignacio. Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos among Mexican Americans. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997. Brief overview study that gives short shrift to Chicanas but offers useful explanations of major ideologies in el movimiento.

———. United We Win: The Rise and Fall of La Raza Unida Party. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989. Full-length study of the major attempt of the southwest branch of the movement to enter the electoral arena with a third party.

Gaspar de Alba, Alicia. Chicano Art inside/outside the Master’s House: Cultural Politics and the CARA Exhibition. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. Brilliant interpretative study of the major Chicano art exhibit of the 1990s, analyzing the history of race, class, gender, and sexuality dynamics in the history of the Chicano/a movement as embodied in the art works.

———, ed. Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture and Chicana/o Sexualities. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2003. Excellent collection on Chicano/a sexual and gender politics in “rasquache aesthetics” in such often-dismissed art genres as painting on velvet; includes discussion of this aesthetic’s impact on the Chicano/a movement.

Goldman, Shifra M. Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Important study comparing and showing links between the politics of U.S. and Latin American murals and other visual arts.

Gonzales, Rodolfo “Corky.” In Message to Aztlán: Selected Writings. Houston: Arte Público Press, 2001. Major writings of Denver’s most well known Chicano activist.

Griswold del Castillo, Richard, Teresa McKenna, and Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, eds. Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965–1985. Los Angeles: Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, 1991. Rich contextualization of the first major exhibit centering on the Chicano/a movement as an artistic force.

Gutiérrez, David G. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Historical study that places el movimiento into the context of long-range struggles by Americans of Mexican descent.

Martinez, Elizabeth (Bettita). “De Colores” Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century. Boston: South End Press, 1998. Excellent activist-focused work on the future of Chicano/a activism in relation to wider movements.

Muñoz, Carlos. Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement. New York: Verso, 1989. Influential early overview of the Chicano/a movement.

Navarro, Armando. Mexican American Youth Organization: Avant-Garde of the Chicano Movement in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Full-length study of MAYO, the major Chicano/a youth group in Texas and parts of the Southwest.

Perez, Emma. The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Brilliant reconceptualization of Chicano/a history that places Chicanas at the center of the movement and the wider arc of history.

Rosales, F. Arturo. ¡Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Houston: Arte Público Press, 1996. General history to accompany the documentary film series of the same name.

Tijerina, Reies López, and Jose Angel Gutierrez. They Called Me “King Tiger”: My Struggle for the Land and Our Rights. Houston: Arte Público Press, 2000. The story of the Hispano land grant movement straight from the tiger’s mouth.

Vigil, Ernesto. The Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government’s War on Dissent. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. Comprehensive study of Colorado’s most influential Chicano/a movement organization.

Villa, Raúl Homero. Barrio Logos: Space and Place in Urban Chicano Literature and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. Brilliant reinterpretation of Chicano/a culture, including the role of murals as claims on public space.

Multimedia

Art of Resistance. 1994. Directed by Susana Ortiz. Documentary film on the relations between Chicano/a art and the Chicano/a movement.

Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965–1985; Artist Round-Table Discussion. 1990. Video dialogue among artists from this pivotal exhibition.

¡Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. 1996. Four-episode documentary, including archival footage and interviews with many key activists and art activists.

Websites

Archivos Virtuales. Online archive of papers and interviews with dozens of Latino/a and Latin American artists.

Brown Berets. Historical site on this key Chicano/a organization, including interviews with former leaders.

Centro Cultural de la Raza. A major legacy of the Chicano/a art movement in San Diego.

Cesar Chavez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction. A major resource from the UCLA Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.

Chicano Art: A Resource Guide. Excellent source on all aspects of Latino/a arts, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Chicano Movement. An extensive bibliography to go beyond the works cited here.

Culture Clash. Exhibit site for one of the great Chicano/a political theatre troupes.

Galería de la Raza. San Francisco’s main institutional contribution to the legacy of Latino/a movement art.

The Great Wall Resource Portal. Video tour of the entire Great Wall mural, Los Angeles, from SPARC.

History of Chicano Park, San Diego, California. Includes a virtual tour and images of murals in this key site of Chicano/a and mural movement struggle.

Latina/o Art Community. Includes online exhibits and links to various artists and art organizations.

Making Face/Making Soul: A Chicana Feminist Homepage. Excellent source linking poetry and other creative work to feminist struggle.

SPARC: The Social and Public Art Resource Center. The most important single source on murals and the mural movement.

El Teatro Campesino. Includes a sample script from the movimiento era and photographs.

Viva Cesar E. Chavez. The best of many sites on Chavez, from San Francisco State University.

Young Lords Party: 13 Point Program and Platform. Puerto Rican gang morphed into a movement group similar to the Brown Berets and the Black Panthers.

Chapter 5. Old Cowboys, New Indians: Hollywood Frames the American Indian Movement

Books and Articles

Burnette, Robert, and John Koster, The Road to Wounded Knee. New York: Bantam Books, 1974. Influential contemporary account of Indian activism in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Crow Dog, Mary, as told to Richard Erdoes. Lakota Woman. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990. (Auto)Biography of one of the women at the center of the Wounded Knee occupation and other AIM actions.

