From ACT Up to the Wto: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization

Activist Benjamin Shepard and CUNY political science professor Ronald Hayduk team up to honor the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power in From ACT UP to the WTO, an anthology of essays and interviews that consider the group's influence on community activism, from their first demonstration on Wall Street in 1987 to ""the Battle of Seattle"" in 1999. The brief, fervent selections offer thumbnail portraits of contemporary social justice movements: transgender activist Leslie Feinberg recounts her arrest during a protest against the murder of Matthew Shepard; Jan Cohen-Cruz profiles the Church Ladies for Choice; and Starhawk, an activist witch, reveals ""how we really shut down the WTO."" Activism isn't dead after all, the editors insist and there's ""a new brand of... joy, perhaps rambunctiousness, involved in the new direct action."" (July)