Movements That Win: Patterns of Resistance, Ecologies of Struggle

Activist McBay (Full Spectrum Resistance) offers an encouraging survey of successful environmental justice activism. The victories spotlighted include an unlikely alliance between construction unions and conservationists that helped protect urban green spaces in 1970s Australia, the diverse coalition-building that prevented gentrification of Boston’s Chinatown in the 1990s, the rural organizing and civil disobedience that stopped the construction of a nuclear reactor in Germany in 1975, and the ways in which Canadian environmentalists have built on a strong history of Indigenous land protection strategies to fight the installation of fossil fuel pipelines from the 2010s to today. Along the way, McBay points out common themes and approaches that led to each movement’s success, spotlighting 12 key “patterns,” including having “urgency” and a “positive vision” for the future, practicing strategic “escalation” and engaging in direct action rather than just protest, and building “coalitions across difference” and movements that can “persist and endure.” The individual stories are accessible but light on detail, leaving McBay’s points sometimes too vaguely illustrated. Still, it’s an illuminating overview and a useful playbook for environmentalists. (Jan.)