This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century - Hardcover

Engler, Mark; Engler, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568587333 ISBN 13: 9781568587332

Publisher: Bold Type Books, 2016

Synopsis

There is a craft to uprising and this craft can change the world.

From protests around climate change and immigrant rights, to Occupy, the Arab Spring, and #BlackLivesMatter, a new generation is unleashing strategic nonviolent action to shape public debate and force political change. When mass movements erupt onto our television screens, the media consistently portrays them as being spontaneous and unpredictable. Yet, in this book, Mark and Paul Engler look at the hidden art behind such outbursts of protest, examining core principles that have been used to spark and guide moments of transformative unrest.

With incisive insights from contemporary activists, as well as fresh revelations about the work of groundbreaking figures such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Gene Sharp, and Frances Fox Piven, the Englers show how people with few resources and little conventional influence are engineering the upheavals that are reshaping contemporary politics.

Nonviolence is usually seen simply as a philosophy or moral code. This Is an Uprising shows how it can instead be deployed as a method of political conflict, disruption, and escalation. It argues that if we are always taken by surprise by dramatic outbreaks of revolt, we pass up the chance to truly understand how social transformation happens.

About this title

Review

Anyone who doubts that community organizing is a significant part of the social fabric will find such assumptions dispelled by this intriguing and illuminating overview. --Booklist

Especially timely in the wake of protests across the United States, this book offers insight into how far we've come as a country and how much further we have to go. --Library Journal

This book is certain to become a seminal text. . . . [The authors] brilliantly illuminate the debates between advocates of mass mobilization, organization building, nonviolence, and disruption. Mark and Paul Engler have constructed a new intellectual platform to advance our understanding of these strategic dilemmas. --Frances Fox Piven, author of Challenging Authority and Poor People s Movements

Book Description

This powerful look at peaceful protest demystifies nonviolence as an important political tool, explores its historical roots, and reveals the careful planning behind these seemingly spontaneous movements-like Occupy Wall Street, the Umbrella Movement, the Climate March, the Millions March, and Tahrir Square-instructing potential activist as to how they can create lasting change.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bold Type Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1568587333
• ISBN 13: 9781568587332
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368