Johnson, Troy. The Occupation of Alcatraz Island. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. Most comprehensive treatment of this key event in the evolution of Indian resistance.

Johnson, Troy, Joane Nagel, and Duane Champagne, eds. American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Collection of articles by many of the key scholars on Indian activism before, during, and after the Red Power era.

Josephy, Alvin, et al. eds. Red Power: The American Indians’ Fight for Freedom, 2nd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Reprint of key collection of essays by and about Indian activists in the Red Power era.

Kilpatrick, Jacquelyn. Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Fine general study of Indians in mainstream and anthropological films.

Matthiessen, Peter. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. New York: Viking Press, 1983. Documents the evolution of AIM and the FBI attacks on them.

Means, Russell, with Marvin J. Wolf. Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Autobiography of the “actorvist” who played a key role in AIM during its heyday and then moved on to Hollywood, while continuing to be an activist.

Nagel, Joanne. American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. History that places the Red Power movement into the wider context of post–World War II Indian cultural transformations.

Peltier. Leonard. Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. AIM activist Peltier, still in prison for murder, has continued to be a voice for Indian resistance.

Singer, Beverly R. Wiping the War Paint Off the Lens: Native American Film and Video. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Traces the self-representation of Indians in film since the 1970s, and discusses how this differs from Hollywooden Indians.

Voices from Wounded Knee, 1973: In the Words of the Participants. Roosevelt, NY: Akwesasne Notes, 1974. Firsthand accounts by Indian activists at and around the Wounded Knee occupation.

Warrior, Robert, and Paul Chaat Smith. Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee. New York: New Press, 1996. Most comprehensive and balanced study of AIM.

Multimedia

Alcatraz Is Not An Island. Directed by James M. Fortier. Independent Television Service (ITVS) and KQED, 2001. An award-winning one-hour public television documentary on the Indian occupation of Alcatraz in 1969.

Incident at Oglala. Directed by Michael Apted. Artisan Entertainment, 1992. Documentary on AIM and the events surrounding the murders that led to Leonard Peltier’s imprisonment.

Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee. Directed by Frank Pierson. Turner Films, 1994. Made for TV with video release. Based on Mary Crow Dog’s autobiography, this is the most substantial treatment of AIM in a fiction film.

Powwow Highway. Directed by Joanelle Nadine Romero and Jonathan Wacks. Handmade Films/Warner Bros., 1986. Set in the context of the AIM era, the film includes some scenes depicting the struggles within Indian communities for political control.

The Spirit of Crazy Horse. Directed by Milo Yellow Hair. PBS, 1990. One-hour documentary exploring the historical context of, and the mixed reactions to, AIM on the Pine Ridge reservation.

Thunderheart. Directed by Michael Apted. Tristar Pictures, 1992. Highly improbable story of a half-Indian FBI agent who investigates and then sides with activists modeled on AIM.

Warrior: Life of Leonard Peltier. Directed by Suzie Baer. Cinnamon Productions, 1992. Sympathetic portrait of Peltier as framed by the government to help stop AIM.

Websites

The Alcatraz Indian Occupation. Dr. Troy Johnson. Essay by the leading authority on the Alcatraz protest.

Alcatraz Is Not an Island. Web site for the PBS documentary on the Indian occupation of Alcatraz.

American Indian Film Festival and Institute. Influential film festival put on by the American Indian Film Institute in San Francisco since 1975.

A Brief History of the American Indian Movement. Laura Wittstock and Elaine J. Salinas. A more or less official history from one of the groups currently claiming the AIM legacy.

Index of Native American Activist Resources on the Internet. Extensive list of links to North American and global Native organizations, from the Virtual Library.

Indigenous Environmental Network. Excellent site treating resistance to the environmental racism that impacts many Native communities.

Indigenous Women’s Network. Dedicated to work on self-determination, cultural renewal, health, and education of indigenous peoples around the globe.

Native Networks. Information and links on film, television, and radio produced by indigenous people of North and South America and Hawaii.

Our Red Earth Organization. Resists the exploitation and selling of American Indian beliefs, ceremony, and culture and supports all First Nations in their ongoing attempt to reattain sovereignty and carry out cultural renewal.

Chapter 6. “We Are [Not] the World”: Famine, Apartheid, and the Politics of Rock Music

Books and Articles

Clayton, Martin, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton, eds. The Cultural Study of Music. New York: Routledge, 2003. Wide-ranging anthology for advanced study. See especially essays by Herbert, Titon, Stokes, and Laing.

Deneslow, Robin. When the Music’s Over: The Story of Political Pop. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1989. Readable general survey that places Live Aid and other agit-pop events in the context of a longer history of pop music politics.

