The personal is political, the political is personal. This mantra has inspired feminist thought for decades because of its emphasis on disclosing the personal in the name of consciousness raising, an important form of feminist activism focused on making what is invisible visible in the spirit of bringing about radical change. Feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa's inspirational writings epitomize the transformative power of incorporating the personal in academic theorizing. Her work has encouraged us to not only reimagine what counts as knowledge, but to "risk the personal" in our own writing. My thesis contributes to the burgeoning field of Anzaldúan studies by asserting the value of "risking the personal" in academic writing. I open up, immerse in, and expose my wound as I contend with the greatest rupture in my life yet. On January 23, 2011, merely two years ago, a single phone call broke my heart and soul. My 48 year-old mother was dead. My thesis is an autohistoria-teoría that aims to examine the suffering consciousness that arises when we experience traumatic ruptures that shatter our worlds. Specifically, I use Anzaldúa's theory of conocimiento as an epistemological framework to map my movements in consciousness as I write about my mother's unexpected death. I offer my personal account of grief to shatter the silence around death, revealing the complexity that surrounds and defines loss by giving voice to the marginalized experience of losing a mother as a young woman. I then write about the role of writing in the face of ruptures, arguing that writing is a powerful tool in developing conocimiento. After descending into my wound, I begin my spiritual activism by examining the power of opening ourselves to alternative ways of knowing. I immerse myself in Tibetan Buddhism, embracing its perspectives and contemplating impermanence. All of this in the service of developing conocimiento, a revolutionary mindset dedicated to constant transformation. This transformation is a process of personal and collective healing that acknowledges our interconnectedness. We all experience similar journeys of rupture, pain, and growth. Let us use this connection to improve ourselves, our communities, and our world. / text

Select members of the Congressional Black Caucus through their votes, speeches, arrests and nonviolent forms of protest practice a renewed kind of nonviolent resistance against a neoconservative political agenda advanced by the executive branch of the U.S. government in the past six years. Their practices are nonviolent according to the definition of nonviolence discussed by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his 1962 New York Times Magazine article: "we will take direct action against injustice without waiting for other agencies to act...We will try to persuade with our words---but if our words fail we will try to persuade with our acts." Nonviolent resistance according to this quote means first trying to persuade with words then trying to persuade with direct action. This study will compare nonviolent methods of direct action between 2001 and 2007 and those between 1955 and 1963. The nonviolent methods between 2001 and 2007 resist the neoconservative policies that are based on the same assumptions as those in the civil rights movements between 1955 and 1963. The identification of five comparisons in particular proves a continuing tradition of nonviolent protest identified as a 'surviving legacy' of resistance against neoconservative policies. First, Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat on a city bus is comparable to U.S. Representative Barbara Lee's refusal to support the military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Second, Daisy Bates's commitment to ensuring a quality public education for the Little Rock Nine is comparable to U.S. Representative Chaka Fattah's efforts to improve the Philadelphia public school system. Third, the organizing work of Ella Baker in creating the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960 is comparable to the organizing work of Maxine Waters in creating the Out of Iraq caucus in 2005. Fourth, the appeals to the U.S. Constitution of James Farmer and the Freedom Riders serves as a foundation for John Conyers' appeal to the U.S. Constitution in his lawsuit against George W. Bush. Fifth, the strategy of getting arrested to call attention to unjust foreign policies within the past five years is comparable to the "jail, no bail" strategy during 1962 and 1963. The major point of this thesis is to argue the existence of a concerted strategy of nonviolent resistance practiced by specific Congressional Black Caucus members. The thesis will compare nonviolent resistance in the 21st century to that of the early 1960s.

