In 2016, James Hansen, revered NASA Goddard Space Center climatologist and official who announced publicly in 1988, “Global warming has arrived,” stood next to me outside a North Dakota courtroom. The trial of Michael Foster, one of the five climate activists who became known as Valve Turners, was happening on the other side of the door. […]
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Today, December 26, is a day of remembrance in Iran, observed by a moment of silence for the approximately 1,500 estimated to have been killed in the government crackdown on protesters since late November. During this moment, people will stop wherever they are—in the street, on the sidewalk, at restaurants. Their standstill is a low-risk, hard-to-repress nonviolent method designed to send a clear signal of dissent and disapproval to the Rouhani government. […]
For over a decade, ICNC grantee Ahouty Kouakou and his colleagues from two civil society groups have been engaged in a nonviolent struggle for disability rights in Côte d’Ivoire, a small Francophone country in West Africa. Parting with the bleak Parisian winter last December, I thawed out during a three-day site visit to the country’s economic capital, Abidjan […]
Since 2013, advocating boycotts on behalf of Palestinian rights has been illegal under Israeli law. Supporters and lobbyists for the Natanyahu government have also been working hard to pass similar laws in the United States. ICNC recently spoke about this criminalization of boycotts with Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh […]
King had never imagined himself as a prominent civil resistance leader in Montgomery, let alone the U.S. Yes, he had experienced racism, and hated it, but all black folks in the country had experienced racism and hated it. He had also read a bit of Gandhi and Marx at Boston University and written several thoughtful papers about social gospel movement theologians who challenged the Church to take up the fight for social justice. Yet, in December 1955, all these ideas were mostly academic concerns for King. […]
Given the scale, intensity, and compounding effects of climate change, it has never been more important to defend the environment. To make matters more urgent, resource conflicts are becoming increasingly deadly in the past couple of decades. This is why people refer to environmental activism nowadays as a “suicide mission,” especially in countries that emerge from colonialism with commodity-dependent economies and weak political institutions. […]
The Gnassingbé regime, a family dynasty that has been in power since the late 1960s, is doing everything it can to steer the struggle toward violence—which is precisely why it’s so important for activists on the ground to remain nonviolent. To resist violence itself. This is apparently no easy task. […]
While central Uganda was boycotting regime-friendly companies, staging industrial strikes and marching in the streets, I was trying to figure out how to help my neighbors resist a massive land grab by foreign companies. Unaware of one another at the time, we were simultaneously applying different forms of nonviolent resistance that Gene Sharp had taught us in his works. […]
Over the years, the Rev. Dr. James Lawson has amassed a treasury of nonviolent civil resistance methodologies, which, ever the teacher, he is eager to share, provided the listener appreciates the value of know-how. After all, he says, it takes more than a riled up spirit to build and sustain a movement; it takes study and planning too. […]
From humble beginnings three decades ago, Ekta Parishad (“unity forum” in Hindi), a pluralistic movement for defending rights of marginalized communities in India, has grown to become today one of the world’s most massive—and exemplary—nonviolent movements. Last fall, I met Ramesh Sharma, National Coordinator of Ekta Parishad, and came to realize the richness, depth, and intelligence of this movement. […]