Editor’s Note from Rivera Sun
Each week, Nonviolence News collects and shares 30-50 stories of nonviolence in action. I love all these links to stories. You love all these links to stories. Spam filters, unfortunately, do not. Many people’s newsletters are ending up in their spam box. To help Nonviolence News reach our thousands of readers, we’ll be posting the 30-50+ stories on our website and sending you the link via enewsletter. If this is your first time reading Nonviolence News, sign-up for our email list here>>
In this week’s amazing newsletter, you’ll read about how:
- 540 strikes took place in the past 3 weeks in the United States;
- 2 million people stood up for economic justice with the Poor People’s Campaign;
- TikTok Teens and KPop fans made Trump’s rally an empty-seats flop;
- LGBTQ activists in Ukraine hung giant rainbow flag from their massive “Statue of Liberty”;
- Extinction Rebellion is back in action for climate justice;
- Malala Yousafzai, the girl who defied the Taliban to attend school, just graduated from college;
- 11 other heartening success stories;
- and 47 more incredible stories of people working for change!
I’m heartened by this week’s news. The success stories show that our efforts are having some effect. (Keep going.) The movements for justice are growing and resurging all over the world. Ordinary, extraordinary people are standing up for what’s right even amidst great challenges. It is an honor to collect and share these stories. Thank you for helping to make this possible!
Yours in these times of great change,
Rivera Sun, Editor
Image Credit: Poor People’s Campaign Digital March & Rally, a selfie sampling of some of the 2 million people who participated. Find out more here>>
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Malala Just Graduated From College – 8 Years After the Taliban Shot Her To Keep Her From Going To School: Eight years after being shot by the Pakistani Taliban, the advocate for female education and the world’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner shared a photo of herself smothered in cake as she celebrated her Philosophy, Politics and Economics degree from Britain’s Oxford University. “Hard to express my joy and gratitude right now,” she wrote to her 3 million social media followers. Read more>>
Tiktok Teens and KPop Fans Sink Trump Rally Reserving and buying the tickets gave the Trump campaign the false sense of a crowd, but when the day of the event came, the stands were largely empty. Read more>>
San Francisco Police Replaced By Professionals for Non-Criminal Calls: The change is part of a four-part plan to address police brutality and systemic racism in policing in the city. Read more>>
Albuquerque, New Mexico, Defunds Police, Funds Social Responders: This police department had one of the worst 30-year track records of brutality in the United States. Read more>>
Boston Bans Facial Recognition Surveillance: “Boston should not use racially discriminatory technology that threatens the privacy and basic rights of our residents,” council member Michelle Wu said in a statement. Read more>>
When Immigrant Workers At Barnes & Noble Got Sick, They Organized Their Warehouse And Won: By winning basic protections against COVID-19 at this Barnes & Noble warehouse, the immigrant workers showed the tremendous power they have when they organize. Read more>>
Supreme Court DACA Win Shows “Sustained Pressure of Activism” Works: The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 5-4 against President Trump’s attempt to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Read more>>
Cancelation of Cop Shows Signals a Cultural Shift in Glorifying Police Violence: Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, discusses how these shows do not show the realities of racist policing. Read more>>
Five Rapid Responses For Communities To Address the COVID-19 “Housing Apocalypse”: After spending months scanning the globe to find promising innovations to support increases in naturally affordable housing, this team identified five strategies that communities could embrace to greatly reduce the damage of navigating forward through the crisis. Read more>>
Communities Hit Hardest By Racism Have Solutions Worth Investing In: This Chicago loan fund has proved that the communities it serves — disinvested and portrayed in mainstream headlines as violent and hopeless — are full of people who have more than just vision; they can also borrow money for community improvements and pay it back. Read more>>
Colorado Law Ends Police Immunity: Colorado is the first state to remove immunity for police who commit civil crimes and make them personally liable for damages. This is a first step in making police accountable for their actions and it is being met with opposition by police. Read more>>
Oakland Judge Issues Restraining Order Restricting Police Use of Tear Gas, Flash Bangs, and Projectiles: The decision follows a similar restriction placed on the Denver police by a Colorado judge. Read more>>
