A young Kansas grain farmer and I were riding on a train through Iowa when the subject of the climate crisis came up. He was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed son of a multigenerational Midwest farming family. I’d grown up on a potato farm in Northern Maine. Both of us spent our teenage years in overalls. We […]
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Tag: Peace Voice
A Blizzard. A Power Outage. A Failure of...
A continent-wide snow storm swept across the United States last week. From Seattle to Baton Rouge and from Dallas to Minneapolis, people grappled with road closures, shutdowns, power outages, and freezing temperatures. From sea to shining sea, ordinary people stepped up to take care of one another. My brother volunteered to snowblow the Seattle offices […]
The Scale of Loss: 400,000 Dead
Image via Today, “Could The COVID-19 Memorial Become Permanent?” Four hundred lights stretch along the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Each represents one thousand people in America who have died of COVID-19. It is only in their absence that we have space to acknowledge the dead–there is not enough space beside the pool for that […]
Tapping Into People Power
by Rivera Sun, Editor of Nonviolence News In times like this, many of us feel powerless to do anything about the political, social, and environmental injustices we face. But, power is everywhere. Like sunlight and solar panels, it’s a question of tapping into it. Accustomed to the top-down power of presidents and CEOs, most of […]
The End of the NRA: Biz Mags Tell Activi...
Good news for humanity: the NRA is weakening. The gun-lobbying group is in “deep financial trouble,” Fortune Magazine reported, and warns that the NRA may not be able to keep going. “The group says it is under such financial distress because New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has convinced a number of financial service providers, banks, […]
Protect the Net!
Stop Crony Capitalism: Protect the Net! by Rivera Sun Pretty soon, we’ll all be paying a whole lot more money for Internet service. A few days ago the FCC’s repeal of Net Neutrality went into effect. If nothing is done, it easy to see the handwriting on the wall. After a waiting period of no […]
Think Outside the Protest Box
Protest. Petition. Call your senators. Nothing changes, right? No matter how large our demonstrations get, no matter how many millions of people write and petition politicians, no matter how many people get arrested in front of the White House or at our state capitols, it seems that our (supposedly) elected officials keep turning a blind […]
Shifting Systems with Nonviolent Strateg...
The secret to successful nonviolent struggle lies in understanding strategy and systems. All systems require participation and resources to survive. Deny those things, and the system will wither away . . . or concede to meet your demands. Strategy can be that simple. Cut off the water and the plants will die. Block all other […]
We are the Legends of Tomorrow
An Essay of the Man from the North by Rivera Sun The clock is ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick. Can you hear it? We have only . . . One minute, 48 seconds until United States poverty claims another life. Two minutes until midnight, with nuclear annihilation looming. 25 hours and 21 minutes until the next […]
Stopping Mass Shootings: Less Finger Poi...
In the wake of yet another school shooting, everyone from ordinary citizens to pundits to politicians seem to be engaged in one of our favorite and least effective responses: finger pointing and passing blame. It’s like a toxic and deadly game of hot potato. The NRA shrieks and throws the blame onto mental health. Mental […]