Editor’s Note From Rivera Sun
In this week’s Nonviolence News, we share the protests around the world calling for a ceasefire, peace, humanitarian relief, an end to the violence, and for the context of apartheid to be included in the discourse about what’s happening. Palestinians who have been part of nonviolent resistance and peace work for years are speaking clearly about the alternatives to the ongoing cycles of violence. Mubarak Awad laid out 7 steps that can be taken (by Israelis, Palestinians, US citizens, media, and more) to move out of the horrific violence.
When a war erupts (Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the attacks in Gaza), the media often defaults to narratives around which side is good vs. bad, whose violence is the most horrific, who aggravated the attacks, who is justified in using violence or more justified in using it? But rarely do we hear about pragmatic alternatives to escalating rounds of violence. But they exist. In Ukraine, for example, numerous reports came forward of how people were resisting the war without using weapons. And, after a week of appalling violence and inflammatory (often lopsided) coverage about Israel and Palestine, voices advocating peace and organizing nonviolent resistance are offering us another way to think about what’s happening.
It takes courage to speak about this. And it takes courage to listen to these voices. I hope you’ll take a moment to read them.
In other Nonviolence News, thousands of Indigenous Guatemalans (pictured) have formed roadblocks around Guatemala City, trying to get the government to uphold the results of a popular vote for a new president. In the Netherlands, the A12 highway blockades have succeeded in pressuring the Dutch parliament to work on a plan to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. In Kashmir, a months-long struggle against high food and electric bills has been taking place in a near-total media blackout. They launched a general strike on October 5 and 70% of the populace have refused to pay their electric bills this month. Toronto, Canada’s renters have been holding a rent strike for two months. Berlin renters have launched another historic effort to seize housing back from corporate landlords. And Los Angeles hotel workers are weathering repression as they continue their rolling strikes.
This is just a glimpse of the powerful stories in this week’s round-up. Orange paint protests, sci-fi twists on temporary visas, 10,000 Indian women marching against anti-poor, anti-women policies. A favorite this week? There’s a story about how a community-led campaign against toxic PCBs laid the groundwork for today’s environmental justice struggles.
In solidarity,
Rivera Sun
Photo Credit: Indigenous Guatemalans hold a ceremony during a roadblock for democracy.
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A12 Blockades In Netherlands Are Proving Effective: After 27 days of Highway A12 blockades and more than 9,000 arrests, the Lower House is asking the cabinet to come up with a phase-out path for fossil subsidies. Extinction Rebellion welcomes the adopted motion, and concludes: civil disobedience works. Extinction Rebellion Netherlands will closely monitor implementation of the motion and stands ready to resume actions. Read more>>
Dallas Climate Activists Won a Major Investment In Green Transit. We Can All Learn From Their Fight. The Dallas ridership program wouldn’t have happened without a disciplined, organized bloc of young people calling on leaders to put their money where their mouth is. As organizers have discovered, it’s one thing to endorse an idea like the Green New Deal. It’s another to make it real. A free public transportation campaign in Dallas is a model for success as Sunrise builds its new Green New Deal for Schools campaign. Read more>>
Rapid-Growth Micro-Forests Are Greening Cities 10 Times Faster: The Miyawaki method is lowering temps and boosting biodiversity with tiny, super-dense forests that grow a meter per year. Read more>>
How New York Socialists Won Big On Climate: New York is the first state to mandate renewable energy in a way that explicitly rejects the neoliberal obligation to put corporate profits first. They’ve put the publicly owned New York Power Authority in charge of building renewable energy with a mandate to do so in the interest of working people. Read more>>
NYC Nannies Built an Underground Care Economy That Should Inspire US Policy: A circle of nannies in New York City created an underground care economy that challenges us to dream bigger. Read more>>
