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Nonviolence

Newsletter – The Consent Of The Governed

January 7, 2017 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. Governments function because of the consent of the governed. When a government does not serve the needs or interests of the people, it loses its legitimacy and no longer deserves the consent of the people.Plutocracy defined We have argued for a long time that current governments at all levels - local, state and federal -function primarily to benefit the wealthy. Academics have proven that the United States is a plutocracy - rule of, by and for the wealthy. It is time for us to withdraw our consent. Let's consider how to do that and what protections will be needed. When a government loses the consent of the people, all it has left to wield to keep its power is repression and force. Cooperation Jackson and the Malcolm X Grassroots Organizing Movement, is calling for "a program of noncompliance and noncooperation on both the federal and state levels." We have entered a new era, a presidency of protest and an increasing illegitimate government. We have the power to withdraw our consent from hate and exploitation and build love and prosperity.

Speak Out Against Trump

December 11, 2016 George Payne, www.popularresistance.org ,
By George Payne of Gandhi Earth Keepers International. Rochester, NY - Denouncing the President-elect is not an act of disunity. Where would the United States be without ordinary citizens speaking up and questioning the policies and decisions of their elected leaders? After-all, we are a nation born out of dissent rather than conformity. I am not willing to extend Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt. He is not my President. He is not my representative. He is not my fellow American. Trump lost my confidence when he mocked the disabled and then lied about his intentions. He lost my allegiance when he threatened to put a political opponent in jail. He lost my trust when he bragged about sexual molestation of women.

Newsletter – Standing Rock And American Genocide

December 4, 2016 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org , , , , , , , ,
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. As we write this newsletter, we are driving to North Dakota to volunteer at Standing Rock. We have been wanting to go for many months but could not because of our commitment to organizing to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and our political work outside of Popular Resistance. We were planning to join a team from Baltimore in late December, but recent events made us decide that it was more important to go ourselves now. For a while, a profound sense of the importance of this moment has been growing within us. There are and have been many fights against fossil fuel infrastructure, but this one is different. Given the history of the country, the crises we all face on many levels and the direction that we are going - growing revolt and an increasingly repressive government - the fight at Standing Rock feels like a major turning point.

Inspiration For Nonviolence: The Battle Of Seattle

November 30, 2016 Rivera Sun, http://www.paceebene.org , ,
By Rivera Sun for Campaign Nonviolence. On November 30th, 1999, the World Trade Organization was scheduled to conduct a summit in Seattle, WA. Due to the intervention of activists, the meetings took place amidst widespread resistance, protest, and disruption. Although the acts of property damage, violence, and the violent repression tactics of the police were widely publicized, a number of on-the-ground nonviolent activists urge us to question the narrative of violence, and dig deeper into the nonviolent side of the story. Organizer David Solnit wrote, "It was a moment when organized resistance became a genuine popular uprising, successfully shutting down the opening day of the WTO meeting, taking over the downtown core of a major American city, and contributing to the collapse of negotiations that would have increased poverty, destruction, and misery around the world."

Seeking The True Path

November 25, 2016 Robert J. Burrowes, www.popularresistance.org ,
By Robert J. Burrowes. One of the more subtle manifestations of the intimate link between (unconscious) human emotions and behaviour is illustrated by the simple concept of choice and how this is so often reduced to a dichotomy between two bad options. In such circumstances, most people choose whatever they consider to be ‘the lesser evil’. But how often are there only two options, even if they appear ‘good’ and ‘bad’? Frankly, I cannot think of one circumstance in which my choices are limited to two, however good or bad they appear to be. Why does this belief in just two options arise? When we are born, our evolutionary inheritance includes a phenomenally powerful capacity to feel a complex range of emotions.

Gandhi: ‘My Life Is My Message’

October 2, 2016 Robert J. Burrowes, www.popularresistance.org , ,
By Robert J. Burrowes. As most of the world ignores or hypocritically celebrates the 147th birthday of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on the International Day of Nonviolence on 2 October, some of us will quietly acknowledge his life by continuing to build the world that he envisioned. When asked for his message for the world, Gandhi responded with the now famous line 'My life is my message' reflecting his lifelong struggle against violence. Gandhi's life was dotted with many memorable quotes but one that is less well known is this: 'You may never know what results come of your actions but if you do nothing there will be no results'. Fortunately, there are many committed people who have identified the importance of taking action to end the violence in our world...

Anti-Drone Activists Say “Enough War”

September 30, 2016 Sharon Delgado, www.sharondelgado.org , , ,
By Sharon Delgado for Campaign Nonviolence. Before we were arrested, each of us explained what we have had enough of. I explained that I have had enough of drone warfare. (Beale is the home of the Global Hawk Drone, a surveillance drone that identifies targets for armed Predator and Reaper drones.) I have also had enough of the U.S. Air Force Vision for 2020, which is geared toward “full spectrum dominance” for the purpose of “protecting U.S. interests and investments” as “the globalization of the world economy… continues, with a widening between “haves” and “have-nots.” I have had enough of the U.S. military enforcing a global order that is enriching the already wealthy, protecting the privileged, exploiting those who are vulnerable, causing massive suffering, and destroying this beautiful earth. #Enough war. #Enough “accidental” (or incidental) killing of children. #Enough suffering. #Enough extrajudicial killing. #Enough.

