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Viyyukka – The Morning Star
Viyyukka: The Morning Star is a rare and compelling anthology of stories written in Telugu over four decades by nearly fifty Maoist women revolutionaries in India. The title, Viyyukka, is a Gondi word meaning morning star. This collection is unique because these narratives are not traditional fiction; they are “lived experiences written from within the movement” while the authors served as guerrilla soldiers, often under extreme duress.
The stories offer a vital glimpse into the human dimensions of armed struggle, highlighting the agency, resilience, and moral consciousness of the women participants. The authors, active in India’s ongoing revolutionary conflict, document everything from tactical and ideological engagements to intimate realities such as love, loss, and camaraderie within their squads.
At its core, the Morning Star series centers on the fierce struggle for survival: of people, forests, rivers, and a way of life. The narratives capture how local struggles against exploitation and dispossession evolved into a wider movement challenging the “Iron Heel of the Indian State” and global capital.
Geographically rooted in Central Indian regions like Dandakaranya, the book vividly portrays the Adivasi (indigenous) resistance for the defense of jal, jangal, and jameen (water, forest, and land). The resistance documented in these pages, particularly against corporate mining and state repression, shares a “common thread” with the struggles of indigenous communities across the globe, positioning this collective testimony as a crucial document of resistance against colonial and capitalist forces.
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We Are Still Not Counted As Human
USD $ 16.00Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product pageWe Are Still Not Counted As Human
S’bu Zikode’s reflections chronicle the profound struggle of Abahlali baseMjondolo (residents of the shacks), the largest popular movement to emerge in South Africa since apartheid. Founded in Durban in 2005, the movement now boasts over 180,000 members organised into more than 100 branches across four provinces (as of September 2025).
The movement arose from a deep disappointment following the initial promise of democracy, realizing that “freedom and the African National Congress (ANC) were two different things”. The poor were immediately excluded from public life and discussions about their own lives, often treated as “criminals” or “rubbish”. This systematic dehumanisation—where their very presence was deemed criminal—showed that democracy, in practice, referred primarily to the middle class and the rich.
At the heart of Abahlali baseMjondolo’s organizing is the non-negotiable demand for the recognition of their humanity and dignity. They built their foundation on the principles and values of ubuntu, viewing dignity as requiring respectful engagement and full participation in decision-making—not merely accepting ‘service delivery’. They insist on thinking and speaking for themselves, adopting the slogan ‘nothing for us, without us’.
AbM developed a unique ‘politics of the poor’ to create a space for the impoverished to think together, build power, and advance their interests outside of political parties or trade unions. The goal is establishing a democratic socialism built from below—a “living communism”—grounded in community praxis.
This struggle has been met with intense repression, including police violence, torture, criminalisation, and assassinations, with more than twenty lives lost. The state’s actions, intended to teach the poor to “know their place,” instead taught them that democracy was not for them, reinforcing the need to organize and be strong together. The movement continues to fight for the destruction of the capitalist system and the reconstruction of a new system centred on the humanity and dignity of all people.
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Twenty Years of Courage and Struggle
Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) is the remarkable story of the South African shack dwellers movement, covering twenty years of courageous struggle. It is the largest movement to have emerged in South Africa after apartheid and one of the largest movements of the urban poor globally, boasting over 180,000 members across four provinces.
AbM emerged from the margins of South Africa’s cities, where residents faced life-threatening conditions, including shack fires, poverty, and systemic betrayal by the democratic state regarding land and housing. The movement is firmly committed to ethical principles, fighting not only for the right to the city but for the right to collectively occupy land and build occupations collectively. Abahlali insists on a humanist philosophy—”no one is illegal, everyone thinks and everyone must be counted and heard”—and works to build democracy and socialism from below.
Abahlali is abolition in action, seeking to interrupt capitalist logic by advocating for the total decommodification of land, recognizing it as a public good allocated based on human need. This commitment has led to significant victories, including securing land, providing services (like water and electricity), and winning a landmark Constitutional Court case against the unlawful Slums Act.
