Year: 2016

The Christmas Day Truce is one of the more memorable stories of peace. During World War I, nearly 100,000 French, British, and German soldiers participated in an unofficial ceasefire around the Christmas holidays of 1914. Wikipedia reports, “In the week leading up to the 25th, French, German, and British soldiers crossed trenches to exchange seasonal […]

An Essay of The Man From the Northby Rivera Sun We are serving ourselves up on silver platters to the oligarchs and giant corporations. We have apples of misinformation in our mouths and sprigs of patriotic parsley tucked behind our ears. Must we complacently acquiesce to being pot-roasted pigs? Rise up! The situation is more […]

Christmas shopping season was in full swing on December 17th, 2012 when the sound of drumbeats and singing broke out at the crowded Cornwall Centre shopping mall in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Surprised onlookers craned over their shoulders as they rode up escalators while an indigenous round dance circled around the Christmas tree in the center […]

When truth and reality are shattered into a thousand shards of deception, skewed and slanted into vicious weapons for power and control, how can we in the Dandelion Insurrection move forward? Cautiously. Gandhi said, “We all have a piece of the truth.” Ideally, we would use our diverse perspectives to build a home for all […]

An Essay of the Man From the Northby Rivera Sun Corporate demons possess our nation’s soul. They crept in stealthily, full of trickery and deception, but now they’re lodged in place, as surely as if they had stormed our homes and halls of power with guns and tanks. Perhaps we’d recognize their coup if they […]

On December 10th, 1997, Julia Butterfly Hill ascended into the upper branches of a 180-foot tall, 1000+ year old redwood tree in Humboldt County, California. She would not come down for 738 days. For over two years, despite dangerous conditions and much hardship, she maintained a tree-sit that ultimately resulted in saving the old growth […]

November 14th, 1917, is known as the “Night of Terror”. During the women’s suffrage movement, thirty-three nonviolent demonstrators were sent back to prison for participating in the Silent Sentinel protests in front of the White House. They had all served time before, experiencing the horrible conditions of the workhouse. In his book, “Nonviolent Lives“, Ken […]

  (This is an excerpt from Rivera Sun’s novel, The Dandelion Insurrection, which you can find here.)   Charlie and Zadie drove down the main street of the rural Pennsylvanian town. The locals stood in the doorways, frowns carving their faces as they stared at the teeming soldiers. The waitresses at the diner peered through […]

An Essay of the Man From the North Don’t wait until the perils of extraction are on your doorstep, in your backyard, or poisoning your water. Look around! Pay attention to the stories coming from the north, south, east, west. See the noose of hard truth tightening. Oil and gas extraction is invading the United […]

by Rivera Sun for Campaign Nonviolence and Peace Voice Many people in the United States are expressing concern over the rise of hatred, hate crimes, bigotry, racism, sexism, and Islamophobia. At the same time, a number of creative nonviolent responses have arisen for addressing discrimination and hatred on the ground. Here are a few stories […]

Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution in 1989 —  Campaigners sought to end the Soviet occupation of the country, as well as shifting from communist rule. They wanted to remove the laws of state-mandated censorship and demanded free elections. Just eighteen months before the November nonviolent revolution, Czechoslovakians organized their first public mass demonstration since 1969. Roman Catholic […]

This is a photo of my electric hot plate stove. Years ago, when I moved to this house, my friends were working to stop fracking in the nearby county. In solidarity, I turned off our natural gas stove and bought a hot plate, paying a little extra each month for the wind power option available […]

A Message from Rivera Sun This morning, I rose and stood in my black wool wrap as a gentle desert rain fell on the dry earth. The scent of sagebrush drifted with the low clouds. I reached down and placed my palm on the damp ground. Gratitude is the sensation of rain falling in the […]

Announcing a new novel from Rivera Sun! The Way Between blends fun, action, adventure, and fantasy while delivering an uplifting message of waging peace and active nonviolence for a new generation of readers. This exciting story will be available soon. Between flight and fight lies a mysterious third path called the Way Between, and young shepherdess […]

An Essay of The Man From the North A smoothly functioning society is created and maintained by the people. Children go to school, workers show up at their jobs, shipments are made, groceries and purchases are bought, bills are paid, goods and services are delivered; and so on. In times of justice, when the workings […]

  When the forces of destruction, hate, bigotry, greed, and violence rise into power, there are three things they steal before they plunder the treasury. Stopping them is where the struggle for life begins. The first thing they steal is courage. The forces of destruction must snuff out the courage of the people like a […]

On November 5th, 2007, the Writers Guild of America, East, and Writers Guild of America, West, went on strike. These television, film and radio writers had been in negotiations with Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represented 397 film and television producers, including some of the biggest names in entertainment: CBS, NBC Universal, […]

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 […]

On December 19th, 1996, the small country of Lithuania became a world leader in the field of nonviolence. After waging nonviolent struggle to regain independence and end Soviet occupation in 1991, Lithuanians had learned the power of active nonviolence . . . and as their new independence government began to draw up policy around defense […]

On October 21st, 1967, thousands of nonviolent activists attempted to levitate the Pentagon in an act of absurdist protest to the horrific absurdity of the Vietnam War. Originally conceived as a massive march on Washington, DC, the plans took a bizarre and memorable turn when activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman came up the concept […]

On October 24th, 1975, ninety percent of women in Iceland took “a day off”. Refraining from working, childcare, and household tasks, they brought the nation to a complete standstill (or utter chaos, depending on your perspective) in protest over women’s rights and equality. One interview about the day reports, “Gudrun Jonsdottir still remembers what she […]

I am an old millennial, one who just barely squeezes into the age category.  I graduated high school in 2000. My first presidential election was Bush vs. Gore – a rigged election with widespread allegations of electoral voting machine manipulation and a dubiously-legal intervention of the Supreme Court to stop the pivotal Florida vote count, […]

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh was born on October 11th, 1926 in central Vietnam. He became a novice monk at the age of sixteen. In the early 1950s, he got involved in the movement to renew Vietnamese Buddhism. He broke new territory in many ways, including by being one of the first monks to […]

Caring for the health and safety of our children and families is common ground where Americans on the left and the right meet. Yet, during this election cycle, few candidates seem willing to talk about the health and safety risks caused by toxic industries. Instead, the false split between environment and jobs is used to […]