What makes civil resistance movements effective? If funders and human rights organizations can identify key factors that answer this question, then their efforts can be oriented towards trying to support the development and growth of those factors. […]
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In an age of fake news, in which conspiracy theories proliferate and spin doctors try to turn public attention away from major problems, it is ever more difficult to determine when an injustice is going on. Understanding the five techniques that perpetrators use to reduce outrage provide guidance for opposing injustice—for each technique, there is a counter-technique. […]
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 […]
In 2018, ICNC’s Minds of the Movement blog is rolling out a thematic series exploring important digital security questions that activists, organizers, and other practitioners often encounter in their civil resistance work. Not sure what encryption is or why it’s important to know about? Undecided about whether you should use Facebook to organize nonviolent actions? In need of a good starting point for understanding the digital security risks you and your nonviolent movement may face? Read on to learn more, and check back soon for additional posts in this series.
Imagine this scenario: A civil resistance campaign emerges in your country. You agree with the goals of the resistance, but you are not the one facing oppression. In fact, in many ways you are complicit in upholding the regime of oppression. What do you do? How can you help the resistance campaign? […]
If the police came and took your computer, would they be able to read all your documents and gain access to your activist contacts? If you’re using the public WiFi in a coffee shop, can someone else read the email you’re writing to organize your next nonviolent action? […]
Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, had not witnessed mobilization on this scale since 2012. In May-June 2018, thousands of people joined together on the streets to support Zaza Saralidze, father of a 14-year-old boy who had been murdered in a street fight. […]
The United States did not begin through the muzzle of a musket against British King George III. Our country was born through persistent nonviolent resistance of tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of residents of the American colonies. […]
In the one year—to the day—that the Minds of the Movement blog has been in operation, much has changed in the world. Although newspapers and schoolbooks will likely remember the wars and violence that sketched the contours of history during this blink of an eye, our blog readers know there are other processes of change that have promise to deliver greater rights and justice in our world. […]
From American colonists nonviolently resisting British rule (1765-1775), to the Indian Independence Movement (1920s-1940s), to the Solidarity movement in Poland (1980-89), it is well known that movements engaged in extensive alternative institution-building. Forty-five years after pioneering scholar Gene Sharp’s 198 methods of nonviolent action […]