FSI 2010 participant, Ashley Renders is a MA candidate in the Conflict Studies and Human Rights program at Utrecht University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Justice and Peace Studies and Political Science from the University of Western Ontario and is currently filling the position of Advocacy and Communications Officer at United Network of Young Peacebuilders. Her research interests include climate justice and the autonomous left, nonviolent revolution, and acts of civil disobedience as ideologically structured action. She is active in the climate justice movement primarily within the European network.

 

My interest in nonviolent struggle was first sparked “…by a study trip to El Salvador where I was deeply inspired as a young student by the mentality of resistance that was present in certain regions of the country. I was inspired by the idea that resistance comes in many forms – from daily practices in day-to-day life that subtly undermine structures of oppression, to full-blown civil wars that have lasting effects for many generations to come. The spectrum between violence and nonviolence has continued to fascinate me ever since. I am involved in nonviolent action in a literal sense when I am engaging in direct actions for climate justice. I am less visibly involved in nonviolent action when I am theorizing, strategizing, and organizing for mass direct action with groups active in the movement. My experience with nonviolent action has been in North America and Europe. I have worked in a conflict environment and learned that nonviolence is easily considered a luxury. I hope to take away from the Fletcher Summer Institute a wider understanding of what nonviolent conflict means to people in different parts of the world, and also how nonviolent actions taking place in North America and Europe are perceived by people in other parts of the world. After the Fletcher Summer Institute I would like to take what I have learned and explore in depth, the precarious relationship between the climate justice movement and nonviolence.”

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