How to Become an Accidental Activist PDF Download

Author: Elizabeth MacLeod
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
ISBN: 1459826132
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Just Get Started! Be Unstoppable! Dream Big! How to Become an Accidental Activist profiles almost 100 activists from around the world, including change-makers like Greta Thunberg, Pete Seeger and Lilly Singh. This book shows us how ordinary people have persevered throughout history to do extraordinary things to help themselves and others. These activists come from many different backgrounds and a drives to take action. They work for human rights, to help the environment, to preserve historic buildings and more. This book will inspire young readers by giving them tips on getting started, continuing when the going gets tough and encouraging others to get involved. They will learn how to use determination, channel their passions and dream big to change the world.

Author: Celeste L. Arrington
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501703366
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Government wrongdoing or negligence harms people worldwide, but not all victims are equally effective at obtaining redress. In Accidental Activists, Celeste L. Arrington examines the interactive dynamics of the politics of redress to understand why not. Relatively powerless groups like redress claimants depend on support from political elites, active groups in society, the media, experts, lawyers, and the interested public to capture democratic policymakers' attention and sway their decisions. Focusing on when and how such third-party support matters, Arrington finds that elite allies may raise awareness about the victims’ cause or sponsor special legislation, but their activities also tend to deter the mobilization of fellow claimants and public sympathy. By contrast, claimants who gain elite allies only after the difficult and potentially risky process of mobilizing societal support tend to achieve more redress, which can include official inquiries, apologies, compensation, and structural reforms.Arrington draws on her extensive fieldwork to illustrate these dynamics through comparisons of the parallel Japanese and South Korean movements of victims of harsh leprosy control policies, blood products tainted by hepatitis C, and North Korean abductions. Her book thereby highlights how citizens in Northeast Asia—a region grappling with how to address Japan’s past wrongs—are leveraging similar processes to hold their own governments accountable for more recent harms. Accidental Activists also reveals the growing power of litigation to promote policy change and greater accountability from decision makers.

Author: Melanie Panitch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135903786
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This book examines how and why mothers with disabled children became activists. Leading campaigns to close institutions and secure human rights, these women learned to mother as activists, struggling in their homes and communities against the debilitating and demoralizing effects of exclusion. Activist mothers recognized the importance of becoming advocates for change beyond their own families and contributed to building an organization to place their issues on a more public scale. In highlighting this under-examined movement, this book contributes to the scholarship on Disability Studies, Women's Students, Sociology, and Social Movement Studies.

Author: David Collins
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574417037
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
In early 2013 same-sex marriage was legal in only ten states and the District of Columbia. That year the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor appeared to open the door to marriage equality. In Texas, Mark Phariss and Vic Holmes, together for sixteen years and deeply in love, wondered why no one had stepped across the threshold to challenge their state’s 2005 constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. They agreed to join a lawsuit being put together by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLD. Two years later—after tense battles in the Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas and in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, after sitting through oral arguments at the Supreme Court of the United States in Obergefell v. Hodges—they won the right to marry deep in the heart of Texas. But the road they traveled was never easy. Accidental Activists is the deeply moving story of two men who struggled to achieve the dignity of which Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke in a series of Supreme Court decisions that recognized the “personhood,” the essential humanity of gays and lesbians. Author David Collins tells Mark and Vic’s story in the context of legal and social history and explains the complex legal issues and developments surrounding same-sex marriage in layman’s terms.

Author: La Shonda Mims
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469670569
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
After World War II, Atlanta and Charlotte emerged as leading urban centers in the South, redefining the region through their competing metropolitan identities. Both cities also served as home to queer communities who defined themselves in accordance with their urban surroundings and profited to varying degrees from the emphasis on economic growth. Uniting southern women's history with urban history, La Shonda Mims considers an imaginatively constructed archive including feminist newsletters and queer bar guides alongside sources revealing corporate boosterism and political rhetoric to explore the complex nature of lesbian life in the South. Mims's work reveals significant differences between gay men's and lesbian women's lived experiences, with lesbians often missing out on the promises of prosperity that benefitted some members of gay communities. Money, class, and race were significant variables in shaping the divergent life experiences for the lesbian communities of Atlanta and Charlotte; whiteness especially bestowed certain privileges. In Atlanta, an inclusive corporate culture bolstered the city's queer community. In Charlotte, tenacious lesbian collectives persevered, as many queer Charlotteans leaned on Atlanta's enormous Pride celebrations for sanctuary when similar institutional community supports were lacking at home.

Author: Candace Gingrich
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
With extraordinary candor and courage, Candace Gingrich, Newt's half-sister--thrust into the national spotlight upon revealing that she is a lesbian--chronicles her often paintful coming-out journey and provides fresh insights into the nation's controversial House Speaker. of photos.

