Last fall, I participated in the Copenhagen People Power Forum, which brought together movement leaders from all over the world to speak with leaders in public, private and humanitarian sectors to critique and advise the forms their solidarity with movements can take. It was an immense effort toward globalizing our struggles, but as with any other recent global gatherings, many invitees from Africa and elsewhere were unable to attend because of visa denials/delays at destination and transitory country embassies. […]

In March 2019, following numerous community pleas to curb graft among local police that had fallen upon deaf ears, residents of Kyere, Uganda tricked a notoriously corrupt police officer into a bribery arrangement. They caught him red-handed. Emerging from their hiding places in a community market, they seized the officer and arrested him—a man who had often used the same power of arrest to extort from them! This effective sting operation occurred without any of the usual police brutality toward activists. […]

Are we already on our way to the next political jolt? Our movements are probably more populous and diverse than ever before. Movement leaders are increasingly deliberate to organize intersectionally and across decentralized structures. Creativity is now mainstreamed within activist culture and there is stronger cooperation across national borders and continents. To ensure that civil resistance remains a force more powerful, though, we’re still going to need a better consolidated ideology, more enduring staying power, and exceptionally innovative tactical chops. […]

The new data are depressing, with mass nonviolent resistance success rates dropping from 52 percent to 34 percent. At the same time however, violent resistance success rates dropped to their lowest point in the past century, at 8 percent. In her Journal of Democracy article a year ago, Chenoweth asks why, and what next? I want to ask, additionally, what to do? To answer this question, I propose to first take a step back and put the evolution of asymmetrical political conflict into perspective, considering developments in both ideology and in practice. This will help us as activists better harness our collective power in the new global context—the focus of my follow-up post. […]

While Black Lives Matter took center stage in the global media, similar struggles against police brutality were fomenting in the Sub-Sahara as well. 2020 was truly a year of protecting black bodies. In many African countries, authoritarian leaders enjoyed the Covid-19 pandemic and the excuses it offered for violent repression. In Uganda, for example, not a single Covid-19 death was registered until July 23. By that date, a half dozen Ugandans had been killed by police using pandemic conditions as an excuse for brutality, and countless citizens had been unjustly arrested, victimized by extortion, tortured, and otherwise abused. […]

“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. […]”

“Choosing to repurpose one’s movement toward community needs in times of crisis has short- and long-term strategic value. In this article I share a few thoughts about how movements can build power by serving their local communities—immunizing their movements from losing momentum with a “vaccine” of constructive programs and obstructive strategies. […]”

Those of us who train and educate movements, whether in informal environments or in the classroom, would like to believe that our curriculum and how we present it directly determines the extent to which our participants thrive. While this may be partially true, these factors are far from being the most important determinants of a participant’s success. […]

This year, the global spotlight was briefly placed upon Sudan during its overthrow of Omar al-Bashir, and to a lesser extent, Algeria’s popular resistance to Abdelaziz Bouteflika whose 20-year rule has met its end. Yet 2019 has yielded at least nine other African political uprisings from which we can learn. […]

A growing obsession with digital security among human rights organizations and progressive donors in East Africa seems to be compromising the efficacy of once-impactful movements. How? For one thing, it’s detracting from planning offensive movement strategy. Second, it’s diverting focus away from countering widely prevalent traditional forms of repression and surveillance (such as spying, trailing, and wiretapping). […]

Uganda’s forests are disappearing at disturbing rates. After tireless but unproductive advocacy efforts, a small group of young farmers in the remote district of Amuru may have found a hack to curb deforestation with direct action. This year they’ve already impounded 27 truckloads of charcoal […]

He pasado la mayor parte de mi corta vida de adulto consolidando y liderando una organización cuyo objetivo es apoyar a los movimientos de resistencia. Desde 2012, Solidaridad Uganda ha pasado de ser un colectivo local de voluntarios en una comunidad campesina remota a una red internacional de apoyo a movimientos de resistencia de base en más de 70 países. […]

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. […]

While central Uganda was boycotting regime-friendly companies, staging industrial strikes and marching in the streets, I was trying to figure out how to help my neighbors resist a massive land grab by foreign companies. Unaware of one another at the time, we were simultaneously applying different forms of nonviolent resistance that Gene Sharp had taught us in his works. […]

In places like Uganda where political leaders leverage their influence as a personal business, institutional tactics like dialogue and advocacy tend to fail. They simply pose no substantial threat to the kleptocrats. Yet one coalition in Uganda has managed to score a significant success rate using primarily […]