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Editor’s Note From Rivera Sun
As you might expect, we have a lot of nonviolent action to report around the US’ political crisis. So, let’s start with celebrating something entirely different: a hard won, little-known success in Canada. A community-based organizing effort has prevented an airport from being built in their backyards for 50 years. Now, they’ve finally succeeded in putting the last nail in the project’s coffin. It’s a good reminder that every delay counts at this pivotal time in human history. (Especially if you’re campaigning against fossil fuels, pipelines, airports, gas export terminals.) If the struggle seems huge and overwhelming, if success seems a long way off, take this Canadian community’s lesson to heart: each day of delay is a victory.
In Nonviolence News across the globe, Colombia’s deforestation rates are the lowest they’ve been in decades, a Singapore activist who held a series of candlelight vigils for death row inmates is facing charges, and a movement of garment workers across the Global South is forming to take on Nike’s labor abuses. Germany held massive demonstrations against right wing extremism in multiple cities with 250,000 protesting in Munich. Teachers in Algeria are on strike over low salaries and poor conditions. Thousands of high school and university students in Greece blocked roads in protest of government inaction on the 2023 railway disaster that killed 57 people. Are they gaining inspiration from Serbia’s similar youth uprising against disasters caused by corruption? Or vice versa? There were also hundreds of students in Bosnia protesting government inaction after the deadly floods last October.
Speaking of students, there have been numerous walkouts by high schools students over Trump’s migrant deportations, including in Bakersfield, Sacramento, Redwood City, CA; Middle school students at a military base in Germany also walked out in protest of Pentagon moves to shut down school diversity programs. A Chicago elementary school also denied ICE agents entry or access to students and Allentown, PA, adopted a noncooperation policy with ICE. Protesters of all ages took action for migrant rights in Salt Lake City, UT; New York City, NY; and Milwaukee, WI.
The Super Bowl – with its supersized media platform – delivered plenty of protest. Hecklers called Trump a traitor as he walked onto the field for a pre-game photo op, possibly leading him to leave the game before halftime. He missed Kendrick Lamar’s performance of Not Like Us, which became the most-watched halftime act in Super Bowl history with 133.5 million views. The choreography, lyrics, and delivery unleashed a nationwide conversation about disguised or coded messages in song with explainers like this and posts contextualizing it alongside the hidden directions to freedom in the anti-slavery, African-American folksong Follow the Drinking Gourd. But the most unexpected hero of the Super Bowl was Lamar’s dancer who bravely unfurled an illicit flag for Sudan and Palestine in protest of war and genocide. He was tackled by security, but was released without charges.
In wider resistance to the Trump Administration, Pope Francis also wrote a sweeping letter to the U.S. bishops denouncing the crisis caused by Trump’s mass deportation plans and denouncing Vice President JD Vance’s use of Catholic theology to justify the crackdown. Canadians are cancelling tourist trips to the US after the threat of high tariffs and the insulting remarks about making Canada the 51st state. Thousands of Danes, angered over Trump’s threats to buy or takeover Greenland, signed a satirical petition to buy California. (There’s an unbelievable US House of Representatives bill to acquire Greenland and call it Red, White & Blueland, btw. No joke.) South Africa suspended US businesses in the country in the ongoing diplomatic row over Elon Musk’s racism and Trump’s sanctions over returning apartheid-era white-held land to Black South Africans. Germans are refusing to buy Teslas, causing sales to drop 60% this month. And, if Elon Musk had thrown that Inauguration Day Nazi salute in Australia, he’d be in jail, thanks to their new anti-hate laws.
What’s in a name? A lot, it turns out. Trump might have made a decree to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, but Encyclopedia Britannica is refusing to comply. After Google changed their maps (in the US, but not to viewers in the rest of the world), users are reporting the ‘mistake’. They’re also changing their search engine to Duck Duck Go in protest. In an interesting break across party lines, Alaskan legislators overwhelmingly supported a resolution telling Trump to halt his plans to change the name of the continent’s largest mountain from Denali back to Mount McKinley. Turns out that Alaska believes in the slogan #IStandWithDenali.
There is so much protest and resistance going on in the US, I literally can’t keep up. (This is a good problem to have.) I collected 91 stories this week – far more than I can mention in this article. You’ll want to visit our Nonviolence News Research Archive to explore them all. You’ll also find useful links to actions you can join, such as the Stand Up For Science Rallies on March 7, a petition telling Congress to reject the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, a March For Future Generations against fossil fuel terminals in Houston, TX on March 9, a toolkit for doing Rush Hour Resistance on highway overpasses, and Choose Democracy’s many answers to the important question of What Can I Do?
In the Nonviolence News Research Archive this week, you’ll also find a Special Collection focused on social media posts from federal agencies like the EPA, Bureau of Land Management, NOAA, NASA who are being told by the Trump Administration to stop honoring Black History Month, speaking out about climate issues, and uplifting women. Responses have ranged from outright defiance – like the Bureau of Land Management defiantly posting about women scientists on the International Day of Women & Girls In Science – to NASA’s subtle protest post of the moon, a widely-recognized symbol of women and feminism, on the same day. On Lincoln’s birthday, unable to honor Black History Month and perhaps under pressure not to talk about DEIA-related themes, EPA Water posted about Abe Lincoln providing the model for the National Parks – perhaps a call-out to the Alt National Park Service’s bold resistance leadership.
This Special Collection focused on these forms of disguised or subtle resistance is part of what makes Nonviolence News a must-read. Nonviolence comes in hundreds of forms, and resistance can be subtle or contextual. We help illuminate what’s going on so we can all see the ways people like us are standing up to injustice together. If you appreciate this, support us! It takes time to track down all those federal agency websites and spot the resistance posts – although I will confess: it’s a lot of fun. Donate here>>
Here’s a treat: thanks to our Nonviolence News efforts to scours the internet, news journals, and social media looking for stories of creative nonviolence, we were able to write a highly popular article for Waging Nonviolence about the numerous ways that people are overloading systems, flooding ‘snitch lines’, and submitting humorous and mocking applications to DOGE. Thousands of people have read this article, prompting many to join in the actions we reported on. It’s a good example of how your support for Nonviolence News unleashes a powerful ripple effect in our world.
In solidarity,
Rivera Sun