Homicide deaths are a common reality in Brazil. Every year, approximately 50,000 people die from this violent crime. Between January 2009 and February 2010, 7,936 people were killed just on the state of Rio de Janeiro. Of this amount, 1,185 were committed by the police, not including the number of disappeared people in this state, came up to 6,379. This report seeks to address the political and analytical challenges of understanding and redressing the negative impacts of state policies and everyday practices, especially violence, on Black Brazilians, particularly disadvantaged Black women, through a revision of relevant scholarship. I first draw attention to three distinct approaches of violence of the state of Rio de Janeiro, and on Black people’s resistance practice. Second, I connect Rio de Janeiro’s practices of state violence with contemporary and historical experiences of racial terror in the African Diaspora through policing Black youth and Black communities, imprisonment, and violence against Black women. And finally, I theorize on the relevance of my work to Black feminism, African Diaspora, and activist theories addressing the politics of fieldwork and the impact of the research on that experience. The knowledge apprehended through this report contributes to my own and further research on state violence against Black people in Brazil and throughout the African Diaspora. / text

What are the causes and consequences of judicial empowerment? What motivates the political decision to delegate authority to independent judiciaries, and what explains the subsequent behavior of these institutions? Going against current trends in comparative judicial politics, this dissertation answers these questions by taking ideas seriously. Dominant accounts of judicial empowerment and behavior associate the emergence of rights protecting judiciaries with the actions of powerful political actors concerned with the protection and promotion of their political self-interests. In contrast, my analysis of Brazil and Colombia links the emergence of such institutions to the actions of groups and individuals who subscribe to the principled belief that courts should focus their efforts on the protection and promotion of constitutional guarantees. These ideational carriers use their resources to convince institutional designers of the suitability of their proposals, and exert powerful influence over the institutional outcome of constitutional transitions. These actors also influence the actions of newly empowered courts to the extent that they are able to entrench their ideational allies on the bench during the uncertainty of the transition. These findings contradict the arguments that judicial empowerment is designed to weaken electoral opponents or to insulate the political process from popular pressures, and that judges are rational-strategic actors whose main concern is to protect their institutional integrity. / text

Ricardo Aldape Guerra was an undocumented Mexican migrant who was wrongfully convicted and given a death sentence for the murder of a white Houston police officer in 1982. In the absence of any physical evidence that implicated Aldape Guerra for the crime, Harris County prosecutors appealed to extreme anti-Mexican immigrant hostility in Houston by repeatedly emphasizing Aldape Guerra’s undocumented immigration status to the jury in order to construct him as a dangerous “illegal alien” deserving of severe punishment. This thesis situates Aldape Guerra’s encounter with the Texas legal system within related histories of social, cultural, economic, political, and legal phenomena in the United States in order to obtain a more complete understanding and to excavate critical lessons about the overall treatment of undocumented Mexican migrants in the U.S. legal system. It argues that the isolation of law from histories of racialization of Mexican migrants renders the U.S. legal system inadequate to protect undocumented Mexican migrants against racial discrimination, even in the court of law. It also argues that the U.S. legal system also cannot account for the material effects of transnational neoliberal capitalism on the cross-border movement of Mexican labor forces. This failure cultivates flawed legal reasoning in immigration jurisprudence that equates “illegality” with danger and criminality. / text

There is an on-going discussion in public relation scholarship surrounding the implication of critical theory on the study of activists’ utilization of public relations tools. One side believes that the mainstream theoretical models are sufficient for explaining the situation in which conflicts and negotiations between activists and corporations are happening, the other believes that critical theory needs to be applied. The purpose of this thesis is to provide an example that sheds light on this type of situation. It will study the 2014 conflict between Greenpeace and LEGO to see if orthodox theories are applicable, or if not, how and why critical theory should get more attention from public relations scholars.   The aim of the thesis is to solve the conflict through studying a case. To solve the dispute two research questions are aiming to scrutinize the negotiation situation between LEGO and Greenpeace. The questions are asking what images of the Greenpeace campaign was most frequently used by the media, and how these frame LEGO. A method triangulation was applied to answer these questions. First, a quantitative study identified what images that were most frequently used by the media to cover the story. Later a qualitative text analysis in the form of semiotics was used to analyse how these images framed LEGO. The result shows that almost 90% of the images used by mass media was directly illustrating Greenpeace’s campaign. The messages in these images framed LEGO on one hand, as a passive player that would stand by and watch as their business partner polluted both the earth and kids’ imaginations.  On the other hand the company was portrayed as an almighty institution that would not take stakeholders wishes and opinions into consideration.   The study serves as an example on the negotiation situation between activists and corporations. The conclusion relates the thesis back to the problem definition. The public relation communication utilized by Greenpeace, and studied in this thesis, is evidence that the scholarship needs broaden the intellectual domain by incorporating activism and critical theory into the academic field.

