Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World [Paperback]

David Solnit (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2003

The attacks of 9/11 have renewed a hunger for ideas about how to effect change. The strategies and hard-won victories of dedicated activists from global justice and community struggles can provide vision and hope, and in this collection of 33 articles and essays, we hear first-hand accounts from North America, Europe and Latin America. In recent years, thousands have flooded the streets to effectively challenge the global economic system. Globalize Liberation aims to deepen, popularize, update and provide concrete practical ideas for this spirit of resistance and innovation.

Contributors include: Betita Martínez, Starhawk, Walden Bello, Naomi Klein, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Midnight Notes Collective, Rage Against the Machine and more.

David Solnit is a founder of Art and Revolution, and was a key organizer of the 1998 anti-WTO protests in Seattle.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...document[s] the social movements of the last ten years and provid[es] suggestions and commentary about their future." -- Hopedance

"...insights and accounts from writers and activists across the globe..." -- NoHo LA

"If there were a required 101 class in anti-capitalism, this book would be central to the reading list." -- Fifth Estate

About the Author

David Solnit was a key organizer of the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle. A twenty-year veteran of global justice, anti-war, environmental justice, and community struggles, he has worked to popularize the use of direct democracy to build mass movements in the United States and globally. He is a founder of Art and Revolution, which has helped popularize the use of art, street theater and giant puppets as an innovative form of resistance in numerous movements across North America, and from Israel and Palestine to Argentina. He is a trainer in grassroots organizing, direct-action strategy, and street theater. He lives and works as a carpenter in Oakland, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (June 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872864200
• ISBN-13: 978-0872864207
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #217,363 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

As a pro-democracy, anti-corporate captalism and economic localization advocate I urge you to support independent publishers, such as AKpress.org when buying my or other books. Here is more information about how Amazon operates that every customer should know:
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You can check the website of the American Booksellers Association to find your local indy bookstore and supprort main street over Wall street.

Thanks, David

David Solnit is an organizer, writer and puppeteer.
As a direct action, global justice and anti-war organizer, he was a an
organizer in the shutdowns of
the WTO in Seattle in 1999 and in San Francisco the
day after Iraq was invaded in 2003 He is an arts
organizer, puppeteer and a co-founder of Art and
Revolution, using culture, art, giant puppets and
theater in mass mobilizations, for popular education
and as an organizing tool. David is a direct action,
strategy and cultural resistance trainer who currently
works with Courage to Resist, supporting
GI resistance. He also organizes with anti-corporate capitalist, climate justice, anti-war, human rights, and environmental justice groups against
the Chevron Oil Corporation, who has both a toxic refinery and
corporate headquarters near his home in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Solnit edited Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the
System and Build a Better World.
With Army veteran Aimee Allison he co-wrote Army of
None: Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End
War, and Build a Better World (http://www.myspace.com/armyofnonebook).
His newest book, co-written with his sister Rebecca Solnit is Battle of
the Story of the Battle of Seattle (AK Press 2008).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An anthology of thirty-three essays by an immense variety, October 5, 2004

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World (Paperback)

Enhanced for the reader with more than 180 black-and-white illustrations, Globalize Liberation: How To Uproot The System And Build A Better World is an anthology of thirty-three essays by an immense variety of community organizers, edited by social activist David Solnit. The common theme of all the topics is how to contribute what one can to making the world a better place, especially in the postmodern era. From identifying global problems of class struggle, racism, discrimination, and extreme concentration of power, to putting ideas in action whether in America, Argentenia, Scotland, or other nations around the world, Globalize Liberation offers a crucial glimpse into what is needed to shape the future of humanity for the better.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Be the change you want to see!, September 12, 2004

By 

R. Hutchinson "autonomeus" (a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World (Paperback)

GLOBALIZE LIBERATION is a fine compendium of writings by and for global justice activists, or just activists generally. With 488 pages and 33 chapters, full of great black & white photos and drawings, it is a veritable encyclopedia. The book is divided into 3 sections:

1) What's the problem? (political analysis)

2) How to change things (tactics and strategies for change), and

3) Ideas in action (examples of various movements).

