Editor’s Note by Rivera Sun We’re always told that nonviolence won’t work. We’re supposed to believe that more – and greater – violence is the only option. The strange thing is: that doesn’t always hold true. This week’s Nonviolence News contains remarkable stories that upend that kind of thinking. In Idaho (US), a sixth grade…
Tag: fossil fuels
Tackling Giants: Halting Coups, Big Oil, and Amazon
Editor’s Note From Rivera Sun It’s been a week of David and Goliath struggles with “little guys” around the world standing up to horrible regimes and destructive corporations. Haiti and Myanmar’s resistance to coups has been gaining international attention, but major struggles are also happening in Algeria (against austerity), First Nations in Canada (against fossil…
Nonviolence News Special Report On 2020 Earth & Climate Wins
Editor’s Note From Rivera Sun Even with the intensity of this year, we have much to celebrate – such as the 70 wins for Earth and climate justice. It’s easy to loose track of how many major pipelines we’ve stopped (at least 6), how many faith groups have divested (128 or so), and that we…
Not My President. No Es Mi Presidente.
Editor’s Note from Rivera Sun Dictators, despots, power-grabbers, presidents-for-life . . . autocrats around the world are being challenged by nonviolent movements. This week’s edition shares the many tales of presidents and protests. In Peru, mass protests forced the interim president to resign after a shady parliamentary coup shoved the previous president out of power….
From Blockades To Embroidery
Editor’s Note Moving beyond protests, people around the world are using nonviolent acts of noncooperation and intervention to strive for change. From blockades to embroidery, they’re using dozens of tactics. In Bolivia, 140 road blockades are shutting down the nation to stop the delays in their elections. Arizona schoolteachers, worried about unsafe school re-openings amidst the…
Election Uprisings
Editor’s Note Election uprisings are in the air. Mass protests in Belarus are decrying the elections results that claim Lukashenko won his sixth term with 80% of the vote while Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the opposition candidate, was forced into hiding for fear of her safety. With police crackdowns, arrests of journalists, and repression of protests rocking…
Safe Schools, Healthy Kids, Ending Racism: Public Health As Nonviolence
Editor’s Note Public health is nonviolence in action. It’s a collection of policies and practices rooted in systemic and structural nonviolence as opposed to “systemic and structural violence“. For example, in a bid to stop obesity and diabetes, Oaxaca, Mexico, just banned the sale of junk food and sugary drinks to minors. It’s a stunning…
Got Dictators? Never Fear, Nonviolence Is Here
Editor’s Note: The United States is going through some growing pains. (Understatement of the year.) With secret police snatching protesters off the street, journalists being arrested for doing their jobs, and the Portland mayor being simultaneously tear gassed by federal agents and booed by his constituency (for doing the same thing to the protesters the…
When We Organize, We Win
Editor’s Note: This week, three major fossil fuel pipelines were stalled, stopped, and shut down: the KXL, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and the Dakota Access Pipeline. This is a testimony to the millions of people who stood up at Standing Rock, in Nebraska, and along the many thousands of miles impacted by these pipelines. It…
Giant Murals, Banner Blockades, Street Dances, and More
Editor’s Note from Rivera Sun The pandemic has shape-shifted activism, but it hasn’t stopped it. In our opening image (above), these activists blocked four streets in downtown San Francisco while they painted a giant mural (side image – and notice how small the people are!) of a hot air balloon that was visible from the skyrise…