At a time when the world was changing, the Black Panther Party in Oakland came along to transform the US civil rights movement. How has the world changed (or not) since? What lessons can we learn from the Panthers' radical perspective on US society? Judy Juanita, a member of the party in its early days, describes in her debut novel those times and the people she knew.

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.

What happens when an historian brings his teenage daughter along to study a women's movement begun by teenagers? And what can a social movement in rural Brazil tell us about activism, social change, and possibilities for greater democracy? Jeffrey Rubin and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin tell the story of women who fought for social justice and for equality at home.

Scientists are some of the most outspoken critics of global warming, with an overwhelming majority of scientists seeing human activity -- such as the burning of coal -- as the main cause of climate change. Yet there are other areas where science is divided. One is over the degree to which our genes determine our lot in life. Radical scientist Steven Rose about the perils of the "new genetics." And Ted Nace reflects on a remarkable grassroots campaign in 2007 to keep coal plants from being built in the United States.

Prefigurative institutions, consensus decision-making, debates over lifestyle and organizing: none of these practices and questions are, in fact, new—although they've been highlighted of late, especially in the Occupy movement. Activist-scholar Andy Cornell discusses an organization in the 1970s and 80s called Movement for a New Society that foreshadowed contemporary anarchist politics. He points to the many lessons we can, and should, learn from it, including the limitations of being "the change you wish to see in the world."

Grace Lee Boggs and Angela Davis have thought, written, and acted courageously for decades. In a rare joint presentation on March 2, they spoke about, among other things, Occupy, nonviolence, and grassroots activism. Alex Gilvarry is a relative newcomer to political thinking, but his debut novel follows an immigrant to the US who winds up at Guantanamo.