We have learned from our international participants that carelessness with regard to terminology—conflating nonviolence (a set of beliefs) with nonviolent action (actual conflict)—is counterproductive at best and dangerous at worst. It plays into the hands of authoritarians, who thrive on confusion, to dismiss as elitist the aspiration to use precise terminology. We owe it to ourselves—and we owe it to nonviolent movements on the front lines of societal change—to talk about their actions in a way that does them justice. […]

In activist circles, sooner or later people can become concerned about the possibility of infiltrators in our midst. During intense periods of activity, I know of times when that concern has become nearly overwhelming. People look at others with suspicion, and mistakes, missteps, or miscommunications by a friend can become a source of doubt. It’s important to note that at such times, the fear of infiltrators itself can become a poison of its own. […]

El 8 de noviembre de 2011, estudiantes de la Universidad de California en la ciudad de Davis ocuparon noviolentamente una acera peatonal, como parte de una campaña desplegada en todo el sistema de sedes de la UC, para protestar contra un alza en los costos de matrícula y el corte de fondos a las universidades. Unos días antes, la policía había usado sus bastones contra estudiantes y personal de la facultad en otro campus, la Universidad de California en Berkeley, y había destrozado un campamento similar al desplegado en la UC Davis. […]

People have rushed to reinvent their campaigns since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis. Some shifted their focus to community support, lockdown monitoring, and popular education. Others reassessed methods of conveying their message. One of them was Europe Must Act, a pan-European nonviolent movement calling for the evacuation of refugee camps in Greece. I was fortunate to participate in the organization’s process of rethinking campaign strategy and thereby engineered, introduced, and helped implement the concept of peopleless protests. […]

There is no denying the drama of the worldwide mass demonstrations against systemic racism generally, discriminatory policing particularly, and George Floyd’s murder specifically. For weeks and weeks, it has unfolded in both predictable and surprising ways. In my experience, honed from decades in the news media, newsrooms begin to lose interest in such phenomena after about two weeks. But, as with practically everything else associated with this movement, the media attention has held steady. […]

2019 resultó ser un año muy movido para las sociedades del mundo que decidieron escribir nuevas páginas de resistencia civil. Las acciones no violentas en demanda de derechos, justicia y libertad fueron increíblemente diversas, enérgicas e inspiradoras en América Latina, donde el despertar popular sacudió regímenes y cambió gobiernos capturando la atención mundial.

The opinions about property damage during protests are all over the map. Please entertain mine for a minute, as I’ve been thinking a lot about this since the 1960s, when my friends destroyed Selective Service files to interfere with the draft for the preposterous Vietnam war. I thought about property destruction harder when some of my mentors hammered on nuclear weapons in symbolic disarmament. I followed their footsteps and reflected on it while incarcerated for these sorts of acts. […]

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. […]