Image: Remix by Nonviolence News of photo by Panggih Septa Perwira on Pixabay
Editor’s Note From Rivera Sun
After 130 days of turmoil, Elon Musk has exited his role as a ‘special government employee’. His rampage through the federal government, controversial takeovers, and widespread funding cuts have failed to achieve the stated goal of reducing the federal deficit (which will increase under the new spending bill) or increasing efficiency. DOGE faces serious legal challenges as a federal judge indefinitely halted Trump’s reorganization efforts, saying “agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a President may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress.”
Thanks to citizen-led campaigns, Elon Musk’s business empire has suffered – SpaceX, Tesla, Starlink and X have lost sales, stock value, customers, contracts, and seen their reputations nosedive. Notably, Musk mentioned that he also plans to do less political spending, a win for everyone who opposes oligarchy and billionaire-influence in politics. (Perhaps the failure of his shockingly blatant attempt to buy votes to elect a federal judge has made him rethink his meddling.) Elon Musk’s ignominious departure contains some important achievements for people-powered movements, including successfully thwarting the constant attempts to peddle misinformation about DOGE’s ‘successes’, staving off his illegal takeovers of USIP, Library of Congress, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and GOA; reinstating climate data and funding for health research; protecting and redisplaying Black history and women’s history exhibits; and reinstating some workers at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, National Parks Service, USDA, Center For Disease Control, and other agencies. These are just some of the many achievements by organized labor, legal coalitions, and citizen action. Although Musk has left a swath of destruction in his wake, the pushback has fired warning shots over the bow of billionaire rule. Ordinary people have demonstrated their ability to make even a president-backed billionaire face repercussions for destructive policies and behaviors.
Consumer boycotts are becoming a force in US society, especially around DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) issues. As Target’s sales fall due to TargetFast’s pressure campaign to restore racial justice initiatives, major companies like Walmart and Home Depot are warning shareholders about the risk of boycotts from both the right and the left, as well as impacts from Trump’s anti-DEI, anti-climate policies. These trends are important in the long-term effort to rein in billionaire rule and oligarchy. Nonviolent action in the hands of the populace is the rarely acknowledged fourth part of the system of checks and balances. When presidents abuse power, when legislatures don’t act, when the courts make immoral rulings … the people’s willingness to say no is the last line of defense. Because of this, it’s important to defend and expand the right to protest, organize, boycott, speak out, and engage in civil disobedience. A couple weeks ago, we reported on how UK activists won back important protest rights; this week, activists in a suburb outside Atlanta are breathing a sigh of relief that a draconian law requiring protesters to get the consent of anyone within 8ft has now been repealed. These victories are important for all of our movements, as they lay the groundwork within which our ability to organize is weakened or strengthened.
In more US resistance news, a federal judge blocked Trump’s ‘Liberation Day‘ tariffs only to see an appeals court reinstate them while court proceedings continue. At the US Naval Academy, most of the 400 banned books are now back on the shelves following public outcry. The educator at the heart of the Everyone Is Welcome Here campaign is switching schools – and taking her iconic banner with her. The strategic campaign against Avelo Airlines, the company that is conducting deportation flights to El Salvador, is undermining a multitude of pillars of support the airline requires, targeting everything from fuel subsidies to penalties to public image. This multi-pronged approach is powerful and something we can all learn from.
Last week marked the 5-year anniversary of the 2020 George Floyd Protests. In Minneapolis, an effort to commemorate him inched forward as the city council overturned the mayor’s opposition to a study to turn the site of his murder into a memorial park, an idea supported by Floyd’s family. In Milwaukee, Seattle, and Austin, several initiatives to defund police departments and invest in social services have been making some headway since the 2020 George Floyd Protests. Four times each year, a Brooklyn neighborhood holds a cop-free week in which community responders handle 911 and 311 calls – and the reports indicate that their programs have led to a marked drop in shootings during those periods. On a larger scale, a new book called No Cop City, No Cop World makes the case for police abolition and demilitarization, chronicling campaigns like Stop Cop City in Atlanta.
In international Nonviolence News, South Korea’s recent and stunningly successful mass movement to impeach, convict, and remove their president for trying to steal power through martial law has had a powerful secondary effect: a new generation of young people are continuing to organize for diversity, equality, and democracy. Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s new government, headed by formerly-exiled President Yunis, faces its first significant challenge to its progressive policies: Islamist religious leaders organized a 20,000-person protest opposing the Women Affairs Reforms Commission, which works on women’s rights and equality. In New Zealand, women across the country held protests after the government cancelled a law for pay equity claims. Pay equity claims are designed to raise wages in female-dominated industries; implementing them would have impacted 150,000 working women.
Tens of thousands of schoolteachers are on strike in Mexico. In India, Samsung workers who waged a 38-day strike won significant wage increases for all the workers. Women in Puttaparthi, India, held protests against water shortages. In Pakistan, Baloch women continue to rise up against forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. They’re being labeled terrorists and imprisoned, but they’re not stopping. In the Gambia, a 10-day peace caravan worked to diffuse rising tribal tensions. Other peace groups took action to oppose the weapons industry at weapons exhibition in Tokyo, the militarization of space at the Space Summit in Australia, and military recruitment at a Seattle high school. In the United Kingdom, the major water treatment company for England and Wales has been raking in the profits while dumping raw sewage into the rivers. A citizen-led campaign has resulted in the water regulators imposing £123m fines on the owners and shareholders (not customers). The environment secretary warned them that ‘era of profiting from failure is over.’
Spain is placing an arms embargo on Israel, fast-tracking the process in the face of the severe humanitarian crisis and genocide. From the United Kingdom to the United States, and also in Qatar, students are defying penalization and arrest to speak out for Palestine at their graduation ceremonies. A vigil at Harvard University read aloud the names of the Gazan children killed in the past 600 days of Israeli bombing; it took 24 hours to speak the 12,000 names. Thousands of protesters demonstrated in Paris, Berlin, and Stockholm, calling for the governments to intervene in the Gaza Genocide.
If you take a stroll (or a scroll) through the Nonviolence News Research Archive, you’ll find intriguing stories to learn from, including why ‘yell and tell‘ doesn’t change people, 11 unlikely lessons for artist-activists, and how we organize through exhaustion, grief, and anxiety. There’s also a historic look at a 1960s anti-poverty campaign and how Black baseball players used wildcat strikes to score a double victory against segregation and fascism in the 1940s. And a pair of pop culture articles go beyond Hollywood’s violence to analyze resistance lessons for these times in hit series like Star Wars’ Andor and Handmaid’s Tale.
Explore the 62 stories this week in our Nonviolence News Research Archive>>
A favorite story? In Boston, a local resident spotted armed men without insignias or identification swarming his neighborhood. So he did what you’re ‘supposed’ to do in that situation: he called the police. When they showed up, the unidentified men – who turned out to be ICE agents – hastily departed. If we’re going to have police departments, we might as well use them to deal with the gun-wielding gang in masks that are snatching people off the streets, right?
In solidarity,
Rivera Sun
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