Help us support the work of Upside Down World!
Our friends at Upside Down World are celebrating ten years of reporting on social movements and politics in Latin America! And in order to ensure that they can keep doing what they’ve been doing for the last decade, they are running a fund drive to cover their operating expenses. We’ve come up with a way that we can all help them out—and you can pick up some new reading material in the process! From now through May 26, for each sale the following AK Press titles on Latin America (in either print or e-book format) through akpress.org, we’ll donate $5 to Upside Down World!
Titles included in this fundraiser are:
The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (Benjamin Dangl)
New social movements have emerged in Bolivia over the “price of fire—access to basic elements of survival like water, gas, land, coca, employment, and other resources. Though these movements helped pave the way to the presidency for indigenous coca-grower Evo Morales in 2005, they have made it clear that their fight for self-determination doesn’t end at the ballot box. From the first moments of Spanish colonization to today’s headlines, The Price of Fire offers a gripping account of clashes in Bolivia between corporate and people’s power, contextualizing them regionally, culturally, and historically.
Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements (Raul Zibechi)
“Emancipation,” argues Raúl Zibechi, “is not an objective but a way of life.” For the last half century, new and emancipatory social formations have worked to carve out their own territories in Latin America, experimenting in rural and urban settings with new forms of liberatory politics that challenge neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and the very basis of the state itself. Not limited to a single path, these “societies in movement” have adopted forms of communitarian relations that allow experimentation and innovation to flourish at a riveting pace. Blending case studies and history with social theory and analysis, Zibechi opens our eyes to the new world being born just outside our gaze.
A Poetics of Resistance: The Revolutionary Public Relations of the Zapatista Insurgency (Jeff Conant)
While much has been written on the history of the Zapatista insurgency and on the communiqués of Subcomandante Marcos, very little has been said about Zapatismo: the ideologies, organizing methodologies, and communications strategies of the movement. The appeal of the Zapatistas, and their survival, has as much to do with their goals as with the compelling and wildly effective language and aesthetics they’ve used to convey their vision. Jeff Conant offers an engaging and innovative tool for organizers and educators to understand how the Zapatistas’ strategy works, and to continue developing and refining their effective messages of participatory, bottom-up revolution.
Zapatista Spring: Anatomy of a Rebel Water Project & the Lessons of International Solidarity (Ramor Ryan)
Eight volunteers converge to help campesinos build a water system in Chiapas—a strategy to bolster the Zapatista insurgency by helping locals to assert their autonomy. These outsiders come to question the movement they’ve traveled so far to support—and each other—when forced into a world so unlike the poetic communiqués of Subcomandante Marcos—a world of endemic rural poverty, parochialism, and shifting loyalties to the movement. The quiet dignity of the local compañeros and echoes of B. Traven, Conrad, and Camus, round out this epic yarn.
More about Upside Down World, from their appeal for support:
“Ten years ago U
pside Down World began as a website with a small group of writers scattered around the hemisphere, reporting on the emerging leftist politicians and burgeoning social movements that would go on to reshape the region. Neoliberalism had dug its own grave, and grassroots struggles and socialist policies were paving a new path for Latin America. Foreign corporations were ousted in popular uprisings, and presidents were elected across the region on anti-imperialist, progressive platforms. Upside Down World was there from the beginning, reporting from the ballot boxes and inaugurations, and later when the celebratory confetti turned into teargas and protests. From the victories and failures of the left and the everyday struggles of social movements for a better world, Upside Down World has reported on the roller coaster of the past decade without stopping. And we need your help to continue the ride…
From the Andes Mountains to the shores of the Caribbean, Upside Down World works hard to bring you regular news and analysis on grassroots politics and social change across the hemisphere. Our reporters are based on the frontlines of struggles over mining, soybean cultivation and human rights. Our site breaks stories long before they hit the pages of the New York Times. And Upside Down World always puts the actions, demands and voices of social movements at the top of our concerns.”
You can read the whole appeal here.