Conville & Walsh
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One No, Many Yeses
A Journey to the Heart of the Global Resistance Movement
- Author: Paul Kingsnorth
- Category: Non-fiction
- Publisher: Free Press(UK)
- Pub date: 22 April 2003
- Length: 320 pages
About One No, Many Yeses
‘Kingsnorth’s reportage dispels once and for all the myth that only the white middle classes are upset at the World Trade Organization … recommended’
— GUARDIAN
In 1994 a thousand rebel soldiers descended on the town on San Cristobal Las Casa in Mexico. They were led by an ex-university professor, head of the Sapatista Army of National Liberation, a grassroots band of rebels against progress. But what emerged from that jungle seven years ago was not an army, but an idea, the sight sound and smell of a politics of opposition to corporate globalization, and to the unelected power of a handful of vast business conglomerates which increasingly holds sway over governments and their people’s lives. This is the politics that will come to dominate the next few decades, defined by an increasingly united opposition to corporate dominance and a diverse decentralized array of alternatives.
In his research, Paul Kingsnorth travelled across five continents to visit some of the movement’s epicentres. Along the way, he found a new political idea. Not socialism, not capitalism, not any ‘ism’ at all, it is united in what it opposes and deliberately diverse in what it wants instead – a politics of one no many yeses. This movement may yet change the world. This book tells its story.
About the Author
Paul Kingsnorth has worked in an orang utan rehabilitation centre in Borneo, as a peace observer in the rebel Zapatista villages of Mexico, as a floor-sweeper in McDonalds and as an assistant lock-keeper on the river Thames. He studied history at Oxford University between 1991 and 1994, was arrested during the Twyford Down road protests of 1993 and was named one of Britain’s ‘top ten troublemakers’ by the New Statesman magazine in 2001.
Paul’s writing focuses on the connections between people and places, and on the increasingly strained relationship between humanity and the natural world. He has worked on the comment desk of the Independent and as deputy editor of The Ecologist, the world’s longest-running environmental magazine, writes widely in the media in outlets including the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Ecologist, and has appeared on radio and TV. In 2009 he founded the Dark Mountain Project, an effort to bring together a new cultural and literary movement to respond honestly to the challenges of the coming century.
Paul’s first book, ONE NO, MANY YESES, an investigative journey through the anti-globalisation movement, was published in six languages in thirteen countries. His second book, REAL ENGLAND, was published in 2008. His debut poetry collection, KIDLAND, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. He is currently working on a novel.