An exciting new cross-media project called Everyday Rebellion has launched its Advent Calender of Nonviolent Struggle, in which Srdja Popovic will offer a short tip for activists every day until Christmas.
The video above is about the role of humor in nonviolent action. Others address the importance of having numbers and an appealing vision for the future to success in nonviolent struggle, among many other topics. (To watch and share these tips as they are posted, follow the project’s YouTube channel.)
As we’ve mentioned many times before, Popovic was one of the leaders of Otpor, the nonviolent movement that brought down Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and now runs the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) in Belgrade.
In Colombia, when the mainstream media and the government are promoting a wave of protests, expect to find a lot of television cameras using close-up shots. That’swhat happened on December 6, when people took to the streets in several Colombian towns with a common purpose: to march against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC-EP. Now the oldest guerrilla organization in Latin America, dating to the 1950s, is essentially a terrorist group that recalls Marxist ideology when convenient. The “EP” in its name stands for “people’s army”—Ejército del Pueblo—but in reality most Colombians think of it as the people’s enemy.
Close-ups at the protests were necessary, of course, because of the size of the crowds. The mainstream Colombian media attempted to portray the protests as a success, but in comparison with earlier protests against guerrilla violence in 2008, few took part this time.
Crazy is a word ‘normal’ people throw around when they either don’t understand something, they’re totally disconnected, or wish to absolve themselves of responsibility. “We don’t kill our people… No government in the world kills its people, unless it’s led by a crazy person,” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said this week in a recorded interview. Does Assad not understand, is he disconnected, or is he crazy? I don’t think it’s either one of those choices. And to even consider that his actions against the Syrian people can be explained by calling him crazy is an insult to the idea of what crazy really is.
Why did Assad himself use that word? I believe that it was a default response in order to buy time and to claim innocence. His audience was his supporters and the international community. How could an eloquent, educated, English-speaker dressed in a suit on international television be crazy, in the sense of being insane? Of course he’s not. Assad is deliberate, cruel, struggling to hold power, and he completely disregards the aspirations of his people. Calling him—or any other authoritarian leader trying to repress his own people with military force—crazy is a misuse of a complex and misused term.
The definition of crazy ranges from insanity to impractical to impatience to infatuated. It’s not surprising that the word ‘crazy’ is often used to describe protestors, civil movement leaders, and most recently, Occupy Wall Street activists.
Located in the Montes de Maria region of Colombia’s Bolivar department on the Caribbean coast, the community of Mampuján has experienced the full force of Colombia’s past and ongoing armed conflicts. Their most decisive event, however, occurred on March 11, 2000, during the height of violence in this zone, when the members of the community of Mampuján were displaced from their original location by a group of right-wing paramilitaries, known as the Heroes of Montes de Maria. The community members were rounded up, accused of supporting guerrilla forces, and commanded to leave Mampuján immediately. Three hundred families fled, and 11 campesinos from the surrounding area of Las Brisas were massacred.
Since this time, the majority of the community has resettled in temporary housing, located about seven kilometres away in New Mampuján, where they live a reality very similar to that of the other 5 million internally displaced persons living in Colombia.
Arab and Bedouin Israelis held a state-wide general strike on Sunday as several thousand demonstrators gathered at the Prime Ministry to express their outrage at a government plan that would relocate Negev Bedouins out of their homes into impoverished townships.
Bangkok, Thailand saw a rare second rally in two days Saturday as a throng of marchers engaged in a ‘fearlessness walk’ reiterated their objections to laws that punish those who speak out against the monarchy.
A flash mob erupted in a Pittsburgh Target on Saturday as Occupy organizers briefly flooded the store in protest of the company’s hiring policies.
For the second day in a row, hundreds of Indian teachers in Bangalore boycotted classes on Friday in protest of low wages.
Demonstrations condemning the NATO airstrike in Pakistan have been ongoing for two weeks across the country, and were sparked anew after prayers Friday.
Tens of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets again Friday chanting ‘no partnership with the murderers’ after a new Cabinet—half filled with pro-regime politicians—was announced.
In the Dominican Republic on Thursday, hundreds of activists rallied against the government’s practice of confiscating or annulling birth certificates for those of Haitian descent.
In light of the dire news out of Syria, international action is ever more urgent. In my judgment, Syria reflects one of the paradoxes of international politics: its strategic importance in the region renders international military action nearly impossible–or at least extremely unlikely. Regional and global powers are not willing to risk the potential regional or global conflagration that would result from foreign military intervention in such a key state, even if inaction means that they will be witnesses to the senseless slaughter of thousands of civilians.
