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Nonviolent Action

Peace Activist, Poet and Writer, Daniel Berrigan Dead At 94

May 1, 2016 Variety of Sources, www.PopularResistance.org , , ,
From a variety of sources on the death of Daniel Berrigan: We are bereft. We are so sad. We are aching and wrung out. Our bodies are tired as Dan’s was—after a hip fracture, repeated infections, prolonged frailty. And we are so grateful: for the excellent and conscientious care Dan received at Murray Weigel, for his long life and considerable gifts, for his grace in each of our lives, for his courage and witness and prodigious vocabulary. Dan taught us that every person is a miracle, every person has a story, every person is worthy of respect.

How Nonviolent Resistance Is Shaping 2016 Elections

April 21, 2016 Erica Chenoweth, www.vox.com , , ,
By Erica Chenoweth for Vox - Violence has gotten a lot of attention in the 2016 presidential race — from the kicking and punching of protestors at Trump’s rallies to incitements of violence against Muslim refugees and Mexican immigrants to promises by various candidates to use overwhelming military force to destroy the Islamic State. But nonviolent resistance — that is, when unarmed civilians use a coordinated set of actions, such as protests, strikes, and noncooperation to directly confront opponents without harming or threatening to harm them

Building New ‘Nonviolent Cities’

March 15, 2016 Rev. John Dear, www.commondreams.org ,
By Rev. John Dear for Common Dreams - Last year, I was invited to give a talk on peace in Carbondale, Illinois. I was surprised to discover that in recent years, activists from across Carbondale had come together with a broad vision of what their community could one day become—a nonviolent city. They wanted a new holistic approach to their work, with a positive vision for the future, so that over time, their community would be transformed into a culture of nonviolence. They created a coalition, a movement and a city-wide week of action and called it, “Nonviolent Carbondale.”

10 Things To Know About Nonviolent Struggle

March 7, 2016 Rivera Sun, www.commondreams.org ,
By Rivera Sun for Common Dreams - “There is a place between passivity and violence. I’ll meet you there.” Nonviolent struggle is on the rise globally. Neither passive, nor inaction, this powerful way of working for change is proving Gandhi’s audacious claim that “nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind” to be correct. Here are ten things you should know about nonviolent struggle and how it works. 1. Nonviolent action is used around the world by people of all classes, races, genders, sexualities, faiths, and political beliefs to accomplish a wide range of goals...

Is This An Uprising?

February 14, 2016 David Swanson, www.davidswanson.org , , , ,
By David Swanson for Let's Try Democracy. The new book This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler and Paul Engler is a terrific survey of direct action strategies, bringing out many of the strengths and weaknesses of activist efforts to effect major change in the United States and around the world since well before the twenty-first century. It should be taught in every level of our schools. This book makes the case that disruptive mass movements are responsible for more positive social change than is the ordinary legislative "endgame" that follows. The authors examine the problem of well-meaning activist institutions becoming too well established and shying away from the most effective tools available.

Protesters Force Auckland Standstill As TPP Is Signed

February 4, 2016 Staff, www.newstalkzb.co.nz , , ,
By Newstalk ZB. Auckland, NZ - A contingent of protesters numbering around 1000 gathered at Aotea Square early this morning before marching to the Centre on Federal Street and confronting police with chanted slogans and hakas. The group then split up, blockading several major intersections in central Auckland with sit-ins. Organisers had been told to act peacefully and not to resist arrest. Their aim was to disrupt the area around SkyCity to prevent officials at the signing ceremony from leaving. One group, including veteran activist Sue Bradford, managed to temporarily block access to the Harbour Bridge, though it has since re-opened. Other groups of protesters blocked on- and off-ramps to the southern and northwestern motorways. More people occupied intersections on Wellesley Street and Hobson Street.

Book Review: The Militarization Of Policing

January 24, 2016 Greg Albo, www.socialistproject.ca , , ,
By Greg Albo for The Bullet. After the killing of Michael Brown in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri in the late summer of 2014, protests erupted, and the Black Lives Matter spread across North America to protest police violence, too often systematically directed at poor and racialized communities. The massive police presence at these protests, with weapons and armoured vehicles that looked and felt like major military deployments, made it clear to all that something fundamental had taken place in policing practices and strategies. The intensification and extension of the coercive and security branches of the state was well-known since the declaration of the ‘war on terror’ in 2001, and the subsequent leaks of official documents by Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and others.

