Tag: essays

On August 20, 2013, Antoinette Tuff (right) nonviolently disarmed a school shooter, saving the lives of hundreds of school children. Antoinette was a bookkeeper. She wasn’t supposed to be at the school that day. She was just filling in as a front desk receptionist as a favor to a friend. That morning, during her prayer […]

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” ~ Dr. King From the left and the right, policy proposals are flying fast and furious. It is an election year, after all.  But one topic is completely off the agenda […]

The forest sways in ripples of green. Wind sends the dappled sunlight sparkling through the branches. These are the things we forget in the heat of the political season. There are few politicians who will speak on behalf of all people . . . and even fewer who will speak for the beings that comprise […]

Watching the electoral cycle this year is like watching an old movie from a warped film reel with the sound out of sync. The puppet figures of politicians go through the meaningless gestures. The familiar slogans and catch phrases groan from twisted mouths, distorted and odd. A maniacal fervor pulses in the expressions of the […]

It takes more than a single action to make a movement. And, who’s to say YOU won’t launch, organize, and carry out a series of effective nonviolent actions that build into a set of powerful campaigns that form the arc of a world-changing movement? Find a couple friends, dust off your strategic thinking caps, and […]

Grand Strategy is a plan of action to achieve the major or overall goals of your movement. It’s different than campaign-level strategy, or strategy for specific nonviolent actions (which should include dates, times, location, weather, people, contingency plans, signage, etc. and so forth.) Grand Strategy is a broad view of the arc of the movement. […]

Too often, our movements find themselves reacting instead of initiating the dynamic events of the struggle. Take back the escalation curve by engaging in strategic thinking, foresight, and planning. Don’t wait for your opposition to attack you . . . organize and mobilize in advance of the crisis. Easier said than done, right? We often […]

Many of us know about protests and marches, there is also a whole other side to nonviolence: constructive program. The phrase was coined by Gandhi whose famous salt and spinning campaigns combined both direct action and constructive program into powerful forces for change. A constructive program is more than a positive project; it should have […]

Acts of concentration are those that assemble human bodies in geographic areas together. Acts of dispersion are nonviolent actions that do not bring bodies into the same space. Why is this important? Because when violent repression is likely to occur, using acts of dispersion can keep people safe while still carrying out effective action. Think […]

Civil disobedience is an art … and there’s more to it than simply “getting arrested.” The term comes from an essay by Henry David Thoreau, whose classic, “On Civil Disobedience” was written in relation to slavery and the Mexican-American war. Thoreau felt it was the duty of citizens to resist through noncooperation and disobedience the […]

The name Helen Keller conjures up, for many people, a deaf-blind-mute girl learning to communicate via sign language. It is a scene straight out of “The Miracle Worker,” the biographical play recounting Anne Sullivan’s role in reaching young Helen Keller. However, the amazing part of Keller’s story is not that the way she learned to […]

On June 27, 1915, Grace Lee Boggs was born in Providence, Rhode Island, above her father’s restaurant.  Grace later said, “because I was born to Chinese immigrant parents and because I was born female, I learned very quickly that the world needed changing.” Over her 100 years of life, Grace would, indeed, change the world […]

On June 15th, 1955, Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day joined a group of pacifists in refusing to participate in the civilian defense drills scheduled on that day. These drills were to prepare the citizenry in the event of a nuclear attack, and involved evacuations of city centers, taking shelter in subway tunnels, and, for schoolchildren, […]

Consider this post an act of rebellion . . . a nonviolent action against the tide of business as usual. It’s just another Sunday at my house, but after over a decade of thinking, reflecting, learning, and changing, Sunday afternoons involve dozens of constructive actions that remove my consent from destructive systems and place my […]

Whenever someone asks me, “What is our salt? What is the US equivalent of Gandhi’s constructive program?” I tell them that I think it’s local food and gardening, seed saving, and caring for the Earth. Whether we’re planting in pots or urban community gardens, or we’re on a small farm, or, like me, you lovingly […]

To everyone who is heartbroken, tired, sick, worried: you’re not crazy. You’re persevering remarkably. The systems of our juggernaut world are cruel, crushing, and insane. You’ve been strong. You’ve been courageous, whether you’ve been protesting on the front lines or managing to stay alive one more day through intense pain. And you’re loved. From one […]

This week in nonviolent history, we celebrate the effective and versatile tactic of the teach-in. One of the largest teach-ins during the Vietnam War, for example, was held on May 21st-23rd, 1965 at UC Berkeley with 10-30,000 students attending. The State Department was invited to send a representative, but declined. An empty chair was set […]

“In all my career I have never advocated violence. I want to give the nation a more highly developed citizenship.” – Mother Jones This week commemorates the anniversary of the Haymarket Affair, International Workers’ Day, and the claimed birthday of Mother Mary Harris Jones.  While the United States’ official Labor Day falls in September, the […]

Nonviolent struggle is on the rise globally. Neither passive, nor inaction, this powerful way of working for change is proving Gandhi’s audacious claim that “nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind” to be correct. Here are ten things you should know about nonviolent struggle and how it works. 1. Nonviolent action is […]

“Alice Paul had “a spirit like Joan of Arc, and it is useless to try to change it. She will die but she will never give up.” – Physician at Occoquan Workhouse where Alice Paul was imprisoned for nonviolent actions to win women’s suffrage in the United States. Alice Paul was born on Jan 11th, […]

(This essay was originally part of a longer essay addressing five stories of nonviolent resistance to the Nazis and the parallels that can be applied to current events in the United States.)  With bigotry and hatred on the rise in the United States and politicians like Donald Trump giving everyone the nightmares of an American Hitler […]

(This essay was originally part of a longer essay addressing five stories of nonviolent resistance to the Nazis and the parallels that can be applied to current events in the United States.) Many United States citizens are appalled at recent remarks by Donald Trump and other bigoted politicians advocating policies against Muslims that are eerily reminiscent […]

(This essay was originally part of a longer essay addressing five stories of nonviolent resistance to the Nazis and the parallels that can be applied to current events in the United States.)  US politics are enough to give everyone nightmares of Donald Trump as Hitler minus the mustache. He’d drop a nuke on ISIS. He wants […]

The Man From the North is a fictional writer in Rivera Sun’s novel, The Dandelion Insurrection. The novel takes place in the near future, in “a time that looms around the corner of today”, when a rising police state controlled by the corporate-political elite have plunged the nation into the grip of a hidden dictatorship. […]