Papua New Guinea Shuts Down Major Gold Mine: Citizens were surprised in Papua New Guinea when the Prime Minister rejected the renewal of license for a major gold mine, saying “The world will not end if Porgera closes.” Read more>>
500 Strikes in 3 Weeks: Workers are rising up across the United States in one of the largest strike waves in recent history … and perhaps the most underreported. Read more>>
Millions Participate In Poor Peoples Campaign’s Digital Rally: Uploading selfies, tuning into the livestream, and email swarming officials were just a few of the digital actions taken by more than 2 million people this week. Read more>>
Protesters Call For Resignation Of Mali’s President: Hundreds of protestors gathered Friday in the capital Bamako, to ask President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta to step down after complaints of government corruption and escalating violence. Read more>>
Mutual Aid in Argentina: After the devastating 2001 economic crisis in Argentina, mutual aid and co-ops conversions swept the country. Read how the Argentine experience and practice of horizontalidad can provide a model for how we make the current global wave of mutual aid last beyond the pandemic. Read more>>
Latin Americans Call For A More Just And Peaceful ‘New Normal’: “We cannot return to the perverse normality of the pre-coronavirus world, where profits are valued more than people. A new normal is both possible and necessary, if we build it together.” Read more>>
How Nonprofit Landlords Are Going The Extra Mile During The Pandemic: Structural and systemic nonviolence includes things like rent forgiveness, checking up on tenants, organizing tenant mutual aid networks, and more. Here’s how nonprofit landlords are doing some of these things. Read more>>
Homeless Philadelphians Move Into Vacant City-Owned Houses: According to those who are helping families move in, a large number of usable residences are being intentionally left vacant by the PHA so that they can be sold to developers. The process of finding empty PHA-owned homes, fixing them up, and helping to move people in is a collaboration between ‘Occupy PHA’ and the Revolutionary Workers Collective. Read more>>
University Worker Unions Protest Austerity: Protesters from unions representing 20,000 workers brought protest signs reading #WeRNotDisposable and calling on Rutgers University to “protect the most vulnerable” decorated car windows; inside the cars, union members and their supporters wore red and their face masks. Read more>>
Thousands of “Workers First” Car Caravans Demand Relief From The Pandemic’s Economic Meltdown: From Fairbanks to San Juan and from Bangor to Honolulu, workers across the US turned out on June 17 in car caravans, at press conferences, and in call-ins to lawmakers to demand solons “Put Workers First For Racial And Economic Justice.” More than 1,000 caravaned to Capitol Hill in DC. Read more>>
Thousands of Palestinians Resist New Land Grab By Israel: Thousands of Palestinians have rallied in Jericho to protest against Israel’s unilateral plan to annex large swaths of the occupied West Bank and Jordan Valley. Read more>>
Black New Orleans Sanitation Worker Strike Continues: The workers have been on strike for over a month. They continue to demand fair pay and PPEs. Read more>>
Defund Police Picks Up Steam: “A well-known movement quote is, “They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.” Nearly six years ago, we were transformed in Ferguson as thousands took to the streets to protest the killing of Mike Brown. Our lives were forever changed and a movement was born to transform our communities. If we were the seeds, then this moment is the harvest.” Here’s why the idea of defunding the police isn’t as unbelievable as the hashtag sounds. Read more>>
Black Lives Matter Is International; Where There’s Oppression, There Will Be Resistance: The injustice of the murder of George Floyd has deep antecedents in the US and indeed in much of what is now called the Global South. There is a shared history of colonial conquest of the Indigenous and the abominable institution of the enslavement of African peoples. What happened has its roots in systemic oppression that has resonated internationally. Just as the police suffocated George Floyd, US unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Zimbabwe, and nearly one third of humanity are designed to asphyxiate those nations which aspire to pursue an independent course. Read more>>
Racial Justice and Transformative Social Change Demanded in Juneteenth Celebrations Across US: “Today we honor Black excellence. Black innovation. Black history. Black futures. Black joy. Black brilliance.” Read more>>
Protests Against Racist Police Brutality Erupt In LA for 18-Year-Old Andres Guardado: “The police came up, and they pulled their guns on him and he ran because he was scared, and they shot and killed him. He’s got a clean background and everything. There’s no reason.” Read more>>
