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Resources in the Connexions Library

Clicking on the title of an item takes you to the bibliographic page for the resource, which typically also contains an abstract, a link to the full text if it is available online, and links to related topics in the subject index. You can find items through the Title, Author, Subject, Chronological, Dewey, Library of Congress, and Format indexes.
Particularly recommended items are flagged with a red Connexions logo:

  1. Alternative Press Annual 1983, The
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1984
  2. Calling All Radicals 
    How Grassroots Organizers Can Help Save Our Democracy
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2007
    Thompson argues that we can reclaim our democracy through grassroots organizing.
  3. Common Sense for Hard Times 
    The Power of the Powerless to Cope with Everyday life and Transform Society in The Nineteen Seventies
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1976
    Presents a vision of society as it is and as it could be. Putting the problems of contemporary daily life in historical perspective, it reveals that they have their roots in the way our society is organized, and thereby enables us to re-examine our own situation and experience.
  4. Critique of Nonviolent Politics 
    From Mahatma Gandhi to the Anti-Nuclear Movement
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1984   Published: 2002
    Ryan accepts that sometimes nonviolence can be effective, but says that sometimes it is not: "a principled insistence on nonviolence can in some circumstances be dangerous to progressive social movements." He says that nonviolence theory "is troubled by moral dogma and mechanical logic."
  5. Direct Action
    An ethnography
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2008
    Graeber undertakes the first detailed ethnographic study of the global justice movement. The case study at the center of Direct Action is the organizing and events that led to the one of the most dramatic and militant mass protests in recent years-against the Summit of the Americas in Québec City.
  6. Direct action
    Connexipedia: Article in Wikipedia
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    Politically motivated activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political goals outside of normal social/political channels.
  7. Ecodefense
    A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching. Second Edition
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1985   Published: 1987
  8. Emergence: An Irresistible Global Uprising
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    First Published: 2003
    An Essay from the Book We Are Everywhere.
  9. The Everyday Activist
    365 Ways to Change the World
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2006
    A positive, practical guide to healing the world - one day at a time. Packed with ideas and facts from leading campaign organizations, this handbook shows how the smallest actions can make a difference to your community and in the wider world.
  10. Free Speech Movement (Berkeley)
    Connexipedia: Article in Wikipedia
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    A student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley after student activists, some of whom had traveled with the Freedom Riders and worked to register African American voters in Mississippi in the Freedom Summer project, set up information tables on campus and solicited donations for civil rights causes, in violation of university policy.
  11. Freedom ride
    Connexipedia: Article in Wikipedia
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    Freedom Riders were Civil Rights activists who rode on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States.
  12. Hard Core Green
    How to Kick Corporate Butt
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    First Published: 2010
    Two uncompromised green activists and writers completely focused on winning, and utterly void of bullshit.
  13. Ideas and Action
    Periodical profile published 1981
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1981
    Archive of some articles published in Ideas and Action, a radical paper published by the Workers Solidarity Alliance from 1981 to 1997.
  14. Journey of Reconciliation
    Connexipedia: Article in Wikipedia
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    An attempt in 1947 to challenge segregation laws on interstate buses in the Southern United States, through non-violent direct action.
  15. Obsolete Communism
    The Left-Wing Alternative
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1968   Published: 1969
    An account of the May 1968 uprising in Paris, positing a left radical alternative to the encrusted beliefs of the old left and the right. A comment on power, on bureaucracy, and on the paths to liberation.
  16. The Political Mass Strike 
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    First Published: 1913
    If we want to prove ourselves worthy of the great coming events then we must not begin at the wrong end by attempting to make technical preparations for the mass strike. When the situation is ripe, the tactic of the mass strike will present itself. Let us not rack our brains about supporting it at the right time. What is necessary is that you watch the party press to ensure that it is your instrument and expresses your opinion and your mood. You must also see to it that our parliamentarians feel a mass pressing them from behind.
  17. Propaganda of the deed
    Connexipedia: Article in Wikipedia
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    A concept that promotes violence against political enemies as a way of inspiring the masses and catalyzing revolution.
  18. Resource Manual for A Living Revolution 
    A Handbook of Skills & Tools for Social Change Activists
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1977   Published: 1985
    A manual for people who are concerned or angered by the deterioration of our society and who, because they have some sense that their efforts can have an effet for change, are looking for tools to transform it. It is a working reference for those who are prepared to act to create a better life for themselves and others.
  19. Revolution for the Hell of It
    Resource Type: Book
  20. Rosa Luxemburg 
    Selected Political Writings
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1972
    A selection of Rosa Luxemburg's writings which highlight her outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of revolutionary socialism.
  21. Savio, Mario
    Connexipedia: Article in Wikipedia
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    American activist 1942-1996.
  22. SDS 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1973   Published: 1974
  23. The Sixties 
    Years of Hope, Days of Rage
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1987
    One of the best books on the Sixties in the U.S., bringing to life the political and cultural currents, including especially the music, which raged during that decade, and setting them in historical context.
  24. Socialism and Revolution 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1967   Published: 1973
    Representative democracy in every industrially advanced country is in a state of profound crisis. But we have been accustomed for so long to accept democracy in the form of its outward appearances and parliamentary institutions that its decay often does not become apparent to us until those institutions have been either brushed aside or reduced to a purely decorative role.
  25. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
    Connexipedia: Article in Wikipedia
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    One of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
  26. We are everywhere: The irresistable rise of global anticapitalism 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2003
    Global voices presenting alternative visions of democracy.
  27. Wobblies & Zapatistas 
    Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical Theory
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2008
    Wobblies and Zapatistas offers readers an encounter between two generations and two traditions. Staughton Lynd and Andrej Grubacic meet in dialogue in an effort to bring together the anarchist and Marxist traditions, to discuss the writing of history by those who make it, and to remind us of the idea that 'my country is the world'.
  28. Worker-Student Action Committees France May '68 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1969
    An account of the May-June 1968 events in Paris. The authors state that "our intention is not to 'clarify' the sequence of events which took place in France in order to make possible a ritual repetition of these events, but rather to contrast the limited views we had of the events at the time we were engaged in them, with the views we have gained from further action in different contexts."


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Catalogue of more than 10,000 books, articles, films, periodicals, websites and other resources.
Indexed by Author, Title, Format, Subject, Dewey number, Library of Congress classification, Year of Publication.
Connexions Directory Associations and NGOs dealing with social and environmental issues — A-Z Index or Subject Index.
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Mission Connexions exists to support individuals and groups working for freedom and social justice. We work to maintain and make available a record of the theory and practice of people struggling against oppression and for social change. We believe that the more we know about the struggles, victories, and defeats of the past, and about those who took part in them, the better equipped we will be to bring a new world into being. Connexions maintains a physical archive of books and documents, and is engaged in an ongoing project to build and expand an indexed digital archive of documents. We try to feature a wide variety of resources reflecting a diversity of viewpoints and approaches to social change within our overall mandate of support for democracy, civil liberties, freedom of expression, universal human rights, secularism, equality, economic justice, environmental responsibility, and the creation and preservation of community. We are internationalist in our orientation, but as a Canadian-based project we feature an especially extensive collection of Canadian documents and profiles of Canadian activist organizations.