Radical Pacifism in Modern America

Radical Pacifism in Modern America PDF Author: Marian Mollin
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812239520
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Their compelling examples of female militancy and leadership challenge the essentialist association of female pacifism with motherhood and expand the definition of political action to include women's political work in both the public and private spheres. Focusing on the vexed alliance between white peace activists and black civil rights workers, Mollin similarly details the difficulties that arose at the points where their movements overlapped and challenges the seemingly natural association between peace and civil rights."

Radical Pacifism in Modern America

Radical Pacifism in Modern America PDF Author: Marian Mollin
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812239520
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Get Book Here

Book Description
Their compelling examples of female militancy and leadership challenge the essentialist association of female pacifism with motherhood and expand the definition of political action to include women's political work in both the public and private spheres. Focusing on the vexed alliance between white peace activists and black civil rights workers, Mollin similarly details the difficulties that arose at the points where their movements overlapped and challenges the seemingly natural association between peace and civil rights."

Radical Pacifism in Modern America

Radical Pacifism in Modern America PDF Author: Marian Mollin
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812202821
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Radical Pacifism in Modern America traces cycles of success and decline in the radical wing of the American peace movement, an egalitarian strain of pacifism that stood at the vanguard of antimilitarist organizing and American radical dissent from 1940 to 1970. Using traditional archival material and oral history sources, Marian Mollin examines how gender and race shaped and limited the political efforts of radical pacifist women and men, highlighting how activists linked pacifism to militant masculinity and privileged the priorities of its predominantly white members. In spite of the invisibility that this framework imposed on activist women, the history of this movement belies accounts that relegate women to the margins of American radicalism and mixed-sex political efforts. Motivated by a strong egalitarianism, radical pacifist women rejected separatist organizing strategies and, instead, worked alongside men at the front lines of the struggle to construct a new paradigm of social and political change. Their compelling examples of female militancy and leadership challenge the essentialist association of female pacifism with motherhood and expand the definition of political action to include women's political work in both the public and private spheres. Focusing on the vexed alliance between white peace activists and black civil rights workers, Mollin similarly details the difficulties that arose at the points where their movements overlapped and challenges the seemingly natural association between peace and civil rights. Emphasizing the actions undertaken by militant activists, Radical Pacifism in Modern America illuminates the complex relationship between gender, race, activism, and political culture, identifying critical factors that simultaneously hindered and facilitated grassroots efforts at social and political change.

Direct Action

Direct Action PDF Author: James Tracy
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226811277
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Direct Action tells the story of how a small group of "radical pacifists"—nonviolent activists such as David Dellinger, Staughton Lynd, A.J. Muste, and Bayard Rustin—played a major role in the rebirth of American radicalism and social protest in the 1950s and 1960s. Coming together in the camps and prisons where conscientious objectors were placed during World War II, radical pacifists developed an experimental protest style that emphasized media-savvy, symbolic confrontation with institutions deemed oppressive. Due to their tactical commitment to nonviolent direct action, they became the principal interpreters of Gandhism on the American Left, and indelibly stamped postwar America with their methods and ethos. Genealogies of the Civil Rights, antiwar, and antinuclear movements in this period are incomplete without understanding the history of radical pacifism. Taking us through the Vietnam war protests, this detailed treatment of radical pacifism reveals the strengths and limitations of American individualism in the modern era.

Radical Pacifism

Radical Pacifism PDF Author: Scott H Bennett
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815630036
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
This deeply researched book is the first history of the War Resisters League, an organization that represents the major vehicle of secular radical pacifism in the United States. Besides opposing all U. S. wars and championing conscientious objection to these wars, Scott H. Bennett shows how the WRL—led by its colorful members—functioned as a “movement halfway house,” assisting and influencing a variety of social reform groups and campaigns. He devotes special attention to WWII conscientious objectors (COs) who staged dramatic wartime work and hunger strikes in Civilian Public Service camps and prisons against Jim Crow, censorship, conscription, and other policies. These radical COs moved the postwar WRL in new directions—and transformed radical pacifism. By recovering the important links between the WRL and the peace, civil rights, civil liberties, and antinuclear movements, Bennett demonstrates the social relevance and political effectiveness of radical pacifism. He emphasizes the WRL’s most important legacy: its promotion, legitimization, and Americanization of Gandhian nonviolent direct action, which infused the postwar peace and justice movements.

Acts of Conscience

Acts of Conscience PDF Author: Joseph Kip Kosek
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231144199
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
In response to the massive bloodshed that defined the twentieth century, American religious radicals developed a modern form of nonviolent protest, one that combined Christian principles with new uses of mass media. Greatly influenced by the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi, these "acts of conscience" included sit-ins, boycotts, labor strikes, and conscientious objection to war. Beginning with World War I and ending with the ascendance of Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph Kip Kosek traces the impact of A. J. Muste, Richard Gregg, and other radical Christian pacifists on American democratic theory and practice. These dissenters found little hope in the secular ideologies of Wilsonian Progressivism, revolutionary Marxism, and Cold War liberalism, all of which embraced organized killing at one time or another. The example of Jesus, they believed, demonstrated the immorality and futility of such violence under any circumstance and for any cause. Yet the theories of Christian nonviolence are anything but fixed. For decades, followers have actively reinterpreted the nonviolent tradition, keeping pace with developments in politics, technology, and culture. Tracing the rise of militant nonviolence across a century of industrial conflict, imperialism, racial terror, and international warfare, Kosek recovers radical Christians' remarkable stance against the use of deadly force, even during World War II and other seemingly just causes. His research sheds new light on an interracial and transnational movement that posed a fundamental, and still relevant, challenge to the American political and religious mainstream.