Scotland Ends Exports of Tear Gas, Rubber Bullets, and Riot Shields To United States: A successful motion, which was backed by 52 votes to 0 with 11 abstentions, says the parliament “stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and considers that the UK government must immediately suspend all export licenses for tear gas, rubber bullets and riot gear to the US”. Read more>>
Immigrants In ICE Detention Centers Hold Hunger Strike For Black Lives: “We begin our protest in memory of our comrades George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Oscar Grant, and Tony McDade. Almost all of us have also suffered through our country’s corrupt and racist criminal justice system before being pushed into the hands of ICE,” the statement read in part. Read more>>
Racism Is A Public Health Crisis: With public health being top-of-mind for many people right now, it’s the ideal time to use that language and framing to take on systemic racism. Read more>>
60,000 March In Silence In Seattle For Black Lives: “The silence was really powerful,” says one protester. Read more>>
US University Students Demand The End of Campus Police: Long protested, campus police are facing renewed pressure from students across the US who say that armed police have no business on college and university campuses. Read more>>
Longshoreman’s Juneteenth Strike Shuts Down 29 Ports For Black Lives: On June 19, the International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Union (ILWU), a militant union of 42,000 members, shut down 29 ports along the West Coast of the United States and Canada, as workers withheld their labor for 8 hours. The strike was organized to demonstrate the labor movement’s solidarity with Black Lives. Read more>>
Juneteenth #BlueLeaks Release Records On Police Brutality: Anonymous is back—and it’s returned with a dump of hundreds of gigabytes of law enforcement files and internal communications. On Friday of last week, the Juneteenth holiday, a leak-focused activist group known as Distributed Denial of Secrets published a 269-gigabyte collection of police data that includes emails, audio, video, and intelligence documents. Read more>>
North Carolina’s Black Lives Matter Protesters Blockade Prison: Different days have drawn different groups with varying goals, but not a day has gone by without hundreds of people turning out on the streets to support Black Liberation and oppose the police. Read more>>
Inside CHAZ, The Cop-Free Zone In Seattle: This interview with two organizers cuts through both mystique and misrepresentation in the media. Read more>>
XR Africa Resists Luxury Tourist Resort: XR Africa is fighting to halt the destruction of a precious wild space, the Nairobi National Park, which is under threat from a luxury tourist resort in direct violation of the 2030 National Wildlife Strategy. Read their newsletter here>>
XR Indonesia Holds 10-day Wave of Digital Actions: Refusing to let pandemic blues stop them, XR Indonesia organized a wave of digital actions that spread awareness of the climate emergency and recruited hundreds of new rebels to their cause. Each day a new digital ‘quest’ was launched on Instagram – a climate-related challenge that included attending zoom seminars, answering questionnaires, and making pieces of protest artwork. Read more>>
Latin Americans Resist Mining During COVID-19: Over the years, the mining industry has taken advantage of dictatorship, disasters, and a variety of distractions to expand operations in Latin America. In the time of Covid-19, with entire populations under lockdown and economies falling apart, mining companies have also hopped on the pandemic profiteering bandwagon. Here’s how people are resisting. Read more>>
XR Is Back! Coming Out Of Pandemic Lockdowns, The World’s Most Creative Climate Action Network is Back: Follow the latest actions in New Zealand, Ecuador, Italy, Nigeria, Croatia, and more in their XR Unchained Newsletter. Read more>>
Fast-Growing Mini-Forests Planted Across Europe To Curb Climate Change: Tiny, dense forests are springing up around Europe as part of a movement aimed at restoring biodiversity and fighting the climate crisis. Often sited in schoolyards or alongside roads, the forests can be as small as a tennis court. They are based on the work of the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, who has planted more than 1,000 such forests in Japan, Malaysia and elsewhere. Read more>>
Benefitting Climate & Communities; How Clothing Cooperatives Could Grow Equitable Regional Economies: Cooperative structures like the Carolina Textile District provide an inspirational example of the type of regional networks that could grow and flourish throughout the country. Read more>>
Democratizing Energy to Counter the Climate Catastrophe: For the labor and climate justice movements to win anything close to a just recovery and a Green New Deal, we need to collectively stand up against market solutions and build on the diverse forms of energy democracy that are already being developed across Europe. Read more>>
