This Element presents an analysis of campaign finance in city council elections in four midsize Massachusetts cities. It shows that while money does not determine local election outcomes it plays a gatekeeping role – especially for nonincumbents. Moreover, this money comes from a very unrepresentative segment of the electorate. Although elections in these cities are nonpartisan, individual donors and interest groups are sorted into networks that function like political parties. The Element...

An optimistic book for Americans who are asking, in the wake of Trump’s victory, What do we do now? The answer: We need to organize and fight to protect and expand our democracy.Americans are distraught as tightly held economic and political power drowns out their voices and values. Legendary Diet for a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé and organizer-scholar Adam Eichen offer a fresh, surprising response to this core crisis. This in...

An optimistic book for Americans who are asking, in the wake of Trump’s victory, What do we do now? The answer: We need to organize and fight to protect and expand our democracy.Americans are distraught as tightly held economic and political power drowns out their voices and values. Legendary Diet for a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé and organizer-scholar Adam Eichen offer a fresh, surprising response to this core crisis. This in...

Using exclusive access to key insiders, Shane Harris charts the rise of America's surveillance state over the past twenty-five years and highlights a dangerous paradox: Our government's strategy has made it harder to catch terrorists and easier to spy on the rest of us.Our surveillance state was born in the brain of Admiral John Poindexter in 1983. Poindexter, Reagan's National Security Advisor, realized that the United States might have prevented the terrorist mas...

“Sexton grapples with the Trump campaign from the perspective of the crowds reveling in the candidate’s presence and message. It is a useful vantage point given the increasingly blatant bigotry in the months since the election.” —The Washington PostThe People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore is a firsthand account of the events that shaped the 2016 presidential election and the cultural forces that powered Donald Trump into the Wh...

Hillary Rodham Clinton was the first Secretary of State to declare the subjugation of women worldwide a serious threat to U.S. national security. Known as the Hillary Doctrine, her stance was the impetus behind the 2010 Quadrennial Diplomatic and Development Review of U.S. foreign policy, formally committing America to the proposition that the empowerment of women is a stabilizing force for domestic and international peace.Blending history, fieldwork, theory, and policy analysis wh...

In June 2010 activists opposing the G20 meeting held in Toronto were greeted with brutal and arbitrary state violence. Whose Streets? is a combination of testimonials from the front lines and analyses of the broader context, an account that both reflects critically on what occurred in Toronto and looks ahead to further building our capacity for resistance.Featuring reflections from activists who helped organize the mobilizations, demonstrators and passersby who were arbitr...

The insurgent activist and educator shares a vital rally cry for today's movement-makers in "a manifesto that should be read by everyone" (Angela Y. Davis).In an era defined by mass incarceration, endless war, economic crisis, catastrophic environmental destruction, and a political system offering more of the same, radical social transformation has never been more urgent—or seemed more remote. Demand the Impossible! urges us to imagine a world beyond what t...

Around the developing world, political leaders face a dilemma: the very information and communication technologies that boost economic fortunes also undermine power structures. Globally, one in ten internet users is a Muslim living in a populous Muslim community. In these countries, young people are developing political identities online, and digital technologies are helping civil society build systems of political communication independent of the state and beyond easy manipulation by cult...

When two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs launched MoveOn.org in 1998, they had no idea that they would be hailed as powerful and influential political activists or grow their online advocacy group to 2 million members in just a few years. Their simple mission-fueled by passion for a more open and democratic nation, topnotch and timely information, and the financial support of concerned individuals and organizations-was to jumpstart broad civic dialogue and enable ordinary citizens to effectiv...

In this eye-opening work, the president of the ACLU takes a hard look at the human and social costs of the War on Terror. A decade after 9/11, it is far from clear that the government's hastily adopted antiterrorist tactics--such as the Patriot Act--are keeping us safe, but it is increasingly clear that these emergency measures in fact have the potential to ravage our lives--and have already done just that to countless Americans. From the Oregon lawyer falsely suspected of involvement with...

Contemporary protest, often presented in media forms as a dramatic ritual played out in an iconic public space has provided a potent symbol of the widespread economic and social discontent that is a feature of European life under the rule of “austerity.” Yet, beneath this surface activity, which provides the headlines and images familiar from mainstream news coverage, lies a whole array of deeper structures, modes of behavior, and forms of human affiliation.Contemporary Protest and...