Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing For Freedom
By James L. Lawson, Jr.
University of California Press, 2022, 140 pages (cloth), $19.95 (available from FOR)
Martin Luther King, Jr. described Jim Lawson in 1968 as “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” Now into his 90s, for decades Lawson has maintained that prophetic mandate, training thousands of grassroots changemakers in Gandhian satyagraha principles and liberatory movement-building. Amazingly this is the first printed text of Lawson’s teachings, edited by Michael Honey and Kent Wong. Succinct and revelatory, these talks and interviews connect the dots between the civil rights era and today’s frontline struggles for human rights, providing an “inclusive revolution” of spirit and methodology to actualize real change now and henceforth.
Insurrectionary Uprisings: A Reader in Revolutionary Nonviolence and Decolonization
Edited by Wende Marshall and Matt Meyer
Daraja Press, 2022, 476 pages (paper), $35.00
The cast of contributors to this fascinating book is simply mind-boggling: Fannie Lou Hamer, Frantz Fanon, Colin Kaepernick, Ella Baker, Starhawk, Arundhati Roy, Audre Lorde, Amilcar Cabral, and the list goes on. Marshall and Meyer (a former FOR National Council chairperson) have assembled a masterful corpus of freedom fighters, particularly centering women’s voices and Black and Brown leaders, to “debate” the role of nonviolence in revolutionary liberation. For scholar-activists, in particular, this is a necessary addition to any course syllabus addressing the intersections of political science, history, critical theory, philosophy/ethics and social change.
We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth
Edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth
The New Press, 2022, 368 pages (cloth), $28.99
For Indigenous and First Nations peoples, radical alteration of the planet, and of life itself, is a story that is many generations long. They have had to adapt, to persevere, and to be courageous and resourceful in the face of genocide and destruction — and their experience has given them a unique understanding of civilizational devastation. An innovative work of research and reportage, centering the voices of Indigenous peoples who communities have long been attuned to surviving environmental crises, We Are the Middle of Forever is an antidote to the climate despair many suffer today.
Journal of Radical Permission: A Daily Guide for Following Your Soul’s Calling
By adrienne maree brown and Sonya Renee Taylor
Berrett-Koehler, 2022, 128 pages (paper), $16.95
Bestselling authors Taylor (“The Body Is Not an Apology”) and brown (“Emergent Strategy,” “We Will Not Cancel Us”) have led the way in helping frontline justice movement activists, especially BIPOC, queer and gender nonconforming individuals, move through trauma and exhaustion to develop healing, self-love and devotional rituals. In this new collaborative work, the trainer-teachers describe six key practices to engage this nexus, centering on curiosity, surrender, grace and satisfaction. This is a workbook and provides a journaling process to support the reader’s journey to overcoming intense self-criticism and embracing a deep awareness of their body’s needs.
Dancing with History: A Life for Peace and Justice
By George Lakey
Seven Stories Press, 2022, 400 pages (paper), $22.95
A FOR member for more than six decades, George Lakey has been at the forefront of countless struggles for peace, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, labor organizing and climate justice. During the 2020 elections, Lakey co-organized the Choose Democracy nationwide campaign, in which thousands of people were trained in nonviolent skills to prevent a Trump-led coup, and he’s a regular contributor on movement lessons and tactics to Waging Nonviolence. In his new autobiography (with an accompanying documentary film to follow), the consummate storyteller and creative direct-action practitioner illuminates his personal, political and theoretical praxis of nonviolent resistance.
Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation
By Rima Vesely-Flad
New York University Press, 2022, 331 pages (paper), $30.00
Buddhism in the West has long been viewed as a religion of Asian descent communities and white converts, but drawing on her research with dozens of Black Buddhist teachers and practitioners, Rima Vesely-Flad describes the dharma’s growing impact on peoples of African descent. The book explores intriguing intersections between Black radical thinkers, often Christian or even secular, and Black Buddhist practice. She also shows how Black people have developed rituals for honoring ancestors and healing intergenerational trauma as essential practices to both illuminate the Buddha’s wisdom and heal from lifelong experiences of racism in white-dominant religions and society.
Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World — and How to Repair It All
By Lisa Sharon Harper
Brazos Press, 2022, 256 pages (cloth), $24.99
“Mine is the first generation in more than 400 years with enough distance from slavery and Jim Crow to try to assess the damage — and to demand repair.” Guided by her ancestors, Lisa Sharon Harper provides a captivating, intimate narrative of our national legacy of colonization, genocide, enslavement, rape and exploitation of people of color. As a Christian leader, Harper trains a particular eye on her faith’s complicity in white supremacy, and she demands reparations to make real our dream of collective healing. Ultimately, Harper’s truth telling offers a profound vision of redemption and Beloved Community.
Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom
By Derecka Purnell
Astra House, 2021, 320 pages (paper), $18.00
Despite a distinguished history of abolitionism in the United States, the idea of ending state policing is decried by many (including on the Left) as unrealistic, even counterproductive. St. Louis lawyer and community organizer Derecka Purnell was initially critical about proposals to abolish the police. As the Movement for Black Lives grew, she came to realize that generations have fruitlessly sought “reform” to policing. Our ultimate need, Purnell highlights, is to reduce and eliminate harm and the root causes of violence in our society — and abolition can help us move toward that visionary goal.
You Shall Not Condemn: A Story of Faith and Advocacy on Death Row
By Jennifer McBride
Cascade Press, 2022. 210 pages (paper), $33.00
Despite recent modest victories for those opposed to the death penalty, more than half of U.S. states still legally support capital punishment. Georgia’s executions of Troy Davis (2011) and Kelly Gissendaner (2015) highlighted the state’s absolute commitment to retaliatory violence, egregious and racist applications of the death penalty, and its denial of the possibility of human transformation. As a pastoral accompanier to Gissendaner, Jennifer McBride provides an intimate, heartrending commentary on her final years on death row and her immoral execution. Ultimately, McBride urges professed Christians to embrace an abolitionist theology of life over death.
Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections
Edited by Linda Burnham, Max Elbaum, and Maria Poblet
OR Books, 2022, 420 pages (paper), $25.00
Racist voter suppression and other electoral shenanigans have been on full display from 2020, a national ballot that some describe as the most consequential in U.S. history since the Civil War. Progressive community organizers from across the nation provide strategic insights on how they achieved remarkable victories in that unprecedented election, what is necessary now to maintain access to the franchise, and how to maximize turnout in a rapidly-changing electorate. In this time of right-wing takeovers of state legislatures, widespread gerrymandering and an ultraconservative Supreme Court, these essays could be received as a how-to manual for protecting democracy.
War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies
OR Books, 2022, 198 pages (paper), $17.95
In less than a year since Russia’s shocking military invasion of Ukraine, tens of thousands have died in the conflict, millions more displaced, NATO has expanded, food shortages and global recession have been exacerbated, and fears have heightened of a nuclear strike. Renowned antiwar activist Benjamin and her respected coauthor argue that although the invasion was indefensible, we need to (1) recognize the provocative actions of Western powers that may have prompted it, (2) stop the propagandizing of “evil empires,” and (3) think critically about how to avoid further escalation and achieve a lasting peace.
Anabaptist ReMix: Varieties of Cultural Engagement in North America
Edited by Lauren Friesen and Dennis R. Koehn
Peter Lang Publishing, 2022, 478 pages (cloth), $109.95
Stereotypes of a homogenous Mennonite faith and identity are subverted by this collection of over 30 scholars, peacemakers and artists addressing such themes as pacifism, race, queerness, and physical ability. Essays and poetry describe how trauma-informed and restorative justice practices disrupt institutional norms within and beyond the church. Of particular interest to this reviewer are an unearthed 1967 speech by Vincent Harding (the only contributor not living); a discussion of teaching pedagogy by theologian James Logan; and a deep look at the Bosnian Student Project, a 1990s FOR initiative, by former FOR executive director Doug Hostetter.