Tag: Peace Voice

We all have our reasons for getting alarmed about the climate crisis. With bare ground at Christmas and no snow on the horizon, my neighbors just got theirs. This Northern Maine valley nestles against the border of Canada – and winter without snow is unfathomable. Snowmobiling is a big deal around here. While most of […]

When I was a teenager, I knew global warming was caused by fossil fuels. So did Exxon.  For decades, Exxon has been hiding the truth about the climate crisis, burying their own scientific reports. From 1970 to 2003, the oil company ran studies that accurately predicted the disastrous consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels.  They modeled […]

It’s outdated. It’s dysfunctional. It’s hated by most of the populace. No, we’re not talking about the line at the DMV. We’re talking about the Selective Service and the military draft. For decades, young men have had to register. Now, congress is considering expanding draft registration to women.  Here’s a better idea: let’s abolish the […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

It’s not every day that you run across an idea so elegant, so eminently practical that your jaw literally drops as you stagger beneath the shock of your huge “aha” moment. Solutionary Rail did that for me. Rail experts and long-time activists from Backbone Campaign have struck gold with their well-researched proposal to electrify America’s […]

There are many subjects that should comprise a US citizen’s required reading – or in this case, viewing – list to make us aware and responsible members of our nation. National Bird, a documentary about the drone warfare program, should be on the list. Drone warfare wreaks havoc on every life it touches. Not just […]

by Rivera Sun A few weeks ago, my mother and I sat down at a shared table in a popular and crowded restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Our brunch partners were total strangers. As the husband and wife introduced themselves as US Air Force veterans, my mother shot me a look. The last time […]

Review by Tom Hastings. The Roots of Resistance is now available on this website and in ebook and print formats on Amazon and all major online bookstores! Rivera Sun caused quite a big stir in the relatively small but passionate world of nonviolent resistance with her 2013 extrapolative fiction, The Dandelion Insurrection and again with […]

I used to think of love as a side dish to social political change – the green beans next to the meat and potatoes of power and struggle. But, the more I live in the gritty world of honest humanity, the more I suspect that love is the essential mineral lacking in our nation’s veins. […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]