Protest

The Right to Strike

A rights-based movement is the only way to save labor.

Black Study, Black Struggle

The university is not an engine of social transformation. Activism is.

What Future for South African Democracy?

Student protests and the deepening crisis of the post-apartheid order

Learning from the Watts Rebellion

Half a century on, we need to recommit ourselves to correcting the conditions that undergirded the civil unrest of the 1960s.

Protesting Too Much

The trouble with Black Power revisionism.

Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement

One of the largest peaceful protest movements in recent world history.

Ferguson Won’t Change Anything. What Will?

Michael Brown shouldn’t be a poster child for social justice movements.

Lessons from Market Basket

On a remarkable summer of protest.

Burning China’s Garbage

Protests against a new waste management system signals a turning point in Chinese environmentalism.

What Killed Egyptian Democracy?

The promise of democracy lies in its potential to cultivate political virtue over time. But Egypt’s liberals, unnerved by the policies of the legitimate Muslim Brotherhood government, refused to wait.

Big, Glitzy Marches Are Not Movements

In 1963 and today, the real work happens elsewhere.

“No to Profit”

Chileans fight back against privatized higher education.

The Day Wikipedia Went Dark

The free Internet will rise or fall on the involvement and ingenuity of the people, not on courts or lawmakers.

The Port Huron Statement at 50

Reassessing the document that sparked an era of activism.

No Saudi Spring

The anatomy of a failed revolution.

Occupy the Future

A series of essays exploring key issues raised by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Containing Outrage

How police power tames the Occupy movement.

Politics by Other Means

The Egyptian uprising has been rightly celebrated as a momentous event.

What Would Emma Do?

An interview with Vivian Gornick about the mother of anarchism.

Why I Was Maced at Occupy Wall Street

I had always thought that surely cops wouldn’t hurt people without a really good reason. But they do.

In Tahrir

The Egyptian revolution, viewed from the center of Cairo.

Reading China

What American conventional wisdom gets wrong.

Writing About Revolution

Revolutions are acts of hope. That’s why they are the terrain of novelists as much as historians.

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