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Direct Action
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  1. The Activists' Handbook
    A Step-by-Step Guide to Participatory Democracy
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2012
    A guide to grassroots activism.
  2. African Mine Workers' Strike of 1946
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    A strike, by mine workers of Witwatersrand, which started on August 12, 1946 and lasted around 1 week. The strike was attacked by police and over the week, at least 1,248 workers were wounded and at least 9 killed.
  3. Against All Odds
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1985
    The shadow haunting the power structure is the danger that those who are controlled will realize they are powerless only so long as they think they are. Once people stop believing they are powerless the whole edifice is in danger of collapse.
  4. Alternative Press Annual 1983, The
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1984
  5. Anarcho-syndicalism
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
  6. Another World is Possible
    Globalization and Anti-capitalism
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2006
    A call-to-arms for progressive activists. McNally argues that capitalism is synonymous with imperialism and fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
  7. Arvida Strike
    Connexipedia: Article in the Canadian Encyclopedia
    Resource Type: Article
    Began July 24, 1941 when some 700 workers in the Aluminium Co. of Canada (Alcan) in Arvida, Québec, spontaneously walked off the job.
  8. Battle of Blair Mountain
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    In 1921 between 10,000 and 15,000 coal miners confronted company-paid private detectives in an effort to unionize the southwestern West Virginia mine counties.
  9. Battle of Matewan
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    A shootout in the coal company town of Matewan, West Virginia on May 19, 1920.
  10. Battle of Orgreave
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    A confrontation between police and picketing miners at a British Steel coking plant in Orgreave, South Yorkshire, in 1984, during the UK miners' strike.
  11. Beautiful Trouble - Pocket Edition
    A Toolbox for Revolution
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2014
    Ideas for organizers.
  12. The black bloc and the Battle of Seattle
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2012
  13. Blockading: a guide
    Tips on some ways you can use your bodies and other materials to barricade, blockade and defend territory
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2003
    Some campaigns will require a geographical space to be protected. This is a short guide with tips and advice on some ways you can use your bodies and other materials to barricade, blockade and defend territory. This area could be houses set for eviction, a large workplace being picketed, a forest, an endangered eco-system, an area through which and environmentally destructive road is to be built. Also included are tips on protecting trees.

  14. Brisbane general strike of 1912
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    The 1912 Brisbane General Strike in Queensland, Australia, began when members of the Australian Tramway Employees Association were dismissed when they wore union badges to work.
  15. Broken Barricades: The Oaxaca Rebellion in Victory, Defeat, and Beyond
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2008
    An analysis of the 2006 Oaxaca rebellion and its contradictions. Its diversity encompassed workers, indigenous groups, Stalinists, anarchists and others. Its weapons and tactics included general assemblies, strikes, barricades, mirrors and fireworks.
  16. Calling All Radicals
    How Grassroots Organizers Can Help Save Our Democracy
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2007
    Thompson argues that we can reclaim our democracy through grassroots organizing.
  17. Cape Breton Strikes, 1920s
    Connexipedia: Article in the Canadian Encyclopedia
    Resource Type: Article
    The Cape Breton labour wars of the early 1920s represented an intense local episode of class conflict. In such conflicts militant unions, often led by radical leaders, were attempting to change the balance of power in Canadian industry by insisting on union recognition and improved living standards for the workers.
  18. Catch your dreams - utopia is possible!
    While Marinaleda has its flaws, it reminds us that alternative economic models are not only possible, they already exist.
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    Amid Spain's general depression, Marinaleda - an Andalucian town sometimes dubbed the 'communist utopia' - is bucking the moribund trend with a heady mixture of direct action, community-level democracy, cooperation and mutual aid.
  19. Catechism of a Revolutionist
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1869
    a program for the "merciless destruction" of society and the state, written by the anarchist Sergey Nechayev.
  20. Common Sense for Hard Times
    The Power of the Powerless to Cope with Everyday life and Transform Society in The Nineteen Seventies
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1976
    Presents a vision of society as it is and as it could be. Putting the problems of contemporary daily life in historical perspective, it reveals that they have their roots in the way our society is organized, and thereby enables us to re-examine our own situation and experience.
  21. Copperbelt strike of 1935
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    A strike action which performed by African mineworkers in the Copperbelt (then in Northern Rhodesia, today called Zambia) to protest against unfair taxes imposed by the British colonial authorities.
