Perspective Transformation Theory and the Donald Woods Experience: From Racist to Anti-Apartheid Activist

This paper chronicles White South African journalist Donald Woods’ life (1933-2001) as he transformed from holding racist beliefs that Blacks were “people who were there to be your servants,” to becoming one of his country’s leading anti-apartheid activists. Adult learning and development via perspective transformation theory are explored.

Social Movement Unionism or Social Justice Unionism? Disentangling Theoretical Confusion within the Global Labor Movement

After the election of John Sweeney as President of the AFL-CIO in October 1995, activists and supportive intellectuals in the United States began thinking about how to revitalize the almost moribund American labor movement. A key part of this literature has revolved around the concept of “social movement unionism.” This term touched a nerve, and has garnered widespread usage in North America over the past two decades. However, most researchers using this term have no idea that it was initially developed to understand the new unionism developed by members of specific labor movements in Brazil, the Philippines and South Africa, a type of unionism qualitatively different from that found in North America. This paper argues that the term “social movement unionism” should be confined only to labor organizations developing the same type of unionism, wherever in the world such should be found. Accordingly, this concept should not be utilized in North America today as there are no labor centers or unions present that are developing this type of trade unionism. It is important to clarify this confusion because it is leads to incorrect understandings and miscommunication. Accordingly, the current situation—whereby the same term is used to refer to two qualitatively different social phenomena —theoretically works against efforts to build global labor solidarity. What about the progressive, broad-scope unionism emerging in North America over the past two decades? Taking a page from labor history, this article argues that the proper precedent is progressive unionism developed by the United Packinghouse Workers of America, CIO, and others, and therefore should be referred to as “social justice unionism.” An Appendix provides a measurement tool. The argument is empirically grounded and theoretically developed, allowing us to better understand trade unionism around the globe.

"New" Social Movements: Alternative Modernities, (Trans)local Nationalisms, and Solidarity Economies

My dissertation is the first project on the Haitian Platform for Advocacy for an Alternative Development- PAPDA, a nation-building coalition founded by activists from varying sectors to coordinate one comprehensive nationalist movement against what they are calling an Occupation. My work not only provides information on this under-theorized popular movement but also situates it within the broader literature on the postcolonial nation-state as well as Latin American and Caribbean social movements. The dissertation analyzes the contentious relationship between local and global discourses and practices of citizenship. Furthermore, the research draws on transnational feminist theory to underline the scattered hegemonies that intersect to produce varied spaces and practices of sovereignty within the Haitian postcolonial nation-state. The dissertation highlights how race and class, gender and sexuality, education and language, and religion have been imagined and co-constituted by Haitian social movements in constructing ‘new’ collective identities that collapse the private and the public, the rural and the urban, the traditional and the modern. My project complements the scholarship on social movements and the postcolonial nation-state and pushes it forward by emphasizing its spatial dimensions. Moreover, the dissertation de-centers the state to underline the movement of capital, goods, resources, and populations that shape the postcolonial experience. I re-define the postcolonial nation-state as a network of local, regional, international, and transnational arrangements between different political agents, including social movement actors. To conduct this interdisciplinary research project, I employed ethnographic methods, discourse and textual analysis, as well as basic mapping and statistical descriptions in order to present a historically-rooted interpretation of individual and organizational negotiations for community-based autonomy and regional development.

Resistance Performances: (Re)constructing Spaces of Resistance and Contention in the 2010-2011 University of Puerto Rico Student Movement

On the night of April 20, 2010, a group of students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), Río Piedras campus, met to organize an indefinite strike that quickly broadened into a defense of accessible public higher education of excellence as a fundamental right and not a privilege. Although the history of student activism in the UPR can be traced back to the early 1900s, the 2010-2011 strike will be remembered for the student activists’ use of new media technologies as resources that rapidly prompted and aided the numerous protests. This activist research entailed a critical ethnography and a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of traditional and alternative media coverage and treatment during the 2010 -2011 UPR student strike. I examined the use of the 2010-2011 UPR student activists’ resistance performances in constructing local, corporeal, and virtual spaces of resistance and contention during their movement. In particular, I analyzed the different tactics and strategies of resistance or repertoire of collective actions that student activists used (e.g. new media technologies) to frame their collective identities via alternative news media’s (re)presentation of the strike, while juxtaposing the university administration’s counter-resistance performances in counter-framing the student activists’ collective identity via traditional news media representations of the strike. I illustrated how both traditional and alternative media (re)presentations of student activism developed, maintained, and/or modified students activists’ collective identities. As such, the UPR student activism’s success should not be measured by the sum of demands granted, but by the sense of community achieved and the establishment of networks that continue to create resistance and change. These networks add to the debate surrounding Internet activism and its impact on student activism. Ultimately, the results of this study highlight the important role student movements have had in challenging different types of government policies and raising awareness of the importance of an accessible public higher education of excellence.

