On the first day of a recent nonviolence training for a mix of scholars, students, journalists, and religious and tribal leaders in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, I asked what they knew about nonviolent civic mobilization. A number of them responded “women’s rights,” while some said “democracy,” and others “pacifying people.” They were all familiar with the term “nonviolence” and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan — also known as “Badshah Khan” and the “Frontier Gandhi” — whose nonviolent Khudai Khidmatgar (“Servants of God”) movement against the British Raj is well known in Afghanistan. But participants had no real knowledge of the details of this movement, nor of the underlying ideas or practical implementation of nonviolent action.

Most participants had never felt the need to study Badshah Khan’s works and philosophy before because they only knew of violent means to address and react to problems faced by their communities: either fight and join the insurgency, or sit silently as passive spectators. In fact, the majority of Afghans believe that as ordinary civilians, it is not in their power to create change. Many only wish to focus on the present and not on the future. This mindset is the result of three decades of violent conflict, which has affected every single family in Afghanistan.

But as the events in the Middle East unfolded during the Arab Spring, Afghan intellectuals and youth groups came to recognize the potential force of nonviolent civic mobilization. They have since begun to adopt these strategies and tactics to organize and tackle widespread government corruption, which particularly affects the justice system and fosters rampant unemployment and insecurity.

With this process still being in its infancy, proponents of nonviolent action are facing many challenges. Due to insufficient knowledge, demonstrations start out peacefully, but most quickly turn violent as they are easily hijacked by violent insurgents. During demonstrations in Mazar Sharif on April 1, 2011, five international U.N. personnel were killed as demonstrators stormed the regional office of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA). In the summer of 2011, gatherings in the cities of Mazar and Kandahar turned violent and claimed several lives as well.

Additionally, participants in nonviolent protests often receive threats, both from violent insurgents (who believe that nonviolent civic mobilization prevents the population from waging jihad against the government) and from corrupt government officials (who fear that such campaigns will threaten their authority in the future). Furthermore, Afghan security forces rarely respect the right to peaceful protest and freedom of expression. Many believe that demonstrations, even nonviolent ones, are against Afghanistan and the interests of Afghans — so they deal with protests and gatherings with an iron fist. In the future, it will therefore be important to include members of the security forces in trainings on civic nonviolent mobilization, so that they too have a better understanding of the demands made and the methods used by civic organizers. In some cases security forces may constitute important allies.

As for the women of Afghanistan, they strongly believe that they can play the same central role the women in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries of the Arab world played, and are still playing, at the heart of the Arab Spring movements. Women represent over half of Afghanistan’s population and are an important pillar in the family, yet their role in the country’s political, cultural and economic life was ignored and suppressed for almost two decades. Torpikai Rasoli, a member of the Kunar Provincial Council and participant in the nonviolent civic mobilization in the Kunar training said: “We, women, have the potential to bring changes in our society.”

Since the collapse of the Taliban regime in 2001, women are increasingly taking on important roles, such as voting and running for the parliament, presidency and other important offices. Although they are now represented in most sectors, including business and media, they still face a number of important issues and challenges, which vary between provinces. For example, security conditions and fear of repercussions deterred female participants from joining the workshop in Kunduz, while nine women were able to attend the one in Kunar.

Although these were not the first workshops on nonviolent civic mobilization that were held in Afghanistan, the local and national media gave greater attention to the trainings this time. In their interviews, participants spoke of the Arab Spring, Gandhi’s salt march, Otpor in Serbia and the use of nonviolence by Badshah Khan as they outlined their own vision for Afghanistan’s future and how it could be achieved.

While some participants, fearing for their safety — especially the tribal chiefs and religious scholars — did not want to be photographed during the trainings, the younger participants were eager to speak with the media. This was significant, as it sent an important message to the community that there are citizens who are ready to speak up and take bold steps.

Participants also made two Facebook groups and began sharing their take on nonviolent civic mobilization with their friends and contacts. They hope to use the social media site to reach and connect with Afghan youths in other parts of the country and to organize future nonviolent civic mobilization activities.

