Year: 2016

Recently, I traveled by train across the US in a swaying, creeping journey that took me through the backyards and forgotten corners of our country. Here, you see the America that doesn’t make it into the slogans of presidential campaigns. These back alleys are not evoked by the statistics and demographical jargon politicians use to […]

by Rivera Sun, author of The Dandelion Insurrection The word you’re looking for is swarming. The people are rising, resisting, changing, growing, evolving . . . and as they do, they’re swarming like bees or birds in the hundreds, thousands, millions. They’re coming together to stop pipelines, then dispersing and reassembling in a different configuration […]

[ Photo Credit: By Warren K. Leffler, U.S. News & World Report Magazine; Restored by Adam Cuerden – Public Domain[/caption] Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October 6th, 1917, in Mississippi, and lived under the harsh reality of the Jim Crow South. Through years of courage and challenge, she became a legendary […]

Automation isn’t coming. It’s here. At the airport, the public library, the grocery store, and dozens of other places, touch screens are rapidly replacing human bodies, especially in basic service industry positions. In a time when service industry jobs represent 80 percent of all employment in the United States, and when a presidential report on […]

The Danish resistance to Nazi occupation contains many chapters, each with dazzling tactics and creative solutions. There is none more jaw dropping, however, than the Danish people’s rescue of 7,220 of their 7,800 Jews. On September 28th, 1943, Nazi occupation forces intended to arrest the entire Jewish population of Denmark and transport them to concentration […]

André Trocmé was trouble for those who favored war and violence. He was sent to a remote parish in the mountains of France for his pacifist views, but as the Nazis invaded and occupied France, Andre discovered he was in a unique position to join the international network of people resisting the Nazis and the […]

In the neighborhood of Pilson, Chicago, there’s a small elementary school called Whittier Elementary School. The residents and children are mostly Mexican immigrants, and the chronically under-funded school needed repairs, a functional cafeteria, and a library. In the corner of the soccer field was an old run-down field house affectionately called “La Casita”, where parents […]

On September 17th, 2011, protesters occupied Zuccotti Park in New York City’s Wall Street financial district and renamed it Liberty Square. Setting up tents, working groups, and general assemblies, the Occupiers protested a variety of grievances including the reckless, destructive, and corrupt policies of Wall Street and the federal government’s bailout of banks, instead of […]

At a certain point, you realize you must live in utter rebellion to the totalitarian oligarchic-corporate state that controls our government, legal system, police and military, the media, education, entertainment, arts and culture. You start to make daily acts of resistance to their domination of so many aspects of our world. You don’t watch their […]

This story appeared as part of Pace e Bene/Campaign Nonviolence‘s inspirational email service: This Nonviolent Life. Sign up here. On August 10th, 1976, Anne Maguire took her children out to go shopping in Northern Ireland. Anne was pushing a pram with her six-week-old newborn. Her son walked ahead; her daughter rode her bicycle beside her, […]

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake,” said Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress. Decades of invasions, airstrikes, occupations, and conflict have left Americans staring at a disastrous rubble of our own making. War is an earthquake – a violent, destructive force unleashed. The aftershocks bring our […]

If our cars fatally malfunctioned as often as police officers shoot citizens, there would be a massive recall, pulling vehicles off the road, overhauling the engineering design, firing culpable employees, and paying out settlements to consumers for injuries and deaths of family members. The problem of a complete lack of accountability within the police system […]

On August 23rd, 1989, two million people joined hands to form a human chain crossing the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, in protest against the Soviet Union, and in support of each nation’s independence. The Baltic Way, as the human chain was called, spanned 420 miles, engaging people of all ages in […]

On August 1st, 1976, the first nonviolent mass demonstration of the Clamshell Alliance took place at the proposed site of the Seabrook Nuclear Energy Facility in New Hampshire. The Clamshell Alliance was a group of anti-nuclear activists who worked to stop nuclear power plant construction at a time when President Nixon’s “Project Independence” had proposed […]

This week in nonviolent history commemorates a turning point in the long struggle to demand justice for the residents of Love Canal, a residential community in upstate New York that was situated on top of a leaking toxic waste dump. On August 2nd, 1978, State Health Commissioner Robert Whalen issued a state of emergency ordering […]

On August 20, 2013, Antoinette Tuff (right) nonviolently disarmed a school shooter, saving the lives of hundreds of school children. Antoinette was a bookkeeper. She wasn’t supposed to be at the school that day. She was just filling in as a front desk receptionist as a favor to a friend. That morning, during her prayer […]

During election years, pent-up frustrations, simmering animosities, and the toxic legacy of countless hours of hate talk radio erupt from the seething volcano of the American public. Injustice left festering explodes into anger and hatred. Defensive arrogance and condescension drips down the pyramid of privilege. What should – and perhaps someday could – be a […]

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” ~ Dr. King From the left and the right, policy proposals are flying fast and furious. It is an election year, after all.  But one topic is completely off the agenda […]

“A voice of one is better than the voice of none.”  This sentence sums up much of my approach to speaking truth, demonstrating, and showing up. I’m not waiting for the crowd, for the great leader, or for the glorious revolution. I want to speak up, show up, stand up. I don’t care if I’m the […]

The forest sways in ripples of green. Wind sends the dappled sunlight sparkling through the branches. These are the things we forget in the heat of the political season. There are few politicians who will speak on behalf of all people . . . and even fewer who will speak for the beings that comprise […]

Watching the electoral cycle this year is like watching an old movie from a warped film reel with the sound out of sync. The puppet figures of politicians go through the meaningless gestures. The familiar slogans and catch phrases groan from twisted mouths, distorted and odd. A maniacal fervor pulses in the expressions of the […]

On July 15th, 1985, South Africans in the Port Elizabeth Township began a boycott of white-owned businesses to undermine the legitimacy of apartheid. A group of women suggested the idea of the consumer boycott, which was met with a 100% compliance rate.  Within five days of the boycott, a Member of Parliament noted that the […]

On July 22nd, 1996, members of the Anishinabe Ogichidaa (Chippewa) Nation living on the Bad River Reservation in White Pine, Michigan, blockaded trains carrying sulfuric acid to a nearby copper mining operation. A Toronto-based corporation hoped to inject 550 million gallons of acid into the mine to extract ore. The EPA granted permission for the […]

On July 8-18th, 2002, six hundred Nigerian women between the ages of 20 and 90 nonviolently seized control of the largest oil plant in the country. The women were demanding employment for local men, and for Chevron to pay for infrastructure development for their communities. Carrying only food and cooking pots, the women took over […]