Red Emma’s

This deeply researched account, twenty-five years in the making, traces the evolution of disruptive protest since the Sixties to tell a larger story about the reshaping of the American left. Kauffman, a longtime grassroots organizer, examines how movements from ACT UP to Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter have used disruptive tactics to catalyze change despite long odds. This lively, elegant history is propelled by hundreds of candid interviews conducted over a span of decades. Direct Action showcases the voices to key players in an array of movements- environmentalist, anti-nuclear, anti-apartheid, feminist, LGBTQ, anti-globalization, racial-justice, anti-war, and more- across an era when American politics shifted to the right, and a constellation of decentralized issue- and identity-based movements supplanted the order ideal of a single, unified left. Now, as protest movements again take on a central and urgent political role, Kauffman's history offers both striking lessons for the current moment and an un-paralleled overview of the landscape of recent activism. Written with nuance and humor, Direct Action is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the protest movements of our time.