In spite of this initial success, participants and trainers alike still face important challenges.

In addition to fearing for their safety, those teaching about nonviolent civic mobilization must combat the persistent perception that this way of struggle is weak. Most Afghans associate strategic nonviolent action with foreign cultures — even though Afghanistan has a rich history of nonviolent movements. Trainers must be sensitive to the cultural and social environment and contextualize their curricula accordingly, reassuring participants that the philosophy of nonviolence is consistent with Islam and Afghan culture.

As the trainings came to a close, the experience strengthened my belief that Afghans throughout the country are seeking alternatives to address their problems and express their grievances. The workshops were conducted in two parts of the country under very different conditions. However, participants responded with equal interest and enthusiasm to this unique opportunity to learn about a new way — consistent with their beliefs and culture — for mobilizing and demanding their political, social and economic rights.

This article was co-authored by Nicola Barrach.

Original headline about Operation Spectrum.

On May 21, 1987, 16 Singaporeans were arrested and detained in a crackdown called Operation Spectrum. About a month later, four of the original 16 were released, and another six arrested. They were branded as Marxist conspirators out to “subvert Singapore’s political and social order using communist united front tactics” and detained without trial. Most of the detainees were lawyers, community workers or entrepreneurs. As the 25th anniversary of the crackdown approaches, activists are using the opportunity to raise questions anew about the repression of dissent in the country.

In Singapore, the Internal Security Act (ISA) allows the government to arrest and preventively detain individuals deemed to be threats to national security. A person can be detained for up to 30 days, after which a detention order must be issued. Although the ISA’s original purpose was for the protection of Singapore’s security, the government has long been criticized for using it as a tool to stifle activism and political opposition.

Unable to defend themselves in a court of law, those arrested in Operation Spectrum were made to appear on national television to give apparent confessions, admitting to plots to overthrow the government and establish a classless society. When nine of the detainees published a press statement upon their release recanting their confessions and accusing the government of ill treatment, they were swiftly re-arrested. Francis Seow, a former solicitor general, stepped in to represent one of the detainees. He, too, was arrested upon arrival at the detention center and held for over two months.

No public evidence – apart from the confessions – was ever produced to prove that any of the detainees were really threats to national security.

A similar spate of arrests and detentions — codenamed Operation Coldstore – occurred about two decades before Spectrum. Both events are rarely covered in Singapore’s primary and secondary school syllabi. But as Singaporeans begin to seek out alternative sources of information to the traditional media, ex-detainees are finding new platforms on which to tell their side of the story, raising awareness of the darker moments in Singapore’s history.

Several books have been written on the events of Operation Coldstore and Operation Spectrum, such as a collection of accounts published in 2009 under the title That We May Dream Again and Teo Soh Lung’s memoirs, Beyond The Blue Gate. When Ms. Teo stood as a candidate in the 2011 general election, fellow ex-detainee Vincent Cheng spoke in support of her at rallies and gave an account of his time in custody.

Whereas Singaporeans once only had access to the perspective of the government in the media — regarding Operation Spectrum, the national broadsheet The Straits Times simply carried the press release from the Ministry of Home Affairs — the stories coming from the detainees have revealed troubling abuses of power. Now, more and more Singaporeans support the abolishment of the ISA.

Calls for abolishment were further strengthened when Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced last fall that he would repeal Malaysia’s ISA. Since Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had said in 1991 (when he was deputy prime minister) that Singapore would consider abolishing the ISA should Malaysia do so, many Singaporeans looked forward to the continued existence of the ISA being debated both in public and in the parliament.

However, a day after Malaysia’s announcement, the Ministry of Home Affairs put out a press release stating that “the ISA continues to be relevant and crucial as a measure of last resort for the preservation of our national security.” With that, the government signaled that there would be no talk of abolishing the ISA in Singapore.

Still, the campaign to abolish the ISA continues to press forward, hoping to slowly chip away at its public support until the government is left with no choice but to act. Emphasis is now being placed on educating Singaporeans and filling in the gaps left by schoolchildren’s history textbooks.

