Over the past few years, I have been working as a civil resistance trainer and educator in various parts of Pakistan including Azad and Jammu Kashmir. At times, my work to spread knowledge about civil resistance for human rights, peace, and democracy has brought me to cross red lines drawn by patriarchal principles in Pakistani society (and so many other places in the world). […]
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If we believe that peace, human rights and environmental justice have both cultural and economic value, then it behooves movement workers to address the mental health needs of activists committed to creating those ‘products.’ But that’s a long-term solution, and we are hurting now. How do we address pain now? […]
I recently had the good fortune of interviewing Jacques Semelin, an historian and political scientist who has notably studied civil resistance during Nazi and communist Europe. Speaking with him brings past and present together. It is as close as I can get to experiencing—over an hour-long conversation in Paris last August—how past nonviolent movements […]
The Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA) is on the frontlines of the nonviolent struggle against slavery and discrimination of oppressed groups in Mauritania — a country where an estimated 43,000 to 140,000 or more people remain […]
For more than a decade, I struggled not to be imprisoned for my nonviolent resistance against the Ethiopian government’s violence against the Oromo people. Inspirational events such as the Arab Spring Revolutions had convinced me that an activist should be brave enough to challenge the situation and show courage to make […]
When I sat down with Mohsen Sazegara, exiled dissident, journalist and writer from Iran, to talk about civil resistance in his origin country, I got an unexpected lesson in physics. A former student of mechanical engineering, Sazegara found a way to apply the conservation of energy principle to the longstanding democracy […]
There are often misconceptions about the country of Madagascar, thanks in no small part to the animated children’s movie. While my country is not home to talking lions and zebras, it is home to some 25 million people who just a few weeks ago celebrated the 57th anniversary of their country’s independence from […]
What sparked your interest in civil resistance? What does it mean for you in your life, and for the lives of others? And why does it matter for understanding the state of the world today? It would be impossible to answer these questions in one, or even a few blog posts. But as Minds of the Movement Co-Editor, my goal for this blog is to […]
When I got involved in the field of civil resistance in 2002, it was the beginning of an exponential growth curve. This fact was not immediately obvious. I worked as the assistant to Gene Sharp at the Albert Einstein Institution, a very small non-profit organization with an office in the basement of a building in Boston. We didn’t have […]
