This past weekend, hundreds of activists gathered in Albany, New York for the United National Peace Conference. In this video, Voices for Creative Nonviolence co-coordinator and WNV contributor Kathy Kelly gives a rousing call to action to the gathering. If you wanted to make it to the conference, but weren’t able to (which was unfortunately my situation), you can still watch many other talks from the weekend by clicking here.

At the Fletcher Summer Institute a couple weeks ago Hardy Merriman gave this insightful presentation on strategy and tactics for nonviolent resistance. For anyone new to the field, watching this video would be an easy way to get the basics.

In this video, Jack DuVall, the president of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict and the co-author of A Force More Powerful, gives a good introduction to civil resistance at the Fletcher Summer Institute which I attended last week.

Last week, I had the good fortune of attending the Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict at Tufts University in Boston, hence my absence from this site. The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), which organized the week-long institute, did a phenomenal job in bringing together some of the most inspiring theorists and practitioners of nonviolent action to share their knowledge and experiences in the field.

One of the highlights for me, was getting a chance to hear Rev. James Lawson speak on the opening night and the conversation that we had later in the week. Rev. Lawson was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States who taught Martin Luther King Jr. and many other leaders of the struggle about nonviolence, and organized the student-led sit-ins in Nashville in 1959 that led to the desegregation of the city.

Fortunately, ICNC has made Rev. Lawson’s talk (video above) and several others available online. I’ll share at least a couple other presentations as the week goes on, along with my reflections on the experience as a whole.

• On Friday, a million workers belonging to Italy’s largest union went on strike across the nation to protest proposed austerity cuts by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government.

• Despite some acts of violence, 25,000 peacefully protested the policies of the G20 in Toronto over the weekend amidst a heavy police presence.

• Tens of thousands of opposition supporters marched in Taiwan’s capital Saturday to protest the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, a trade agreement with China opponents said will undermine the island’s self-rule and harm its economy.

• On Saturday, people gathered and held hands to form a symbolic line in the sand for 15 minutes as part of the “Hands Across the Sand” demonstrations organized in the US and abroad to pressure elected officials against any expansion of offshore drilling and to promote “clean” energy. In the U.S. nearly 700 rallies took place in all 50 states.

• Egyptian dissident Mohamed El Baradei led over 4,000 in a protest in Alexandria on Friday demanding an end to police brutality.

• In Michigan, thousands rallied on the state Capitol in Lansing on Thursday to urge lawmakers not to cut funding for public education.

• On Friday, 40 demonstrators greeted Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean at a Melbourne hotel when he arrived at a meeting to approve a deal to export up to 20 million tons of polluting La Trobe Valley brown coal to Vietnam.

The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict has a couple of interesting events coming up. The first is part of an online lecture series on topics related to nonviolent conflict and civil resistance. There have been two presentations since the series began last month, but the latest one is scheduled for this afternoon, starting at 12pm EST. University of San Francisco politics professor Stephen Zunes will be speaking about “the long history of nonviolent action throughout the Islamic world” and highlighting “case studies including Iran, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Mali, Western Sahara, Indonesia, Pakistan, and others.” You must register to attend the Webinar.

The second event is the ICNC’s fifth annual Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict at Tufts University. This week-long Institute “brings together international professionals and journalists from around the world to learn from top practitioners and scholars about strategic concepts and present applications of civil resistance.” It will take place June 20-26. Go to the ICNC website to learn more about the application, which is due March 15th.

If you want to be notified of more events put on by the ICNC sign up for their bi-weekly emails, which also include links to many great stories about nonviolence.

Just over a week ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a conference at The New School called “Iran: Politics of Resistance.” Many great scholars on Iran, both American and Iranian, took part in three panel discussions throughout the day. I was only able to attend the first one—which focused primarily on the Green Movement and whether it can accurately be called a full-fledged revolution—but the others looked to be just as fascinating. Fortunately, they are now all online.

From the first panel, I recommend watching Charles Kurzman from the University of North Carolina speak about “Cultural Jiu-Jitsu and the Iranian Greens,” as well as the talk on “Revolutionary Prefigurations” given by journalist Danny Postel (a good friend of this site). His suggestion that the Green Movement not put off addressing economic issues (like the “color revolutions” of Eastern Europe) was met with serious debate during the Q&A period—a phenomenon we are familiar with on this site. It was also nice to hear a lot of our hunches about the ambiguity of the Green Movement’s objectives and leadership echoed by the speakers.

I have yet to watch the other two panel presentations, but both look particularly useful to those studying social movements and nonviolence. The second is about “Everyday Resistance, Micropolitics and Solidarity” and the third is on “Ethical and Political Demands of the Green Movement,” which includes a presentation on “The Gandhian Movement in Iran.”

I plan on watching both and will add comments if anything strikes me. I hope others will join me.

In this fascinating video, neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran gives a brief overview of the recently discovered mirror neurons, or what he likes to call “Gandhi neurons,” at a recent TED conference. As he describes in his talk, a mirror nueron is a motor neuron in your brain that:

fires when I reach and grab something, but it also fires when I watch Joe reaching and grabbing something. And this is truly astonishing. Because it’s as though this neuron is adopting the other person’s point of view. It’s almost as though it’s performing a virtual reality simulation of the other person’s action.

Ramachandran then describes another type of mirror neuron that works similarly with the sense of touch:

Read the rest of this article »

We just heard from the folks at the Metta Center about an upcoming conference in October that should be really worthwhile:

Sixth Annual
Gandhi-King Conference on Peacemaking
October 23-25, 2009
Memphis, TN

Less than two weeks left for Early Registration!!!!

ENDS SEPTEMBER 15

Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with experts on issues of justice, nonviolence, sustainability, education, community building and more!!!

Featuring: Rev. CT Vivian, lifelong civil rights activist • Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence • Mubarak Awad, Nonviolence International • Barbara Love, United to End Racism • Rudy Balles, PeaceJam Foundation • Michael Nagler, Metta Center

Workshops by: United to End Racism, Community Media Workshop, National War Tax Resistance, the Matrix Center, and more!!!

Learn more and register at gandhikingconference.org.