School desegregation in Broward County, Florida 1970-1998 : a historical study of power

This is a historical case study on school desegregation and power in Broward County, Florida from 1970 to 1998. The purpose of this study is to describe, explain and analyze types of power used by the School Board of Broward County, Florida and community activists, in their efforts to influence desegregation decisions from 1970 to 1998. In addition, this study explains who benefited and who won from the School Board's desegregation decisions and who governed those decisions? A historical case study approach was used as the method for conducting this study. Data sources included 11 interviews of individuals who were involved in school desegregation issues as either School Board officials or community activists and 10 archival data sources. The theoretical models of Russell, Galbraith, Wartenberg and Domhoff were used to determine the different types of power techniques used by School Board officials and community activists and to answer the questions: who benefited and who won from the School Board's desegregation decisions and who governed those policies and practices? The primary beneficiaries of school desegregation policies and practices in Broward County were: white, affluent communities and the builders, developers, realtors and other businesses in the western suburban communities. All of the data sources indicated that the black community did not benefit from the School Board's desegregation policies. The primary power techniques used by School Board officials to influence desegregation policies and practices was "power over opinions" and compensation. These power techniques were manifested by the School Board publicly disputing the allegations raised by community activists and by compensating those who supported and promoted the School Board's desegregation policies and practices. The power techniques primarily used by community activists were coercive force and "power over opinions." They effectively used these power techniques to change the School Board's policies and practices they felt were detrimental to black children and the black community. Based on the analysis of the qualitative data, it can be concluded that black children did not benefit from school desegregation in Broward County, Florida and the community continues to suffer residual effects from past desegregation policies and practices.

Poéticas do rap engajado e juventudes nas periferias urbanas de Natal-RN

This thesis relates to issues present in the hip hop movement. Thus it includes youngsters grouped in different levels such as local, regional and national. The research deals with this broad segment. The analysis is made on those called “peripheral youth” It encompasses the juvenile segment, that is committed to a movement defined by these youngsters and activists, the so called “hip hop movement”. The research aims to analyze poetics present in rap, considered as an expression of resistance and inventiveness. The analysis was of micro politic nature and it dealt with the “peripheral scenario” present in hip hop Lelo Melodia in the Guarapes neighborhood in Natal-Rio Grande do Norte-Brazil. In this community, the group in known for their resistance attitude. The group´s opinion is not of opposition or force but it is seen in the sense of reinventing life that is currently attached to the persisting social inequality condition. In these terms, the research also deals with this committed poetic rap understood here as expressions towards resistance and inventiveness that is produced by these youth groups that belong to this hip hop movement. The focal group was the Lelo Melodia Group of the Posse de Hip Hop in the Guarapes neighborhood in Natal/Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil.

Lei Maria da Penha: da convivência com as práticas do sistema de justiça no submédio do Vale do São Francisco

The inequalities that mark the women’s lives in societies around the world have been the subject of intense discussion by the feminist movement, with developments in questioning about possibilities of full citizenship. In this scenario the Brazilian feminist movement has achieved steadily, in recent decades, an effort to participate in the formulation of the public policy agenda, as well as the realization of demands to institutionalize the legal parameters as regulations for the issue of violence against women. On the grounds of social justice, many discourses are made with a focus on reframing the institutional role of the state in the areas of constitutional law and criminal law. Considering these discourses, proposals were reformulated and the action of the state was resized, what ended in the enactment of Law 11,340 / 2006 (Maria da Penha Law), with a great impact on the Brazilian criminal justice system. Taking this perspective as its starting point, this research is focused on understanding the struggles for access to the legal field regarding the implementation of the Maria da Penha Law. This qualitative and quantitative research analyses the way the social practices and social representations which involve activists of the feminist movement and operators from the justice system are established in Juazeiro/ BA and Petrolina/PE before the institutional reshuffles of the state. As a result, it was revealed that, despite inconsistencies in the performance of the criminal justice system, the positioning of feminist activism is grounded on the assumption.

Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, anti-child porn advocate

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Bullet proof cage surrounds Angela Davis as she performs in "Night with Angela Davis" at Madison Square Garden

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Kate Millett speaks in defense of Intro 475 at City Hall

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, anti-child porn advocate

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Pat Swinton and Ti-Grace Atkinson

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Pat Swinton

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Margaret 'Midge' Costanza

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

"Sissy" Farenthold at MS. found meeting

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.