The Meta-Activism Project, a digital activism think tank, has just launched a new resource for nonviolent activists.  The resource, called Civil Resistance 2.0, is a database of technology-assisted nonviolent methods based on the 198 methods of nonviolent resistance compiled by Gene Sharp, the trailblazing scholar of the field, in 1973. Communication tools have become more numerous and more accessible to activists since then, and other technology-based methods, like using airborne drones to track humanitarian crises, have also emerged. The database (use links tinyurl.com/CivRes20 or tinyurl.com/CivilResistance20 to visit or share) is being crowdsourced, which means that scholars and activists can add to and update the list. Please stop by and share your creativity and experiences.

On Tuesday, WNV editor Nathan Schneider was a guest on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, where he discussed his recent article on the question of co-optation and Occupy.

“Civil Resistance and the Dynamics of Nonviolent Conflict” is a fully online academic course on civil resistance, a joint project of Rutgers University and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. The organizers are now admitting perspective participants.

The course will run from Monday, April 23 to Tuesday, June 5, 2012, and it will involve a mixture of both live, synchronous activities at scheduled times (webinars, live chats and Skype conversations) and asynchronous activities to be completed within specified time frames (forum posts, short quizzes, readings and videos). The course will provide an in-depth and multi-disciplinary perspective on civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world through nonviolent tactics and strategies — from Egypt to Burma, to Zimbabwe and West Papua. We will look at issues of agency and structure, strategic planning and mobilization, democratic transitions and civil resistance, backfire and security divisions, digital actors and tools, the role of third party actors, and, finally, historical and contemporary cases of civil resistance around the world.

Perspective applicants may also register for and earn up to three graduate credits awarded by Rutgers University. Apply here.

When The Nation assigned me to do a story about questions of violence and nonviolence at Occupy Wall Street early last month, I had no idea how much the subject would explode. Occupy Oakland’s “Move-In Day” on January 28 and a subsequent article by Chris Hedges (as well as some heated discussions on my articles at Waging Nonviolence in between) triggered a national identity crisis in the movement. I followed the controversy as it played out in the OWS Direct Action Working Group, one of the movement’s most active and radical corners during the relatively quiet winter. Over the course of the month, I found yet another example of what “diversity of tactics” really means for Occupy Wall Street — the overcoming of challenges through raw creativity. In particular, I wrote about the birth of a new undertaking called the + Brigades:

The urge for this first came from a frustration with the same old tactics that Natasha Singh had been feeling for a while. “The marches were pointless,” she says. Then, just after the incident in Oakland, her friend and artistic collaborator Amin Husain returned from a World Social Forum meeting in Brazil, where he learned about the Chilean student movement’s creative tactics. He wanted to bring some of that home. The two of them recruited others and settled on a name: “+ Brigades.” They scoured photographs of movements through history at the New York Public Library. The goal, says Husain, is “addition and supplement rather than negation, opposition and subtraction.” Thus their answer to all the worry about black blocs: create blocs of your own.

Husain, who with Singh was one of the earliest OWS organizers, took part in the first intifada as a teenager in the West Bank. But he identifies neither with principled nonviolence nor, for instance, anarchism. The movement’s problem, he and Singh thought, wasn’t a matter of violence or not; it was a lack of imagination. There was too small a repertoire.

“Don’t negate the things you don’t like,” said Austin Guest at that inaugural + Brigades meeting in the church basement. “Add the things you do, so we can get a real diversity of tactics.”

Read the rest of the article at The Nation.

The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) is now accepting applications for the seventh annual Fletcher Summer Institute (FSI), which is the “only executive education program in the advanced, interdisciplinary study of nonviolent conflict, taught by leading scholars and practitioners of strategic nonviolent action and authorities from related fields.” The week-long conference will take place from June 24-30, and the application, which is due by March 15, can be downloaded here.

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We’re thrilled to announce the launch of a project we’ve been proud to be involved in: Beautiful Trouble, the ultimate guide to justice-oriented troublemaking. It includes contributions by all three Waging Nonviolence editors.

In Beautiful Trouble, seasoned pranktivist Andrew Boyd assembles the accumulated wisdom of decades of creative protest in order to place it in the hands of the next generation of change-makers. Part manifesto and part reference guide, Beautiful Trouble is the anti-textbook—a dynamic, 21st century how-to that brings together ten grassroots groups and dozens of seasoned artists and activists from around the world. Among the groups included are Agit-Pop/The Other 98%, The Yes Men/Yes Labs, Code Pink, SmartMeme, The Ruckus Society, Beyond the Choir, The Center for Artistic Activism, Waging Nonviolence, Alliance of Community Trainers and Nonviolence International.

The book will be officially released on April 1 by OR Books, an innovative new print-on-demand publisher. But if you pre-order between now and February 15, you get a 20% discount.

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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.

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Yesterday, Waging Nonviolence launched our first post published in collaboration with Possible Futures, an exciting new website and book series organized by the Social Science Research Council: “Women in Occupy Denver” by Chad Kautzer. In addition to choosing really great collaborators, however, Possible Futures has also gotten a start on launching an important discussion in various academic disciplines about what the Occupy movement represents. Most of all, taking advantage of the SSRC’s international orientation, the project is approaching the movement in global terms—as few are, and as all of us should be.

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If you’re in New York this coming Wednesday, we hope you’ll consider joining WNV editor Nathan Schneider and contributor Jeremy Kessler for a panel discussion about the First Amendment issues raised by the Occupy movement. Get in on Facebook here.