-
What's New
LISTEN: Interview with ICNC President & CEO Hardy Merriman
Radio hosts Jim Johnson and Jamie McMillin recently interviewed ICNC President and CEO Hardy Merriman about civil resistance, current events, international support to nonviolent movements, training, and other topics in two wide-ranging interviews on their “Solutions to Violence” radio show.
Listen to interview 1 (starts at 2:44):
Listen to interview 2 (starts at 3:03)The program is a feature of FORward Radio, a community-based station sponsored by the Louisville Chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). It airs thrice weekly on WFMP-FM 106.5 in Louisville, Kentucky.
-
Violent Protests? Agents Provocateurs? ICNC has Information, Insight
Ongoing mass demonstrations protesting the alleged murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police have raised anew old questions and concerns about what happens when violence enters the mix and about infiltration by persons or groups intent on sabotaging the movement or campaign – agents provocateurs.
ICNC’s Resource Library and “Minds of the Movement” blog are treasuries of information on these topics. Here are a few examples we recommend in light of recent events:
• Blog: Property Damage, Violence, Nonviolent Action and Strategy. A new posting by veteran civil resistance activist, educator and peace activist Tom Hastings.
• Blog: Marketing Violence: A Closer Look at the ‘Diversity of Tactics’ Slogan. Popular posting by Steve Chase, ICNC’s Manager of Academic Initiatives, a longtime activist, and former professor.
• Article: How The World is Proving Martin Luther King Rights about Nonviolence by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, explaining key statistical findings about the effectiveness of civil resistance campaigns.
• Booklet: Backfire Manual: Tactics Against Injustice by Brian Martin, outlines a five step process that activists can take to cause repression to backfire.
• Blog: Let’s Get Real! Facing Up to the Agent Provocateur Problem. Insightful blog post by ICNC’s Steve Chase.
• Abstract: Agents Provocateur, Violent Flanks, and Nonviolent Movements: A Historical and Strategic Perspective. A preview of a forthcoming addition to ICNC’s Monograph Series by Tom Hastings, Adam Vogel and Steve Chase.
-
ICNC Interviews
Brahim Bilal Ramdhane
Brahim Bilal Ramdhane was born into slavery in Mauritania and spent 20 years in forced labor. Today, he is the Vice President of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA), an organization that works to eradicate slavery in Mauritania.
In 2014, IRA launched a Freedom Caravan, traveling throughout Mauritania to raise awareness about new laws, encouraging debates and breaking the silence about slavery.
Watch more interviews! -
New Blog Post
Minds of the Movement authors Gregory François and Jean Sonel Basquin write:
On August 14, 2018, Gilbert Mirambeau, a Haitian-Canadian man in his early 30s tweeted a photo of himself blindfolded, holding a sign that said in Haitian Créole: “Kot Kob Petwo Caribe A???” (“Where is the PétroCaribe money???”). The PétroCaribe program was supposed to put money towards development, but those funds went missing, and Mirambeau’s post triggered a nonviolent movement against corruption in Haiti, a country ranked 161st out of 180 countries in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index.
The resulting #PétroCaribeChallenge campaign has been a central feature of Haiti’s anti-corruption movement, still ongoing today […]
Read more!
-
For Activists & Organizers
ICNC provides practical, relevant information and educational opportunities about civil resistance to activists and organizers around the world.
Our view is that nonviolent struggle is a social science that can be studied and understood. Practitioners can increase their chances of success by learning lessons from each other as well as from cutting edge academic scholarship on this topic.
Learn More -
New from ICNC Press
The Path of Most Resistance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning Nonviolent Campaigns by Ivan Marovic, is a practical guide for activists and organizers of all levels, who wish to grow their resistance activities into a more strategic, fixed-term campaign. It guides readers through the campaign planning process, breaking it down into several steps and providing tools and exercises for each step. Upon finishing the book, readers will have what they need to guide their peers through the process of planning a campaign. This process, as laid out in the guide, is estimated to take about 12 hours from start to finish.It is available for purchase or free download in English, Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese (Brazilian).
Learn More -
Visit our full resource library to find hundreds of resources on civil resistance in English and over 70 languages.
Or, if you are interested in civil resistance and don’t know where to start, we’ve made a list of general introductory resources–many of them short articles–to introduce you to the field. See our list of ten key resources for activists and organizers.
Visit the Resource Library -
ICNC Translations Program
Translating civil resistance literature into diverse languages is one of the most powerful ways to spread knowledge and increase the effectiveness of nonviolent movements struggling for rights, freedom, and justice. Learn more about our translations program.
We also currently host resources on civil resistance in over 70 languages and dialects on our website.
Find Translated Resources
-
For Scholars & Students
The discipline of civil resistance has developed enormously in recent years, driven by new quantitative and qualitative scholarly research, as well as by numerous nonviolent movements around the world.
ICNC runs a number of grant-supported academic and educational programs to meet the growing demand for cutting edge research, applied knowledge and practical skills in this field. Look at our research, writing, teaching and other educational offerings and review current calls for proposals or applications.