Frith, Simon, ed. World Music, Politics, and Social Change. London: University of Manchester Press, 1989. Rich study of the complexity of music moving across national lines to shape social change.

Garofalo, Reebee. ed. Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements. Boston: South End Press, 1992. Best collection of essays on political pop music and benefit rock.

Geldof, Bob, with Paul Vallely. Is That It? New York: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1986. Live Aid founder’s reflections on the power and limits of the Live Aid concert and subsequent work on the famine.

Hall, Stuart. The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left. New York: Verso, 1988. Includes some of the most trenchant work on the cultural politics of the 1980s in the United Kingdom and the United States, including the “benefit rock” phenomenon.

Jameson, Fredric. “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture.” Social Text 1 (1979): 130–48. Remains a key text for understanding the relation between commercialism and social change in mass culture.

Marsh, Dave. Sun City: The Making of a Record. New York: Vintage-Penguin, 1985.

Omi, Michael. “A Positive Noise: The Charity Rock Phenomenon.” Socialist Review 16, no. 2 (1986): 107–14.

Peace, R. C. A Just and Lasting Peace: The U.S. Peace Movement from the Cold War to Desert Storm. Chicago: Noble Press, 1991. Includes chapters on the Central American solidarity and anti-apartheid movements.

Smith, Christian. Resisting Reagan: The U.S. Central America Peace Movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Fine detailed study of the “solidarity movements” of the 1980s.

Üllestad, Neal. “Rock and Rebellion: Subversive Effects of ‘Live Aid’ and ‘Sun City.’” Popular Music 6, no. 1 (1987): 67–76. Thoughtful comparison of these two key events.

Vellela, Tony. New Voices: Student Activism in the ’80s and ’90s. Boston: South End Press, 1988. Includes useful analysis of the anti-apartheid movement in the United States.

Weinstein, Deena. “The Amnesty International Tour: Transnationalism as Cultural Commodity.” Public Culture 1, no. 2 (1989): 60–65. Challenges the self-congratulatory nature of much benefit rock promotion.

Multimedia

Artists United Against Apartheid. Sun City. Manhattan/Capitol Records EP ST53109, 1985.

Live Aid. Warner Bros./Elektra/Atlantic DVD, 2004 [1985]. Four-DVD set with more than ten hours of concert footage.

Making of “Sun City.” Karl-Lorimar home video. VHS, 1986.

United Support of Artists for Africa. We Are the World. Columbia Records 40043, 1985.

Websites

Everyday I Write the Book: A Bibliography of (Mostly) Academic Work on Rock and Pop Music. Gilbert Rodman’s very extensive bibliography on the study of popular music.

Farm Aid. One of the key, ongoing movements to spin off of the Live Aid phenomenon.

Live Aid. Excellent Wikipedia article on the concert.

Chapter 7. ACTing UP against AIDS: The (Very) Graphic Arts in a Moment of Crisis

Books and Articles

ACT UP/New York Women and AIDS Book Group. Women, AIDS, and Activism. Boston: South End Press, 1990. Important book in bringing to light the underreported impact of AIDS on women and girls.

Barnett, Tony, and Alan Whiteside. AIDS in the Twenty-First Century: Disease and Globalization. London: Palgrave, 2003. Clear, accessible, and nuanced study of the economic, social, and cultural impact of HIV/AIDS around the world, with special focus on the complexities of the African context.

Crimp, Douglas, ed. AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988. Very influential collection of essays on ACT UP and other early forms of resistance to the silence around the AIDS crisis.

Crimp, Douglas, and Adam Ralston. AIDS DemoGraphics. Seattle: Bay Press, 1990. The key book exemplifying and contextualizing ACT UP’s posters and other visual art.

Epstein, Steven. Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Most comprehensive study of the medical activism surrounding HIV/AIDS science.

Gamson, Joshua. “Silence, Death, and the Invisible Enemy: AIDS Activism and Social Movement Newness.” In Ethnography Unbound, ed. Michael Burawoy et al. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, 35–57.

Irwin, Alexander, Joyce Millen, and Dorothy Fallows. Global AIDS: Myths and Facts; Tools for Fighting the AIDS Pandemic. Boston: South End Press, 2003. At once an introduction to issues and a tool kit for activists.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984. Key text in the evolution of lesbian of color theory.

Miller, James, ed. Fluid Exchanges: Artists and Critics in the AIDS Crisis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Broad anthology that touches on the power and limits of art in various HIV/AIDS activist contexts.

Patton, Cindy. Inventing AIDS. New York: Routledge, 1990. Crucial intellectual-activist text that influenced many in ACT UP to think more critically about AIDS discourses.

Schulman, Sarah. Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Rich study of theater as a site of AIDS activism but also of commercialization of a crisis.

Sturken, Marita. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Includes a rich study of the politics of representation surrounding the AIDS Quilt.

Treichler, Paula A.How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999. Absolutely indispensable for understanding the cultural languages and codes of the AIDS pandemic. Treichler’s essays, originally consumed in an activist context, show brilliantly and precisely why you need theory (even) in an epidemic, and what theory can do for activists.

