In a recent piece for TomDispatch, Rebecca Solnit made a simple observation about the nature of revolution that I hadn’t ever really considered:

At its best, revolution is an urban phenomenon. Suburbia is counterrevolutionary by design. For revolution, you need to converge, to live in public, to become the public, and that’s a geographical as well as a political phenomenon. The history of revolution is the history of great public spaces: the Place de la Concorde during the French Revolution; the Ramblas in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War; Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 (a splendid rebellion that was crushed); the great surge that turned the divide of the Berlin Wall into a gathering place in that same year; the insurrectionary occupation of the Zocalo of Mexico City after corrupt presidential elections and of the space in Buenos Aires that gave the Dirty War’s most open opposition its name: Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, the Mothers of the Plaza of May.

It’s all very well to organize on Facebook and update on Twitter, but these are only preludes. You also need to rise up, to pour out into the streets. You need to be together in body, for only then are you truly the public with the full power that a public can possess.

One factor that perhaps makes revolution less likely in the United States, she argues, is the sheer size of the country and that a “majority seems to live in places that are themselves decentered.”

Over at Yes! Magazine, Jay Walljasper defines our problem slightly different:

…the exercise of democracy depends upon having a literal commons where people can gather as citizens—a square, Main Street, park, or other public space that is open to all. An alarming trend in American life is the privatization of our public realm. As corporate-run shopping malls replaced downtowns and main streets as the center of action, we lost some of our public voice. You can’t organize a rally, hand out flyers, or circulate a petition in a shopping mall without the permission of the management, which will almost certainly say no because they don’t want to distract shoppers’ attention from the merchandise. That’s why you see few benches or other gathering spots inside malls. The result is that our ability to even discuss the issues of the day (or any other subject) with our fellow citizens is limited.

What do you think? How does where someone live (urban vs. rural) or the presence or lack of public spaces affect the likelihood or ultimate effectiveness of nonviolent struggle?

The authors of Small Acts of Resistance—a great little book filled with stories of ordinary people taking bold, creative and often-times humorous action to defy injustice—recently published a piece in Yes! Magazine that boils their message down to “10 Everyday Acts of Resistance That Changed the World.” The list, much like the book, features some familiar stories that may be recognizable to longtime advocates of nonviolence—such as the Danish resistance movement during WWII—but mainly focuses on ones that have unfortuantely remained obscure, like the one about football fans in Uruguay, who during the military dictatorship mumbled the national anthem until it came to the line, “May tyrants tremble!”

Authors Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson introduce the piece as a reminder that victories “borne of small acts toward monumental change,” like the recent ones in Tunisia and Egypt, are not new. And perhaps, with the even more recent and sad turn toward violence in Libya, we should be ever more wary of innovative and inspiring ways to challenge violent regimes. The good news, as I learned from Jackson just the other day, is that the book is set to be reprinted in Arabic this summer. “Perhaps a bit late,” Jackson joked. But really, it’s never too late to spread these stories. They should be told as often as possible. So, if you haven’t read the book yet, be sure to at least check out the magazine piece.

As Bryan already noted, the five Disarm Now Plowshares were sentenced at the end of last month for trying to beat the American nuclear weapons into plowshares—literally, with ordinary hammers—as prophesied in the book of Isaiah, as well as pouring blood over them. Yesterday at Religion Dispatches, though, there was also an excellent essay by Kristin Tobey about the action, its background and context, its symbolism and planning, and the longstanding communities that made it possible. Here’s a bit of it:

Like the Plowshares Eight, The Disarm Now Plowshares intended their act of civil disobedience — or “divine obedience,” as Plowshares activists prefer to call their actions — to function as symbolic disarmament, purifying the land and equipment from its sinful purpose; to draw attention to the danger of nuclear weapons (or “idols”); and to offer atonement, via the spilling of their own blood and the risking of their own freedom, for the sins of nuclear violence and idolatry. To ensure metaphysical efficacy, the action adhered to a ritual template that has remained strikingly consistent since the first Plowshares action — trespass, blood, hammers. But another crucial element of the Plowshares’ actions is the wait to be apprehended, which illuminates the ways in which the actions are meant to function.

Keep reading at Religion Dispatches.