At least 50,000 working-class laborers from the West Indies, many of them poor and unemployed, remained with their families in central Panama after the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914. Over the next thirty years, along with a small number of West Indian professionals, religious leaders, and business owners, they established ways to sustain themselves in locales, both in Panama and the American-controlled Canal Zone, where they faced challenges and opposition. Their sizable presence interrupted ideals of elite politicians in Panama to Hispanicize the population. Nationalist Panamanians stigmatized them as culturally different competitors for canal maintenance jobs, and lacking in loyalty to the state because they clung to English and their British colonial citizenship. In the Canal Zone, they faced racial segregation and second-class status. This dissertation examines critical physical and cultural spaces the immigrants created to foster community, provide social and economic security, educate their children, and as a corollary, develop new identities. Using archival material, land records, interviews and historical newspapers from Panama and the United States, and informed by a wide range of secondary sources, the chapters examine the activism of West Indians, in the context of Panamanian historical trends. The case studies analyze involvement of the immigrants in three particular settings: as members of voluntary associations called lodges, as renters and residents of neighborhoods, and as shapers of education for their children, who were born into citizenship in Panama. West Indians had come to Panama from different island cultures and maintained many differences, yet in these settings they developed commonalities and shared experiences as West Indian Panamanians. In the process, West Indian immigrants influenced Panama's development in ways little acknowledged in Panamanian or American national, social or economic history.

Some art educators working in communities exemplify an alternative to the more common and stereotypical notion of the artist as autonomous, self-focused, and neutral. They view art-making and education as vehicles for social justice, and in some cases for social and political activism. In these broader social functions, the boundaries between art, education and activism fade. Drawing on perspectives from community art education, sociology, art criticism, critical pedagogy, and social justice education, and based on in-depth interviews with participants, this study examines the motivations, perspectives, development, and experiences of five artist/educator/activists who work in community-based settings in Tucson, Arizona. Common characteristics, as well as questions and implications for further research, are presented and discussed.

This dissertation addresses native activism in response to United States and Mexico border enforcement policies on the U.S.-Mexico border among indigenous peoples whose communities are divided by the international line. Fieldwork for the dissertation was conducted in collaboration with an indigenous grassroots community organization with members in both the U.S. and Mexico who advocate for rights of border mobility among native border peoples. This work discusses the impacts of border enforcement policies on native community cultural maintenance, local interpretations and uses of international human rights tools, and the challenges faced by U.S.-Mexico border native activists in communicating their ideologies to a broader public. This work further addresses the complex identity construction of Native Americans with cultural ties to Mexico, and conflations of race and nationality that result in distinct forms of intra-community racism.

After its abandonment in the 1980s, threat has re-emerged as an area of theoretical importance in understanding social movement mobilization (Jasper 1998). This case study examines the role of threat in mobilizing members of a movement to empower the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation (a small tribal community in NC). The study explores threats and the emotions that make them up, while also investigating the relevance of other prominent assumptions embedded in mobilization theories. The study employed mixed methodologies including focus groups, individual interviews, and participant observation. Findings supported the idea that threats may be partially responsible for creating mobilization, but also suggest that prominent threats faced by this community complicate the ways in which threat is understood. The findings also shed light on limitations of the prominent Weber-Michels model for movement growth/decline, and highlight potential areas of interest for future research with Indigenous communities.