From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization (Paperback)

~ Benjamin Shepard (Editor), Ronald Hayduk (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Activist Benjamin Shepard and CUNY political science professor Ronald Hayduk team up to honor the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power in From ACT UP to the WTO, an anthology of essays and interviews that consider the group's influence on community activism, from their first demonstration on Wall Street in 1987 to "the Battle of Seattle" in 1999. The brief, fervent selections offer thumbnail portraits of contemporary social justice movements: transgender activist Leslie Feinberg recounts her arrest during a protest against the murder of Matthew Shepard; Jan Cohen-Cruz profiles the Church Ladies for Choice; and Starhawk, an activist witch, reveals "how we really shut down the WTO." Activism isn't dead after all, the editors insist and there's "a new brand of... joy, perhaps rambunctiousness, involved in the new direct action."
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

Captures narratives of a new activism currently igniting our nation. -- Eric Rofes

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Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Verso; illustrated edition edition (August 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859843565
• ISBN-13: 978-1859843567
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 7.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #311,275 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars is there a link?, April 19, 2005

By	L history "santa barbara" (santa barbara) - See all my reviews

Some of the essays in this book are excellent, providing real life evidence of efforts to build community power through documenting struggles on a local level. Still on a whole this book represents an assemblage of popular kitch. Shepard and Hayduk don't seem to provide any unifying theme other than the fact that various groups are organizing. Does the ACT-UP struggle resemble community labor coalition organizing? What are the differences between the so called "Urban Protest and Community Building." The derivative nature of the collection is clear to this reader since I found much of the work widely available elsewhere. The editors effort is commendable but a better project would have linked the movements in a coherent fashion. I certainly think that each of the sundry efforts are interesting, but they do not add up to any trend. The authors mix and match organizing that does not help me in understanding the various trajectories presented in the essays that are on the whole fairly interesting but taken together do not show any semblance of coherence.

Yes some of the movements intersect, but none of them seem to connect. Think about it: do ACT-Up, the Seattle protest of 1999, transgender activism, a protest against the murder of Matthew Shepard, pro-choice activists, worker organizing, etc. relate in any way other than tangentially? Another serious omission is the failure to include race as a serious issue in the contemporary era.

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, radical, art-activist radical social change, March 12, 2008

By	Ivan Boothe "www.QuixoticLife.net" (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A fascinating, useful, comprehensive look at (mostly) Global North movements variously described as prefigurative politics, autogestion, precariousness, people-powered movements and radical social change. Landmark essays and recountings of key ideas and events in radical movements for global justice, queer rights, racial justice, environmental justice and public commons. All the rockstar organizations are here, in their most accessible and unpretentious forms: ACT-UP, Black Radical Congress, Students Against Sweatshops, Reclaim the Streets, Indymedia, Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, SexPanic!, Theatre of the Oppressed, Billionaires for Bush, Lower East Side Collective, and dozens of others. Nonviolent resistance, direct action, guerilla theatre, art-as-activism -- a brilliant reader and overview of the movements for social justice within the Global North.

5.0 out of 5 stars Queering the movement for global justice!, May 4, 2006

By	wildflowerboy (planet earth) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization (Hardcover)

This is one amazing, fabulous book, rich with people's history and political analysis, thoroughly debunking the myth that the anti-globalization movement is strictly a middle-class white, male, heterosexual phenomenon. As a young radical queer male living with AIDS, I especially enjoyed how the authors interlinked the struggle for economic justice with the fight for sexual freedom. From community gardens to ACT UP to the Battle of Seattle, this book brilliantly documents the social imagination of this movement of movements. Without a doubt, this is one of the best books on the global justice movement around, a definitive activist masterpiece!