Author: Rivera Sun

November 14th, 1917, is known as the “Night of Terror”. During the women’s suffrage movement, thirty-three nonviolent demonstrators were sent back to prison for participating in the Silent Sentinel protests in front of the White House. They had all served time before, experiencing the horrible conditions of the workhouse. In his book, “Nonviolent Lives“, Ken […]

  (This is an excerpt from Rivera Sun’s novel, The Dandelion Insurrection, which you can find here.)   Charlie and Zadie drove down the main street of the rural Pennsylvanian town. The locals stood in the doorways, frowns carving their faces as they stared at the teeming soldiers. The waitresses at the diner peered through […]

An Essay of the Man From the North Don’t wait until the perils of extraction are on your doorstep, in your backyard, or poisoning your water. Look around! Pay attention to the stories coming from the north, south, east, west. See the noose of hard truth tightening. Oil and gas extraction is invading the United […]

by Rivera Sun for Campaign Nonviolence and Peace Voice Many people in the United States are expressing concern over the rise of hatred, hate crimes, bigotry, racism, sexism, and Islamophobia. At the same time, a number of creative nonviolent responses have arisen for addressing discrimination and hatred on the ground. Here are a few stories […]

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 […]

This is a photo of my electric hot plate stove. Years ago, when I moved to this house, my friends were working to stop fracking in the nearby county. In solidarity, I turned off our natural gas stove and bought a hot plate, paying a little extra each month for the wind power option available […]

A Message from Rivera Sun This morning, I rose and stood in my black wool wrap as a gentle desert rain fell on the dry earth. The scent of sagebrush drifted with the low clouds. I reached down and placed my palm on the damp ground. Gratitude is the sensation of rain falling in the […]

Announcing a new novel from Rivera Sun! The Way Between blends fun, action, adventure, and fantasy while delivering an uplifting message of waging peace and active nonviolence for a new generation of readers. This exciting story will be available soon. Between flight and fight lies a mysterious third path called the Way Between, and young shepherdess […]

An Essay of The Man From the North A smoothly functioning society is created and maintained by the people. Children go to school, workers show up at their jobs, shipments are made, groceries and purchases are bought, bills are paid, goods and services are delivered; and so on. In times of justice, when the workings […]

  When the forces of destruction, hate, bigotry, greed, and violence rise into power, there are three things they steal before they plunder the treasury. Stopping them is where the struggle for life begins. The first thing they steal is courage. The forces of destruction must snuff out the courage of the people like a […]

On November 5th, 2007, the Writers Guild of America, East, and Writers Guild of America, West, went on strike. These television, film and radio writers had been in negotiations with Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represented 397 film and television producers, including some of the biggest names in entertainment: CBS, NBC Universal, […]

On November 30th, 1999, the World Trade Organization was scheduled to conduct a summit in Seattle, WA. Due to the intervention of activists, the meetings took place amidst widespread resistance, protest, and disruption. Although the acts of property damage, violence, and the violent repression tactics of the police were widely publicized, a number of on-the-ground […]

On December 19th, 1996, the small country of Lithuania became a world leader in the field of nonviolence. After waging nonviolent struggle to regain independence and end Soviet occupation in 1991, Lithuanians had learned the power of active nonviolence . . . and as their new independence government began to draw up policy around defense […]

On October 21st, 1967, thousands of nonviolent activists attempted to levitate the Pentagon in an act of absurdist protest to the horrific absurdity of the Vietnam War. Originally conceived as a massive march on Washington, DC, the plans took a bizarre and memorable turn when activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman came up the concept […]

On October 24th, 1975, ninety percent of women in Iceland took “a day off”. Refraining from working, childcare, and household tasks, they brought the nation to a complete standstill (or utter chaos, depending on your perspective) in protest over women’s rights and equality. One interview about the day reports, “Gudrun Jonsdottir still remembers what she […]

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, […]

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh was born on October 11th, 1926 in central Vietnam. He became a novice monk at the age of sixteen. In the early 1950s, he got involved in the movement to renew Vietnamese Buddhism. He broke new territory in many ways, including by being one of the first monks to […]

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 […]

[ 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 […]