Weeks Of #NoDAPL Solidarity Actions Planned

September 6, 2016 Melinda Tuhus, www.beyondextremeenergy.org , , ,
By Melinda Tuhus for Beyond Extreme Energy. North Dakota - Our Native American brothers, sisters, relations & settler supporters have assembled at the Sacred Stone Camp and are converging with hundreds of Indigenous Tribal Nations and thousands of Water Protectors at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. They are holding the line against construction of a pipeline that would carry highly flammable, fracked oil from the Bakken oil fields in that state to Illinois. The pipeline would go under the Missouri River, and protesters — referring to themselves as “protectors” and holding signs such as “Water is Life” — are carrying out radical non-violent resistance. Their numbers swell daily at the Camp of the Sacred Stones and the Red Warriors Camp.

New Occupation At Mississippi Entrance To Dakota Access Pipeline

September 6, 2016 Frank Cordaro, www.popularresistance.org , , ,
By Frank Cordaro of the Des Moines Catholic Worker. Jessica Reznicek out of jail and is now starting a “24/7” occupation of the Dakota Access pipeline Mississippi entrance just north of Keokuk IA. DM Catholic Worker Jess Reznicek was arrested twice earlier this week for blocking traffic at this Dakota Access pipeline entrance on the Mississippi. In hopes to get more people to join her, Jess changed her presence from blocking traffic in and out of the site to setting up her tent and starting a 24 hr / 7 days a week occupation of the entrance. Jess got permission from the property owner to set her tent up and welcomes others to join her in the same nonviolent spirit.

A Look At The Newest Additions To The Nonviolence Canon

August 27, 2016 Brian Martin, www.wagingnonviolence.org
By Brian Martin for Waging Nonviolence - Interest in nonviolent action is greater today than it ever has been. This is reflected in the number and sophistication of nonviolent campaigns, in media coverage and popular understanding — as well as a spate of new books, several of which were published last year. Decades ago, really good books in the area were uncommon. There was Gandhi’s autobiography, Richard Gregg’s 1934 “The Power of Nonviolence” and Joan Bondurant’s 1958 “Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict.”

Nonviolent Revolt In The Twenty-First Century

August 25, 2016 Robert J. Burroweswww.PopularResistance.org ,
By Robert J. Burrowes for Popular Resistance. In the Engler's book, This Is An Uprising, the authors try too hard to make nonviolent action fit into a model they have created by combining thoughts from a few (US) authors – essentially Saul Alinsky, Frances Fox Piven and Gene Sharp – to describe an approach to change based on structure-based organizing, momentum-driven revolt and the creation of prefigurative community. They then use a few case studies, all of which (including the campaigns of the US civil rights struggle) are from the USA except for the Otpor struggle to overthrow the Milosevic regime in Serbia and the struggle of the April 6 Youth Movement and its allies to remove the Mubarak regime in Egypt, to illustrate their argument.

Time For Silence Is Over: Grasping Reality Of Nonviolence

July 6, 2016 Stephanie Van Hook, www.peacevoice.info
By Stephanie Van Hook for Peace Voice - With a rainbow pin on his lapel, signifying–on that day at least–the most recent gun massacre in the United States, Congressman John Lewis made an impassioned cri de coeur before members of Congress and the people of this country: the time for silence is over. “Sometimes,” he said, “you have to do something out of the ordinary.” And that’s just what they did: he and other members of his party put their bodies in the way of the daily operations of the Congress

Newsletter: Real History Of Revolution

July 2, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. Official holidays in the United States tend to reinforce false historical narratives. The Fourth of July is one of those holidays and what the official story misses is the reality that must be told. During the decade before the Revolutionary War, colonists ran one of the most effective nonviolence resistance campaigns against corporate power in history. Rivera Sun describes this campaign of nonviolent actions by showing that many of the tactics people attribute to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other modern activists were used in an effective campaign by the colonists including boycotts of British goods, replacing them with their own goods; refusing to cooperate with unjust laws, non-payment of taxes, the development of parallel governments and local assemblies as well as rallies, petitions, marches and protests.

The Nonviolent History Of American Independence

July 2, 2016 Rivera Sun, www.counterpunch.org , ,
By Rivera Sun for Counter Punch - Independence Day is commemorated with fireworks and flag-waving, gun salutes and military parades . . . however, one of our nation’s founding fathers, John Adams, wrote, “A history of military operations . . . is not a history of the American Revolution.” Often minimized in our history books, the tactics of nonviolent action played a powerful role in achieving American Independence from British rule.

Major Democracy Mobilization In West Papua, Police Crackdown

May 31, 2016 Staff, www.westpapuamedia.info , , ,
By West Papua Media. Indonesian police have arrested scores of West Papua National Committee (Komite Nasional Papua Barat) members around Papua on May 30, as Papuan civil society is gearing up for a day a mass mobilizations to sustain pressure brought on by the massive May 3 rallies, where Indonesian security forces beat hundreds of people and arrested close to 2300 people. KNPB members across Papua were handing out pamphlets calling on West Papuan society to rally on May 31 for international mediation to allow West Papuans to exercise their universal human rights of Self-Determination, long denied by Indonesia. The May 31 rally will also be demonstrating Papuan support for the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) bid for full membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, which was due to meet in Port Moresby this week, but the meeting has been postponed.
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