Pacifism as Pathology

Pacifism as Pathology PDF Author: Ward Churchill
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 1629633291
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Pacifism as Pathology has long since emerged as a dissident classic. Originally written during the mid-1980s, the seminal essay “Pacifism as Pathology” was prompted by veteran activist Ward Churchill’s frustration with what he diagnosed as a growing—and deliberately self-neutralizing—”hegemony of nonviolence” on the North American left. The essay’s publication unleashed a raging debate among activists in both the U.S. and Canada, a significant result of which was Michael Ryan’s penning of a follow-up essay reinforcing Churchill’s premise that nonviolence, at least as the term is popularly employed by white “progressives,” is inherently counterrevolutionary, adding up to little more than a manifestation of its proponents’ desire to maintain their relatively high degrees of socioeconomic privilege and thereby serving to stabilize rather than transform the prevailing relations of power. This short book challenges the pacifist movement’s heralded victories—Gandhi in India, 1960s antiwar activists, even Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement—suggesting that their success was in spite of, rather than because of, their nonviolent tactics. Churchill also examines the Jewish Holocaust, pointing out that the overwhelming response of Jews was nonviolent, but that when they did use violence they succeeded in inflicting significant damage to the nazi war machine and saving countless lives. As relevant today as when they first appeared, Churchill’s and Ryan’s trailblazing efforts were first published together in book form in 1998. Now, along with the preface to that volume by former participant in armed struggle/political prisoner Ed Mead, postscripts by both Churchill and Ryan, and a powerful new foreword by leading oppositionist intellectual Dylan Rodríguez, these vitally important essays are being released in a fresh edition.

A World Without War

A World Without War PDF Author: Frances Early
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815627647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Traces the connection between feminist antiwar activism and the emergence of the modern civil liberties movement in WWI America. Documents the formation and history of the New York Bureau of Legal Advice, a mixed-gender organization associated with the feminist- oriented, left-wing pacifist movement of the war years through the lives and deeds of its founders, Frances Witherspoon and Tracy Mygatt. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

American Gandhi

American Gandhi PDF Author: Leilah Danielson
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812291778
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
When Abraham Johannes Muste died in 1967, newspapers throughout the world referred to him as the "American Gandhi." Best known for his role in the labor movement of the 1930s and his leadership of the peace movement in the postwar era, Muste was one of the most charismatic figures of the American left in his time. Had he written the story of his life, it would also have been the story of social and political struggles in the United States during the twentieth century. In American Gandhi, Leilah Danielson establishes Muste's distinctive activism as the work of a prophet and a pragmatist. Muste warned that the revolutionary dogmatism of the Communist Party would prove a dead end, understood the moral significance of racial equality, argued early in the Cold War that American pacifists should not pick a side, and presaged the spiritual alienation of the New Left from the liberal establishment. At the same time, Muste was committed to grounding theory in practice and the individual in community. His open, pragmatic approach fostered some of the most creative and remarkable innovations in progressive thought and practice in the twentieth century, including the adaptation of Gandhian nonviolence for American concerns and conditions. A biography of Muste's evolving political and religious views, American Gandhi also charts the rise and fall of American progressivism over the course of the twentieth century and offers the possibility of its renewal in the twenty-first.

Radical Chapters

Radical Chapters PDF Author: Michael Doyle
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 0815657293
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Long a hub for literary bohemians, countercultural musicians, and readers interested in a good browse, Kepler’s Books and Magazines is one of the most influential independent bookstores in American history. When owner Roy Kepler opened the San Francisco Bay Area store in 1955, he led the way as a pioneer in the "paperback revolution." He popularized the once radical idea of selling affordable books in an intellectually bracing coffeehouse atmosphere. Paperback selling was not the only revolution Kepler supported, however. In Radical Chapters, Doyle sheds light on Kepler’s remarkable contributions to pacifism and social change. He highlights Kepler’s achievements in advocating radical pacifism during World War II, antinuclear activism during the Cold War era, and antiwar activism during the Vietnam War. During those decades, Kepler played an integral role, creating a community and a space to exchange ideas for such notable figures as Jerry Garcia, Joan Baez, and Stewart Brand. Doyle’s fascinating chronicle captures the man who inspired that community and offers a moving tribute to his legacy. In a new foreword for this revised edition, Doyle updates Kepler’s story and assesses how the bookstore and the community it serves have remained socially engaged and commercially viable amid the tumult of the twenty-first century.

The United States and the Second World War

The United States and the Second World War PDF Author: G. Kurt Piehler
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823231208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
In this text, Piehler and Pash bring together a collection of essays offering an examination of American participation in the Second World War, including a long overdue reconsideration of such seminal topics as the forces leading the US to enter World War II, the role of the American military in the Allied victory and more