Author: Matt Ball
Publisher: Lantern Books
ISBN: 1590564553
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Not every activist starts out with the goal of changing the world. Some have their life shaped by chance, quirks of timing, and strange coincidences. And an unwillingness—or simple inability—to fully ignore the horrors perpetrated on animals today. Since Matt Ball learned of factory farms well over a quarter century ago, his journey has been anything but linear. Instead, his evolution has been fraught with denial, regression, conflicts, and failures. Matt’s evolution shows that not every activist is a confident extrovert with all the answers. His struggles—often publicly played out in written form, in newsletters, mailings, blogs—have influenced, directly and indirectly, countless individuals. Even though accidental and reluctant, the hard-learned but ultimately pragmatic lessons Matt shares in this book are changing the world. Having learned from years of mistakes, his insights can help others be effective and, hopefully, happier as well. As Peter Singer notes, “A new future is in sight, one that Matt, Vegan Outreach, and other advocates are hard at work creating.” This book can help each of us be a part of bringing about this new future.

Author: Jonathan Matusitz
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031165829
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This book examines the reasons for which children join terrorist movements and how they eventually become peace activists fighting the very crimes that they once committed. The transformation of child terrorists into peace activists has received scant attention from academics and practitioners alike. Particular focus is placed on child jihadism, child terrorism in Africa and Latin America, child separatist terrorism, and White child supremacism. These five groups of child terrorists represent about 80% of the problem across the world. The text serves as a primer for anti-terrorism and peace activism for global social change. It includes original, applied research and features personal accounts from former child terrorists who became peace activists themselves. One of the nine chapters provides an in-depth thematic analysis of the lives of 24 subjects (from all five aforementioned groups). The analysis produced four main themes that encapsulate the time and effort that it takes to become a peace activist today: metamorphosis, terrorist behavior, disillusionment, and anti-terrorist behavior. The book ends with multiple solutions from the perspective of social work, including the reintegration of former child terrorists into society. From Child Terrorism to Peace Activism is a resource of deep and broad appeal. The text is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate and Master’s students in political science, military studies, international relations, international law, and peace and conflict studies. It can be pertinent reading for students and instructors in international social work contemplating social work-related solutions to rehabilitate former child terrorists and child soldiers into society through peace activism, anti-terrorist endeavors, and other socio-psychological methods that will produce social change. The text also would appeal to faculty and students in childhood studies with an interest in child terrorism, child development, and child trauma and resilience. Given the essentials, depth, and possibilities that the book offers, it is a useful resource for audiences within counterterrorism institutes, national security agencies, and academic think-tanks. Information on motives, strategies, radicalization processes, and recruitment methods used by terrorist organizations as well as their effects on various audiences will draw readers from law enforcement agencies and institutions.

Author: Michael S. Foley
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0809054825
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
"An on-the-ground history of ordinary Americans who took to the streets when political issues became personal. It is widely believed that Americans of the 1970s and '80s were exhausted by the upheavals of the '60s and eager to retreat to the private realm. When they did take action, it was mainly to express their disillusionment with government by supporting the right. In fact, as Michael Stewart Foley shows, neither of these assumptions is correct. On the community level, the 1970s and '80s saw vibrant new forms of political activity emerge. Tenants challenged landlords, farmers practiced civil disobedience to protect their land, and laid-off workers asserted a right to own their idled factories. Activists fought to defend the traditional family or to expand the rights of women, while entire towns organized to protest the toxic sludge in their basements. In all these arenas, Americans were propelled by their own experiences into the public sphere. Disregarding conventional ideas of "left" and "right," they turned to political action when they perceived an immediate threat to the safety and security of their families, homes, or dreams. Front Porch Politics is a people's history told through on-the-ground experiences. Recalling crusades famous and forgotten, Foley shows how Americans followed their outrage into the streets. Their distinctive style of visceral, local, and highly personal activism remains a vital resource for the renewal of American democracy"--

Author: Sylvia Olsen
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
ISBN: 1459823729
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Elizabeth May was born to be an activist. As a young girl, Elizabeth was worried about the health of the planet and believed it was her job to protect it. While other children were playing, she was raising money for important causes, researching the latest science and organizing protests. Before most people had heard about environmentalism, she was an environmentalist, living by her principle of “I have to do something.” Written with Elizabeth’s daughter Cate, this book reveals how Elizabeth’s activism led her to politics, first as leader of the Green Party of Canada and later as a Member of Parliament. Filled with environmental facts, profiles of young activists and tips for making change in your own community, this book is part biography and part blueprint for activists in the making.