Will #GotaGoHome activists be able to sustain the movement beyond this initial protest phase? It will depend on many factors, but laying out a clear vision for a better, and achievable, economic model for Sri Lanka, a better institutional set-up, and more democratic organizational structures will be crucial. So many nonviolent movements before them have fallen short of this key step in driving a country in political transition down the road to democracy—not democratic backsliding. […]

У моїй першій публікації я поділилась надихаючими розповідями про немілітарний цивільний захист музеїв в охопленій війною Україні. Я також аналізувала міжнародний заклик українських митців бойкотувати російські об’єкти культури та наближених до Путіна митців. У цьому дописі я детально розповім про те, що в інших публікаціях називала «документальним спротивом», спираючись на нещодавнє інтерв’ю з українською культурною діячкою Ольгою Сагайдак. […]

Я познайомилась з Ольгою Сагайдак в травні поточного року в Українському культурному центрі в Парижі. У великій вітальні, де я проводила наше інтерв’ю, стіни від підлоги до стелі були вкриті приголомшливими фотографіями воєнних руйнувань та вуличним мистецтвом на знак протесту проти вторгнення путіна в Україну 2022 року. У мене всередині защемило, коли, нахилившись, щоб ближче розглянути один антивоєнний малюнок, я зрозуміла, що його намалювала рука української дитини. […]

Facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, I find it truly courageous that the Ukrainian art world is taking bold actions to preserve their country’s immense cultural heritage, both in-country and from afar. After all, as Olga aptly puts it, “This war is a war of cultures”. Putin’s only language is violence; Ukrainians have been fluent in the language of nonviolent resistance for decades. By putting culture in a key position of the anti-occupation struggle, Ukrainians can and are nudging the conflict to where they can have a battlefield advantage.. […]

I met Olga Sagaidak last May at the Ukrainian Cultural Center here in Paris, France. In the large drawing room where I conducted our interview, the walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with jaw-dropping photography of war destruction and street art protesting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. My stomach knotted when, leaning forward for a closer glimpse of one anti-war drawing, I realized it had in fact been sketched by the hand of a Ukrainian child. […]

As Covid emerged in 2020 and altered our lifestyles, some of us who offer nonviolent movement trainings in the United States became aware of the anti-Covid vaccine, anti-health mask campaign launched across the Canadian border, in Ottawa. The campaign spread somewhat to the U.S. North, notably resulting in a trucker blockade in February 2022 at the Ambassador bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario with Detroit, Michigan. The phenomenon left many of us trainers asking many thorny questions about ethics. […]

“I participated regularly in Fridays for Future marches to fight climate change during my high school years. At the beginning, in the winter of 2018-19, my entire high school here in France went into a climate change frenzy. But after a few weeks the enthusiasm had died down, and even the most outspoken students on social media suddenly seemed much less engaged. According to the Fridays for Future website, this rapid drop in participation was not unique to the French context. […]”

အယ်ဒီတာ၏မှတ်ချက်။ ။ အောက်တွင်ဖော်ပြထားသောအကြောင်းအရာများသည် ၂၀၂၁ခုနှစ် ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလတွင်အာဏာသိမ်းမှုပေါ်ပေါက်ခဲ့ပြီးနောက် ဆန့်ကျင်သည့်ဆန္ဒပြပွဲများကို ရက်စက်စွာဖြိုခွင်းခဲ့ပြီးသည့်နောက် မြန်မာပြည်မှာထွက်ပြေးလွတ်မြောက်လာသော ဒီမိုကရေစီလိုလားသူ ဆန္ဒပြခေါင်းဆောင်သည် ICNCနှင့်အတူ မျှဝေထားသော ကိုယ်ရေးကိုယ်တာ ဇာတ်ကြောင်းတစ်ခုဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ထိုဆန္ဒပြခေါင်းဆောင်၏မှတ်တမ်းသည် တပ်မတော်၏ လက်၀ယ်တွင်ဖြစ်ပွားခဲ့သော ပြည်တွင်းစစ်နှင့် ရက်စက်ကြမ်းကြုတ်မှုများ ဖိနှိပ်မှုများကြောင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ ဆယ်စုနှစ်များစွာကြာ ပေါ်ပေါက်ခဲ့သော ဒီမိုကရေစီရရှိရေးတိုက်ပွဲများ၏တပ်ဦးမှဆင်းသက်လာခဲ့ခြင်းဖြစ်ပါသည်။ […]

The following is a personal narrative shared with ICNC by a pro-democracy organizer who fled Myanmar following the brutal crackdown of anti-coup protests in February 2021. His account comes from the frontlines of the country’s decades-long struggle for democracy, which has been punctuated by civil war and brutal repression at the hands of the Tatmadaw. Our contact shares his personal experience with repression but also a message of resilience and solidarity that hopefully resonates with activists living under harsh dictatorships worldwide.