Vaid, Urvashi. Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation. New York: Doubleday, 1995. One of the most comprehensive studies of the gay/lesbian/queer movement, including a critical assessment of the successes and limits of ACT UP.

Warner, Michael, ed. Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Major collection of essays in the evolution of queer social and social movement theory. See especially the pieces by Seidman and Patton.

Multimedia

Angels in America. Directed by Mike Nichols. HBO Films, 2003. Brilliant film adaptation of Tony Kushner’s play set in the midst of the rise of the AIDS crisis.

Pandemic: Facing AIDS. Directed by Rory Kennedy. HBO Films, 2005. Documentary series in five half-hour segments that examines worldwide AIDS epidemic in both personal and broad social terms.

Websites

ACT UP. Geoffrey W. Bateman. Brief analytic history for a GLBT Encyclopedia.

ACT UP Documents. A particularly valuable part of the ACT UP New York site.

ACT UP New York. Great site that includes both much history and current issues.

AIDS. Comprehensive list of resources from the Queer Directory.

AIDS Activism in the Arts. Craig Kaczorowsk. Online essay briefly covering Gran Fury, the NAMES Quilt, Red Ribbon Project, and Day Without Art, from GLBT Encyclopedia.

AIDS: Making Art and Raising Hell. Robert Atkins. Survey of AIDS art activism from an ACT UP perspective.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt. NAMES Project home page. Site for information about the largest-scale AIDS art project, the NAMES Quilt, documenting the lives of untold numbers lost to the disease.

Art and AIDS: A Selective Bibliography. Includes books and essays on all aspects of visual art concerned with the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Avert.org. AIDS posters from around the world.

Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. Fine general resource site from CUNY.

Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). The key media watchdog group of queer activists.

GLBTT IMC. Independent Media Center for worldwide queer activism.

Lesbian Avengers Chicago. Explosive site of this key lesbian activist direct action group

Masami Teraoka. Terrific site from one of the great visual artists to address the AIDS pandemic.

National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce. Excellent activist and educational site from one of the key national queer activist organizations.

Queer Theory. Site from the United Kingdom that provides background on many of the theorists and theories that have greatly influenced ACT UP and other postmodern activists.

“So Many Alternatives: The Alternative AIDS Video Movement.” Introduction from Cineaste magazine, via ACT UP New York.

Treatment Action Group (TAG). Key ACT UP spin-off focusing on medical breakthroughs.

Visual AIDS. Site exploring and supporting visual art dealing with the HIV/AIDS.

Chapter 8. Environmental Justice Ecocriticism: Race, Class, Gender, and Literary Ecologies

Books and Articles

Adamson, Joni. American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism: The Middle Place. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003. Best, most sustained example of environmental justice ecocriticism. Brings together literature, Native environmental racism issues, and cultural pedagogy for justice.

Bennett, Michael, and David W. Teague, eds. The Nature of Cities: Ecocriticism and Urban Environments. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999. Important collection that helps undermine the notion that nature somehow stops at the edge of cities. See especially essays by Wallace, Teague, and Bennett.

Carr, Glynis, ed. New Essays in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2000. See especially the essays by Sze on Karen Yamashita, Blend on Chicana writers, and Gaard on Linda Hogan and Alice Walker. Demonstrates the strong tendency in much recent ecofeminist criticism to align itself with environmental justice concerns.

Comer, Krista. Landscapes of the New West: Gender and Geography in Contemporary Women’s Writing. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Works to lessen the grip of the “wilderness plot” and other elements of frontier mythology surrounding writers from the western United States, raising new questions about gender, race, and environment.

Cronon, William, ed. Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995. Sophisticated anthology treating environmental rhetorics in popular culture, science, the arts, and movements. See especially pieces by Cronon, White, Haraway, Spirn, Di Chiro, and Davis.

Deming, Alson, and Laurel E. Savoy, eds. The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2002. A rich anthology of writing from African Americans, Latino/as, Asian Americans, Native Americans, mixed race writers, and others who challenge the assumption that nature writing is white writing.

Faber, Daniel, ed. The Struggle for Ecological Democracy. Guilford, CT: Guilford Press, 1998. Excellent, important collection of essays rooting environmental cultural studies in political economy and the search for substantive democracy.

Gaard, Greta, and Patrick D. Murphy, eds. Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy. Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Wide-ranging collection that at its best brings questions of race, class, gender, colonialism, and nature to bear on key literary texts and literary critical questions. See especially pieces by Alaimo and Platt.

Gottlieb, Robert. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington, DC: Earth Island Press, 1993. First book to fully weave worker safety issues and environmental justice concerns into a general history of U.S. environmentalism.

Guha, Ramachanda. “Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique.” Environmental Ethics 11, no. 1 (1989): 71–84. Classic statement of the dangers of wilderness purism when looked at from the perspective of Third World economic, political, and ecological realities.