The editor, David Solnit, is a Bay Area activist with long years of experience, going back to the Bay Area Peace Test of the late 1980s. He was a key organizer of the successful nonviolent shutdown of the WTO (World Trade Organization) meeting in Seattle in November/December, 1999. Solnit works as a carpenter in Oakland, enough to keep him on the frontlines of a constant stream of NVA (nonviolent direct action) campaigns. In his editor's note, he says:

"As a carpenter, I have packed this book like a toolbelt, with the most useful and practical tools: ideas and understandings of how to uproot the system causing our problems and build a better world... ...This book is a resource, but does not offer a repeatable blueprint, roadmap or recipe for the changes our planet so desperately needs."

Of course if it did offer The Answer, you can bet that it would be VERY hard to find, and that everyone who desires progressive change would be circulating bootleg copies! But GLOBALIZE LIBERATION offers plenty of insight into making radical change from people who've been trying to make it. Most of the authors are unsung grassroots activists, but there are contributions from Walden Bello, Starhawk, Naomi Klein, George Lakey, and Elizabeth Martinez, all of whom are widely published and well-known in progressive circles. (No Rage Against the Machine, though, Amazon description to the contrary!)

The book makes no claim to represent the entire global justice movement -- certainly there are no contributions from conservative opponents of globalization such as Pat Buchanan. But neither are there contributions from the AFL-CIO, or such leading organizations as Public Citizen, the Institute for Policy Studies, or any of the Big 10 environmental groups. Solnit and his contributors basically fall into two categories -- anarchist/antiauthoritarians, and grassroots/populist organizers. The word anarchism, oddly enough, is not used overly much by the contributors -- but the basic approach is clear enough from the Introduction. Solnit says "[t]he new radicalism is a movement of movements, a network of networks, not merely intent on changing the world, but -- as the Zapatistas describe -- making a new one in which many worlds will fit." He goes on to distinguish this radicalism from the hierarchical/authoritarian Left of the 20th century -- I'll leave it to you to judge whether the movements of GLOBALIZE LIBERATION are really "beyond left and right," as he suggests, or are best thought of as an antiauthoritarian left. Here are the common principles Solnit sees in the new radicalism:

"...the commitment to uprooting the system that is the cause of our social and ecological problems; doing it ourselves with people power and direct action; making change without taking power; practicing direct democracy in our resistance and in the world we create; and making our efforts a laboratory of resistance, creating new language and new forms of struggle."

So the vision, while loose and diverse, is basically a vision of direct democracy and nonviolent direct action -- as Solnit says, "[a] common theme within the new radicalism is the practice of letting the means determine the ends." Groups like Public Citizen and the IPS, which are liberal or social democratic in orientation, are tactical allies of "the new radicalism," but ultimately have different aims. There are examples in the book from various protests, many in the U.S., but also elsewhere, including the U.K., Italy, Argentina, Mexico (of course, the Zapatistas), and Serbia. The book avoids any lengthy debate over the tactical issue (where exactly is the boundary on nonviolent action?), but stakes out a clear position in favor of NVA, particularly notable with the inclusion of Lakey, a long-time proponent of Gandhian nonviolent strategy. Lakey was an influential voice in the successful movement to remove Milosevich from power in Serbia, and the book includes his account of Otpor, the student movement which used creative non-cooperation tactics. The fact that the CIA & U.S. Endowment for Democrcy also backed Otpor is not addressed, though apparently the Otpor leaders minimize this and say the U.S. intel support was not critical, nor did it guide their objectives (this is from Lakey via the editor).

GLOBALIZE LIBERATION is an excellent, up-to-date primer on "the new radicalism." It isn't the only one, though -- see my "Tools for Activists Against Global Capital" for more. The 4 that are most similar to the present volume are WE ARE EVERYWHERE, CONFRONTING CAPITALISM, ANTI-CAPITALISM, and A MOVEMENT OF MOVEMENTS.

Given the crisis we face -- and I personally am most concerned about the ecological crisis, and the fact that the oil is running out without any concerted plan for a transition to renewable energy -- the activism of GLOBALIZE LIBERATION is a source of hope. And the most hopeful thing is that it will spark more activism!