• Eight young illegal immigrants were arrested Tuesday for sitting in the middle of a busy street in front of the Georgia Capitol, protesting their lack of access to higher education in a scene reminiscent of civil rights demonstrations decades ago.

• In the wake of the March 11 earthquake in Japan and the havoc it caused to coastal nuclear reactors, people in Tokyo are protesting at the headquarters of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, calling for “No More Nukes, No More Lives.”

• Residents of the southern town of Daraa, one of the focal points of the protests in Syria, held a general strike on Tuesday as part of “Martyrs Week”—a series of demonstrations to honor those killed in security crackdowns on anti-regime demonstrations.

• Dozens of Omani protesters staged a sit-in on Saturday at the capital in Muscat to demand probes into alleged state abuses after clashes with security forces left at least one person dead on Friday.

• The village of Hempstead on Long Island is pulling its money from JPMorgan Chase and severing its ties with the bank to protest lending and foreclosure policies.

• Students from across Pennsylvania headed to Harrisburg on Tuesday to protest proposed higher education cuts. After the rally, Penn State University students and alumni paid personal visits to more than 90 lawmakers, offering them some of their famous Creamery ice cream.

• Activists in 10 US states converged on 30 Rite Aid stores last Friday to protest the company’s unfair labor practices and management’s efforts to impose unaffordable healthcare costs on employees.

• Thousands of people across India have joined hunger strikes and candlelit vigils to demand that government enact a tough anti-corruption law that would lead to prosecution of officials and lawmakers.

• Thousands of teachers took to the streets in the German capital on Tuesday to protest working seven hours more per week than teachers in other German states.

• Students at Ewha Womans University in South Korea are taking part in a five-day-long sit-in protest this week calling for a reduction in tuition for freshmen.

A US boat named The Audacity of Hope is scheduled to sail to Gaza next month along with a flotilla of 15 ships from Europe, Canada, India, South Africa, and the Middle East, carrying passengers from more than 22 nations. The US Boat to Gaza is part of a larger campaign to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip and draw attention to Israel’s inhumane blockade of the Palestinian coastal enclave. The organizers, supported by a large list of signatories, explained the reasoning behind the presence of a US boat in the upcoming flotilla as such:

The U.S. government is complicit through established policies that uncritically support Israel in its brutal attack on the Palestinian people and on those who attempt to intervene on their behalf. We in the United States must continue to step up and do our part. We must join with others from across the world to support an end to the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza.

The international movement to end the siege on Gaza reached a violent peak on May 31, 2010 when Israeli commandos intercepted the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish-American. In the aftermath of Israel’s raid on the Freedom Flotilla, Israel mounted an aggressive PR campaign to derail the growing global awareness of the humanitarian crisis resulting from Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

The Israeli daily, Haaretz, reports that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon to stop the flotilla that is set to arrive in Gaza in May. In his statement to the UN, Netanyahu accused the impending flotilla, deemed the Freedom Fleet, of being comprised of radical Islamists “whose aim is to create a provocation and bring about a conflagration.”

The Israeli government campaign to silence dissent and curb criticism of Israeli governmental and military policy, evidenced by Netanyahu’s desperate plea to Ki-Moon, has accelerated with the creation of a military intelligence research division tasked with monitoring left-wing groups and so called “deligitimizers.” The new unit will reportedly work closely with Israeli government ministries and has already been in discussion with the Prime Minister’s office regarding the Freedom Fleet’s upcoming journey to Gaza.

Read the rest of this article »

Waging Nonviolence is pleased to announce its sponsorship of an event at Columbia University tomorrow afternoon called “From Belgrade to Cairo: The Strategy and Organization of Nonviolent Revolution.” There will be several tremendously gifted speakers on hand, including Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Tina Rosenberg, former Otpor! leader and CANVAS founder Srdja Popovic, Rutgers professor Kurt Shock, and Columbia professors Jack Snyder and Alfred Stepan. The discussion will focus on the nonviolent overthrow of dictatorships from Serbia in 2000 to Egypt earlier this year with particular insight into the advantages and challenges facing such movements.

The event starts at noon and runs until 2pm at Columbia University’s Morningside Campus in Room 1501 of International Affairs Building. If you plan on coming, please RSVP here. Hope to see some of you there!

