คุณเป็นเจ้าหน้าที่ทหารหรือตำรวจที่ถูกขอให้ไปควบคุม รวมถึงอาจให้ปิดฉากการประท้วงของประชาชน คุณถูกบอกมาว่าผู้ประท้วงกำลังคุกคามความปลอดภัยของสาธารณะและความมั่นคงของชาติ อย่างไรก็ตาม เมื่อคุณเผชิญหน้ากับพวกเขา สิ่งต่างๆ กลับไม่ชัดเจนนัก มีประชาชนหลายร้อยหรือหลายพันคนอยู่ที่การประท้วงและพวกเขาไม่ได้ใช้ความรุนแรงแต่อย่างใด […]

Though violent action can certainly have direct and immediate impacts, it is defined by destruction and harm. In contrast, human agency and creativity are unbounded by those limits. So when it comes to producing an anatomy of civil resistance, it truly takes a village… and the frontiers continue to expand. In that vein, I want to share some ideas—drawing from my personal and professional engagement as an artist, activist, movement trainer and organizer—about how to address potential gaps that persist in spite of Beer’s Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century. […]

La Boétie knew then, as do the Russians driving civil resistance in the cities and towns of Russia today, that the tyrant is one man. By himself he cannot do anything. Understand Putin’s sources of power and peel away the pillars of support that prop him up, and the man’s rule will collapse. Already we are seeing early signs of mass civilian-based noncooperation. Last week the entire staff at independent Russian TV station Dozhd walked out live on air while declaring “no to war” after being shut down over their coverage of the Ukrainian invasion. […]

One movement coach I interviewed traced the ideal path from grievance to funding to capacity building. Although many readers will already be in the thick of organizing and fundraising, I thought it would still be helpful to share this model as a way to ground our thinking around movement capacity building. In a perfect world, a group would navigate the following steps: 1) Make a grievance known in your community to help form a critical mass of participants (this can be as few as 5 or 10 people). Take necessary security measures. […]

Last year, I read Hardy Merriman’s blog posts about civil resistance training and activists’ common questions about training, and so much rang true to me. I am a fan of learning theories around movement support work and in-field tools and practices used by coaches and activists. Hardy’s posts inspired me to gather in-field experiences of movement coaches and share them with larger audiences. I asked the coaches: How do we find trainers and resource persons? And, how do we decide what kind of content the training participants will need? […]

“The global Indigenous women’s movement has not lost momentum. The formation in 2019 of the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice and Peace, gathering Indigenous women from seven socio-cultural indigenous zones of the world, is the latest form of organizing that has emerged. It shows the continuing strengthening of the movement that started over 30 years ago and that will no doubt continue its important work in the years to come. […]”

Compared to just a few years ago, Indigenous women’s search for women-led peace and security is now a brave new reality which will help deepen democracy in our communities and globally. After decades of almost exclusively grassroots, local organizing, Indigenous women-led struggles are gaining major international recognition for their causes. Thanks to what has become a true international movement, Indigenous women from Chile, Nicaragua, Kenya, Argentina, USA, Canada, Guatemala and many other countries are now regularly represented in international decision-making processes. […]

J’ai constaté que le milieu académique français (et plus largement le public français) porte peu d’intérêt et partagent une incompréhension générale de ce qu’est la lutte non-violente et de la manière dont elle façonne la politique. C’est “le paradoxe français” : les Français sont connus dans le monde entier pour leurs marches massives sur les places de la République et de la Bastille à Paris ; leurs grèves paralysantes de plusieurs semaines dans les transports publics ; leurs syndicats d’enseignants extrêmement actifs et puissants… et pourtant, la stratégie non-violente comme force politique est peu étudiée dans les universités. […]

What has surprised me most is not the movements themselves, but rather the discovery that most French political scientists (and the French public more broadly) share a general misunderstanding of what nonviolent struggle is and how it shapes politics. This is “the French paradox”: The French are known world-wide for our massive marches in Paris’ République and Bastille plazas; our crippling, weeks-long public transportation strikes; our extremely active and strong teacher unions… yet our academia don’t specifically study why nonviolent struggle is powerful. […]