A Review by Rivera Sun The Occupy Movement ignited popular awareness of “horizontal” concepts, yet many years have passed and few movements – and even fewer organizations – have really figured out how to embody those ideas. Samantha Slade’s new book, Going Horizontal, offers practical tools and tangible practices for all of us seeking to […]
Murmuration Exercise Adapted for movements and organizations by Rivera Sun Please use and share, but please let participants know where it comes from so a sense of lineage and longevity is built through our movements. Thank you. History: I first learned this exercise as a group improvisational dance structure at Bennington College with Dance Professor […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
It takes more than a single action to make a movement. And, who’s to say YOU won’t launch, organize, and carry out a series of effective nonviolent actions that build into a set of powerful campaigns that form the arc of a world-changing movement? Find a couple friends, dust off your strategic thinking caps, and […]
There are over two hundred methods of nonviolent action. Gene Sharp categorized them into three major groups: acts of protest and persuasion, acts of noncooperation, and acts of intervention. Acts of intervention literally interrupt business-as-usual and disrupt the functioning of systems. Usually (though not always) these types of nonviolent actions involve people physically putting their […]
Grand Strategy is a plan of action to achieve the major or overall goals of your movement. It’s different than campaign-level strategy, or strategy for specific nonviolent actions (which should include dates, times, location, weather, people, contingency plans, signage, etc. and so forth.) Grand Strategy is a broad view of the arc of the movement. […]
Too often, our movements find themselves reacting instead of initiating the dynamic events of the struggle. Take back the escalation curve by engaging in strategic thinking, foresight, and planning. Don’t wait for your opposition to attack you . . . organize and mobilize in advance of the crisis. Easier said than done, right? We often […]
Many of us know about protests and marches, there is also a whole other side to nonviolence: constructive program. The phrase was coined by Gandhi whose famous salt and spinning campaigns combined both direct action and constructive program into powerful forces for change. A constructive program is more than a positive project; it should have […]