We are Power: How Nonviolent Activism Changed the World

There has never been a time when a book is more relevant than this one. Hasak-Lowy has compiled a collection of short biographies on civil disobedience, nonviolent protest, and student activism that both build on one another and could be read as standalones. Readers will learn about India achieving independence from Britain, the Women's Suffrage movement, the Civil Rights movement, Czech independence from Russia and communism as well as the farm workers' movement. This nonfiction text could be used in connection with Chelsea Clinton's It's Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired, & Get Going! (Philomel Books 2017). Translator, professor, adult writer, and middle grade author of 33 Minutes (Aladdin 2017), Todd Hasak-Lowy has organized five chapters on Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Paul, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Vaclav Havel of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. The conclusion includes Greta Thunberg and the March for Our Lives movement. Hasak-Lowy explains that history as a subject is often taught around wars, yet many vital developments that improved the livelihoods of countless Americans were achieved through nonviolent resistance. All individuals mentioned suffered harassment or imprisonment by performing similar kinds of intentional law-breaking, such as pickets, boycotts, strikes, speech making, and banner construction. As a forewarning, the "n-word" is mentioned in the Martin Luther King Jr. chapter in its historical context. Photos complement the text. It is the hope that all who read this text come away inspired to think globally and act locally.