North Carolina Sanitation Workers Strike For $5K Bonuses: “We’re here to make a stand. At least 40 trucks should be on the road right now, and as far as we know, no trucks have gone out this morning,” said Durham, North Carolina, sanitation worker Christopher Benjamin, flanked by 100 sanitation and other city workers at a September 6 press conference. By Oct 5th, city workers won $6.5 million in bonuses. Read more>>
Seattle’s Urban Animal Network Debuts First Veterinary Worker Cooperative: Urban Animal, a Seattle-based veterinary network, has announced it will become the first worker cooperative veterinary practice in the US this fall. This will enable its 110 employees to share in the governance and profits of the company with more than 50,000 clients. Read more>>
Stockholm To Ban Petrol And Diesel Cars From City Center Starting In 2025: Stockholm has announced plans to become the first big capital city to ban petrol and diesel cars from its centre, in an effort to slash pollution and reduce noise. From 2025, 20 blocks of Stockholm’s inner city area, spanning its finance and main shopping districts, will be restricted to electric vehicle traffic only. A decision on whether to expand the zone will be made in early 2025. Read more>>
In Kashmir, Anti-Neoliberal Struggle Convulses the Himalayas: Blacked out even in the Pakistani mainstream media, and in its fifth month, this movement manifested mass power yet again on October 5, when a general strike was observed across Pakistan Jammu Kashmir. Markets were closed, there was no traffic and the streets were empty. More importantly: for the second month in a row, the majority of people in major towns refused to pay their monthly electricity bills. Read more>>
In the United Kingdom, Disabled People’s Independent Living Is Under Threat: Cash-strapped councils may seek to put Disabled people in residential care to save costs, without regard for their wishes. The Disabled community is already organizing, building power and fighting back. Read more>>
Indigenous People Lead Guatemala Protests Against Election Interference: Protestors, led by indigenous groups, have been demonstrating peacefully and blockading roads for eight straight days, calling for the government to respect Bernardo Arévalo’s landslide win. Read more>>
Advocates Urge Mainers to Vote for First Statewide Consumer-Owned Utility: “Mainers have a rare chance to take control of an important part of their daily lives,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders in his endorsement of Pine Tree Power. “Mainers can have cheaper, more reliable power—and help fight climate change at the same time.” Read more>>
Union of Southern Service Workers Takes On Waffle House For Fair Wages: Supporters gathered around USSW member Mo Haskins as he read a list of demands: a guaranteed wage of $25/hour for all employees, 24-hour security at all Waffle House locations, and an end to the meal deductions that are taken off each employee’s paycheck, regardless of whether they eat shift meals or not. Read more>>
Toronto’s Rent Strike Is Growing: Toronto tenants have been on strike for months. With new tenants joining in the fight, the strike appears to be gaining momentum as it seeks to put landlords on notice and redress the balance of power between property owners and renters. Read more>>
Berlin’s Housing Movement Launches New Campaign To Get Rid Of Corporate Landlords: Berlin’s grassroots housing movement Deutsche Wohnen Enteignen (Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen, DWE) launched its new campaign on September 26 for a legally binding referendum to expropriate housing from for-profit corporate landlords. The launch date marked exactly two years since the previous successful, but non-binding, housing referendum, in which 59% of Berliners voted to expropriate corporate landlords that own 3000 apartments or more. Read more>>
Debt Abolition Activists Gear Up for Countersummit as World Bank and IMF Meet: Activists from the global movement for debt abolition are converging October 12-15 in Marrakesh, Morocco. Planned in protest of the elite meeting, the activist countersummit will bring together delegations from social movements from all over the world, creating a counterforce to the roughly 10,000 bankers, corporate CEOs and government bureaucrats who will descend on the country to stay in five-star hotels and discuss how to manage the debt system they impose on countries of the Global South. Read more>>
New Jersey Nurses Enter Third Month of Strike for Safe Staffing: The striking nurses emphasized hospital understaffing endangers both workers and patients. “Many nurses feel their values as medical professionals are being ignored, or compromised,” Moccio said. Read more>>