  22. Critique of Nonviolent Politics
    From Mahatma Gandhi to the Anti-Nuclear Movement
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2002
    Ryan accepts that sometimes nonviolence can be effective, but says that sometimes it is not: "a principled insistence on nonviolence can in some circumstances be dangerous to progressive social movements." He says that nonviolence theory "is troubled by moral dogma and mechanical logic."
  23. Delano grape strike
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    A strike, boycott, and secondary boycott led by the United Farm Workers (UFW) against growers of table grapes in California.
  24. Direct action
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    Politically motivated activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political goals outside of normal social/political channels.
  25. Direct Action for Democracy
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1999
    Direct action protests are about people taking power for themselves, instead of leaving politics to professional politicians.
  26. Ecodefense
    A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching. Second Edition
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1987
  27. Emergence: An Irresistible Global Uprising
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2003
    An Essay from the Book We Are Everywhere.
  28. English Road Opponents Turn to Direct Action
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1996
    In Alternatives Journal 22:3, July/August 1996
  29. The Everyday Activist
    365 Ways to Change the World
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2006
    A positive, practical guide to healing the world - one day at a time. Packed with ideas and facts from leading campaign organizations, this handbook shows how the smallest actions can make a difference to your community and in the wider world.
  30. Farm Gate Defence
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1986
    Describes how farmers have been driven to come together to defend their farms in the face of high interest rates, mounting production costs and low prices.
  31. February strike (The Netherlands)
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    A general strike organized during World War II in The Netherlands against the anti-Jewish measures and activities by the Nazis.
  32. Flint Sit-Down Strike
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    Changed the United Automobile Workers from a collection of isolated locals on the fringes of the industry into a major union and led to the unionization of the United States automobile industry.
  33. Fraser River Fishermen's Strikes
    Connexipedia: Article in the Canadian Encyclopedia
    Resource Type: Article
    A strikes by whites, natives and Japanese fishermen against salmon canneries that lined the lower Fraser River.
  34. Fraser River Railway Strikes
    Connexipedia: Article in the Canadian Encyclopedia
    Resource Type: Article
    Strikes which started in March 1912 when railway workers organized by the Industrial Workers of the World walked out of construction camps on the Canadian Northern line to protest conditions.
  35. Free Speech Movement (Berkeley)
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    A student protest which took place during the 1964-1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley after student activists, some of whom had traveled with the Freedom Riders and worked to register African American voters in Mississippi in the Freedom Summer project, set up information tables on campus and solicited donations for civil rights causes, in violation of university policy.
  36. Freedom rides
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    Freedom Riders were Civil Rights activists who rode on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States.
  37. G4S To End Israel Prison Contracts Following Protests
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2014
    G4S, the Anglo-Danish security contractor, has agreed to withdraw from prison work in Israel after activists disrupted the company annual general meeting for the second year in a row. The company is also under fire for ill-treatment of detainees in the UK, including the death of an Angolan man.
  38. General Strike France 1968
    A factory-by-factory account
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1969
    Andre Hoyles analyses the development, organisation and end of the mass strike in France, 1968, with reference to case studies of particular factories.
  39. General Strike of 1842
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    The strike started among the Staffordshire miners and soon spread through the country affecting factories, mills and coal mines from Dundee to South Wales and Cornwall.
  40. Ideas and Action
    Periodical profile published 1981
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 1981
    Archive of some articles published in Ideas and Action, a radical paper published by the Workers Solidarity Alliance from 1981 to 1997.
  41. Intifada:
    The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1989
  42. Jewish Women Occupy Israeli Consulate in Toronto
    Sources News Release
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2009
    A diverse group of Jewish Canadian women are currently occupying the Israeli consulate at 180 Bloor Street West in Toronto. This action is in protest against the on-going Israeli assault on the people of Gaza.
  43. Journey of Reconciliation
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    An attempt in 1947 to challenge segregation laws on interstate buses in the Southern United States, through non-violent direct action.
  44. Making the most of spontaneous rebellions at work
    Advice on how to react when a big issue immediately angers a large number of people at your workplace
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2006
    It would be nice if we always had tested and trusted structures in place able to respond to unexpected situations at work. Unfortunately this doesn’t describe many workplaces where structures tend to be weak and disorganised or slow and bureaucratic. The situations that upset us the most are likely to be unanticipated. Sudden rebellion is most likely to develop as a response to unexpected decisions or circumstances i.e. unfair sackings, shift changes etc, and our actions need often be rapid and ad hoc.
