The Guy in the Green Truck

John St. Amand – A Biography

James N. McCrorie

Few mature men and women choose to abandon secure employment with handsome health and retirement benefits for a cause and an uncertain future. This biographical memoir is about a man who did just this, abandoning a promising career as a sociologist at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, for the turbulent life of union organizer in Nova Scotia. In one of his first organizing campaigns, John St. Amand crisscrossed industrial Cape Breton signing up workers to the new Canadian Miner’s Union… (more information)

Another World is Possible

Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum

Edited by William Fisher, Thomas Ponniah

The collection explains the history and significance of the World Social Forum, held each year in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and brings together the most important themes and voices expressed by the 30,000 members of citizens’ movements who take part. Their power emerges from the range of disparate activists and organizations — indigenous groups, trade unions, environmentalists, women’s organizations, church groups, students — that make up the global justice movement. This book… (more information)

Cultivating Utopia

Organic Farmers in a Conventional Landscape

Kregg Hetherington

This study begins with the questions “what draws people to become organic farmers?” and “why do so many leave farming in short order?” Organic farmers speak of a “wake-up call” or a moment, usually several years after buying and moving onto a farm, in which they question what they are doing and why. By most reports, most organic farmers then quit the field, or at least quit trying to farm commercially. The book examines what causes this wake-up call. One central… (more information)

Edible Action

Food Activism and Alternative Economics

Sally Miller

Hunger is up, obesity is up, food-borne illness is up, farms are lost to debt and despair; the food system fails growing numbers of people across the world every day. Yet if we adjust our lens, we see ubiquitous commitments to change: food movements and enterprises dedicated to making the world a better place to eat and to live. Food initiatives—from farmers’ markets to fair trade coffee—offer a pattern of powerful alternatives to conventional food economics, which benefit only… (more information)

Grassroots Leaders Building Skills

The Henson College Certificate in Community Development

Anne Bishop

“Empowerment is the word. I’ve been forced to break out of my own circle and see more. I have a direction now in my community, more involvement in activism.”—student evaluating the Henson College Certificate in Community Development. This course was designed to sharpen social analysis and develop skills in leaders of low-income and marginalized communities in Nova Scotia. Taught by two experienced community workers and funded by two major Canadian foundations, it graduated… (more information)

Illusion or Opportunity

Civil Society and the Quest for Social Change

Henry Veltmeyer

The failure of development strategies in the past few decades has given rise to a worldwide movement in the direction of “another development.” This is a form of development that is social as well as economic, oriented towards people’s basic needs, people-centred and initiated from below. It is human in scale and form, equitable and socially more inclusive, capacitating and empowering of the poor, sustainable in terms of both the environment and livelihoods, participatory and community… (more information)

Mobilizations, Protests and Engagements

Canadian Perspectives on Social Movements

Marie Hammond-Callaghan, Matthew Hayday

This book addresses many questions in evaluating social movements and is the first in a series being developed by The Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University. What lessons can we learn from protest movements and social mobilizations of the past? Do newer movements differ from those of the past in process or outcomes? How have globalization and international events changed and shaped the way Canadian social movements operate? How effective are (and have been) social movements as agents… (more information)

Perils and Possibilities

Social Activism and the Law

Byron Sheldrick

This book argues that law is a political resource that carries with it both opportunities and dangers for social activists. As such, activist groups must carefully navigate the contradictions within law to evaluate the strategic and tactical issues raised by law and legal institutions. Perils and Possibilities provides a guide to these issues and explores the types of questions activist groups need to ask themselves before embarking on a campaign of legal mobilization. In addition to a brief exploration… (more information)

Poverty, Regulation & Social Justice

Readings on the Criminalization of Poverty

Edited by Diane Crocker, Val Marie Johnson

Emerging from a public colloquium on the criminalization of poverty, this volume critically interrogates how state and private practices have increasingly come to over-regulate people with severely limited economic resources, and understands this regulation as part of the dynamics of liberal capitalism. Exploring issues such as homelessness, social assistance and single mothers, and written from a diversity of perspectives from academics to frontline workers, policy-makers and those affected first… (more information)

Raise Shit!

Social Action Saving Lives

Susan C. Boyd, Donald MacPherson, Bud Osborn

This book tells a story about community activism in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side (DTES) that culmi-nated in a social justice movement to open the first official safe injection site. This story is unique: it is told from the point of view of drug users — those most affected by drug policy, political decisions and policing. It provides a montage of poetry, photos, early Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) meetings, journal entries from the Back Alley, the “unofficial&rdquo… (more information)

RESIST!

A Grassroots Collection of Stories, Poetry, Photos and Analysis from the FTAA Protests in Québec City and Beyond

Edited by Jen Chang, Steve Daniels, Darryl Leroux, Bethany Or, Eloginy Tharmendran, Emmie Tsumura

In late April, tens of thousands of people gathered to protest at the Second People’s Summit of the Americas (the FTAA Summit). RESIST! is a collection of young peoples’ experiences from Quebec City. Surprising in their honesty, these accounts, including poems, photos and essays, look at what happened during the FTAA weekend. The contributors seek answers to explain the treatment of the protesters, marvel at the strength of character of those that they encountered, and celebrate many… (more information)

Something’s Wrong Somewhere

Globalization, Community and the Moral Economy of the Farm Crisis

Christopher Lind

“Recalling the fascinating history of rural protests in seventeenth to nineteenth century England, (Lind) argues that today’s crisis has as much to do with morals and ethics as with economics.”–Kim Cariou, People’s Voice (more information)

The People’s Co-op

The Life and Times of a North End Institution

Nancy Kardash, Jim Mochoruk

Located in the heart of Winnipeg’s Northend, the most class-conscious and ethnically diverse part of the city, the People’s Co-op was always a different kind of institution. Founded and then successfully run for over sixty years by members of Winnipeg’s vibrant left-wing Eastern-European community, this co-op mixed Marx, milk and the masses into a heady brew of social activism and co-operative enterprise. Beginning with a small coal and fuel yard in 1928-and a much larger dream… (more information)

Transforming Communities

William L. Luttrell

An extraordinary exploration of the dangers, and possibilities, facing human communities today, Transforming Communities rejects the current myth that capitalism, led by global corporations, is providing the solutions we require to survive and prosper in the decades ahead. Quite a different path is offered to us by Mother Earth, Dr. Luttrell suggests, and it is the best hope for life on this planet, our own lives included. The book is an effort to outline the direction this path would take us, and… (more information)

Victim No More

Women’s Resistance to Law, Culture and Power

Edited by Ellen Faulkner, Gayle MacDonald

This book challenges the idea that women are simply victims. It celebrates women’s resistance. It explores the moments beyond victimization. It argues that women do not stay crushed and broken, but move on, build and grow. The contributors to this edited edition celebrate the various forms of resistance: political resistance at both the collective and individual levels, legal resistance and resistance to cultural forms and labels. The editors argue that “Women-as-victim is not an emancipatory… (more information)