Mack Trucks Employees Go On Strike After Rejecting Contract: Workers slammed a proposed deal between the company and the United Auto Workers union. About 4,000 of them are now on strike. The union released a letter on X, formerly known as Twitter, that said 73% of UAW members voted against the contract and would walk off the job at 7 a.m. ET. Read more>>
Workers Are Considering Calling for a Boycott: Starbucks Workers United has not yet asked supporters to stop frequenting Starbucks locations. But unionized workers have been ramping up customer solidarity organizing, potentially laying the groundwork for a Starbucks boycott. Read more>>
LA Hotel Workers Persevere In Challenging Strike: Hotel workers have had to endure aggressive responses to the strike, including assaults by hotel security guards and even by guests at several hotels. Nevertheless, the workers have persevered, and the strike continues to move forward on a number of fronts. Read more>>
United Campus Workers Racks Up Victories Across ‘Right-To-Work’ Tennessee: UCW President Anne Langendorfer explains her union’s unique approach to building power in a state where the cards are firmly stacked against workers’ rights. Read more>>
Walgreens Pharmacy Workers Launch Rolling Walkouts Across Hundreds Of Stores: Employees at Walgreens and CVS the largest drugstore chains in the United States say harsh working conditions make it difficult to safely fill prescriptions, which could put the health of their customers at risk. Now, they’re demanding change by staging a series of walkouts across the country. Hundreds of stores may be affected. Read more>>
Ugandans Arrested, Dutch Roadblocks, France Airport Shutdown: Wet’suwet’en Blockade members joined a protest against the Museum of Modern Arts’ fossil fuel sponsorship. Australians rallied against seismic blasting for offshore gas exploration. Ugandans were arrested while protesting the East Africa Oil Pipeline (EACOP). In Extinction Rebellion’s newsletter, you’ll find these stories and others from Denmark, USA, Bangladesh, Nepal, North Pole, Sweden, India, Zimbabwe, Australia, Uganda, South Africa, Brazil, France, Belgium, Gambia, UK, and Austria. Read more>>
Climate Defiance Stops Events By “Petro Pete” Buttigieg and Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk: “We just chased Secretary Pete Buttigieg off the stage at the Meyerhoff Symphony. Petro Pete is a coward. As we write he is ramming down our throats the Sea Port and GulfLink oil terminals – each worse than Keystone. We must resist him with all we’ve got. And we will.” Read more>>
Just Stop Oil Student Campaign Paints University Buildings In Orange (Washable) Paint: A new university campaign by the climate group Just Stop Oil is painting buildings with (washable) orange paint. This was the ninth protest so far this week. The climate crisis is not going away. The students are not going away. Read more>>
Disrupting Shell’s New “Greenwasher-In-Chief”: ExtinctionRebellion and Indigenous leaders disrupted climate criminal Shell oil company’s new “Greenwasher-in-Chief” – the global PR agency Havas. “Don’t Shill for Shell!” Read more>>
Mountain Valley Pipeline Construction Halted In National Forest Due To Pipeline Resistance: Pipeline fighter Mickey locked themself to a sleeping dragon blockade on the Virginia side of Peters Mountain, in the Jefferson National Forest. Mickey prevented tree clearing on the mountain for the full day before being extracted and arrested. A banner at the site read, “Defend the Forest Everywhere!” Read more>>
Any Antidote To Climate Anxiety Involves Organizing: By taking collective action, we step out of our sense of helplessness into a realm of working to change the conditions giving rise to those emotions. Read more>>
Free Your Voice Aims To Environmental Racism In South Baltimore: Student activists are pushing back against big polluters — and winning. First, they tackled a coal field next to their school. Now, they’re taking on a 100-year-old coal yard. Read more>>
How Cities Are Experimenting With Reparations In Urban Policy: Land banking in Atlanta and community solar in New Orleans offer a roadmap for embedding reparative politics in city policies. Even as politicians work to reenact Jim Crow-era silences about how white supremacy has shaped America, reparations are on the table as they have never been before. Read more>>
A Sci-Fi Spin On Temporary Visas: ‘The Disposables’ puts a sci-fi spin on life on a temporary visa and examines a range of social, economic and environmental issues. Aimed at a teen audience, The Disposables is the ABC’s first TikTok series, released both on an ABC iView as an hour-long special and in short segments on TikTok, aiming to draw in younger audiences. Read more>>
