The limits of multi-partyism (1992–2005)

This chapter examines the events that shaped Kenya’s democratization, from the reintroduction of multi-partyism in 1992 to the popular rejection of a new Constitution in 2005. The chapter shows how, in the face of strong benefits of incumbency and a government set on staying in power, a divided opposition lost to President Moi and the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) in both the 1992 and 1997 elections. In 2002, the opposition finally united in the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) and ousted KANU and Moi’s chosen successor, but optimism soon faded as former allies in NARC turned against each other and set the country on a perilous path ahead of the 2007 elections. The chapter also draws attention to a longer—and more successful—struggle for constitutional reform that was fought throughout the same period and which laid the groundwork for post-2007 reforms, including a more transformative Constitution in 2010.

Organizing a Rainbow Coalition of Revolutionary Solidarity

This article considers the possibilities and limitations of multiracial alliances and antiracist organizing in and beyond the USA by analyzing the Rainbow Coalition of Revolutionary Solidarity in Chicago from 1969 to 1972. The article argues this coalition—involving the Black Panther Party, Young Lords, and Young Patriots, among other diverse organizations—demonstrated a powerful model of organizing across race for revolutionary social change, which structured self-determination in communities-of-color alongside white communities’ responsibility for ending white supremacy.

Fusion Politics from the Poor People’s Campaign to the Rainbow Coalition to the New Poor People’s Campaign

This article examines a model of fusion politics that connects activism to end poverty, and addresses a constellation of social injustices across more than a half century in the United States. We consider an articulation of fusion politics that highlights the actions of disparate groups and individuals, including youth, racial and ethnic minorities, women, LGBT activists, teachers, and union members who have joined in a cooperative effort to address independent but linked concerns such as quality public schools, livable wages, affordable healthcare, environmental justice, immigrant rights, women’s reproductive rights, fair elections, and criminal justice. Our analysis points out the historical links between the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, the Rainbow Coalition of the 1980s, and the new Poor People’s Campaign launched in 2018. It draws heavily on the words and writings of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Reverend William Barber, II in understanding the organizing, objectives, and transformative potential of these movements.

Queer activism in Taiwan: An emergent rainbow coalition from the assemblage perspective

A social movement for sexual and gender minorities (the Movement) emerged in Taiwan around the 1990s after the abolition of martial law in 1987. This article, drawing on Deleuze’s assemblage theory, looks at how activists negotiate and compete over constructing the discourses of sexual rights and citizenship in a context of democratic transition. With the recent ‘Renaissance’ of conservatism, which combines Confucianism and Christianity, the Movement has been thus de- and reterritorialised in response, and such a process has brought to the fore a rainbow coalition – a larger composition of assemblage rather than simply a descriptor. Gaining greater leverage and influence on society, the coalition, based on the pursuit of self-determination and self-liberation, has inversely provided soil for a cosmopolitan identity of Taiwaneseness to grow.