This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century - Softcover

Engler, Mark; Engler, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1568585705 ISBN 13: 9781568585703

Publisher: Bold Type Books, 2017

Synopsis

"Absorbing... Ambitious... Indispensable. A genuine gift to social movements everywhere." -Naomi Klein

Features a new Foreword by Bill McKibben and a Reading Group Guide

From protests to defend immigrant rights and combat climate change, to Occupy, #BlackLivesMatter, and the resistance to the Trump administration, a new generation is unleashing strategic nonviolent action to shape public debate and force political change. In This Is an Uprising, Mark and Paul Engler look at the hidden art behind such outbursts of revolt, examining core principles that have sparked and guided moments of transformative unrest. With incisive insights from contemporary activists, as well as fresh revelations about the work of groundbreaking figures such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Gene Sharp, and Frances Fox Piven, the Englers show how people with few resources and little conventional influence can harness the power of nonviolent movements to create lasting change.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Strategic nonviolent action has reasserted itself as a potent force in shaping public debate and forcing political change. Whether it is an explosive surge of protest calling for racial justice in the United States, a demand for democratic reform in Hong Kong or Mexico, a wave of uprisings against dictatorship in the Middle East, or a tent city on Wall Street that spreads throughout the country, when mass movements erupt onto our television screens, the media portrays them as being as spontaneous and unpredictable. In This is an Uprising, political analysts Mark and Paul Engler uncover the organization and well-planned strategies behind such outbursts of protest, examining core principles that have been used to spark and guide moments of transformative unrest. This is an Uprising traces the evolution of civil resistance, providing new insights into the contributions of early experimenters such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., groundbreaking theorists such as Gene Sharp and Frances Fox Piven, and contemporary practitioners who have toppled repressive regimes in countries such as South Africa, Serbia, and Egypt. Drawing from discussions with activists now working to defend human rights, challenge corporate corruption, and combat climate change, the Englers show how people with few resources and little influence in conventional politics can nevertheless engineer momentous upheavals. Although it continues to prove its importance in political life, the strategic use of nonviolent action is poorly understood. Nonviolence is usually studied as a philosophy or moral code, rather than as a method of political conflict, disruption, and escalation. This is an Uprising corrects this oversight. It argues that if we are always taken by surprise by dramatic outbreaks of revolt, and if we decline to incorporate them into our view of how societies progress, then we pass up the chance to fully grasp a critical phenomenonand to harness its power to create lasting change.

About the Author

Mark Engler, a writer based in Philadelphia, is an editorial board member at Dissent, a contributing editor at Yes! Magazine, and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books).

Paul Engler is founding director of the Center for the Working Poor, based in Los Angeles. He worked for more than a decade as an organizer in the immigrant rights, global justice, and labor movements.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bold Type Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1568585705
• ISBN 13: 9781568585703
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 384