Book - Fight the Power!: A Visual History of Protest Among English-Speaking Peoples

Softcover, 192pp., 2013. Sean Michael Wilson and Benjamin Dickson According to Gandhi, the Four stages of Protest are as follows: First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win! In Fight The Power!, comics authors Sean Michael Wilson and Benjamin Dickson team up with illustrators Hunt Emerson, John Spelling, and Adam Pasion to show how this process has been played out again and again throughout history – and has slowly but surely led to hard-won rights for the people along the way. Focusing on the real "English-Speaking Peoples" – not just the generals and "leaders" portrayed by Winston Churchill in his writings – Wilson and Dickson chronicle fourteen struggles, from the United States to Australia, from the Luddites in the early 1800s through the Occupy movement, when everyday citizens rose up and fought for a better life. We are the benefactors of such struggle, though the fight goes on. . . In an accessible, enjoyable art form, Fight the Power! shows that there is a point to the struggle, fight by fight, win by win. "Throughout human history, social change has never been doled out by those very few that hold power, but taken by the collective with a common need for justice (like not to starve or be worked to death for pennies). Fight The Power! harnesses a chunk of this history and graphically illuminates it with humor and eloquence. It reminds us of the struggles that, against the odds, brought us a better world and empowers us to carry those actions into the future." —Peter Kuper, cofounder, World War 3 Illustrated and artist/writer for Mad magazine's Spy vs. Spy