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January 20, 2026

ICE agents face off with protesters in Minneapolis where an ICE agent shot legal observer Renee Nicole Good. By Chad Davis, [1], CC BY 4.0. My neighbors are good people. Always ready with a polite nod or wave. Helpful if your car breaks down. In this rural region, they’re farmers and loggers, truckers and mechanics. They’re quick to volunteer for the local fire department, show up for spaghetti dinner fundraisers, and plow the seniors’ driveway in a pinch.  Two-thirds of them voted for Trump.  How can they stomach it? A president who flips off and cusses an autoworker. A president who bulldozed part of …

January 18, 2026

The Dandelion Insurrection is here. (And remember: the people win in the end.) “What’s it like to wake up and find your novel has come to life?” A reader asked me this recently and I answered. “Strange. Wild. Frightening. But remember: I also know the end of the story.” The Dandelion Insurrection was written as a speculative fiction in 2013. Thirteen years later, my extrapolations seem to have leapt off the page and into our lives. Lucky for all of us, I based the plot on my studies of nonviolent revolutions around the world, from Serbia to Chile and from the Philippines to the …

October 9, 2025

Image: Portland, OR, June 2025 by Spicypepper999 – CC0 No one likes to be deceived. Or misled. To the best of our abilities, we try to use make good decisions based on the information we receive.  What if that information is wrong?  President Trump watched Fox News coverage of riotous protests in Portland, Oregon, and thought: I’ll do something about that. I’ll help out that city, send in the National Guard, and restore law-and-order. But the footage was old. It was from five years ago.  Today, Portland’s downtown is an idyllic scene of farmers’ markets and coffee shops. The residents of …

September 20, 2025

Charlie Kirk’s murder. School shootings in Minneapolis and Denver. Genocide in Gaza. Russia’s war in Ukraine. Violence is everywhere. It’s frightening and heartbreaking. No one likes violence. Do they?  In truth, our culture sends out very mixed messages when it comes to violence. We glorify it in movies. We fantasize about it in video games. We pour billions of dollars into weapons and guns each year. We pour billions into police and efforts to stop it. We justify it (when used by people on ‘our side’). We denounce it (when used by the ‘other side’). We criminalize it. We profit …

July 26, 2025

Image By Ashraf Amra – UNRWA: United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, CC BY-SA 4.0 Gaza is being starved – deliberately, with cruel intention and shocking inhumanity. The photos of skeletal children haunt me. At night when I close my eyes. At dawn when I rise. They should haunt us all – along with the unfathomable suffering the families of Gaza have endured over nearly two years of relentless bombings, forced relocation, war crimes, destruction of hospitals, targeting of doctors, ambulance drivers, and reporters.  These months of Israeli-caused famine are worsening the nightmare …

July 26, 2025

Image: Trump at Alligator Alcatraz in Florida. Photo by The White House, Public Domain After spending months firing federal workers, slashing public services, gutting healthcare, and raising taxes for everyone but the rich, our country just wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a detention center in Florida. Dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, it’s nothing more than a collection of tents on an old airstrip in a swamp. It has already flooded. It cost $450 million. For reference, that’s what it costs to build a skyscraper in New York City. While the State of Florida paid out for it, they plan …

May 13, 2025

Portrait Unveiling Celebrated With Art, Music, Theater, Literature and Speeches I often speak about the shift to a culture of nonviolence, a society in which artists, teachers, scientists, political leaders, writers, thinkers, and everyone replaces the typical focus on war and violence with a celebration and affirmation of the power of nonviolent alternatives. In this culture, books movies, music, paintings, etc. uplift a different kind of heroism and popularize effective tools for dealing with conflict – like boycotts, strikes, restorative practices, peacebuilding, conflict resolution, and much more.  On Sunday, May 4th, 125+ people had a remarkable experience of this world. Seventy-five of them …

March 16, 2025

Created by Rivera Sun, March 15, 2025 You can download, print and use this poster at protests, demonstrations, and other nonviolent actions. Feel free to share it with your friends and networks. Here is a high-resolution version for printing. Remember the vision. The world that we’re standing up for is worth the struggle.