But when governments and international governmental organizations are unwilling or unable to act, civilians across the globe can still play a vital role. It’s time to demonstrate the power of “civilian diplomacy”—a concept that Hillary Clinton has been touting for a couple of years, and which has some real potential to change the course of the Syrian revolution.
This means you.
What follows are ideas of things that people both inside and outside Syria can do to help. Read more to find your inner civilian diplomat.
As chants of “Al-shaab urid iskat al-nizam” (“the people want to bring down the regime”) rise, so, too, does the hailstorm of bullets. As people come out into the streets to express themselves, so, too, do the tanks. Syria’s revolution is entering its ninth month, the Assad regime uses familiar tactics in its attempt to crush dissent. There is nothing creative about deploying tanks and snipers to villages. There is nothing creative about using rape as a tool of war, especially against an unarmed population. In contrast, however, the Free Syria movement has responded to these assaults with amazing creativity. Syrians continue to take to the streets in peaceful protest against the Assad regime—every day, in nearly every city, in nearly every village.
Being creative takes work. Nonviolent creativity, especially when faced with live ammunition, takes steely willpower and a fierce commitment. Syrians have demonstrated both as they slowly but surely rid themselves of a regime that thinks nothing of using rape as a tool of repression, dismemberment as a message, or kidnapping as a reminder. That the protests have remained largely peaceful is awe-inspiring; that Syrians are so creative under these circumstances is astonishing.
Since the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) report was released at a huge ceremony in Bahrain last month, a new political era has started. The much awaited report has put most of the cards on the table after a very long period of pro-government propaganda and misleading information regarding what actually happened in Bahrain earlier this year. This report, for example, has put to rest once and for all the whole accusation that there was Iranian influence over the uprising that began in Manama last February.
Since the release of the report, several events have taken place in Washington D.C. and other parts of the world that have tried to answer the questions: What’s next? What does the report mean and what should be done now?
While the report was considered a major development in the “Bahrain story” in the international media and among policymakers, the view inside Bahrain looks very different. Nothing on the ground in the country has changed, and people can see now more than ever that no report can change their situation without a real willingness for change.
My dad died nine years ago this week. Talking about waging nonviolence and little insurrections.
In life, as in dying, my dad was a peaceful warrior.
In the fall of 2002, after months of feeling lousy and only very slowly healing from hip surgery, Phil Berrigan, priest, peace activist, father of the plowshares movement and three kids, went to the doctor. The verdict came back harsh: advanced (stage 4) and aggressive liver cancer that had metastasized to his kidneys. The doctors said they could treat it with chemotherapy, but the chances of a full recovery were slight. Dad was up for trying chemo and wanted to let the doctors—oncologists at the top of their game at Johns Hopkins—a chance, but after one round of chemo, he said “no more.”
Friends from far and wide offered alternative cures, advice, great stories of teas and herbs that (against all odds) allowed them to live cancer-free. But, our dad sat us down and told us that he was seeking healing, not a cure; putting his faith in God and in us—praying for healing and for the faith to be strong in the months to come and asking us to start preparing for a life without him. He was not afraid, he told us. He loved us and he was sad, but he would be ready.
And then, with clear eyes and a lot of compassion, he got down to the hard work of dying with dignity.
A modified dollar bill from the Sindegate campaign.
While the United States government debates the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Spanish Internet activists have won a small victory against the threat of censorship on the web. If the proposed Sinde Law had been approved in Spain on December 2, the government would have won the power to shut down websites that offer downloads and streaming of digital content under copyright. But ultimately, the lame-duck, left-wing party PSOE kept the law from passing because of an internal debate created by a two-year long mobilization that was the prelude of the occupation-based May 15 movement.
Crazy is a word ‘normal’ people throw around when they either don’t understand something, they’re totally disconnected, or wish to absolve themselves of responsibility. “We don’t kill our people… No government in the world kills its people, unless it’s led by a crazy person,” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said this week in a recorded 
Political scientist Erica Chenoweth, at her blog Rational Insurgent, has
As chants of “Al-shaab urid iskat al-nizam” (“the people want to bring down the regime”) rise, so, too, does the hailstorm of bullets. As people come out into the streets to express themselves, so, too, do the tanks. Syria’s revolution is entering its ninth month, the Assad regime uses familiar tactics in its attempt to crush dissent. There is nothing creative about deploying tanks and snipers to villages. There is nothing creative about using rape as a tool of war, especially against an unarmed population. In contrast, however, the Free Syria movement has responded to these assaults with amazing creativity. Syrians continue to take to the streets in peaceful protest against the Assad regime—every day, in nearly every city, in nearly every village.
