I’m putting together my reading list for next year’s LSE course on activism and this week’s Guardian long read on Extinction Rebellion is going to be on it, even though it’s a bit UK-centric. It brilliantly pulls together a number of features of the rise of new social movements. Here are some extracts, but as ever, better to read the

Somethin is happening here: Every day my timeline highlights a different uprising – today it is a national strike in Colombia, with hundreds of thousands protesting in support of the faltering peace process, despite the pouring rain (thanks to Hong Kong, at least umbrellas are cool now). But it could equally well have been Iran, Iraq, Bolivia, Lebanon, Chile, Hong

Bumped into Tom Carothers in the DFID foyer the other day, and he handed me a copy of a fascinating new Carnegie Endowment Report, Global Civic Activism in Flux. Late last year, Carnegie set up a Civic Activism Network that brought together 8 national experts on new forms of citizen activism in Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, and

Oxfam head of policy for food and climate change Tim Gore reflects on what happens next after the euphoria of New York (and asks you to vote, right) First, the good news. After the Copenhagen hangover, the international climate change movement is back. Over recent days in New York, we’ve seen the emergence of a new people’s climate movement, broader

Writing a blog is a mixed blessing when it comes to freebies. You get sent some real turkeys in the shape of papers and books to review. But every now and then an unexpected treat drops into your pigeon hole. One such is ‘Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity and Ingenuity Can Change the World’, by Steve Crawshaw and