Showing titles in Activists

In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs. Exiled to England, the dispossessed Maharajah transformed his estate at Elveden in Suffolk into a Moghul palace. Sophia, god-daughter of Queen Victoria, was raised a genteel aristocratic Englishwoman: presented at court, afforded grace-and-favour lodgings at Hampton Court Palace and photographed wearing the latest fashions for the society pages. But when, in secret defiance of the British government, she travelled to India, she returned a revolutionary.

Guerrilla Warfare by the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, written in 1960, has become a how-to manual for thousands of guerrilla fighters in various countries around the world. Guevara intended it to be a guidebook on guerrilla warfare, as inspiration for the revolutionary movement. Fascinating to admirers and adversaries alike, he captured the minds of millions with his leadership and his belief in guerrilla warfare as the only effective agent to achieve political change.

As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself in its exotic locales. Later in life, in war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she travelled to Somalia – "the most dangerous place on earth."

Written and read by Jessica Watson, this is the story of a remarkable girl who followed her dream and conquered the world. There is something different about adventurers, about the way their minds work. They look at the world as a place of challenges and though they know what fear is, they refuse to be hindered by it.

As a young child in North Carolina, Jacob Tobia wasn't the wrong gender, they just had too much of the stuff. Barbies? Yes. Playing with bugs? Absolutely. Getting muddy? Please. Princess dresses? You betcha. Jacob wanted it all, but because they were "a boy", they were told they could only have the masculine half. Acting feminine labelled them "a sissy" and brought social isolation. It took Jacob years to discover that being "a sissy" isn't something to be ashamed of. It's a source of pride.

The incredible life story of Haben Girma, the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School, and her amazing journey from isolation to the world stage. Haben defines disability as an opportunity for innovation. She learned non-visual techniques for everything from dancing salsa to handling an electric saw. She developed a text-to-braille communication system that created an exciting new way to connect with people.

So who really spearheaded India's Freedom Struggle? Millions of ordinary people—farmers, labourers, homemakers, forest produce gatherers, artisans and others—stood up to the British. People who never went on to be ministers, governors, presidents, or hold other high public office. They had this in common: their opposition to Empire was uncompromising. In The Last Heroes, these footsoldiers of Indian freedom tell us their stories.

One ordinary spring morning in Reykjavik, Iceland, Thordis Elva kisses her son and partner good-bye before boarding a plane to do a remarkable thing: fly 7,000 miles to South Africa to confront the man who raped her when she was just 16. Meanwhile, in Sydney, Australia, Tom Stranger nervously embarks on an equally life-changing journey to meet Thordis, wondering whether he is worthy of this milestone.

From the time she was a little girl, Maryam rebelled against the terrible second-class existence that was her destiny as an Afghan woman. She had witnessed the miserable fate of her grandmother and three aunts, and wished she had been born a boy. As a feisty teenager in Kabul, she was outraged when the Russians invaded her country. After she made a public show of defiance, she had to flee the country for her life. A new life of freedom seemed within her grasp, but her father arranged a traditional marriage to a fellow Afghan, who turned out to be a violent man....

Of the great figure in 20th-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age 39. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man.

Mahatma Gandhi is a world-famous pacifist figure who managed to lead the Indian independence movement against British rule by employing nonviolent civil disobedience. His ethics and unwavering stance inspired movements for civil rights and freedom all across the world, long after his assassination in 1948.

Joining us at Audible Studios is high profile human rights and civil liberties barrister Leslie Thomas QC. Thomas was called to the bar in 1988 and has represented some very high-profile cases, including families of the Hillsborough disaster, the family of Mark Duggan, whose death sparked the 2011 London riots, and more recently, the families of the victims of Grenfell Tower. It's clear that Thomas has a passion for supporting the voiceless and vulnerable, and is an expert in claims against the police and other public authorities.

Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee. He was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship. A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognize his father’s courage, and in turn, his father does not appreciate Raja’s own efforts in campaigning for Palestinian human rights. When Aziz is murdered in 1985, it changes Raja irrevocably.

In late 2006, Saket Soni, a 28-year-old, Indian-born community organizer received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker inside a Mississippi labor camp. He and 500 other men were living in squalor in Gulf Coast “man camps,” surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, crammed into cold trailers with putrid portable toilets, forced to eat moldy bread and frozen rice. Worse, lured by the promise of good work and green cards, the men had desperately scraped together up to $20,000 each to apply for this “opportunity”.

In 2010, Chelsea Manning, working as an intelligence analyst in the US Army in Iraq, disclosed 720,000 classified military documents that she had smuggled out via the memory card of her digital camera. In March 2011, the US Army sentenced Manning to 35 years in military prison, charging her with 22 counts relating to the unauthorized possession and distribution of classified military documents. The day after her conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition.

Accidents happen, but they're usually the result of human carelessness. Charlie Morecraft found that out one August night years ago, when he literally blew himself up. A long time worker at an Exxon refinery in New Jersey, Morecraft was rushing to leave for vacation and too macho to bother following standard safety procedures when performing a late night repair job. The result? Burns covering 50 percent of his body, months upon months of hospitalization and rehab, dozens of surgeries, and emotional suffering.

In Mandela, former foreign correspondent Bob Crew demystifies the icon and his legacy. After over a decade of travels in South Africa, Crew seeks truth in the unexpected details of the lives of Mandela and current South African president Jacob Zuma, comparing them to other world icons in order to bring a new understanding of their legacies to Western listeners.

Young Latinos across the United States are redefining their identities, pushing boundaries, and awakening politically in powerful and surprising ways. Many - Afrolatino, indigenous, Muslim, queer, and undocumented, living in large cities and small towns - are voices who have been chronically overlooked in how the diverse population of almost 60 million Latinos in the US has been represented. No longer.

We are currently experiencing the biggest humanitarian crisis of our time. Across the world, from Ukraine to Sudan to Mexico, people are forced to flee their homes every day due to conflict, climate change and persecution. And devastatingly, the scale of this crisis is only predicted to get worse: by 2050, 1 in 10 people on earth will be displaced. Having met and interviewed hundreds of people impacted by migration, charity founder Jaz O'Hara shares 31 remarkable and inspiring stories, from refugees to volunteers working on the frontline: ordinary people with extraordinary experiences.

In 2001, when Jacqueline Novogratz founded Acumen, a global community of socially and environmentally responsible partners dedicated to changing the way the world tackles poverty, few had heard of impact investing - Acumen’s practice of “doing well by doing good”. Nineteen years later, there’s been a seismic shift in how corporate boards and other stakeholders evaluate businesses: Impact investment is not only morally defensible, but now also economically advantageous, even necessary.