Today, in 50 US states, rallies are being held to remember Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination 43 years ago, while he was on his way to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers. It comes, of course, at a time when labor rights are being threatened around the country by politicians eager to use tough budgetary times to advance an anti-labor agenda.

The rallies are under the banner of “We Are One,” through Working America, the AFL-CIO’s advocacy arm. Find the action nearest you on the official website.

I’m writing from northern Wisconsin, in a small town of only a few hundred people. The other day I was talking with a man who has lived up here just about all his life. Someone described him to me as the most forward-thinking man in town; he has an array of solar panels in his yard, and generating electricity for the neighborhood is only one of the many cottage industries he has going to support his family and his imagination. He was depressed because he’d just learned from the power company that, in a year or so, they’ll no longer pay him a reasonable rate for what he can add to the grid. They want to shut out small producers like him. He also has a job at a local school and is part of the union.

Last week, to defend the union’s right to organize, he went to the first rally he’d ever been at in his life. He talked about the people who passed by and saw him, hoping that the kids would remember this for years to come as a time when their parents finally stood up for themselves against big business. Most people cheered them on, he told me. But not all.

“A few of them were calling us bottom-feeders,” he said. “Well, I guess I’m a bottom-feeder.”

The Church of Earthalujah! has pulled it off again, this time in Swarthmore, PA. On Saturday morning, residents of the quiet town were greeted by a theatrical convergence in the local PNC Bank branch, when Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Gospel Choir teamed up with Swarthmore College students and community members to call attention to PNC’s dirty financial practices.

Over sixty people went inside the bank and filled the lobby with cries of ‘Save the Mountains!’. Performance activist Reverend Billy preached against Mountaintop Removal (MTR) coal mining, a practice that destroys mountains, causes cancer and health problems in Appalachian communities, and has already buried thousands of miles of streams. Demonstrators waved messages of ‘No More MTR’ and ‘Bank Like Appalachia Matters,’ and the Gospel Choir sang anthems. When police were called to ask the group to leave, Reverend Billy moved the impromptu congregation outside and led them in song in front of the bank. Interested passersby stuck around to watch the show.

PNC remains one of the largest financiers of MTR, and is hugely complicit in environmental devastation and climate injustice, despite attempts to brand itself as a green bank. The action was supported in conjunction with Earth Quaker Action Team, as part of their ongoing campaign to call for PNC’s complete divestment from MTR. As the result of prior pressure, PNC has changed their corporate statement to reflect a partial shift, but still has not entirely divested. An environmentally-conscious student presence was strong as well. “Students have got to turn out in full force to challenge abusive financial practices,” said Kate Aronoff, member of student direct action group Swarthmore Mountain Justice, “If we don’t hold institutions accountable now, then ‘Lord Almighty!’ think about the world we will inherit tomorrow.”

With all the ruckus of the U.S.-NATO intervention in Libya, even the in-depth 24-hour news coverage that saturated us with images of Egypt, Tunisia and Wisconsin have been relegated from the headlines to brief news bits.  Even more neglected is the case of Yemen, where pro-democracy protests have been rocking public squares for months. Using tactics such as sit-ins and civil disobedience, the opposition, with its plan for a peaceful transition of power, is growing in its support for Saleh’s deposition.  The pro-democracy movement has refused Saleh’s offer of amnesty to military and government dissenters and negotiations with the President broke down last week.  Since then, the violence against pro-democracy protesters seems to have increased and there is an emerging counter-movement supporting Saleh that has engaged in violence with the state security forces.  Yesterday, 1,600 people were injured by police in Taiz as the resistance spreads and President Saleh’s 32-year rule is unraveling. But the international community has refrained from weighing in on the Yemen uprising.

Context is everything in understanding why international diplomacy takes a front seat in the news cycle and the courageous people power and nonviolence sits quietly in the back.  In Libya, as this site has been keen to point out in various posts, the nonviolent uprisings did not coalesce into a movement because the context was not properly prepared.  As Stephen Zunes argued, Libya pro-democracy, nonviolent forces lacked strategy and when the violent, state repression came down with a heavy hand, they lacked the training and organizing to remain nonviolently disciplined.  The case for foreign military intervention was argued on humanitarian reasons (which are apparently of little concern, because thousands of Yemenis are being targeted by security forces loyal to Saleh and 300 have been reported killed).

