{"title":"Biography Memoirs \u0026 Essays","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"towards-collective-liberation-anti-racist-organizing-feminist-praxis-and-movement-building-strategy","title":"Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy","description":"\u003cp\u003eTowards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy is for activists engaging with dynamic questions of how to create and support effective movements for visionary systemic change. Chris Crass’s collection of essays and interviews presents us with powerful lessons for transformative organizing through offering a firsthand look at the challenges and the opportunities of anti-racist work in white communities, feminist work with men, and bringing women of color feminism into the heart of social movements. Drawing on two decades of personal activist experience and case studies of anti-racist social justice organizations, Crass insightfully explores ways of transforming divisions of race, class, and gender into catalysts for powerful vision, strategy, and movement building in the United States today.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOver the last two decades, activists in the United States have been experimenting with new politics and organizational approaches that stem from a fusion of radical political traditions and liberation struggles. Drawing inspiration from women of color feminism, justice struggles in communities of color, anarchist and socialist movements, the broad upsurges of the 1960s and 70s, and social movements in the Global South, a new generation of activists has sought to understand the past while building a movement for today’s world. Towards Collective Liberation contributes to this project by examining two primary dynamic trends in these efforts: the anarchist movement of the 1990s and 2000s, through which tens of thousands of activists were introduced to radical politics, direct action organizing, democratic decision making, and the profound challenges of taking on systems of oppression, privilege, and power in society at large and in the movement itself; and white anti-racist organizing efforts from the 2000s to the present as part of a larger strategy to build broad-based, effective multiracial movements in the United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCrass’s collection begins with an overview of the anarchist tradition as it relates to contemporary activism and an in-depth look at Food Not Bombs, one of the leading anarchist groups in the revitalized radical Left in the 1990s. The second and third sections of the book combine stories and lessons from Crass’s experiences of working as an anti-racist and feminist organizer, combining insights from the Civil Rights Movement, women of color feminism, and anarchism to address questions of leadership, organization building, and revolutionary strategy. In section four, Crass discusses how contemporary organizations have responded to the need for white activists to lead anti-racist efforts in white communities and how these efforts have contributed to multiracial alliances in building a broad-based movement for collective liberation. Offering rich case studies of successful organizing, and grounded, thoughtful key lessons for movement building, Toward Collective Liberation is a must-read for anyone working for a better world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Giovanni's Room","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51018736402743,"sku":"9781604866544","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0934\/9926\/1239\/files\/10266300743991_42048688193847_1756580365217_493.jpg?v=1756580579"},{"product_id":"barbara-gittings-gay-pioneer-color","title":"Barbara Gittings: Gay Pioneer (Color)","description":"\u003cp\u003eBarbara Gittings: Gay Pioneer is the first full-length biography of the woman who has been called the mother of the gay-rights movement, Barbara Gittings. Her work in the LGBT movement spanned from the late 1950s until her death in 2007. Her partner in life, Kay Lahusen, photographed many of the movement’s biggest actions during the 1960s, and more than 270 photos accompany this biography. This book is available in both color and B\u0026amp;W editions, and in color on Kindle by July 2015. Gittings was active in a wide range of pre- and post-Stonewall groups, including the Daughters of Bilitis. She served as editor of DOB’s newsletter, The Ladder. She worked with Frank Kameny on many protests and legal cases fighting government discrimination. She also was among the leaders of the push to change the American Psychiatric Association diagnosis of homosexuality as an illness, and among those pushing the American Library Association to be more inclusive of gays. 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Skillfully combining Gittings’ own words with accounts of her activist campaigns, this biography makes clear how much Gittings accomplished. A committed activist for five decades, Barbara Gittings truly changed the world. “ — Author and Historian John D’Emilio (In a New Century: Essays on Queer History, Politics, and Community Life) “Barbara Gittings just about leaps from the pages of Tracy Baim’s celebratory biography of the gay rights movement’s happiest warrior. Determined, persistent, persuasive, and wicked-smart, Barbara wielded her smile like a machete, demolishing all demagogues and fools who got in the way of what she knew to be true about herself and the rest of us. How lucky were we that she was born at a time when we so desperately needed her to help blaze our path to freedom.” — Eric Marcus, author of Making Gay History “Tracy Baim has captured the life and legacy of the mother of gay liberation in America with this book. Barbara Gittings would have loved it. Another incredible book on our history!” — Reverend Troy Perry “Gittings understood early on the critical role America’s libraries would play in changing hearts and minds about gay issues. In an age before the Internet, she dedicated her life to making good information available to all through her leadership in the Gay Task Force of the American Library Association. 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Even though I had met plenty of married men on gay sites on-line, up until that night I had considered myself an anomaly. I had lived life as a heterosexual man and didn’t realize I was gay until after I was married and had children. Before that night at the bar, I had been vaguely aware that my friends and I were meeting a lot of married men—men in straight marriages—in gay bars and other venues in which these supposedly straight men were looking to hook up with other men. That night in the South Side, it hit me that I was not an anomaly. There is something happening in American culture. People are questioning their sexual orientation. They are questioning whether they are who they thought they were. Right then, I decided to write this book. I would write the book I wish I had been able to read years ago when I was married to a woman and had young children and was starting to question whether I might be gay. 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