Tag: Rivera Sun

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

… by Rivera Sun If you enjoy this Solutionary Climate Fiction Story, you will also enjoy Ghosts & Gleaners. … “That crow lady’s back.” “She’s more buzzard than crow.” “Magpie, I’d say. Always on the lookout for shiny trinkets.” Peering through the grimy window, clutching identical mugs of steaming herbal tea, the three workers watched […]

This post was originally published on Waging Nonviolence. Twin Cities Nonviolent, one of the sites with our Nonviolent Cities Project, held two environmentally-themed musical actions as part of their 12 Days Free From Violence. On Sept. 30, the symphony group Classical Uprising performed “The (Uncertain) Four Seasons,” Vivaldi’s classic with a climate twist. On Sept. 25, another […]

A Decade of Literary Resistance With The Dandelion InsurrectionCan you believe it’s been 10 years? The Dandelion Insurrection has been lighting up readers’ imaginations for 10 years. It’s hard to believe this golden yellow book has reached a decade of circulation on this maddeningly tumultuous world. It was written as Snowden made his revelations about the […]

Nonviolence News Editor’s Note From Rivera Sun Looking around the globe in this week’s Nonviolence News, it’s evident that people are gripped in “struggles of survival”. The demands are sensible, reasonable: people want safety from brutal repression, they want wages that pay the bills, and they want a planet they can live on that won’t […]

Kids ask the darndest things. On a virtual Author Q & A with a school classroom that read The Way Between, I was asked the question: what do I think about ChatGPT and AI novels? Rather than tear off on a long-winded rant about the long arcs of automation and tech capitalism’s lack of concern […]

This article was originally published on Campaign Nonviolence’s Community Page on Waging Nonviolence. It is reposted with permission. “Aren’t we supposed to sing beyond the choir?” This question recently came up during a training, the person’s eyebrows drawing down into a perplexed expression. On the screen, a diagram of the Spectrum of Allies – a […]

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 […]