Small Acts of Resistance

Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson; Foreword by Vclav Havel

Synopsis:

Remarkable, mischievous, inspiring - the 80 or so stories in Small Acts of Resistance bring hidden histories to life. The courage of the people in these stories is breathtaking. So, too, is the impact and imagination of their actions.

These mostly little known stories - including those written from eyewitness experience of the events and situations described - reveal the role ordinary people have played in achieving extraordinary change. In the real world, it will never happen, the sceptics love to tell us. As this book so vividly shows, the sceptics have repeatedly been proven wrong.

Stories in this book include how: - Strollers, toilet paper, and illegal ketchup helped end forty years of one-party Communist rule; - Dogs (and what they wore) helped protestors humiliate a murderous regime; - Internet videos about cuddly animals infuriated a repressive government which tried - and failed - to ban the craze; - Football crowds found ways of singing the national anthem so as to defy a junta of torturers, now in jail; - Women successfully put pressure on warlords to end one of Africas bloodiest wars; - The singing of old folksongs hastened the collapse of an empire sustained by tanks;

If you think individuals are powerless to change the world, read this remarkable book and youll surely change your mind.

In my lifetime, I have repeatedly seen that small acts of resistance have had incomparably greater impact than anyone could have predicted at the time. Small acts of resistance are not just about the present and the past. I believe they are about the future too. Vclav Havel, writer, first Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience and former Czech president.

Steve Crawshaw is international advocacy director at Amnesty International in London. He was a foreign correspondent at The Independent from 1986 to 2002 and worked at Human Rights Watch in London and New York from 2002 to 2010. He is the author of Goodbye to the USSR and Easier Fatherland: Germany and the 21st Century.

John Jackson is Vice President of Social Responsibility for MTV Networks International. Previously, he led social justice initiatives internationally as Head of Campaigns at Christian Aid and was a founding member and Director of the Burma Campaign UK.