Harvey, David. Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference. London: Basil Blackwell, 1999. Harvey offers a reframing of historical-geographical materialism in light of issues of environmental justice and postmodern sociocultural conditions on a global scale.

Kollin, Susan. Nature’s State: Imagining Alaska as the Last Frontier. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Uses postcolonial and environmental justice theory to explore the gendered and racialized nature of eco-imperialism and social anxieties about nature, ethnicity, and national identity in the context of the Northern “frontier” of the United States.

Kuletz, Valerie. Tainted Desert. New York: Routledge, 1998. Excellent study of the environmental impact of nuclear testing and uranium mining on the cultures, peoples, and landscape of the U.S. Southwest.

O’Meara, Bridget. “The Ecological Politics of Leslie Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.”Wicazo Sa Review 15, no. 2 (2000): 63–73. Online. Insightful study of the links between environmental and social justice in Silko’s monumental novel.

Peet, Richard, and Michael Watts, eds. Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. New York: Routledge, 1996. Collection of strong essays articulating complex Third and Fourth World critiques of and social movements against Western, capitalist, environmentally and socially destructive forms of so-called development.

Pellow, David, and Lisa Sun-Hee Park. The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Economy. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Important study extending analysis of the impact of environmental racism and injustice to immigrant workers of color in the high-tech industries of places like Silicon Valley.

Peña, Devon, ed. Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics: Subversive Kin. Tempe: University of Arizona Press, 1999. Essays detailing interrelations between Chicano cultural/political struggles and environmental struggles around pesticides, pollution, toxics, land stewardship, and other concerns.

Pulido, Laura. Environmentalism and Economic Justice. Tempe: University of Arizona Press, 1996. Rich reading of Chicano and Hispano environmental/economic justice movements in terms of material processes and culture.

Stein, Rachel. Shifting the Ground: American Women Writers’ Revision of Nature, Gender, and Race. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997. Excellent study focusing on ways in which Emily Dickinson, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Leslie Silko negotiate the intersections of race, gender, and notions of nature.

Sturgeon, Noël. Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory, and Political Action. New York: Routledge, 1997. Best study of ecofeminist movements in United States in terms of their racial dynamic; offers an alternative racial and gender politics and a concept of “direct theorizing” of use for cultural environmental analysis and social movement action.

———, ed. “Intersections of Feminisms and Environmentalisms.” Special issue, Frontiers 18, no. 2 (1997). Essays by Comer, Kirk, Kollin, Platt, Sandilands, and Di Chiro.

Multimedia

Fresh Kill. Directed by Shu Lea Cheang. Airwaves Project, 1997. Experimental fiction film with rich environmental and social justice themes woven into a “lethal comedy swimming through a torrent of [transnational] toxic treachery.”

The Golf War. Directed by Jen Schradie and Matt DeVries. Anthill Productions, 2000. Powerful film on a struggle over a Philippine golf course as a symbol of globalization destroying indigenous culture and land use practices.

Llamado Para La Madre Tierra. Directed by Joseph Di Gangi and Amon Giebel. Indigenous Environmental Network and Greenpeace, 1999. Shows how toxic chemicals may well be the greatest threat to the survival of indigenous peoples.

Websites

Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. The main organization for ecocriticism, with many useful links, bibliographies, and syllabi.

Bullfrog Films. Major production and support center for environmentalist films. Links to many great films for kids and adults.

Cultural Environmental Studies. Site rich in resources for environmental justice cultural criticism, including annotated bibliography and dozens of links.

Environmental Justice Resource Center. Founded by Robert Bullard, one of the most important scholars of environmental justice, this site includes annotated bibliographies, news items and research articles, and links to many other environmental justice websites.

Environmental Justice Video Archive. Many other films and videos to learn from.

Global Justice Ecology Project. Group linking environmental and social justice issues worldwide.

Native Americans and the Environment. An extremely rich source of information on environmental racism as a set of issues facing Native peoples.

Rainforest Action Network. Organization working with Native peoples to resist deforestation and cultural genocide.

Chapter 9. Will the Revolution Be Cybercast? New Media, the Battle of Seattle, and Global Justice

Books and Articles

Appelbaum, Richard. P., and William I. Robinson, eds. Critical Globalization Studies. New York: Routledge, 2005. Collects many of the best essays focused on globalization theory and practice, including some from the perspective of grassroots activists.

Aronowitz, Stanley, et al. Implicating Empire: Globalization and Resistance in the 21st Century World Order. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Surveys a range of issues in the cultures of globalization and resistance to neoliberal globalization.

Bandy, Joe, and Jackie Smith, eds. Coalitions across Borders: Transnational Protest and the Neoliberal Order. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Collection of case study essays examining the possibilities and difficulties of organizing movements across national boundaries.

Brecher, Jeremy, et al., eds. Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity. Boston: South End Press, 2000. Best general introduction to the forces of globalization and the movements arrayed against them. Especially good on practical organizing.

