Civil Government

Too many Americans have been disenfranchised or faced needless barriers to vote. Part of the blame falls on the Constitution, which does not contain an affirmative right to vote. The Supreme Court has made matters worse by failing to protect voting rights and limiting Congress's ability to do so. The time has come for voters to take action and push for an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee this right for all. Richard Hasen argues that American democracy can and should do better in assuring that all eligible voters can cast a meaningful vote that will be fairly counted.

In December 2010, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor's self-immolation triggered protests that spread from his hometown in Sidi Bouzid to cities across the country. The next month, on January 14, the country's autocratic president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled the country. This would be the start of what became known as the "Arab Spring", which ultimately saw anti-government protests responded to with violence, reform, or both in countries across the Middle East.

In his groundbreaking new book, Counterpunch, Floyd G. Brown issues both the battle cry and a strategic action plan for a populist movement in America that goes beyond any president or political party. Issue by issue, the Left chooses new markers in the sand and waits to see who will embrace their agenda. Those who don't are canceled and silenced. This leads to alienation and the feeling that violence is the only option left. Brown wants listeners to know there is another way, a civil disobedience of the state that allows us to be peaceful—and potentially more successful.

"Questo libro non è un volume di storia. Non intende raccontare la nascita del Movimento, non ha nessuna pretesa di appuntare al petto degli intervistati e delle intervistate medaglie di merito o dare patenti di ogni tipo. Intende solo celebrare questi cinquant'anni. Questo è un libro di vite. Di incontri, scontri, coincidenze." Il primo Movimento di liberazione omosessuale italiano è stato il FUORI!, nato nel 1971, e la comunità e i suoi protagonisti a distanza di cinquant'anni si raccontano.

"Este tipo de generación de narrativas de golpe a veces se ha conectado en Latinoamérica con golpe, golpe, golpe de Estado, y esta idea de los niños con cáncer que no tienen medicamentos cada vez la vemos más posicionada como parte de una campaña, más allá del país, de los grupos de derecha internacionales, que están buscando crear esta ola de simpatía en la ciudadanía mexicana, ya con una visión casi golpista [...]", Hugo López-Gatell, Subsecretario de Salud.

Un fantasioso, colorato e soprattutto ironico girotondo intorno a chi sta fermo in piedi per discriminare. Sono nati così i Sentinelli, per colorare le strade di Milano e del mondo delle molte sfumature dei diritti, per rispondere al buio che sta calando sul presente. In queste pagine la voce collettiva dei Sentinelli di Milano disegna una mappa della strada percorsa e ancora da percorrere verso un futuro inclusivo per tutti e per tutte.

In 1950, we, the people of India, gave ourselves a constitution that promised justice, liberty and equality to all its citizens. Decades later, as a nation, we still struggle with inequality in various forms—religion, sex, caste, gender. As we forge ahead, it is imperative to ask, ‘who is...

Are radical climate activists hurting the cause? Germany should have been a global leader in combating climate change—its voters consider it a major issue and back the world’s most powerful Green Party. Yet, Germany’s climate policies have been disappointing. What happened? In Climate...

Told through "moments of despair, heartbreak, laughter, and triumph" (Kirkus), this "inspiring" (Booklist) and "hopeful" (School Library Journal) memoir tells the true story of how a modern teen girl and her Holocaust-survivor friend fought against hate to create change. In 2018...

Part biography, part history, part love story, A Small Town Rises chronicles the lives of two civil rights activists who met in the tiny cotton town of Shaw at the tail end of the Mississippi Summer Project, the voting-rights campaign known as Freedom Summer. Shaw was, like countless segregated towns across the South, a pressure cooker of violent white resistance to the growing civil rights movement. The two young freedom fighters joined forces in 1964 with local Black activist Andrew Hawkins.

The 27th United States Colored Troops (USCT), composed largely of free black Ohio men, served in the Union army from April 1864 to September 1865 in Virginia and North Carolina. It was the first time most members of the unit had traveled so far from home. The men faced daily battles against racism and inferior treatment, training, and supplies. They suffered from the physical difficulties of military life, the horrors of warfare, and homesickness and worried about loved ones left at home without financial support.

No Human Is Illegal is a powerful document of one lawyer's fight for those seeking a better life in America against its ever-tightening borders. For author Mulligan Sepúlveda, the son and husband of Spanish-speaking immigrants, the battle for immigration reform is personal. Mulligan Sepúlveda discusses visiting border detention centers, defending undocumented immigrants in court, and taking his services to JFK to represent people being turned away at the gates during Trump's infamous travel ban.

American public opinion tends to be sticky. Although the news cycle might temporarily affect the public's mood on contentious issues like abortion, the death penalty, or gun control, public opinion toward these issues has remained remarkably constant over decades. There are notable exceptions, however, particularly with regard to divisive issues that highlight identity politics. Why have people's minds changed so dramatically on this issue, and why so quickly? Listen, We Need to Talk tests a new theory about how to change people's attitudes on controversial topics.

The life story of the most controversial, volatile, misunderstood provision of the Bill of Rights. At a time of increasing gun violence in America, Waldman's book provoked a wide range of discussion. This book looks at history to provide some surprising, illuminating answers. The Amendment was written to calm public fear that the new national government would crush the state militias made up of all (white) adult men - who were required to own a gun to serve. Waldman recounts the raucous public debate that has surrounded the amendment from its inception to the present.

"You know what our party thinks? 'We're good people with good ideas. That's enough, isn't it?' Being tough enough, mean enough, and vicious enough is just not what they want." Well, tough, mean, and vicious isn't just for Karl Rove anymore. In the 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic party decisively ended 12 years of electoral humiliation by seizing back Congress and putting an end to Republican rule. The Thumpin' is the story of that historic victory, and the one man at the center on whom everything hinged: Congressman Rahm Emanuel.

In his final speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop," Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his support of African American garbage workers on strike in Memphis. Although some consider this oration King's finest, it is mainly known for its concluding two minutes, wherein King compares himself to Moses and seems to predict his own assassination. But King gave an hour-long speech, and the concluding segment can only be understood in relation to the whole.

For six decades John Robert Lewis was a towering figure in the U.S. struggle for civil rights. As an activist and progressive congressman, he was renowned for his unshakable integrity, indomitable courage, and determination to get into "good trouble." In this biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the "conscience of Congress."

Most historians attribute the shortcomings of the civil rights era to a conservative backlash or to the fracturing of the liberal establishment in the late 1960s, but the civil rights movement also faced resistance from a liberal "frontlash," from antiredistributive allies who, before it ever took off, constrained what the movement could demand and how it could demand it. Telling the stories of Ruth Benedict, Kenneth Clark, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and others, Darda reveals how Americans learned to wait on time for racial change and the enduring harm of trust in the clock.

Millicent E. Brown's family home at 270 Ashley Avenue in Charleston, South Carolina, was a center of civil rights activity. There Brown gained intimate knowledge of the struggle for racial justice, and those experiences set her on a life course dedicated to the civil rights struggle. Best known as the named plaintiff in the federal court case that, in 1963, forced the initial desegregation of public schools in South Carolina, her experiences as an activist range across years and well beyond her native state. Another Sojourner Looking for Truth is Brown's insightful reflection.

“Profound and revelatory, Racial Innocence tackles head-on the insidious grip of white supremacy on our communities and how we all might free ourselves from its predation. Tanya Katerí Hernández is fearless and brilliant . . . What fire!”—Junot Díaz The first comprehensive book about...