We in the U.S. live at the edge of radical possibilities, but few seem to actually see openings available for profound change, or perhaps have become simply too paralyzed to act. After all, the U.S. government in the post 9-11 world has placed "national security" above "liberty" and taken unprecedented measures to monitor citizens'…

The data for this paper were generated during a 3-year, participatory action research project, with 41 female coresearchers and activists ages 15-19 years old, within and beyond the walls of a secondary school. The two questions we sought to answer were (a) what happens when we engage with students to challenge formal physical education curricular…

During the author's thirty-seven-year career as a professor of English literature, she has learned as much from professional service outside her home institution as she has from her work as a teacher and scholar. Engagement with the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the Association of Departments of English (ADE) has both enabled her service…

In this article, I examine the literacy practices of a high school-based human rights club. I investigate how the group engages in certain kinds of textual production to sponsor and arrange advisory sessions (school-wide meetings between teachers and small groups of students). More specifically, I consider how the club adapts school genres to…

Grassroots organizations emerge when groups of people decide to work collectively to form an organization as a way to initiate change. Rather than seeking leadership from established government or corporate organizations or departments, the purpose of the organization, the framework for decision making, and the individuals involved in leadership…

Using terms like free spaces and havens, conventional wisdom views social ties by subordinate groups to dominant group members as hindering protest participation. In contrast, we draw on ethnic resiliency and social capital perspectives and argue that there are mobilization benefits to having dominant group members as friends. We offer a unique…

Since 1980, Tufts has offered a minor called Africa in the New World, but for reasons lost to time, the private university north of Boston did not join other schools in the 1960s and 1970s in creating a major in what was usually called Black studies. A faculty-student committee's recommendation in 1972 to do so went unimplemented. African-American…

In August 2010, dance artist Jess Allen undertook an eight-day journey on foot and public transport between the 10 wind farms of mid-Wales, talking to the people encountered about changing landscapes and changing values in a changing climate. The sound recordings of interviews and encounters conducted in this process were edited into a score that…

This article analyzes the development of the Egyptian workers' movement in the face of the 25 January Revolution through the notion of dialectical pedagogy. This Gramscian concept is extended by a Vygotskyan analysis of the reciprocal learning processes, which stimulate a proletarian activity system to overcome its economic-corporate predicament.…

North American teacher unions' positive contributions to educational change have historically flown under the radar of educational policy makers, a situation that has been reified by recent attacks on public sector unions. In this article, I draw on social movement theory and an institutional case study of a self described social justice union to…

In this article the authors respond to a recent special issue of the "Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education" (Alsop & Bencze, 2010) in which the role of environmental activism in science, mathematics, and technology education (SMTE) was addressed. Although they applaud this Special Issue's invitation to begin a new…

As the Latino community in the United States grows and matures, the inevitable question continues to be asked: who is the leader of this community of 50 million? "Leadership" in the Latino community has been hotly debated for many years. Many decry the absence of the "great Brown hope," a single leader who can unite the community of 50 million…

Seven activist Women of Color shared experiences of racism in feminist activism and provided strategies for building a more inclusive movement through this narrative study. A history of exclusion in the feminist movement and examples of marginalization provide a context for this study. Critical race feminism and intersectionality theory inform the…

Strike and protest activity at South African universities continues to be prevalent nearly two decades after the dismantling of apartheid, although there has been a shift away from directing strikes and protests against the government (during the apartheid era), to directing them against higher education institutions and management (since the…

To an American audience, the demonstrations, strikes, and unrest resulting from the changes to higher education in Britain must seem perplexing. Compared with the $37,000 for annual tuition at a private university like Princeton, higher education in England still seems like a bargain. But the changes now under way in Britain threaten the very core…