Keeping Hope Alive Inspires Us To Continue Our Work

September 11, 2015 Joy First, www.popularresistance.org , , ,
By Joy First of National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance. Washington, DC - As activists for peace and social justice, how do we keep ourselves going in a world where there is so much despair? What we are facing today is enormous when we consider the systemic violence that leads to wars on several fronts, climate chaos, lack of health care, housing, and food, decline of the economy, police violence against people of color, a government that is totally unresponsive to its citizens and the list goes on and on. We are living in a world that is unsustainable as things now stand. The idea of hope is something we all grapple with when we are up against such great struggles in the world. Some people don’t like to use the word hope.

Vykom: Nonviolent Action Against Untouchability

April 6, 2015 Robert Burrowess, www.pressenza.com , ,
The Vykom struggle was designed by Gandhi to eliminate untouchability by ‘converting’ the high caste Hindus ‘by sheer force of character and suffering’. Within a decade of the Vykom campaign the narrative that emerged, and which has persisted to this day because of its unquestioned promulgation in several well-known books on nonviolence, is that this was achieved. However, after protracted research in sometimes obscure places, including the morgues of newspapers no longer published, the viewing of colonial and archival records, and interviews of a diverse and extensive range of scholars, Professor King presents new evidence that the suffering of activists – whether untouchable or caste Hindu – was ineffective in ‘converting’ orthodox upper-caste Hindus in Vykom.

The Flood Wall Street Not Guilty Verdict Changes Policing

March 29, 2015 Shawn Carrie, www.mintpressnews.com , , , , , ,
For the first time, a New York judge gave judicial notice to the realities of climate change as he exonerated ten protesters on freedom of speech grounds. Judge Robert Mandelbaum found the Flood Wall Street Ten not guilty, commending the climate activists’ protest as “honorable.” This landmark decision could not only have resounding implications for the growing environmental justice movement — it could also potentially thaw the iron-fisted policing that has come to be routine in the United States, especially in New York. “The importance of judicial notice is that the judge accepted climate change and the need to do something about it as a fact without the necessity of any evidentiary support or proof at trial,” Martin Stolar, an attorney for the defense, told MintPress News. “To the best of my knowledge, this is unprecedented and has significance for future litigation involving climate change.” The legal recognition of man-made climate change as an indisputable fact sent shockwaves through the environmentalist movement both on the streets and in the courts, allowing the Flood Wall Street case to be cited by protesters, academics and lawyers alike.

Nonviolent Organizer’s Recipe For Social Change

March 29, 2015 Adam Vogal, www.paceebene.org ,
For me, creating a march for Campaign Nonviolence that encourages positive social change is like making a perfect loaf of banana bread. Like the perfect loaf, there is also a tried and true and unfailing recipe for doing the things necessary to bring equality, love, peace, and joy to our world. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., not to mention countless other inspirational leaders, have devoted their lives to perfecting the recipe for helping to create positive social change. Their recipe is called nonviolent action. It is strategic and loving, powerful, but never harming, and always accessible to anyone willing to use it. Most importantly, the result of nonviolence is that it always works. To be successful in creating positive change, all we have to do is follow the recipe of nonviolence that has been handed down from these amazing leaders. For me, the first part of organizing the nonviolent march recipe means contacting everyone I can to get buy in. I know intuitively that everyone wants a better world so I just have to let them know that we are doing something to work towards that end. Many people are willing to spend time helping to create a better world, but first I have to find them and then bring them all together.

Ferguson Police Shooting Not From Area Of Nonviolent Protest

March 13, 2015 Democracy Now!, www.democracynow.org , , ,
Two police officers have been shot during a protest outside the Ferguson police headquarters early this morning. Both of the wounded officers have serious injuries. The shooting came just hours after Police Chief Thomas Jackson quit following last week’s Justice Department reports finding widespread racial bias in the city’s criminal justice system. Jackson is the sixth Ferguson official to be forced out in the wake of the report, including the city manager and the top municipal judge. We are joined from Ferguson by Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, who witnessed last night’s shooting, and Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is part of the Ferguson Legal Defense Committee.
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