Fisher, William, and Thomas Ponniah, eds. Another World Is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum. London: Zed Books, 2003. Excellent set of documents exemplifying some of the many alternatives to neoliberal globalization arising out of the World Social Forum meetings.

Kidd, Dorothy, and Bernadette Barker-Plummer, eds. “Social Justice Movements and the Internet.” Special issue, Peace Review 13, no. 3 (September 2001). Collects a number of fine studies of how the Internet has been used for and against global justice movements.

Mertes, Tom, ed. A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? London and New York: Verso, 2004. Collection of articles by grassroots activists dealing with practice and theory of the movement for global justice.

Opel, Andy, and Donnalyn Pompper, eds. Representing Resistance: Media, Civil Disobedience, and the Global Justice Movement. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Various essays assessing the pros and cons of mainstream media coverage of the global movement and the alternative media work done by the movement itself.

Shepard, Benjamin, and Ronald Hayduk, eds. From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization. London: Verso, 2002. Excellent essays by grassroots activists tracing the coalescence of progressive groups in the United States from the 1980s to the early twenty-first century.

Smith, Jackie, and Hank Johnston, eds. Globalization and Resistance: Transnational Dimensions of Social Movements. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Academic case studies surveying global movements from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.

Veltmeyer, Henry, ed. Globalization and Antiglobalization: Dynamics of Change in the New World Order. Aldershot, Hants, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004. Focused especially on Asia and Latin America, this collection lays out the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of the current global system and its resisters.

Yuen, Eddie, et al., eds. The Battle of Seattle: The New Challenge to Capitalist Globalization. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2001. Collection of essays by activists debating issues surrounding the Seattle demonstrations and subsequent ones in Prague, Genoa, and elsewhere.

Multimedia

Another World Is Possible. Directed by Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young. Moving Images, 2002. Short, lively documentary on the World Social Forum 2002.

Fourth World War. Directed by Richard Rowley and Jacqueline Soohan. Big Noise Films, 2003. Explores the global justice movement at the grassroots on four continents.

Kilometer 0: The WTO in Cancun. A Global Indymedia coproduction, 2003. Collectively directed and edited documentary on the WTO protests in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003.

Showdown in Seattle. Big Noise Films, 1999. Five half-hour films shot and edited on location in downtown Seattle during the WTO protests; provides a day-by-day, street-level view of the actions. Can be streamed online.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like. Directed by Richard Rowley and Jacqueline Soohan. Big Noise Films, 2000. Battle of Seattle coverage synthesized from the longer Showdown in Seattle series.

Zapatista. Directed by Richard Rowley and Jacqueline Soohan. Big Noise Films, 1998. Documentary on the rise and evolution of the Zapatista rebellion and movement for indigenous rights in Chiapas, Mexico, that did much to inspire the global justice movement.

Websites

Art and Revolution. One of the key organizers of the Seattle protests, this political art and puppetry collective is a cultural force for direct action against neoliberal globalization and related issues.

Battle of Seattle. New Social Movement Network site with several articles analyzing the anti-WTO action.

CorpWatch. Resource center for tracking transnational corporate injustices and resistance to them.

50 Years Is Enough. Site of one of the key debt relief and egalitarian economic development alliances in the global justice movement.

Focus on the Global South. Key resource site for NGOs and direct action groups seeking justice for the southern hemisphere’s people.

Global Exchange. One of the major “fair trade,” anti-sweatshop organizations.

Independent Media Center. Links to Indymedia centers around the world; major alternative source of news from grassroots.

Mobilization for Global Justice. Washington, DC–based direct action support for global justice movement.

Peoples’ Global Action. One of the key groups coordinating direct action and other work against corporate globalization.

Ruckus Society. Training group for many of the bold and imaginative actions of the antiglobalization forces in the United States.

Third World Network. Major networking structure for Asian Pacific organizing against neoliberalism.

United for Peace and Justice. Key coalition of 1,300 U.S.-based groups working for global justice and peace in the Middle East.

United Students Against Sweatshops. U.S. branch of the important movement to stop exploitative labor in the global south and at home.

World Social Forum. The main networking organization of the movement against corporate globalization. The 2005 forum drew more than 135,000 participants from all over the world.

WTO History Project. Excellent, comprehensive site on the Battle of Seattle, including interviews, articles, documents, and photographs.

Zapatistas in Cyberspace. A guide to documents, art, films, analyses, and links about the Zapatistas who have done much to inspire and shape the global justice movement.

Chapter 10. Reflections on the Cultural Study of Social Movements

Books and Articles

Buechler, Steven. Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Offers a rich synthesizing theory of movements that explores at once the “political economy and cultural construction of social activism.”

d’Anjou, Leo. Social Movements and Cultural Change: The First Abolition Campaign Revisited. New York: Aldine, 1996. Uses the first British antislavery campaign in the eighteenth century as a test case for explorations of the social construction of meaning via social movements.

