Author: Rivera Sun

From Qatar to Honduras, People Take Action.Nonviolence News: Aug 10th, 2019 Editor’s Note from Rivera Sun: In Nonviolence News this week, you’ll find some powerful stories.  Thirteen victories, large and small, show how change is being made step-by-step. Georgians, Russians, Hondurans, migrant workers in Qatar, and Irish and British airport workers are all striving for […]

by Rivera Sun, Editor of Nonviolence News If you want to make change, think outside the protest box. It’s easy to get hung up on protests. We’ve heard about them, they’re highly visible, and they’re relatively easy to pull off. The problem with protests is that – all too often – they’re easily ignored. Creativity […]

Can Peace Novels Make a Difference? You bet.Build peace by helping Ari Ara’s new novel reach thousands of new readers. It’s Launch Day for The Lost Heir! It’s also Memorial Day Weekend. The sound of motorcycles rumbles in the distance. The RVs are lumbering up the highway. The barbeques are firing up for the season. And, the war […]

by Rivera Sun It’s rare to hear business magazines admit the power of nonviolent action. As the editor of Nonviolence News, a service that collects and shares 30-50+ stories of nonviolence in action each week, I often see business journals minimizing the effect of activism. Usually, industry tries to conceal the impact nonviolent action has on […]

Note: This chapter is excerpted from The Lost Heir:  An Unruly Royal, An Urchin Queen, and A Quest For Justice by Rivera Sun. You can purchase the book here. And find the eBook version here. Hours later, exhausted and happy to her bones, Ari Ara slipped through the side gate of the House of Marin with Emir. […]

Rivera Sun’s novel, The Lost Heir: an Unruly Royal, an Urchin Queen, and a Quest for Justice, is now available in print and eBook formats on her website and all other online bookstores, including Amazon. Thanks for spreading the word! The following Author Q & A appears in the end matter of the First Edition […]

May 11-18, 2019 Editor’s Note from Rivera Sun: By the numbers, Nonviolence News covers stories that involve millions of people. Civil disobedience arrests are happening by the dozens. Demonstrations involve thousands. Strikes include hundreds of thousands. This week alone, Nonviolence News is covering stories about 100-200,000 French protesters, 300,000 teachers on strike in Poland, thousands […]

A Poem by Rivera Sun Learning words for landscapeplace-terms in the language of geologyan incantation linking my wayward soulwith tenterhooks and spiderwebshair-thin roots and curling pea shoot tendrilsanchoring my humanity to this earth:tuckamore, vly, chockstone, fen. Can you feel the wilds awakeningwithin you at their sound? Stirring like spring,fertile and feral:hummock, loess, nickpoint, pediment,oxbow, portage, riprap, scarp. […]

By Gayle Morrow I am not a devoted fan of the fantasy genre so did not expect to care for this first in a series work by Rivera Sun. Instead I was captivated almost immediately. The premise is a “lost heir” of a dead queen turning out to be a pixie, fairy-like young girl; fairly […]

A Review by Rivera Sun “When everyone knows how to plan, you start to get strategic behavior.” These words from Ivan Marovic serve as my mantra as I facilitate trainings in strategy for nonviolent campaigns. When I met Marovic at the James Lawson Institute in 2014, he impressed upon me that everyone should understand strategy, […]

We say we want change. So, every few years, we elect new officials, and they continue to churn out more of the same policies, legislation, and rhetoric. The rich continue to get richer. The poor slide deeper into poverty. Corporations and the wealthy see pet projects and sweet deals passed through Congress. The People receive […]

Review of The Way Between by Liz Moon The Way Between is a thoughtful story which infuses rich fantasy and nonviolent action principals, together. This combination not only draws you into the storyline to learn more about the characters and how they intertwine with both their shared and individual history, but also allows you to […]

An Essay of the Man From the North by Rivera Sun A nation built on greed is not a nation; it is just a legal framework for rape and pillage, slavery and exploitation, theft, murder, and genocide. A nation whose primary function is to protect the exclusive right of the rich to engage in those […]

An Essay of the Man From the North by Rivera Sun The tools of nonviolent action and the skills of struggle are as vital to these times as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Training to use them is as essential as learning how to use a computer. The ability to boycott and strike is as important […]

An Essay of the Man from the North by Rivera Sun If we, the people, wrote a constitution now, what would go in it? Equal rights for women, men, non-binary, and undefined? Caps on wealth tied to poverty levels? Rights of nature? Reparations for past crimes, wrongs, and thefts? Limits on military spending? A free […]

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 […]

(Note: This tale is part of the fictional Stories of the Third Brother, an ancient book of folktales about Alaren in Ari Ara’s world. Each folktale teaches a lesson in waging peace using true stories as a spark of inspiration for the tales of courageous nonviolent action. You can find the stories in The Adventures […]

An Essay of the Man From the Northby Rivera Sun I want to love this broken-hearted country, this land of shattered dreams and dashed hopes. I want to place my ear to the drumming cadence of our cities and hear the insistent pulse of life. I want to wander the forgotten highways of stories that […]

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, […]

Urchins’ Feast Note: This chapter is excerpted from The Lost Heir:  An Unruly Royal, An Urchin Queen, and A Quest For Justice by Rivera Sun. You can purchase the book here. And find the eBook version here. “No, absolutely not,” the Great Lady Brinelle spoke as she continued reading a draft bill, not bothering to […]

If you like being a peon, a serf, or a slave, by all means, continue on with business-as-usual. Your corporate overlords are delighted to exploit you. They’re thrilled at the prospect of profiting off your descendants for all eternity. But their hourglass is running out of sand. The planet’s ecosystems are collapsing. We will not […]

I recently left the country (for a weekend) and joined an international group of feminists of all genders at the Entrepreneurial Feminist Forum (EFF) in Toronto. I had been invited to offer a workshop on the tools and strategies activists use to make change. When I first heard about this group (not knowing anything about […]

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 […]

An Essay of the Man from the Northby Rivera Sun What do we do when we finally understand that the elections really are stolen? Or rigged? Or thrust out of our reach by the manipulations of rich and powerful people? Corrupted by corporations? How long does it take before we call the bluff? Another disappointing […]