  45. The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2005
    A biography of John Brown.
  46. Marx and Makhno Meet McDonald's
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2005
    Over the last several years, a revolving network of militants in Paris, France, have developed a strategy and tactics for winning strikes by marginal, low-paid, outsourced and immigrant workers against international chains, in situations where the strikers are often ignored by unions to which they nominally belong, or are actually obstructed by them.
  47. The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1906
    Luxemburg writes that "the mass strike in Russia [in 1905] has been realised not as means of evading the political struggle of the working-class, and especially of parliamentarism, not as a means of jumping suddenly into the social revolution by means of a theatrical coup, but as a means, firstly, of creating for the proletariat the conditions of the daily political struggle and especially of parliamentarism. The revolutionary struggle in Russia, in which mass strikes are the most important weapon, is, by the working people, and above all by the proletariat, conducted for those political rights and conditions whose necessity and importance in the struggle for the emancipation of the working-class Marx and Engels first pointed out, and in opposition to anarchism fought for with all their might in the International."
  48. Media Interviews during the January 7, 2009 Israeli consulate occupation in Toronto
    Resource Type: Audio
    Published: 2009
    On January 7, 2009, a group of Jewish women occupied the Israeli consulate in Toronto to protest against Israel's attack on Gaza. In this audio clip, spokeswomen Miriam Garfinkle and Judy Rebick explain why they are taking this action.
  49. Obsolete Communism
    The Left-Wing Alternative
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1969
    An account of the May 1968 uprising in Paris, positing a left radical alternative to the encrusted beliefs of the old left and the right. A comment on power, on bureaucracy, and on the paths to liberation.
  50. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - August 21, 2014
    Killings by Police
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2014
    Topic of the week is Killings by Police. Articles on the way the Ebola crisis illuminates the moral bankruptcy of capitalism; Responding the capitalist crisis, in 1914 and 2014; Globaling Gaza: Israel's leading role in undemining international law; and Marinaleda, a town in Spain attempting to create alternatives based on democracy, co-operation, and mutual aid. Group of the Week is Librarians and Archivists with Palestine.
  51. Our Generation
    Volume 2 Number 4
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 1963
  52. Outrageous Campaigners Show Size Isn't Everything
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1992
    OutRage! therefore consciously tries to make its protests informative and amusing. It projects it's political message with wit, style, humour and theatricality. Indeed, a typical OutRage! action could be described as "radical theatre of the streets".
  53. Passionate Declarations
    Essays on War and Justice
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2003
    Essays looking at American political ideology.
  54. Pay Cheques & Picket Lines
    All About Unions in Canada
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1987
    A children's book which explains what unions are, how they came to be, and why they exist.
  55. Picketing
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    A form of protest in which people congregate outside a place of work or location where an event is taking place. Often, this is done in an attempt to dissuade others from going in ("crossing the picket line"), but it can also be done to draw public attention to a cause.
  56. The Political Mass Strike
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1913
    If we want to prove ourselves worthy of the great coming events then we must not begin at the wrong end by attempting to make technical preparations for the mass strike. When the situation is ripe, the tactic of the mass strike will present itself. Let us not rack our brains about supporting it at the right time. What is necessary is that you watch the party press to ensure that it is your instrument and expresses your opinion and your mood. You must also see to it that our parliamentarians feel a mass pressing them from behind.
  57. The Politics of Nonviolent Action
    Part Two: The Methods of Nonviolent Action
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1973
    An encyclopedic treatment of the theory and practice of nonviolence, with a detailed examination of 198 specific methods of the technique — illustrated with actual cases — within the broad classes of nonviolent protest and persuasion, non-cooperation (social, economic and political) and nonviolent intervention.
  58. Practice and Ideology in the Direct Action Movement
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2000
    In the midst of enthusiasm and grandeur, the direct action movement sees a growing anti-capitalist movement everywhere. This illusion stops them from recognizing that, in its present form, the direct action movement is going nowhere.
  59. Press for Conversion #41
    July 2000
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2000
  60. Propaganda of the deed
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    A concept that promotes violence against political enemies as a way of inspiring the masses and catalyzing revolution.
  61. Resource Manual for A Living Revolution
    A Handbook of Skills & Tools for Social Change Activists
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1985
    A manual for people who are concerned or angered by the deterioration of our society and who, because they have some sense that their efforts can have an effect on change, are looking for tools to transform it. It is a working reference for those who are prepared to act to create a better life for themselves and others.