March 14, 2025

Image by Bruce Emmerling from Pixabay Originally published by PeaceVoice in journals nationwide on Feb 15, 2025 It takes time. That’s what people keep saying in response to concerns about the Trump Administration. It’ll take time before he can get the good stuff done. They say the promised benefits to this chaos are coming soon. Don’t hold your breath. The egg prices are still sky-high. How much time will it take for those to come down?  Trump passed 200 executive orders in his first day in office. Not one of them taxed the rich. Not one of them lowered your …

March 12, 2025

There are popular social posts going around that read: Do not obey in advance or Don’t self censor or Don’t do the fascists’ work for them. In this session, we’ll look at the chilling effect of knowing a repressive regime is coming into power . . . and how we can resist doing its work for it.  Author/Activist Rivera Sun shares stories, quotes, and strategic wisdom in these videos on courage, resistance, defiance, love, humor, solidarity, and soul force. This project was made possible in partnership with Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service. https://youtu.be/gPTjVtdKYYg Quotes:  “The tap root of power lies below …

March 10, 2025

The Greatest Honor of My Life: Joining the Americans Who Tell The Truth The Americans Who Tell The Truth portrait series by Robert Shetterly is a collection of 275 paintings of the most incredible people in our history. These are the ones who rose up for justice, who spoke out against wrongs, who revealed the truth and held firm for the vision of a nation that respected all people at home and around the world.   Mother Jones. Sojourner Truth. Alice Paul. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I will be portrait #276. It is the greatest honor of my life. On May 4, at an …

February 2, 2025

Do Not Obey. In Advance or Otherwise.Dandelions are everywhere. If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to live in “the time that looms around the corner of today” where The Dandelion Insurrection begins … well, this is the closest parallel I have ever seen. At the start of the book, a fist thumps down upon the table and Valier shouts, “That’s it! They’ve gone too far.” He and his family are upset over closed borders, military presence, climate disasters, economic hardship, and media propaganda feeding them nothing but lies. In our case, the militarized border is along Mexico and the round-ups are targeting …

January 25, 2025

Nonviolence was forged in the crucible of dark times—and its lessons can help us powerfully today. From systemic injustices to global crises, we find ourselves facing challenges that call for courage, creativity, and solidarity. It’s easy to feel hopeless or powerless. But all throughout history, in the worst situations, people have turned to the tools of nonviolent action to build “a way out of no way.” They’ve ousted dictators. They’ve ended authoritarian regimes. They’ve stopped wars. They’ve won rights, freedoms, democracy, justice, and liberation.  This deep, long history of powerful nonviolence reminds us that even in the darkest moments, ordinary …

January 25, 2025

Remix of a protest against nuclear power plant, South Korea, 2015. Image by Daeyong Wee on Pixabay. The inauguration of Donald Trump to a second term as president of the United States unleashed a new chapter in resistance. The politics of hate was given the keys to some of the highest positions of power in the world. The situation seems bleak … but the history of nonviolent struggle shows that we have more power than we think. People have ousted dictators, ended occupations, and overthrown authoritarian regimes over and over again. In the past few months, Bangladesh successfully rose up against its corrupt …

January 25, 2025

Image: screenshot from Youtube If it launched with a Nazi salute … where do you think it ends?  On Monday, January 20th in the Capitol Rotunda, tech billionaire Elon Musk threw what appeared to be a Nazi salute during the inauguration of Donald Trump as US president. In case we missed it (or misinterpreted it), he made the emphatic gesture again.  The lame explanations offered for it must be roundly rejected. It doesn’t matter if Musk genuinely intended that gesture to have another meaning. Neo-Nazis were swift to celebrate it. And there’s no one on the planet who doesn’t know its symbolism.  It’s impossible …

