Many consider The Searchers to be one of the greatest movies to come out of Hollywood. According to Glenn Frankel, this iconic Western has much to say about the mythos of US expansionism. It also, he argues, portended changes in the way Hollywood viewed Native Americans and the doctrine of manifest destiny. Frankel discusses as well the history of battles between whites and Indians on the Texas frontier in the nineteenth century.

At the World Social Forum, social movements and groups from around the globe gather and strategize. But how do we apply the processes developed at the Forum to community-level organizing? What lessons can be translated from global to local? Scholar-activist Jackie Smith shares a number of insights. And Deana Rohlinger discusses the broader project of the volume Strategies for Social Change.

We spend our days obsessively checking email, texts, and social media on our tablets and smart devices. According to Douglas Rushkoff, this is no way to live. The media theorist has coined the term “present shock” to describe how the digital universe has taken us out of ourselves and changed the way the world works.

Asylum seekers and migrants without papers are often arrested and taken to detention facilities purposely sited far from population centers -- and sometimes on remote islands. Alison Mountz discusses US, Australian, and other national policies to disperse and isolate detainees, often hiding their location from family members and potential advocates. She also describes efforts to find and assist detainees.

For those who reject police-and-prisons-dominated responses to violence, what's the alternative? Sujatha Baliga and Mia Mingus spoke about restorative and transformative justice at a recent symposium in Berkeley. Clarissa Rojas talked about feminism as an anti-imperialist project and about what she calls the medicalization of anti-violence work.

Should racial, sexual, and other forms of liberation be sought through legal change? Will enhanced criminalization, more hate crimes legislation, and demands for same-sex marriage get us to a just society? Dean Spade argues that these kinds of efforts distract and detract from efforts to achieve real racial and economic justice. He also suggests key elements of a critical trans politics.