Massive
protests have disrupted global summit meetings from
Seattle to Quebec City and from Gothenburg to Genoa.
These demonstrations let the world know that
resistance to globalization remains strong and
vibrant. Not as clearly heard, though, are accounts
of local communities organizing popular collective
actions to resist those same institutions and
policies of globalization.
Focusing on
four countries--Mexico, Guatemala, United States, and
Canada--the narratives in this volume tell of
peoples' collective struggles for environmental,
economic and social justice. They deal with:
indigenous peoples struggles against violence and
coercion in Guatemala; Guatemalan refugees mobilizing
in exile; environmental education for sustainable
agriculture in Mexico; organizing waste pickers of
Mexico; the resistence efforts to better working
conditions of telemarketing operators; improving
seniors housing; and the ways people of color have
taken community actions to change oppressive
environments through grassroots organizing, education
and community planning in New York City.
In all
cases the focus is on the meaning and usefulness of
individual acts of resistance and their relationship
to collective action: the ways people cope with
difficult working conditions and how these acts help
to change, not only the working conditions, but the
workers themselves.
These
poignant and inspiring stories of communities
taking action and successfully resisting the
corporate agenda...eloquently told...reveal the
strength and creativity of people living on the
margins, from Santiago Atitlán in Guatemala to
Vancouver, Canada.
--Leonie Sandercock, author of Making
the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning
History
Contributors include: Galit
Wolfensohn, Egla Martinez-Salazar, Cindy McCulligh,
Sheelagh Davis, W. Alexander Long, Emily Chan, Sarah
Koch-Schulte, and Emilie K. Adin.
Table
of Contents
GENE DESFOR
teaches at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at
York University. Actively involved with union and
community organizations for years, he has, most
recently, been investigating the political economy of
the waterfront in Copenhagen, Denmark.
DEBORAH
BARNDT, educator, photographer and professor in the
Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University,
has worked for more than twenty-five years in social
justice movements in the Americas.
BARBARA
RAHDER, the Graduate Program Director and Planning
Programs Coordinator in the Faculty of Environmental
Studies at York University, has, for more than twenty
years, focused on issues of equity and access to
housing and community services with marginalized
communities in Canada.
204 pages,
photographs
Paperback ISBN: 1-55164-200-X $24.99
Hardcover ISBN: 1-55164-201-8 $53.99
Ecology
& the Environment / Cultural Studies
January
2002