  62. Revolution for the Hell of It
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1968
  63. Rosa Luxemburg
    Selected Political Writings
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1972
    A selection of Rosa Luxemburg's writings which highlight her outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of revolutionary socialism.
  64. The Rosa Luxemburg Reader
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2004
    A definitive one-volume collection of Luxemburg's writings.
  65. Savio, Mario
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    American activist. (1942-1996).
  66. SDS
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1974
    The rise and development of the Students for a Democratic Society, the organization that became the major expression of the American left in the 1960s -- its passage from student protest to institutional resistance to revolutionary activism, and its ultimate impact on American politics and life.
  67. The Sixties
    Years of Hope, Days of Rage
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1987
    One of the best books on the Sixties in the U.S., bringing to life the political and cultural currents, including especially the music, which raged during that decade, and setting them in historical context.
  68. Socialism and Revolution
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1973
    Representative democracy in every industrially advanced country is in a state of profound crisis. But we have been accustomed for so long to accept democracy in the form of its outward appearances and parliamentary institutions that its decay often does not become apparent to us until those institutions have been either brushed aside or reduced to a purely decorative role.
  69. The Socialist Register 1972
    Volume 9: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 1972
  70. The Socialist Register 1983
    Volume 20: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 1983
  71. Spontaneity and Organization: Some Comments
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1973
    A contribution to a symposium on Jeremy Brecher's book Strike!
  72. Strike!
    The True History of Mass Insurgence from 1877 to the Present
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1997
    A history-from-below that brings to light strikes as authentic revolutionary movements against the establishments of state, capital, and trade unionism.
  73. The Strike and Its Enemies
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2012
    Like the progressive labour bureaucrats, today’s generation of young radicals have spent all of their formative years living in the era of capitalist realism — the era of There is No Alternative. And it’s perhaps for this reason that each tenet of the union bureaucrat philosophy finds its distorted mirror-image in the views of the young anti-union radicals. They tend to believe that middle-class intellectuals and full-time activists should take the lead role in strategy and that these groups do not have different material interests than rank-and-file workers. That building “communes,” rather than confronting capital, should be the movement’s main mission.
  74. Strikes and Lockouts
    Connexipedia: Article in the Canadian Encyclopedia
    Resource Type: Article
    A strike is the withholding of labour by workers in order to obtain better working conditions; such withholding of labour is generally accompanied by demonstrations, such as picketing, parades, meetings. A lockout is the opposite, being the temporary shutdown of a business by an employer to compel employees to accept certain conditions.
  75. Strikes in South Korea 1996-1997
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1997
    In December 1996 and January 1997, South Korea experienced the largest organized strike in its history, when workers in the automotive and shipbuilding industries refused to work in protest against a law which was to make firing employees easier for employers and curtail labor organizing rights.
  76. Strikes, List of
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    The following is a list of deliberate absence from work related to specific working conditions (strikes) or due to general unhappiness with the political order (general strikes).
  77. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    One of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
  78. We are everywhere: The irresistable rise of global anticapitalism
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2003
    Global voices presenting alternative visions of democracy.
  79. Wobblies & Zapatistas
    Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical Theory
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2008
    Wobblies and Zapatistas offers readers an encounter between two generations and two traditions. Staughton Lynd and Andrej Grubacic meet in dialogue in an effort to bring together the anarchist and Marxist traditions, to discuss the writing of history by those who make it, and to remind us of the idea that 'my country is the world'.
  80. Worker-Student Action Committees France May '68
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1969
    An account of the May-June 1968 events in Paris. The authors state that "our intention is not to 'clarify' the sequence of events which took place in France in order to make possible a ritual repetition of these events, but rather to contrast the limited views we had of the events at the time we were engaged in them, with the views we have gained from further action in different contexts."
  81. Workers Solidarity Issue 2
    June - August 2004
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2004
    A newsletter pulbished by the Workers Solidairty Alliance (WSA).
  82. You Can't Blow Up a Social Relationship
    The Anarchist Case Against Terrorism
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1981
    An Australian socialist-libertarian response to terrorism in the aftermath of the 1978 Sidney Hilton bombing, and a meditation on the inferior logic of terrorist-based politics.
  83. The Young Lords' Legacy of Puerto Rican Activism
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2009
    A short history of the Young Lords, a group that used confrontational tactics to bring services and attention to the residents of East Harlem, or El Barrio, and beyond.

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