Beyond raising public awareness of long-lived racial injustices, the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations had another salutary effect: They created an opportunity for journalists to dive deeper into social justice issues and grassroots movements. The story was simply too big to ignore and would not go away, requiring journalists to look for new angles and details to keep their reporting fresh and relevant. […]

In the spring of 2013, Turkish police made a public announcement at a metro station in Ankara warning passengers to “act in accordance with moral rules” after having spotted a couple engaging in a public display of affection. The admonishment backfired, and the next day, dozens of couples staged a “kissing protest” at the metro station. The incident went viral on social media, and a flood of photos and videos of couples kissing further flustered city police. […]

La pandemia de este año no ha impedido a la gente en América Latina agruparse y empujar por sus agendas de derechos, justicia y democracia. En algunos casos, el mal manejo o la inacción con relación al COVID-19 incluso provocó demostraciones masivas, como fue el caso de Brasil. Pero esta no es la única tendencia en términos de resistencia civil que se puede identificar en la región este año. Aunque la violencia permanece como el instrument a elegir por muchos grupos no estatales, por amplio margen, el estereotipo del guerrillero con un fusil como símbolo del luchador por la libertad, el cual ha plagado la conciencia colectiva de Latinoamérica por décadas,[…]

While movements initially have few resources, and nearly no cash, many thrive and often succeed in achieving their goals. How do they mobilize resources to achieve their objectives? What sort of strategies do they use to generate material resources needed in their campaigns? To answer these questions, we studied three movements from northwest Mexico. In all three cases, we found that the key to mobilizing material resources was that movement leaders focused on communicating powerful messages and building public trust, which encouraged volunteers to join them. […]

Those of us who study and practice civil resistance need to know that the Academy for Autocrats is also busy learning—in many cases, from us. We share our knowledge in the spirit of offering tools for nonviolent liberation to all, everywhere. There are strengths in our transparency and open approach, but autocrats also try to use this to their advantage, seeking to think several moves ahead of activists. […]

Training activists is now widely considered a foundational movement activity. But what about implementation? If you don’t yet have a movement, or your movement lacks the capacity to hold workshops, where and how do you start to apply this insight?

“In the face of rising authoritarianism, people worldwide are increasingly turning to civil resistance to fight for their rights. This is an empowering choice, but it can also feel overwhelming for those involved. When people who seek to build or maintain a movement, the first big question is often: Where and how should we start? […]”

English language terminology in the field of civil resistance is like a garden of wildflowers, shaped by sometimes competing forces. On the one hand, the garden reflects locally rooted ideas and cultures: vibrant, natural, and defying simple efforts to constrain it. It’s an outgrowth of various micro-climates. Over time, some flowers (key terms) get more sunlight than others. New flowers also emerge, brought in on the wind from elsewhere. The garden evolves, as does the soil from which it grows. […]

In the past two decades, autocracies have been on the rise and aspiring autocrats in democracies have been gaining in numbers and strength. The 2020 democracy report by the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute noted that by 2020, autocracies have formed a clear majority for the first time since the beginning of 2000, constituting 92 countries with 54% of the global population or 4.2 billion people. Furthermore, 35% of the world’s population, an additional 2.7 billion people, live today in countries that are experiencing a significant decline in their democracy index and that are often headed by elected anti-democratic demagogues. This is colloquially known as the third wave of authoritarianism, or “autocratization” […]