December 3, 2024

Image by Use at your Ease from Pixabay  by Rivera Sun The spirits are speaking to me. Across time. Through history. Ignore the headlines. Go to the heart.How many millions of humans have stood where you stand now? Afraid. Overwhelmed. Despairing. Raging. The globe spins with their haunting cries from Chile under Pinochet, Liberia under Taylor, Estonia under the Soviets, East Timor under Indonesia, Denmark under the Nazis, India under the British. On and on and on the list goes. Humanity has suffered under many cruel regimes, brutal dictators, violent occupations, war – my heart wrings like a tear-damp washrag, remembering it …

November 25, 2024

This writing came from Rivera Sun’s newsletter on Nov 24, 2024. To enjoy more writings like this, join her email list. You have to stay human. With all your courage, tears, messiness, brilliance, we need to navigate these times as human beings not automatons. What is the point, otherwise? With extinction on one hand and AI replacement on the other, and capitalism’s inhumane treatment of our soft round bodies and rainbow-splendid souls, and the plastic insufficiency of the faux personas of the social media era … being fully human is an act of rebellion, revolution, resistance and evolution. Here’s what I mean:It’s holiday …

November 25, 2024

Image by Peter H from Pixabay by Rivera Sun for Peace Voice On Election Night in my small town, I sat around a folding table with four election clerks, sworn in by the election warden and doing my civic duty to count every vote. The polls had closed. Darkness pressed heavy against the windows, as it does this time of year in Northern Maine. Rain hushed down on the empty parking lot, the playground, and the bandstand. It was sacred. Secular, yes, but sacred. It is through the ballot, not the bullet, that we choose our leaders. We came so …

August 8, 2024

FNVW Walk for Peace and Justice 2023. (Photo by Friends for a Nonviolent World.) Originally published on Waging Nonviolence After the shooting at former President Trump’s campaign rally, many people rushed to say that “political violence has no place in our democracy.”  Let’s go even further and boldly say: political nonviolence is essential for democracy.  The ties between nonviolence and democracy run deep. We know from the groundbreaking research of Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan that even if a nonviolent movement fails to achieve its primary goals, it often leaves a more democratic society in its wake. On the other hand, violence swiftly …

August 1, 2024

Paper cranes folded to protest nuclear weapons, 2015. Used with permission. Every child has that book. The one that breaks your heart wide open. Bridge To Terabithia. The Velveteen Rabbit. Charlotte’s Web. The Hate U Give.  For me, it was Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. Based on the true story of Sadako Sasaki, it tells the story of a 12-year-old girl who survived the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima as a toddler, but later died of leukemia, or as it was called at the time ‘atom bomb disease’. Drawing from a traditional belief in Japan, she starts to fold 1,000 origami cranes in hopes …

June 9, 2024

A father stands tall in their child’s eyes. Mine towered. He was a 6’6”, red-headed giant of a man, a farmer who loved rock ‘n roll and corny jokes. He taught me to stand up for the underdogs, fight the good fight, and stick it to the Man.  He also taught me to speak out for peace.  My father was a conscientious objector and an anti-war organizer during the Vietnam War. In his 20s, he blockaded naval maneuvers off the coast of Maine and helped drafted young men get to Canada. His life inspires my own peace activism. Because of his …

May 22, 2024

Image by Pexels from Pixabay Local news has its finger on the pulse of our communities. When city council acts (or acts up), when disaster strikes, when corruption or scandal needs to be scrutinized, local news steps up. From our kids’ sporting events to small town heroes, road construction detours to storm preparedness, they cover stories of interest and importance to our daily lives – stories that large media overlooks.  Amidst the climate crisis, these stories could save our lives.  Heat waves. Super-storms. Forest fires. Floods. Reporting on climate events, disasters, and preparedness is essential, obviously. But local news has …

April 29, 2024

“Dreams of War, Dreams of Peace” – an excerpt from River Dragon ___________ This is an excerpt from River Dragon, Book 5 in the Ari Ara Series.You can get River Dragon here. Since the official trial would not start until the next morning, the Twins of the Sisterlands and the Abbess led Ari Ara on a tour of the Gateway Abbey’s workshops and libraries, sleeping quarters and offices. Ari Ara asked many questions – or as many as she dared. A potential queen was not nosy, after all. She watched the twelve-year-old girls learning soap making, sewing, candle dipping, and thought how fortunate …

