By Timothy Cubitt, Anthony Morgan and Isabella Voce

Recent protest activity in Australia has related to a range of political and social causes, including climate change, women’s rights, pandemic-related government policies, and a range of ideological movements. While peaceful protests were held in parts of the country, some resulted in arrests, fines and violence (ABC News 2021; Bavas & Nguyen 2021). Over time, fringe and conspiratorial rhetoric increased across social media (De Coninck 2021) and began featuring more prominently in anti-authority ‘freedom’ protests (Khalil & Roose 2023). While the public health measures have ceased, these freedom protests—and related social movements—have persisted. Conspiratorial and far-right actors have become increasingly prominent among anti-government or anti-authority protests

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 693. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024. 16p.

By Victor Viruena

The global economy has driven companies to develop strategies, adopt and promote diversity as a core value in their organizations. The blend of ethnicity, gender, and age strengthens internal ties, boosts productivity, creativity, and innovation. According to Esvary (2015), the sharing of best practices in managing and promoting workplace diversity is intended to strengthen diversity policies further. All around the world, discrimination is rejected by society, but at the same time, businesses still reluctant to incorporate women, LGTB, young and people of different races and cultures on boards and top management positions. Lately, the raising of nationalism, racism, and political polarization has polluted the environment, making it more challenging to integrate minorities as decision-makers in organizations. The national protests against police brutality and racism have opened a new chapter in the U.S. civil rights movement; for the first time in history, Fortune 500 corporations were obligated to publicly stand against racism and take concrete actions to boost management diversity medium-level positions in their organizations.

Academia Letters, Article 430. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL430.. 5p.

By Sirje Laurel Weldon

A must-read for scholars across a broad sweep of disciplines. Laurel Weldon weaves together skillfully the theoretical strands of gender equality policy, intersectionality, social movements, and representation in a multimethod/level comparative study that unequivocally places women's movements at the center of our understanding of democracy and social change."" ---Amy G. Mazur, Washington State University "Laurel Weldon's When Protest Makes Policy expands and enriches our understanding of representation by stressing social movements as a primary avenue for the representation of marginalized groups. With powerful theory backed by persuasive analysis, it is a must-read for anyone interested in democracy and the representation of marginalized groups." ---Pamela Paxton, University of Texas at Austin ""This is a bold and exciting book. There are many fine scholars who look at women's movements, political theorists who make claims about democracy, and policy analysts who do longitudinal treatments or cross-sectional evaluations of various policies. I know of no one, aside from Weldon, who is comfortable with all three of these roles."" ---David Meyer, University of California, Irvine What role do social movements play in a democracy? Political theorist S. Laurel Weldon demonstrates that social movements provide a hitherto unrecognized form of democratic representation, and thus offer a significant potential for deepening democracy and overcoming social conflict. Through a series of case studies of movements conducted by women, women of color, and workers in the United States and other member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Weldon examines processes of representation at the local, state, and national levels. She concludes that, for systematically disadvantaged groups, social movements can be as important---sometimes more important---for the effective articulation of a group perspective as political parties, interest groups, or the physical presence of group members in legislatures. When Protest Makes Policy contributes to the emerging scholarship on civil society as well as the traditional scholarship on representation. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with advancing social cohesion and deepening democracy and inclusion as well as those concerned with advancing equality for women, ethnic and racial minorities, the working class, and poor people.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. 244p.

By Amitai Etzioni

From the Preface: “Most Americans tend to view their society as well advanced, politically stable and not very violent, although sophisticated observers point out to Americans that violence is frequently present in this country. Presidential assassinations, lynchings, abuses of police powers, threats and violence against negroes and blacks, and the violence and shootings in the newly settled western territories in the 19th century and early 20th century all indicate that violence was and still is common in the United States. We will probably never be able to answer the question whether the United States is a violent country; such a simple, naive question is obviously unanswerable. It seems safe to say that different nations are characterized by more and less violence; there are some nations that exhibit more incidence of violence and others have less; placing the United States in its proper place along this continuum would be a costly and difficult piece of social research. Whatever is the answer to this question, it is clear that many Americans, both politicians and ordinary citizens, were deeply disturbed by the demonstrations and violence of the mid-to-late 1960’s. For many reasons Lyndon Johnson appointed the President’s National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence; the task of the Commis­sion was clear, to help us gain an understanding and to help us prevent the commission of violent acts.”

NY. Gordon and Breach, Science Publishers. 1970. 115p.

By Christian Scholl

Investigates how activists confront global powers with their street-level dissent.Two Sides of a Barricade argues that to construct global democracy, conflict and dissent must be taken seriously. Christian Scholl explores the political significance of the confrontations within four sites of interaction: bodies, space, communication, and law. Each site of struggle provides a different entry point to understand the influence of protester and police tactics on each other. At the same time, the four sites of struggle allow a comprehensive analysis of how the contestation of global hegemonic forces during summit protests trigger a preemptive shift in social control through increased deployment of biopolitical forms of power.

Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013. 439p.

By Donatella della Porta (Editor), Kivanc Atak (Contributor), Mariana S. Mendes (Contributor), Juan Masullo (Contributor), & 4 more.

Riding the Protest Wave in the Neoliberal Crisis. Recent years have seen a new development in the growth and spread of popular protest: protests that began as local, homogeneous events-such as Occupy Wall Street or the protests of the Arab Spring-quickly left their original locations and local specificity behind and became global. This book looks at the development of this wave of protests, with an eye on protests against austerity and neoliberal economic policies, and offers a global view, covering events in Turkey, Brazil, Venezuela, South Africa, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and other locations. (Protest and Social Movements)

Amsterdam University Press (2017) 265 pages.