‘Stabbed In The Back’: Biden’s Border Wall U-Turn Leaves Indigenous And Climate Groups Reeling: Rio Grande communities feel like the ‘sacrificial lamb’ in a political war as climate activists and environmentalists call foul. The Biden administration’s decision to waive environmental, public health and cultural protections to speed new border wall construction has enraged environmentalists, Indigenous leaders and community groups in the Rio Grande valley. Read more>>
‘There Are No Better Experts On Refugees Than Refugees’ – Why Politicians Need To Listen: At 11, the South Sudanese refugee was forced to flee his Ethiopian village and spent several years in Kakuma camp in Kenya. His work helping others there won UN recognition and a prestigious award – now he’s planning to fund a library. Read more>>
Thousands of Women March In Delhi To Protest Modi Government’s Anti-Women, Anti-Poor Policies: On October 5, 10,000 women from over 25 states across India gathered in Delhi to denounce the rise of sectarian politics and worsening socio-economic conditions. Read more>>
As Hate Groups Attack LGBTQ Youth, Canada’s Labour Movement Rises To The Moment: In Alberta and elsewhere, unions and families turned out to confront far-right protesters. Organized labour was out in full force outside Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) headquarters in west Edmonton last week to stand in solidarity against the far right demonstrators of the so-called “1MillionMarch4Children” protesting 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion policies in Canadian schools. Read more>>
A Memorial to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Honors the Lives Lost and the Continued Importance of Labor Organizing: One hundred and forty six people died, the overwhelming majority of them Italian and Jewish immigrant girls and women aged 14 to 43. The event galvanized labor workers and unions that demanded the right to better working conditions around the country, many of which are still in place more than a century later. Read more>>
Across the Middle East, Mass Protests Erupt Over Israel’s Assault on Gaza: Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the Middle East on Friday to protest Israel’s assault on the occupied Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 1,500 people, displaced more than 330,000, devastated the enclave’s infrastructure, and pushed its healthcare system to the brink of collapse. Demonstrators in Jordan, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bahrain, Iran, Egypt, and Lebanon expressed outrage over Israel’s ongoing attack, evacuation orders, and the decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory. Read more>>
7 Steps To End the Cycle of Violence In Israel And Palestine: The path to peace requires nonviolent action not just from Israelis and Palestinians, but also Americans, the media, aid organizations and others. Mubarak Awad lays out what steps can be taken. Read more>>
When Will We Learn That Violence Doesn’t Lead To Security? Mohammed Abu-Nimer explains why supporting Israelis and Palestinians means insisting on their right to equally live in peace and freedom — not helping structures of state violence and cultures of militarization. Read more>>
Working Together to Keep Ukrainians Safe: Recently, NP’s Ukraine team and the Odesa City Council co-organized a successful forum that brought together over 260 volunteers, civil society organizations, employees from international organizations, and government authorities to discuss ways to reduce safety risks and how to connect civilians with the resources they need most. Read more>>
Centering Community-Led Approaches to Protection: In this piece on International Peace Institute’s Global Observatory, NP’s United Nations (UN) Representative Gay Rosenblum-Kumar discusses the critical role of community-led approaches to protection as UN Missions draw down. Read more>>
UK’s Right Of Juries Protests Spread: 240 people across the UK replicate an action by a rebel now threatened with prison for holding a sign outside court. The rebel held up her sign about the rights of juries during a climate trial in March. She did it because the judge banned the climate activists being prosecuted from mentioning climate change in their defence. Civil liberty campaigners believe her prosecution is part of an escalating attack on the right to protest by the UK’s government. Read more>>
Hubs for Safety and Nonviolence, From The U.S. To Ukraine: Hear Marna Anderson, Director of Nonviolent Peaceforce U.S., speak on the similarities in implementing unarmed civilian protection in two very distinct contexts – the United States and Ukraine – in this panel discussion from World Beyond War’s annual conference, #NoWar2023. Read more>>
