In Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns, Theresa Keeley analyzes the role of intra-Catholic conflict within the framework of U.S. foreign policy formulation and execution during the Reagan administration. She challenges the preponderance of scholarship on the administration that stresses the influence of evangelical Protestants on foreign policy toward Latin America. Especially in the case of U.S. engagement in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Keeley argues, the bitter debate between U.S. and Central American Catholics over the direction of the Catholic Church shaped President Reagan's foreign policy. The flash point for these intra-Catholic disputes was the December 1980 political murder of four American Catholic missionaries in El Salvador. Liberal Catholics described nuns and priests in Central America who worked to combat structural inequality as human rights advocates living out the Gospel's spirit. Conservative Catholics saw them as agents of class conflict who furthered the so-called Gospel according to Karl Marx. The debate was an old one among Catholics, but, as Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns contends, it intensified as conservative, anticommunist Catholics played instrumental roles in crafting U.S. policy to fund the Salvadoran government and the Nicaraguan Contras. Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns describes the religious actors as human rights advocates and, against prevailing understandings of the fundamentally secular activism related to human rights, highlights religion-inspired activism during the Cold War. In charting the rightward development of American Catholicism, Keeley provides a new chapter in the history of U.S. diplomacy and shows how domestic issues such as contraception and abortion joined with foreign policy matters to shift Catholic laity toward Republican principles at home and abroad.

The core of this book, written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, documents the wide-ranging FBI assault on CISPES.

Focuses on the activists in three of the "most dramatic, sustained" social movements of the twentieth century: the labor, civil rights, and antiwar movements. Provides an overview and brief history of each of these movements. Activists in each of these movements recall the courage needed to stand up to resistance from the police and the government (from the FBI to Congress and the White House), and the struggle to overcome violence and accusations of treachery and subversion.

Hospitality practices grounded in religious belief have long exercised a profound influence on Wisconsin’s Latino communities. Sergio M. González examines the power relations at work behind the types of hospitality--welcoming and otherwise--practiced on newcomers in both Milwaukee and rural areas of the Badger State. González’s analysis addresses central issues like the foundational role played by religion and sacred spaces in shaping experiences and facilitating collaboration among disparate Latino groups and across ethnic lines; the connections between sacred spaces and the moral justification for social justice movements; and the ways sacred spaces evolved into places for mitigating prejudice and social alienation, providing sanctuary from nativism and repression, and fostering local and transnational community building. Perceptive and original, Strangers No Longer reframes the history of Latinos in Wisconsin by revealing religion’s central role in the settlement experience of immigrants, migrants, and refugees.

Tracing the history of government intrusions on Constitutional rights in response to threats from abroad, Cole and Dempsey warn that a society in which civil liberties are sacrificed in the name of national security is in fact less secure than one in which they are upheld. A new chapter includes a discussion of domestic spying, preventive detention, the many court challenges to post-9/11 abuses, implementation of the Patriot Act, and efforts to reestablish the checks and balances left behind in the rush to strengthen governmental powers.

During the 1980s, the United States was at war in Central America. In this book, Michael Little attempts to place both the U.S. Central American policy and its opposition movement in context, examining the 'hearts and minds' of the U.S. public and Congress. Tactics and organization of the FMLN support networks are examined, including the peculiar role the left wing of Congress played in advancing the goals of a Marxist insurgency at war with the United States. Contents: Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; The Background to U.S. Policy; The Rise of the FMLN; El Salvador and the Cold War; Private Foreign Policy; Organizations Opposing U.S. Policy; War of Information; Private Intervention; The FMLN: Terrorists or Guerrillas?; Did CISPES Believe in Human Rights?; The Media and Congress; The FBI Investigation; The End of the War; Conclusion; Appendix; Selected Bibliography; Index.

From the 50s to the 70s in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, Swearingen records his participation in campaigns against Communists and Muslims, Weathermen, Black Panthers, and other organizations. Readers interested in domestic repression or U.S. history more generally will find invaluable primary source material in this historic expose. This is the first insider's account of the FBI's COINTELPRO era. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.