Dan Berger

An accessible yet wide-ranging historical primer, The Struggle Within discusses how mass imprisonment has been a state-sponsered tool of repression deployed against diverse, left-wing social movements over the last 50 years. Author Dan Berger goes on to examine some of the most dynamic social movements across half a century, including black liberation, Puerto Rican independence, Native American sovereignty, Chicano radicalism, white antiracist and working-class mobilizations, pacifist and antinuclear campaigns, earth liberation, and animal rights. Berger’s encyclopedic knowledge of social movements in the United States provides a rich comparative history of numerous campaigns that continue to shape contemporary politics. The book also offers a little-heard voice in contemporary critiques of mass incarceration by investigation how mass incarcerations have occurred within a slew of social movements that have provided steep challenges to state power.

Prisons, Political Prisoners, and Mass Movements in the United States

The Struggle Within

Chesa Boudin

Kenyon Farrow

Who will lead America in the years to come? Letters from Young Activists introduces America's bold, exciting, new generation of activists. These diverse authors challenge the common misconception that today's young people are apathetic, shallow, and materialistic. Aged ten to thirty-one, these atheist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, pagan, transgender, heterosexual, bisexual, metrosexual Americans are from every type of background and ethnicity, but are united by their struggle toward a common goal. They are the inheritors of their parents' legacy from the sixties, but also have the imagination and courage to embark on new paths and different directions. In letters addressed to their parents, to past generations, to each other, to the youth of tomorrow and to their future selves, each author articulates his or her vision for the world as they work towards racial, economic, gender, environmental and global justice. As the editors write in their introduction: "From globalization to the war on terrorism and beyond, our generation is compelled to action in the midst of a rapidly changing, and unique political moment Our challenge, and yours, is to live our lives in a way that does not make a mockery of our values."

Today's Rebels Speak Out

Letters from Young Activists

Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era

Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era

Captive Nation

The Black Power movement, often associated with its iconic spokesmen, derived much of its energy from the work of people whose stories have never been told. Stayed On Freedom brings into focus two unheralded Black Power activists who dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom.  

Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons fell in love while organizing tenants and workers in the South. Their commitment to each other and to social change took them on a decades-long journey that traversed first the country and then the world. In centering their lives, historian Dan Berger shows how Black Power united the local and the global across organizations and generations.  

Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, Stayed On Freedom is a moving and intimate portrait of two people trying to make a life while working to make a better world.   

The Long History of Black Power through One Family’s Journey

Stayed On Freedom

Toussaint Losier

Rethinking the American Prison Movement

"For readers interested in Red Power, Brown Power, women's liberation, peace movements, queer politics, and the white left, this important volume offers new perspectives and information that is not available elsewhere. The essays, by a mix of emerging scholars and scholar-activists, offer views of the recent past that should reshape the consensus about the 1970s to focus on activism, organizing, and violence from above and below." ---Felicia Kornbluh, author of The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America "Important and insightful, The Hidden 1970s boldly reimagines a decade that remains understudied and misunderstood." ---Peniel E. Joseph, author of Waiting Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America The 1970s were a complex, multilayered, and critical part of a long era of profound societal change. Indeed, several iconic events of "the sixties" occurred in the ten years that followed. The Hidden 1970s explores the distinctiveness of those years, a time when radicals tried to change the world as the world changed around them. This powerful collection is a compelling assessment of a wide variety of left-wing social movements during a period that many have described as dominated by conservatism or confusion. Contributors examine critical and largely buried legacies of the 1970s. Their essays provide fascinating insight into the myriad ways that radical social movements shaped American political culture in the 1970s and how they continue to do so today.

Histories of Radicalism

The Hidden 1970s

Rethinking the American Prison Movement provides a short, accessible overview of the transformational and ongoing struggles against America�s prison system. Dan Berger and Toussaint Losier show that prisoners have used strikes, lawsuits, uprisings, writings, and diverse coalitions with free-world allies to challenge prison conditions and other kinds of inequality. From the forced labor camps of the nineteenth century to the rebellious protests of the 1960s and 1970s to the rise of mass incarceration and its discontents, Rethinking the American Prison Movement is invaluable to anyone interested in the history of American prisons and the struggles for justice still echoing in the present day.

The fiery true story of America's most famous radical fugitives, urgently and passionately told.

The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity

Outlaws of America

An Inside Look at Napa Valley

Peter A. Laird

The Trek to Nara Dim

Emily K. Hobson

This book brings together documents from multiple radical movements in the recent United States from 1973 through 2001. These years are typically viewed as an era of neoliberalism, dominated by conservative retrenchment, the intensified programs of privatization and incarceration, dramatic cuts to social welfare, and the undermining of labor, antiracist, and feminist advances. Yet activists from the period proved tenacious in the face of upheaval, resourceful in creating new tactics, and dedicated to learning from one another. Persistent and resolute, activists did more than just keep radical legacies alive. They remade radicalism—bridging differences of identity and ideology often assumed to cleave movements, grappling with the eradication of liberal promises, and turning to movement cultures as the source of a just future. Remaking Radicalism is the first anthology of U.S. radicalisms that reveals the depth, diversity, and staying power of social movements after the close of the long 1960s. Editors Dan Berger and Emily Hobson track the history of popular struggles during a time that spans the presidencies of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush and bring to readers the political upheavals that shaped the end of the century and that continue to define the present.

A Grassroots Documentary Reader of the United States, 1973–2001

Remaking Radicalism

The 1970s were a complex, multilayered, and critical part of an era of profound societal change and an essential component of the decade before-several of the most iconic events of "the sixties" occurred in the ten years that followed. The Hidden 1970s explores the distinctiveness of those years, when radicals tried to change the world as the world changed around them. Essays trace the struggles from the 1960s through the 1970s, providing insight into the ways that radical social movements shaped American political culture in the 1970s and the many ways they continue to do so today.

Dan Berger

Books

Your next favorite book is out there