Darnovsky, Marcy, et al., eds. Cultural Politics and Social Movements. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. See especially introduction and essays by Esoffier, Sturgeon, Szasz, Darnovsky, and Mayer and Roth.

Eyerman, Ron, and Andrew Jamison. Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. Reconceptualizes both American and European social movement theory via a sociology of knowledge approach to “movement intellectuals” and collective actors engaging in “cognitive praxis.”

Fantasia, Rick. Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, and Contemporary Workers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Takes an innovative look at the subcultures created by workers in unions, on the shop floor, and outside the job. His concept of cultures of solidarity connects in interesting ways to the idea of movement cultures.

Gamson, William A. “Political Discourse and Collective Action.” International Social Movement Research 1 (1988): 219–44.

Goodwyn, Lawrence. The Populist Moment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Contains one of the earliest and most interesting elaborations of the concept of movement culture.

Johnston, Hank, and Bert Klandermans, eds. Social Movements and Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. The first anthology of theory dedicated fully to the topic of cultural approaches to social movement theorizing. See especially the editors’ introduction and essays by Swidler, Melucci, Lofland, Gamson, Fine, Taylor and Whittier, and Lofland.

Krasniewicz, Louise. Nuclear Summer: The Clash of Communities at the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. Uses postmodern ethnographic techniques to contrast the movement culture of the peace camp with the surrounding conservative upstate New York community.

Laraña, Enrique, Hank Johnston, and Joseph Gusfield, eds. New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Offers theoretical overview of social movements in terms of three broad dimensions: the cultural roots of movements, the emergence and development of movement cultures, and the cultural consequences and impacts of movements. See especially essays by McAdam; Gusfield; Melucci; and Hunt, Benford, and Snow.

McAdam, Doug, and Mayer Zald, eds. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Part III on framing is of greatest relevance, and McAdams’s essay on CRM dramaturgy is especially suggestive.

Melucci, Alberto. Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Melucci, a key theorist of “new social movements” in Europe, offers his most sustained analyses here of the symbolic-semiotic nature of contemporary movements. Includes both general theory and application to a number of recent movements.

Morris, Aldon D., and Carol McClurg Mueller, eds. Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. This collection is a key transitional volume indicating the beginnings of a shift toward greater interest in cultural matters in social movement theorizing. See Mueller’s introduction and pieces by Gamson, Taylor and Whittier, Snow and Benford, Friedman and McAdam, and Morris.

Young, Alison. Femininity in Dissent. New York: Routledge, 1990. Analyzes press coverage of the Greenham Common women’s peace camp in England using a feminist poststructuralist approach that has interesting implications for issues of cultural framing of movements.

Young, Stacey. Changing the Wor(l)d: Discourse, Politics, and the Feminist Movement. New York: Routledge, 1997. Analyzes existing historiographies of second-wave U.S. feminism and existing social movement theory, noting their inadequacy vis-à-vis cultural-discursive dimensions. Then, drawing concepts judiciously from postmodern theory, offers a case study of cultural production within the movement.

Website

Social Movements and Culture. Includes dozens of links to movements and movement research, bibliographies, a glossary of movement theory terms, course syllabi, and more.

Bonus Chapter. Peace Symbols: Poster Art in the Vietnam and Iraq Antiwar Movements

Books and Articles

Bloom, Alexander, and Wini Breines, eds. Taking It to the Streets: A Sixties Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Breines, Wini. Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962–1968. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989.

Calvert, Gregory. Democracy from the Heart: Spiritual Values, Decentralism, and Democratic Idealism in the Movement of the 1960s. Eugene, OR: Communitas Press, 1991.

DeBenedetti, Charles. An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press,1990

Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam Books,1987.

Kunzle, David, Nguyen Ngoc Dung, and Susan Martin, eds.Decade of Protest: Political Posters from the United States, Vietnam, Cuba, 1965–1975. Santa Monica, CA: Smart Art Press, 1996. See bibliography for other books.

Rawls, Walton. Wake Up, America! World War I and the American Poster. New York: Abbeville Press, 1979.

Small, Melvin, and William Hoover, eds. Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992.

Sontag, Susan. “Posters: Advertisement, Art, Political Artifact, Commodity.” In The Art of Revolution: 96 Posters from Castro’s Cuba, 1959–1970, ed. Dugald Stermer. New York: McGraw Hill, 1970.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. SDS. New York: Random House, 1973.

Multimedia

Berkeley in the ’60s.First Run Features, 1988. Directed by Mark Kitchell. Traces interwoven strands of radical activity in Berkeley, including the Free Speech Movement, the anti-draft campaign to shut down the Oakland Induction Center, and the Black Panthers.

Hearts and Minds. Criterion, 1974. Emotionally manipulative academy award–winning documentary offering revealing portrait of the Vietnam War from the contrasting points of view of politicians, generals, soldiers, and vets against the war.

Rebels with a Cause. Shire Films, 2000. Directed by Helen Garvy. Excellent history of Students for a Democratic Society based on interviews with key members.