How Everyday People Started a Movement That’s Still Shaping Climate Action Today: The illegal dumping of toxic waste, especially PCBs, in Warren County ended up sparking local residents, fueled by the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, to fight back. In the process, they helped birth a national movement, one that would eventually help put environmental justice on President Biden’s agenda and is shaping the fight for climate action today. Read more>>
Every Degree Matters – Why We Can’t Give Up On Climate Action: As the impacts of the climate crisis become more evident, people are understandably struggling with how to respond. Clearing the FOG speaks with climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann, author of “Our Fragile Moment: How lessons from Earth’s past can help us survive the climate crisis,” about the reality of our current situation and how major climate changes in the past have shaped the world and human societies. Read more>>
UAW President Shawn Fain Is Reviving That Old-Time Religion – Christian Radicalism: Mixing Bible verses with class-struggle rhetoric, Shawn Fain’s pro-labor Christianity has baffled some in the media. But the UAW leader stands in a rich tradition brimming with scripture-quoting union workers and labor prophets like Eugene Debs and MLK. Read more>>
‘Peace Is Only A Thought Away’ — What Neuroscience Tells Us About Nonviolence: Neuroanatomist and author Jill Bolte Taylor joins Nonviolence Radio to offer insights on the brain, nonviolence, the meaning of life and her latest book “Whole Brain Living.” Read more>>
This Is What Community Looks Like: I was new to Minnesota when I noticed so much of the community coming together after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. That fall, one of the ways I found that sense of togetherness and connection was through mutual safety work when I became a volunteer with Nonviolent Peaceforce during the elections. Later, I volunteered again with Nonviolent Peaceforce to cultivate safety in the community leading up to Derek Chauvin’s trial the following spring. It only felt right that when I was able to join Nonviolent Peaceforce as a staff member earlier this year, one of the first things I worked on was the annual George Floyd memorial events.” Read Kelly Mielke’s reflections on working with and in the community since joining Nonviolent Peaceforce as a Community Coalition Coordinator in Minneapolis, U.S. Read more>>
Take Action For Palestine! Here are groups and organizations with a long – and current – history of nonviolent resistance against apartheid and for a peace rooted in justice in Palestine and Israel. Learn more>>
Organize a #DefundMVP Bank Teach-In Action Near You: Following the passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the #StopMVP movement lost its legislative and judicial means of stopping the project. The movement is now focusing energy on building up its financial campaign to #DefundMVP, including by advocating for the top banks behind the project (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, PNC & BNP Paribas) to pull out. We need your support to share information with your community about the money behind this disastrous project in order to prepare for calls to action coming soon! Fill out this Google form if you want to host a solidarity action (An organizer will be in touch with resources to help you get plugged in). Read more>>
Tell Congress: Ceasefire in Gaza Now – Open a Pathway to Humanitarian Aid: Gaza, an open-air prison, under blockade and siege for 16 years, is at a breaking point. Medical personnel and aid workers are facing huge barriers to delivering desperately needed supplies to the over two million who are trapped there. Israel has cut off lifelines of electricity, water, and food and now Gaza is out of fuel. Call for a ceasefire now. We need a humanitarian corridor into Gaza to protect civilian lives. Read more>>
Foundations of Nonviolence with Ela Gandhi: Join Ela Gandhi for a four-week Zoom course exploring the foundations of nonviolence, including constructive program, cultivating a nonviolent approach to conflict resolution, reconciliation, restorative justice, and more. (Fridays in Nov) Read more>>
Stand With UAW For a Green New Deal: The United Auto Workers (UAW) is in a historic Stand Up Strike at General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis — collectively the ‘Big 3 Auto’ companies. At stake is not just the wages and benefits of thousands of union autoworkers, but the future of our Build Back Better agenda and a just transition to a Green New Deal. Read more>>