However, this quest for dignity has come at a tremendous cost, marked by severe repression, police violence, and the assassination of many activists by state forces and party thugs. Despite these challenges, AbM has persisted, developing occupations into working communes (such as eKhenana) that feature collective production, community halls, and political schools. Their story is a map for movements fighting inequality and authoritarianism globally. The movement continues to build collective power and struggle for a world where land, wealth, and power are shared on an equal basis.
“Your movement has shown the world that democracy extends beyond elections to a way of living together—through open assemblies and collective decision making. In doing so, you have advanced a vision grounded in humanity, solidarity, and courage. Your struggle has always been internationalist, and your solidarity with the people of Palestine, Swaziland, and the Congo, and the warm relations you have built with movements around the world, are exemplary.” Jeremy Corbyn in https://rajpatel.org/2025/10/13/4764/
The movement continues to grow, discovering that more and more settlements function better not when they function as an association of residents but as a commune. Agroecology is cropping up in more and more settlements thanks to exchanges with the MST. It’s a demonstration that when the wretched of the earth organize themselves without mediation, without NGO managers or academic gatekeepers, they can survive what would destroy any formation dependent on elite patronage. … This is the lesson Abahlali offers the world: genuine democracy is possible, but only when everyone thinks, everyone counts, everyone cares, and everyone acts. Raj Patel Everybody Thinks, Everybody Counts, Everybody Cares, Everybody Acts: Twenty Years of Abahlalism
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Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral
“Never has it been more certain that our victory depends principally on our own actions. Tell no lies, claim no easy victories . . .” —Amílcar Cabral On the centennial of Amílcar Cabral’s birth, and fifty years after his passing, Claim No Easy Victories brings to life the resonance of his thought for today’s freedom movements. World-renowned revolutionary, poet, liberation philosopher, and leader of the anticolonial independence movement of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, Amílcar Cabral’s legacy stretches well beyond the shores of West Africa. His profound influence on the pan-Africanist movement and the Black liberation movement in the United States and the English-speaking world spans the ages—and is only growing in an era of renewed anti-imperialist internationalist struggle. In this unique collection of essays, radical thinkers from across Africa, the United States, and internationally commemorate Cabral’s life and legacy and his relevance to contemporary struggles for self-determination and emancipation. Claim No Easy Victories serves equally as an introduction or reintroduction to a figure and militant history that the rulers and beneficiaries of global racial capitalism would rather see forgotten. Understanding Cabral then and now sheds light on the necessity of grounding radical change in the creation of theory based on the actual conditions within which movements develop. The depth and dimension of Cabral’s theoretical ideas and revolutionary practice of building popular movements for liberation are assessed by each of the authors and critically reanimated for a new generation of freedom fighters. The book features contributions by: Kali Akuno, Samir Amin, David Austin, Jesse Benjamin, Angela Davis, Bill Fletcher Jr, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, Lewis Gordon, Firoze Manji, Asha Rodney, Patricia Rodney, Olúfémi Táíwò—and others.
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From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain
In his introduction to this new edition of From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain, Mahmood Mamdani reminds us that long before 1972, most Ugandan ‘Asians’ had already been disenfranchised by law, both Ugandan and British. Despite a global industry that insists otherwise, Uganda Asians are a poor fit as victims: there was no large-scale loss of life during the expulsion, nor were there massacres of Asians, only of ‘indigenous’ peoples. Asians in Uganda, as in East or Southern Africa, he argues, were immigrants, not settlers: immigrants are prepared to be a part of the political community, whereas settlers ‘create their own political community, a colony, more precisely, settler colonialism.’ Mamdani insists that there is no single Asian legacy. there are several and they are contradictory. The Asian question in Uganda remains, but it is no longer the original Asian question. But it does allow us to think more broadly. Just as US law recognizes African Americans as Americans of African descent, so too must those of Asian origin in Africa consider themselves, and be considered, Asian Africans. It is in his bittersweet and touching book on the Asian expulsion from Uganda that one can trace the beginnings of author and intellectual Mahmood Mamdani’s world-view.. … In From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain Mamdani offers portraits of people reduced to a vegetative existence in refugee camps, feeling the burden of not being fluent in English and struggling with the uncomfortably cold weather. Not surprisingly, these few months played a pivotal role in shaping Mamdani’s theoretical and political leanings, and it is here that one can locate his preoccupation with the formation of racial, ethnic and class identities during the colonial era and his overarching concern with issues of citizenship.