Underground. De Antonio, 1976. Directed by Emile de Antonio and Mary Lampson. Based on clandestine interviews with Weather Underground fugitives, this documentary makes an excellent contrast to the 2003 film Weather Underground.

Vietnam: In the Year of the Pig. De Antonio, 1968. Directed by Emile de Antonio. Widely considered to be the best documentary film on the Vietnam War ever produced. Certainly the best made while the war was still in progress, and best on the French background to the war.

The War at Home. First Run Features, 1979. Directed by Gene Silber and Barry Alexander Brown. Powerful documentary about the antiwar movement in the United States through a focus on one important site, Madison, Wisconsin.

The Weather Underground. New Video Group, 2003. Directed by Sam Green. Superb film on the evolution of SDS from young idealists to bomb-building revolutionists.

Posters on the Web

Another Poster for Peace
Anti War Posters
Design Action Collective
Drawing Resistance
Étapes
Free Anti-war Posters
Peaceposters.org
Peace Signs
Protest Posters
Protest Records
Stop Wars: Threads of Change
WAR: Campaign on Iraq Poster Exhibition

Websites

ANSWER: Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. A major U.S. and international progressive coalition of hundreds of groups fighting the Iraq war and its roots in colonialism and racism.

Center for the Study of Political Graphics. A major resource archive with over 50,000 posters and other political graphics, on- and off-line exhibits, books, links, and a vast amount of information.

CODEPINK Women for Peace. A creative, seriously humorous women-centered peace and justice direct action group.

Decade of Protests: Political Posters from the United States, Cuba, and Viet Nam, 1965–1975. Includes a historical essay and a fascinating collection of images from the Sixties Project.

Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). Since 1915, one of the most influential radical pacifist and social justice organizations.

Lead Pipe Posters. A commercial site that includes a number of political posters from the 1960s and 1970s.

MoveOn.org. The most successful Web-focused liberal group in the battle against the war in Iraq and other issues.

Posters American Style. A broad-ranging exhibit that includes a section on “Patriotic Persuasion” featuring military recruitment and antiwar posters, among others. From the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art from World War II. Useful historical archive of images from the National Archives.

Promotion, Persuasion, and Propaganda. Excellent media studies course that includes work on “The Art of Protest: From Vietnam to AIDS,” in the context of a wider look at advertising and propaganda.

SDS. A good starting point for finding online resources about Students for a Democratic Society.

Sixties Project/Vietnam Generation. Excellent site on the Vietnam War and related sixties movements and experiences.

United for Peace and Justice. The largest U.S. progressive peace and justice coalition fighting the Iraq occupation and connecting it to other key social issues via some 1,300 coalition group members.

Vintage Political Posters. A commercial site, but worth checking out because it has a rich and varied collection from around the world.

When I’m Out on the Street. Political comics and posters by Mike Fluggenock.

Win Without War. One of the largest liberal coalitions against the war and occupation of Iraq.

WILPF: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Since 1915, a major voice internationally and inside the United States for peace based on structural changes for justice and freedom.

Yo! What Happened to Peace? Posters about the Middle East conflicts.

contexts:

Fig of Peace Symbol.org.

while pointing out how they differ in ways that may matter to current and future organizing for peace.

efforts.

Figure 4. James – he finally ends up investigating himself.

Figure 7. Micah Wright. Courtesy of

Figure 8. Nowar, circa 2003. Courtesy of Miniature Gigantic.
Figure 9 of .

Another favorite source for poster inspiration is American popular culture. In both the Vietnam and the Iraq

Figure 10. “

the selling of war to the selling of popular products, and the passive war in Iraq.

Figure 12. “Chanel,” Violet Ray, 1969. Courtesy of Sixties Project.
Figure 13. “Proud Sponsors of War,” n.d. Courtesy of Cyberhumanisme.

While these and other parallels exist in the form and to some degree in the content of antiwar posters, there are significant differences in the two eras. Most important is the ability of contemporary poster-style images to be spread much more rapidly and fully via the World Wide Web. As we will see in our discussion of the movement against the war and occupation of Iraq, the Web has allowed peace movements to compete much more fully with mainstream mass media as modes of widespread dissemination of images. The Web has become both a “virtual wall” on which posters are posted and a means of disseminating images that can be downloaded and posted the old-fashioned way on trees, walls, fences, billboards, or any other public space.

1 Wright has created a vast collection of what he calls “remixed” posters, based on World War I and World War II propaganda posters but improved. He has gathered these images in book form as You Back the Attack! We’ll Bomb Who We Want (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003).

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American Protest Literature

American Protest Literature

Resources for Learning More about Social Movements and Culture

Chapter 2. Scenarios for Revolution: The Drama of the Black Panthers

Multimedia

Websites

Websites

Multimedia

Chapter 6. “We Are [Not] the World”: Famine, Apartheid, and the Politics of Rock Music

Multimedia

Multimedia

Website

Multimedia

Posters on the Web

Websites

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