Jeremy Scahill’s recent article, “The Dangerous US Game in Yemen” gives context for why there has not yet been a massive outcry of humanitarian support for the people of Yemen.  The U.S. wants Saleh in power in Yemen for the stability to continue its proxy-war against Al Qaeda which has found, strangely, enough state support in Yemen to not have fled to any other number of unstable areas to continue its activities (a place like, say, Libya).

The reason the U.S. is supporting the rebel forces in Libya is that Gaddafi has long been a thorn in the side of the American-led war on terror.  He has played a dicey game of diplomacy that kept him isolated from the U.S. but never a full blown target for American counter-terrorism (although Libya has long appeared on Cheney’s list of countries to attack).  So the understanding of how conflicts are characterized by the media, both mainstream and otherwise, needs to dig deeper into the unique, cultural contexts with which these uprisings arise and the historical contexts that determine why and when foreign military intervention becomes an option.  And then we must ask the question: how sincere can U.S. (or other foreign support) for people’s liberation movements be when they question economic and policy interests?

With any solid nonviolent movement, in addition to training, strategy and organizing, a solid analysis needs to take place.  For those of us who support democracy and nonviolent people power, we would do well to take the time to hit the alternative history books, media centers, and voices from people on the ground for the strengthening of our own contextualizing analysis.

A year since my first interview with her appeared in Guernica, The Immanent Frame asked me to have another exchange with the feminist philosopher Judith Butler. Once again, we talked about violence, nonviolent resistance, power, and the problem of Israel-Palestine. This time, though, the backdrop was different: the Arab Spring, or the Middle East uprisings, or whatever we’re to call it (or them). On the one hand, there was the successful, largely-nonviolent movement in Egypt that ousted Hosni Mubarak from power after weeks of patient protests. On the other, there’s Libya, where the US and its coalition have joined a so-far intransigent firefight against Muammar el-Qaddafi.

In this interview, Butler stressed a theme that is actually the starting point for the discussion of nonviolence in her recent book Frames of War: the co-implication of violence and nonviolence, where neither can quite escape the other. I pushed back a bit, and so did she.

NS: Do these popular uprisings affect how we should think about power and sovereignty, as armed dictators are being coerced by nonviolent movements?

JB: I understand the desire to come up with theoretical generalizations. I spend a good deal of my time doing precisely that. But even though nonviolent practices have been important in some of these uprisings, we are also seeing new ways of interpreting nonviolence, and new ways of justifying violence when protestors are under attack from the military. The events in Libya are clearly violent, and so I think we are probably left with new quandaries about whether the line between violent and nonviolent resistance ever can be absolutely clear.

NS: Where in particular do you see that line blurring?

JB: We have to be careful to distinguish between nonviolence as a moral position that applies to all individuals and groups, and nonviolence as a political option that articulates a certain refusal to be intimidated or coerced. These are very different discourses, since most of the moral positions tend to eliminate all reference to power, and the political ones tend to affirm nonviolence as a mode of resistance but leave open the possibility that it might have to be exchanged for a more overtly aggressive one. I am not sure we can ever evacuate the political frame. Moreover, it is important to think about how one understands violence. If one puts one’s body on the line, in the way of a truck or a tank, is one not entering into a violent encounter? This is different from waging a unilateral attack or even starting a violent series, but I am not sure that it is outside the orbit of violence altogether.

NS: President Obama sometimes seems to be policing that distinction in his rhetoric about these uprisings: demanding that protesters and regimes both remain nonviolent, and then bringing U.S. military force to bear in Libya when the state turns to military force. But I would think the difference between how the movements in Egypt and Libya have progressed actually reaffirms that the line between violence and nonviolence is a useful one.

JB: Well, it is interesting that the U.S. affirms that the anti-government forces in Libya are resistance fighters and seeks to provide aerial bombing support to their forces on the ground. So it seems that even liberal public discourse makes room for justified armed resistance. What is most interesting is to figure out when certain forms of violence are considered part of an admirable struggle for freedom, and when, on the contrary, violence is understood as the terrorist activities of non-state actors. Do you have an answer to that?

NS: I certainly can’t think of a consistent rule that would apply to all cases, and probably for good reason. The case of Israel-Palestine comes to mind.

JB: Indeed, it does.

Read the rest at The Immanent Frame.