เมื่อไม่นานมานี้ ปรากฏการณ์พลังประชาชนนำโดยเยาวชนเริ่มปรากฏขึ้นใหม่ในประเทศไทย แต่การประท้วงที่เพิ่งเริ่มต้นใหม่จะแปรเปลี่ยนเป็นขบวนการเคลื่อนไหวระดับประเทศได้หรือไม่นั้น ขึ้นอยู่กับยุทธศาสตร์ที่มีประสิทธิภาพ และวิสัยทัศน์ต่ออนาคตที่เป็นเอกภาพ แม้ว่าสถานการณ์การระบาดของเชื้อไวรัสโคโรนาไปทั่วโลกจะเป็นอุปสรรคใหม่ต่อขบวนการเคลื่อนไหว แต่เหล่านักศึกษาก็พยายามแสวงหาการประท้วงออนไลน์รูปแบบใหม่ๆ และรวมเอากิจกรรมด้านมนุษยธรรมเข้าไว้ในรายการกิจกรรมของพวกเขา เพื่อสร้างความสัมพันธ์อันดีกับชุมชน […]

Such a long period of lockdown, dominated by social distancing, fear of the virus spreading, and the omnipresence of state leaders in mainstream media all certainly represent challenges for movements. Holding demonstrations would present health risks and/or are outlawed, and alternative forms of protest do not draw as much media and public attention. Have movements disappeared? […]

You are not imagining things if you think recent anti-COVID-19-shutdown protests captured the news media’s attention with speed, regularity and intensity that many civil resistance campaigns can only envy. Several scholars and co-founders of a website that tracks news accounts of U.S. protests compared coverage of the anti-shutdown protests with that given to bona fide civil resistance actions such as last September’s nationwide climate strikes. As the researchers reported on Vox last week, the difference is stark. […]

On March 26, 2018, a suicide car bomb hit a stadium in Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand province in Afghanistan. The attack killed dozens of football fans who had gathered in the stadium to watch the game. A number of civilians who lost their dear ones in the attack sat in protest to criticize the attack. They erected protest tents in Lashkargah and observed a hunger strike. […]

“People worldwide are alert to the ramifications of COVID-19, and many are already organized and taking action to seize this crisis for the better. What remains to be seen is whether these fragmented efforts coalesce into collective power. Our ability to harness this power will determine whether we are able to leverage this pandemic in a way that transforms oppressive social, economic, and political systems. […]”

Governments worldwide are using the pandemic to tighten control and clamp down on dissent. Is this virus going to strengthen the autocrats’ grip on power? And what can we do now and in the future? Although I don’t have experience with epidemics (the smallpox outbreak, the last epidemic in Yugoslavia, happened a year before I was born), I do see some similarities between the current moment and the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, which came when our movement Otpor was just a few months old. […]

In Ecuador and Bolivia, the countries’ presidents were unable to complete their terms because of growing waves of civil resistance, but also one decisive factor in particular: military defections. This blog post analyzes military defections in a way that hopefully other civil resistance movements worldwide may distill some insights. […]

There is still much to do to consolidate democracy and civilian rule in Sudan. All the same, the toppling of al-Bashir and his military backers is an amazing accomplishment. It demonstrates that whatever the structural obstacles may be, building on internal strengths and external opportunities, embracing diversity and nonviolent discipline, and following through on what was started are important ingredients to movement success. […]