April 24, 2024

“The Ordeal of Queens” – an excerpt from River Dragon ___________ This is an excerpt from River Dragon, Book 5 in the Ari Ara Series.You can get River Dragon here. The lanterns and lit windows of Mariana Capital gleamed like a low constellation of stars. Ari Ara, Brinelle, and the others gathered abovedeck. Each stood quietly, holding their churning emotions close to their chest, no two reactions the same. The river bore the vessel swiftly, inexorably, toward the looming threshold of change. Ari Ara wavered between eagerly leaning into the downstream charge of the ship and nervously bracing her heels into the wooden …

April 7, 2024

It’s four in the morning and my heart is in my throat again. The presidential election in November fills me with nothing but dread and despair.  On the one hand, we’re facing a candidate who spews hatred, advocates violence, and peddles sneakers and bibles while facing astronomical legal costs for his fraud, lies, sexual assaults and lawbreaking. One the other hand, we’re told that to stop him, we have to vote for a president who keeps sending weapons and billions of dollars to a genocidal nation that has killed more than 33,000 people (including more than 12,000 children) since October.  This is not …

April 1, 2024

Ari Ara’s novels will live longer than any of us. What a thought! Just like we’re still reading Tolkien, exploring Narnia, and traveling to Never Never Land with Peter Pan, imagine readers of the future enjoying Ari Ara’s adventures 70, 90, or 110 years from now! What will people think in 2134? Imagine the children of the 2100s seeing Ari Ara as a cultural icon like Peter Pan and Wendy, Lucy and Edmond, or Frodo and Sam. Instead of fighting pirates, witches, or orcs, though, the children of the future will be playacting nonviolent struggles and embarking on imagined quests in …

March 23, 2024

This is an excerpt from River Dragon, Book 5 in the Ari Ara Series. You can get River Dragon here. Ari Ara rubbed her eyes and stared out the crosshatch windows of the ship. The morning had crawled by while she studied. The dense river ports had given way to smaller villages. Fish weirs dotted the reeds in the shallows. Large swaths of water-loving grains swayed on the flatlands, nourished with rich minerals from the annual floods. On a brilliant blue day such as this, entire villages poured into the wetland fields to stand ankle deep in the muddy silt, planting …

March 9, 2024

“Heir Apparent” – Chapter One of River Dragon This is an excerpt from River Dragon, Book 5 in the Ari Ara Series. You can get River Dragon here. Gritting her teeth, Ari Ara waved to the crowd, a fixed smile plastered on her face. The horse fidgeted beneath her, sensing her discomfort and distraction. Her fitted jacket was so stiff that she could hardly move. Designed to prevent slouching, Ari Ara thought in annoyance, and any other motion unbefitting to a royal heir. Solid as a suit of armor – and just as uncomfortable – the jacket held her ramrod straight as …

February 6, 2024

By Rivera Sun Love is in the air . . . or at least occupying the airwaves this week, selling chocolates and roses and candlelit dinners for two. But this romantic love is just a thin slice of the feast of love that exists in the human heart. And when Valentine’s Day rolls around, I always rebel against such limited fare and demand the full deliciousness of all kinds of love. Love of one’s family. Love between friends. Biophilia (love of nature). Agape (the selfless love that a person feels for strangers and humanity). Love for what Dr. King called …

January 18, 2024

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay By Rivera Sun for Peace Voice As the primaries heat up and the nation goes through the throes of another election cycle, cast your vote for something unexpected, something that defies the lies of politicians, something that could save our nation – and most certainly our souls. Make a choice to weather this election year with respect and decency toward your fellow citizens, no matter our political views. In past years, our election cycles have been marked with fear, distrust, polarization, heightened divisiveness, even violence. In 2024, if we do one thing as citizens, …