Movement Generation Talks About Transition In the Eleventh Hour: How is the transition from our current fossil fuel-dependent society to a post-carbon world going to go? Is it going to be one that continues on a path of inequity, violence, scarcity and the hoarding of resources by some while others go without? Or is it going to be a Just Transition? Read more>>
#MeToo Hits Twitch Streaming World: High-profile streamers have been accused, often by multiple women, of patterns of inappropriate behavior up to and including sexual assault. The flood of stories this weekend has caused Twitch and its CEO to respond, saying that they will work to address the systemic issues that have so far allowed these kind of predatory behaviors to flourish in the streaming world. Read more>>
Radical Mothers For Abolitionist Futures Post COVID-19: Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity (MAMAS) was founded in Chicago to resist the interconnected systems of prisons, anti-immigrant violence, war and colonization. They have a focus on uplifting mother-survivors of these systems as movement organizers. Here’s how they envision the challenges and possibilities of abolitionist futures, post COVID-19. Read more>>
Black Women Unleash Backlash Against a BLM Panel In Music Industry That Excludes Women: The industry’s abuse of women paired with women’s exclusion from speaking to Black Lives Matter issues, has provoked a storm of backlash. Read more>>
LGBTQ Activists Use Drone To Hang Pride Flag From Ukraine’s Statue Of Liberty: Ukrainian LGBTQ activists used a drone to hoist a giant rainbow flag and attach it to the “Motherland” statue in Kyiv. The sculpture is venerated in the country and stands slightly higher than the Statue of Liberty. While the stunt has been met with blowback in the conservative country, the government was powerless to stop them. Read more>>
Writing Transforms Confederate Monument: Carden sees the writing on the monument — which includes the names of black people killed in police custody — as a way of transforming the monument. “For some people it looks like destruction; to me it looks like art,” he said. Read more>>
Opera Barcelona Plays To An Audience of Plants: Livestreaming the show to humans because of pandemic restrictions, the opera used creative action to remind us of our connection to plants. Read more>>
Music Cooperative Supports Musicians From Pandemic Woes: Musicians were hit with a one-two economic punch when the virus closed down performances and the restaurants that were their “day jobs”. In response, the cooperative of musicians behind the Ampled online music platform has committed to giving 100 percent of every payment made through the platform to the respective artist, through at least the end of the year. Read more>>
Food Sovereignty Activists See Pandemic Food Crisis As A Pivotal Moment For Change: Malik Yakini speaks for many people in the movements for food sovereignty and sustainability as they face the crisis of the novel coronavirus. He sees it from the perspective of the urban farms of Detroit, as the executive director of the Black Community Food Security Network. “The problems people see now, from the difficulty they’re experiencing getting to markets to the absence of food on the shelves when they get there, really highlight the need for a new food system,” he says. Read more>>
Activists Paint “DefundPolice” Mural On Street Outside Baltimore City Hall: As the city prepares to approve a $500 million police budget, community members demand reallocation of the funds. Read more>>
What the Movement for Black Lives Can Learn From Tunisia’s Revolution: Mohamed Bouazizi’s death kicked off the Arab Spring. Will George Floyd’s killing be a tipping point for the U.S. struggle against systemic racism? Read more>>
The Freedom Rides Made the Most of a Multiracial Activist Base: Today’s protests for racial justice are strikingly multiracial. Civil rights organizers have historically considered this an asset and often used it creatively and strategically to their advantage, as they did during the Freedom Rides through the American South in 1961. Read more>>
Sex Workers Have Never Counted on Cops. Let’s Learn From Their Safety Tactics: Sex workers have kept each other safe outside the purview of the state for decades, and probably centuries. Read more>>
From Fringe Idea to Law of the Land — a Look Inside the Creativity Fueling the Struggle to Defund the Police: “Defund the Police!” has moved from fringe idea to nearly law of the land so fast, pundits have motion sickness. It shows what can happen when progressive ideas are backed by true people power in a kind of “People’s Shock Doctrine. Read more>>
Dr. King And The Triple Evils of War, Poverty, and Militarism: Dr. King’s warning on the perils of these entwined issues remains startlingly relevant. Here’s what you can do about them. Read more>>
People Power In Sudan Webinar: A panel of presenters will explore the recent nonviolent revolution in Sudan and share the challenges still faced by the movement. (July 1st) Learn more>>
International Summer Nonviolence Institute: Study nonviolence with people from around the world. (July 30-Aug 1) Learn more >>