Learn More -
Academic Online Curriculum
ICNC’s Academic Online Curriculum on Civil Resistance (AOC) is an online resource to advance curriculum development, teaching, and research on civil resistance. It offers an extensive and regularly updated set of resources in this field, organized into clearly structured topics and case studies, and drawn in part from content that we and various academic collaborators developed for the ICNC university seminars we’ve led since 2009.Anyone can register to use the AOC at any time and it is free to use.
Topics on the AOC include:
– Civil Resistance: Nature, Ideas and History
– Strategic Considerations in Civil Resistance Struggles
– Types of Civil Resistance StrugglesAnd more!
Register now! -
Calls from ICNC Academic Initiatives
Throughout the year, ICNC is offering a number of academic opportunities, resources, and support that it makes available to scholars and students. The field of civil resistance has grown immensely and these academic programs aim to respond to the growing demand for knowledge and skills and contribute to expanding the quality of education, research, and curriculum related to civil resistance. This page includes the current and past calls for the ICNC’s educational and research programs, such as learning opportunities, curriculum support, and research grants.One of our calls, the Rapid Field Research and Data Collection Program, accepts applications on a rolling basis and interested applicants can apply for the program throughout the year.
Learn More -
New from ICNC Press:
Preventing Mass Atrocities: From a Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) to a Right to Assist (RtoA) Campaigns of Civil Resistance
by Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman
Available in: English, Arabic, and SpanishEvents of the last decade demand new approaches to atrocity prevention that are adaptable, innovative and independent of a state-centered doctrine. With the aim of reducing risk factors such as civil war, we argue for a new normative framework called The Right to Assist (RtoA)….
See ICNC Press Publications
-
For the Policy Community
Civil resistance movements have a proven role in advancing human rights, democratic governance, and curtailing corruption. They are a critical factor in addressing root causes of human suffering and reducing deadly violence in the world.
It is incumbent for members of the policy community who care about these issues to understand how movements work; their historic record of making change; and when, how, and under what circumstances external actors can take actions that are helpful to movements.
Learn More -
New From ICNC Press:
Preventing Mass Atrocities: From a Responsbility to Protect (RtoP) to a Right to Assist (RtoA) Campaigns of Civil Resistance
by Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman
Available in: English, Arabic, and SpanishEvents of the last decade demand new approaches to atrocity prevention that are adaptable, innovative and independent of a state-centered doctrine. With the aim of reducing risk factors such as civil war, we argue for a new normative framework called The Right to Assist (RtoA)….
Read More -
Powering to Peace: Integrated Civil Resistance and Peacebuilding Strategies
by Veronique Dudouet
Learn More
This report explores the complementary ideas and practices that civil resistance and peacebuilding approaches present, each from different points along the conflict transformation spectrum. Both strategies oppose violence in all its forms, and seek to pursue just peace by peaceful means. However, they take different approaches to conflict transformation, in particular how they analyze primary causes of violence and how they respond to conflict. Drawing on a number of case studies, this report aims to help practitioners and scholars understand how integrating these strategies can help establish a path for “powering to peace.” -
A Movement-centered Support Model: Consideration for Human Rights Funders and Organizations
ICNC President Hardy Merriman writes: “What makes civil resistance movements effective? If funders and human rights organizations can identify key factors that answer this question, then their efforts can be oriented towards trying to support the development and growth of those factors. […]”
Learn More
-
Minds of the Movement Blog
Minds of the Movement is a blog for those interested in the ideas and experiences of people on the front line of civil resistance, and those who seek to understand the art and science of nonviolent struggle.
Learn More -
New post
Haitian activists Gregory François and Jean Sonel Basquin write: “On August 14, 2018, Gilbert Mirambeau, a Haitian-Canadian man in his early 30s tweeted a photo of himself blindfolded, holding a sign that said in Haitian Créole: “Kot Kob Petwo Caribe A???” (“Where is the PétroCaribe money???”). The PétroCaribe program was supposed to put money towards development, but those funds went missing, and Mirambeau’s post triggered a nonviolent movement against corruption in Haiti […]”
Read now! -
ICNC’s Deborah Mathis writes: “There is no denying the drama of the worldwide mass demonstrations against systemic racism generally, discriminatory policing particularly, and George Floyd’s murder specifically. For weeks and weeks, it has unfolded in both predictable and surprising ways. In my experience, honed from decades in the news media, newsrooms begin to lose interest in such phenomena after about two weeks. […]”
Read now! -
Activist-scholar Tom Hastings writes for Minds of the Movement: “The opinions about property damage during protests are all over the map. Please entertain mine for a minute, as I’ve been thinking a lot about this since the 1960s, when my friends destroyed Selective Service files to interfere with the draft for the preposterous Vietnam war. I thought about property destruction harder when some of my mentors hammered on nuclear weapons in symbolic disarmament. I followed their footsteps and reflected on it while incarcerated for these sorts of acts. […]”
Read now!