Minds of the Movement

An ICNC blog on the people and power of civil resistance

News, Insights, Thoughts

Articles

How Can Civil Resistance/Social Work Integration Enhance Social Change?

Building a two-way street between civil resistance and social work could have many benefits on individual, interpersonal, and societal levels. What could those benefits look like? Perhaps social workers could be helping clients connect with local groups doing work around issues impacting clients’ lives. […]

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Movement Commentary

Venezuela’s National Conflict Platform: Building Unity to Challenge Oppression

“One year ago, the Venezuelan people were disheartened and apathetic. Since then, we have built the foundations of a broad-based opposition to the regime—and one with a powerful, peaceful, and organized agenda for pushing for change. […]”

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Movement Commentary

How Can Movements Bounce Back from a Harmful Media Narrative?

Last month, Kenyan media undermined a nonviolent movement against extrajudicial killings by propagating a harmful news story involving an activist. The media attack forced the movement to deal with humiliation, shame, and social polarization, instead of focusing on its struggle for justice. But the movement is now picking up the pieces and finding ways to bounce back from the attack. […]

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Scholarship & Research

Defection as Therapy? A Closer Look at the Trauma of Repressing

Would suffering from Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress (PITS) symptoms make agents of repression more likely to defect, or less? Do those suffering from PITS find defection to be a good therapy, and if so, is there a way of using this knowledge to encourage defections? […]

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Ideas & Trends

Protest is Not Enough: Nonviolent Struggles against Corruption in Nigeria and Romania

Anti-corruption movements, campaigns, and civic initiatives have become a familiar phenomenon in civil resistance and reform-oriented uprisings in many countries, particularly in the Global South. But what specific tactics and broader approach can people utilize to turn an anti-corruption movement into real change?

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Ideas & Trends

How Online Courses on Civil Resistance Can Make Real Impact

With the growth of online courses on civil resistance comes the challenge of measuring and assessing their impact. To this end, ICNC developed and conducts different surveys to evaluate its online courses that may serve as a useful template to others. This blog post shares the instruments we use to measure the impact of online education and the real changes we can discern from this work.

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Ideas & Trends

Five Tips for Building an Organization that Supports Movements

Since 2012, Solidarity Uganda has grown from a local volunteer collective in a remote farming community to an international network supporting grassroots resistance movements in over 70 countries. I hope the below tips—derived from Solidarity Uganda’s victories and shortcomings—can assist those walking similar paths, and help progressive funders understand what to look for in movement-minded organizations. […]

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Interviews & People

Inside Cote d’Ivoire’s Nonviolent Struggle for Disability Rights (Interview)

For over a decade, ICNC grantee Ahouty Kouakou and his colleagues from two civil society groups have been engaged in a nonviolent struggle for disability rights in Côte d’Ivoire, a small Francophone country in West Africa. Parting with the bleak Parisian winter last December, I thawed out during a three-day site visit to the country’s economic capital, Abidjan […]

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Ideas & Trends

“Revolutionizing” Revolution: A New Path for Political Change in Latin America

The term “Revolution” has ceased being associated uniquely with bloody revolts that generally end up with new dictatorships in power, and has become a synonym of truly mass movements with poetic names, capable of paving the road to lasting democracies. Latin America is not exempt from this reality, in spite of all stereotypes that try to restrict and disqualify the development of strategic nonviolent action on our continent. […]

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Ideas & Trends

How “Movement Halfway Houses” Can Increase Activist Learning

January 21 is a national holiday in the United States that honors Martin Luther King, Jr., who first came to prominence as a civil resistance leader during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Yet, the boycott was not inspired by King. It was inspired by Rosa Parks, one of the Highlander Folk School’s best-known graduates […]

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