Introducing Our Summer Issue: American Movements
What are the visions and complaints, accomplishments and limits of the largest and most important movements on the left today?
Spring 2025
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What Makes Nonviolent Movements Explode?
A case study in the strange alchemy of disruption and sacrifice.
Lessons from the Revolutions of 1989—and Other Not-So-Spontaneous Uprisings
Cross-posted from Waging Nonviolence. On November 9, 1989—twenty-five years ago—huge crowds of East Germans descended on the Berlin Wall. The restless citizens were responding to an announcement by authorities suggesting that the government would loosen travel restrictions. In truth, those …
How Did Gandhi Win? Lessons from the Salt March
Gandhi’s demands were ridiculed and his settlement with the British disappointed many. But the Salt March was a key symbolic win that spurred India’s independence movement toward victory.
The Climate Movement Has Arrived
This post originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. Less than two weeks have passed and yet it isn’t too early to say it: the People’s Climate March changed the social map—many maps, in fact, since hundreds of smaller marches took place in 162 …
Weathering the Ups and Downs of Social Movements
How do we know when movements have died—and when are they primed to revive?
Hurling the Little Streets Against the Great: Marshall Berman’s Perennial Modernism
For Marshall Berman, the street was not just the site where modernism was enacted; it was modernism incarnate.
May Fourth Movements
Ninety-five years ago today, Beijing students gathered in front of Tiananmen, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, and launched a mass movement against corruption and foreign bullying. Seventy years later, in 1989, student protesters would gather at the same spot to claim the May Fourth mantle—only to be brutally repressed.
A Generation’s Call: Voices from the Student Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement
On the heels of last weekend’s Fossil Fuel Divestment Convergence, we hear from two students active in campus and national divestment efforts. Chloe Maxmin sketches the contours of a rapidly growing movement and examines the case of Harvard. Kate Aronoff argues that students must situate themselves carefully within social movement strategy if they are to effectively leverage the power of their institutions.
From Che to Marcos
Th Changing Grassroots Left in Latin America