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MATHARE: An Urban Bastion of Anti-Oppression Struggle in Kenya.
USD $ 5.00 USD $ 15.00Price range: USD $ 5.00 through USD $ 15.00Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product pageMATHARE: An Urban Bastion of Anti-Oppression Struggle in Kenya.
History is written by the victors of any war. But what happens when the victors forget to write down their history or omit the cog of the struggle? This is the untold story of Mathare Slum that has never been told to the world: of the role it played in anti-colonial struggle and the planning ground for the Mau Mau struggle which culminated with the fall of the British Colonial Empire in Kenya in the midnight of December 12th 1963. Mathare has also played a critical role in anti-oppression struggle against the four regimes that we’ve had since independence and continues to do so up to date. This history has not been documented and has only been done piecemeal. This has overtime eroded the rich history of Mathare and led to a distorted history of once a planning ground and a bulwark of Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KFLA). The current generation are not cognizant with the critical role Mathare played in the independence of our country. Presently, Mathare is majorly known for all the negative reasons and its proximity to Mathari Mental Hospital has contorted its image to the outside world. My story tries to re-tell the history of Mathare from an informed insider perspective by threading the struggles from the colonial era to the present day and the role it has played in agitating for social justice. My story brings to view the past history of this informal settlement in the heart of Nairobi, the present struggle and the promising future through community organizing.
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Mental Health and Human Rights in Palestine
From: USD $ 5.00Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product pageMental Health and Human Rights in Palestine
This is a biography of the life of Dr Eyad El Sarraj, Gaza’s pioneering psychiatrist and founder of the Gaza Community Mental Healthcare Programme, written by his son, Wasseem El Sarraj. It is also a history of Palestine with a focus on Gaza. Eyad’s life was intimately intertwined with Palestine’s struggles so his choices and reactions reflected many of the major historical moments of the last 70 years. The book is an effort to provide a perspective on how the forces around him impacted his life, and how he took control of what he could achieve in an intractable situation. The book is interspersed with Wasseem’s own reflections as a mixed-race Palestinian, and as someone who has lived under occupation in Gaza.
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International Brigade Against Apartheid: Secrets of the People’s War That Liberated South Africa
USD $ 27.00Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product pageInternational Brigade Against Apartheid: Secrets of the People’s War That Liberated South Africa
We hear for the first time from the internationalist secretly working for the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), in the struggle to liberate South Africa from apartheid rule. They acted as couriers, provided safe houses in neighbouring states and within South Africa, helped infiltrate combatants across borders, and smuggled tons of weapons into the country in the most creative ways. Driven by a spirit of international solidarity, they were prepared to take huge risks and face great danger. The internationalists reveal what motivated them as volunteers, not mercenaries: they gained nothing for their endeavours save for the self-esteem in serving a just cause. Against such clandestine involvement, the book includes contributions from key people in the international Anti-Apartheid Movement and its public mobilisation to isolate the apartheid regime. These include worldwide campaigns like Stop the Sports Tours, boycotting of South African products and black American solidarity. The Cuban, East German and Russian contributions outlined those countries’ support for the ANC and MK. The public, global Anti-Apartheid Movement campaigns provide the dimensions from which internationalists who secretly served MK emerged. Edited by Ronnie Kasrils. First published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2021, ISBN: 978-1-4314-3202-8, this Daraja Press edition is available in North America and East Africa.
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