Visionary thinking

The writer and radical Walter Mosley is best known for his crime novels, in particular those featuring his African-American private investigator Easy Rawlins, hero of the best-selling Devil in a Blue Dress. But Mosley’s prolific output also includes science fiction, erotica, non-genre fiction and five short political tracts addressing issues such as race and US foreign policy.

In this, his latest foray into politics, he turns to economics, proposing a ‘shotgun wedding’…

There’s a referendum in the offing and the far right is on the rise.... in East Berlin, 1994, the capital of the counter-factual people’s Grassroots Democratic Republic of East Germany, created when the Communist government was dissolved and the people turned down the option of uniting with West Germany.

In this action-packed sequel to Stealing the Future (see PN 2586-87), the country is now five years old, growing in confidence, and considering taking down the…

Linda Stout starts her book with a successful mobilisation that dwindled rapidly and is now almost forgotten – the US ‘Nuclear Freeze’ campaign of the early 1980s. She points out: ‘Supported by 70 percent or more of the [US] population, the freeze was endorsed by 275 city governments, 12 state legislatures, and the voters in nine out of ten states where it was placed on the ballot in the fall of 1982.’

The Freeze campaigners demanded an end to the testing, production and…

1) Don’t be afraid to be afraid or appalled to be appalled. How do you think the redwoods feel these days, or the whales, or, for that matter, most humans?

2) Generally speaking, when asked to speak, be silent; when asked to shut up, accede on the instant.

3) Keep your soul to yourself. (Soul is a…

Co-founder of the Mouvement pour une Alternative Non-Violente, Jean-Marie Müller is one of the leading contemporary thinkers on nonviolence. Despite authoring over 20 books on a wide range of nonviolence-related subjects, he is little known in Britain: so the recent publication in English of The Principle of Non-Violence is particularly welcome.

Originally published in 1995, it represents Jean-Marie’s most comprehensive statement of his view of nonviolence as a…

‘If we want to weaken the state we must strengthen society.’ Colin Ward reminds me of the fundamental principles that drive my actions, and gives me hope with which I can go forward and get involved in dealing with activist topics. His revitalising principles, encapsulated in this short quote, remind us that thinking about social change need not be an armchair activity, or a bottomless slog, but can be an essential part of ultimately getting stuff done.
Ward wrote about all…

Like the author of this book, I’ve had the experience of working for a large NGO (non-governmental organisation) and, in the process, becoming de-skilled, de-motivated, uncreative and disempowered.

After a couple of years of struggling with hierarchy and unimaginative bureaucracy, I left to do more activism, study for an art degree, and work part-time for a small start-up charity where my skills have been appreciated and nurtured. So naturally I was keen to crack open my copy of…

I took part in an exercise recently. I was told to imagine that I had come from the future, in fact seven generations or 200 years into the future. All we knew about this future world is that the systems on Earth are life-sustaining enough to hold some amount of humanity.

I was to imagine that in the time I lived – the year 2213 – there was a lot of talk about what the world was like back in 2013. The future ones knew that there had been massive change on Earth at that time, and I…

Since creating the post-religious Church of Stop Shopping in 1999, the Reverend Billy has held services in churches, community centres, forests, fields, parking lots, shopping malls and – above all – inside brand-name stores across the US and Europe, preaching against consumerism, and for economic and ecological justice.

The creation of actor Bill Talen, the Reverend Billy is…

Parecomic: The Story of Michael Albert and Participatory Economics is a clear, thoughtful and compelling introduction to some of the most challenging ideas around, and to an inspiring life of radical construction. After leading revolutionary student activism in the top scientific university in the US, MIT (the sanctuary described above had a huge impact), Michael Albert was…

Part-trade show, part-international conference, part-jamboree, Co-operatives United was enormous. The biggest co-operative event in decades combined serious business and lots of fun in one huge melting pot. Young people rubbed shoulders with Russian business leaders, mime artists with Malaysian bankers, while co-operatives large and small talked and worked together.

This event was…

‘When I hear the word gun I reach for my culture’, quipped Malcolm Muggeride in response to Nazi playwright Hanns Johst’s infamous (and often misquoted) line that ‘When I hear the word culture... I release the safety on my Browning!’

‘When I hear the word social theory, I reach for clarity, simple prose and common sense’ could be the catchphrase for this volume, the first of three volumes about ‘winning social changes that reorient whole societies by altering institutions at the heart…

Every time I tell someone about 'anarchist sabbath', they're intrigued, curious, sometimes envious – the conversations start exploring lifestyle, family, personal decisions, community, spirituality, emotional support, political strategy.

This is rather gratifying. So what is it?

Most Sundays, my friend, whom let's call 'Jack', and I meet up in my kitchen and pour ourselves a cup of tea. We take our tea down to the garden pond and sit next to each other without talking for…

Drawing by Joss Williams

As I pondered how to write this article – about the way conflict is approached at the school in which I work – a friend introduced me to ‘Conflicts as Property’ written by Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie and published in an issue of The British Journal of Criminology in 1977. Although it is the legal system that preoccupies Christie as he sketches out a model of court procedure that restores the participants’ rights to their own conflicts, the parallels with…

I cannot recommend this book too highly. It is an excellent compilation of all the myths, lies, nationalisms and vanities which have led us into wars past and present.

Swanson, who must be a bit older than his website picture suggests, has been active in the United States peace world for many years. He was at one stage the press secretary during Dennis Kucinich’s presidential campaign in 2004.

The book is self-published and a fund has now been created to enable it to be given…