With the 25th anniversary of Operation Spectrum coming up, the anti-ISA initiative Function 8 and the human rights NGO Maruah are jointly organizing an event called “That We May Dream Again: Remembering the 1987 ‘Marxist Conspiracy’” on May 19. It will be held at Speakers’ Corner — the only outdoor place in Singapore were cause-related activities can be held without a permit — and will feature exhibitions, performances, speeches and testimonies from ex-detainees.

In a statement released by the organizing committee, four main objectives were identified:

1. Raise awareness on the misuse of the ISA in the past;
2. raise awareness of the danger of the continued existence of the ISA which may lead to complacency of the authorities in dealing with real security threats to our country;
3. work towards the abolition of the ISA; and
4. press the government to welcome the return of those who have been forced into exile because of the ISA, such a move being the first step towards national reconciliation and healing for all parties.

As of right now, the campaign against the ISA progresses in fits and starts — the topic comes up from time to time, events are organized and then the issue once again fades to the background. To have a greater, lasting impact on Singaporean society, the campaign requires much more participation, but is often confined to the same group of passionately supportive activists. This group of people usually finds it difficult to sustain the campaign as they are more often than not also involved in other causes such as the death penalty, migrant workers’ rights, LGBT rights and more.

Perhaps the ISA itself makes other Singaporeans hesitate to join the struggle; one only needs to speak to the ex-detainees to be reminded of the price activists in Singapore have had to pay.

UPDATE 5/17/12: 

On May 17, 2012, Function 8 and Maruah posted a note on Facebook saying that their May 19 event had been postponed. They had been informed by the police that due to a by-election being held in one of Singapore’s constituencies, Hougang, “the exemption granted under the Public Entertainments and Meetings Act to Speakers’ Corner, Hong Lim Park has been revoked with effect from 16 May to 26 May 2012.” This means that anyone who wants to hold an event at Speakers’ Corner in that period will be required to apply for a police permit. In their statement, the organizers wrote:

Owing to the short notice and uncertainties in obtaining a police permit, as well as the prospect of inconvenience to our guests and contractors should the permit be refused, we are sorry that our event at Speakers’ Corner, Hong Lim Park, has to be postponed. We deeply regret that a by-election in the single-member constituency of Hougang, has disrupted and inconvenienced Singaporeans from enjoying activities at Hong Lim Park which is not part of Hougang.

That We May Dream Again: Remembering the 1987 ‘Marxist Conspiracy will now be held on 2 June 2012.

Catholic Workers outside Chicago's Prudential Building, via Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune.

Catholic Workers and friends gathered yesterday morning at the Prudential Building in Chicago — home to President Obama’s campaign headquarters — to say “No to NATO; Yes to Community.”

“We are here today,” said Chantal de Alacuaz from Chicago, “to boldly proclaim our desire to live in a world where we say no to NATO and yes to community. As Catholic Workers, we serve the poor by practicing the works of mercy by feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and taking care of the sick. The works of war are directly opposed to that.”

Our intention (disclosure: I am a Catholic Worker myself and helped organize the action) was to invite Obama and other NATO leaders to break bread with us over a symbolic meal to discuss how to transform NATO from an instrument of war and empire into an instrument of peace and love, embodied by the biblical works of mercy. We sang songs, held signs, shared bread with commuters, passed out leaflets and spoke to media before entering the building.

More than 125 of us streamed into the building, through the lobby, up the elevators, past the security check point and into the elevator banks before they were shut down, preventing us from reaching the offices. At that point, we joyfully sang our vision of a world without NATO with modified lyrics to tunes such as “Down by the Riverside,” “This Little Light of Mine,” and “Oh, Freedom.” Then, as bike police barricaded the entrance to the building and security began warning us to leave, the mic check started, reading a carefully crafted statement declaring our intentions to live “A Week Without Capitalism.”

Since the end of the Cold War, NATO forces — led by U.S. interests and the West’s insatiable appetite for oil and free markets — have been controversially involved in conflicts in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. In 2010, NATO countries spent a collective $1.08 trillion on defense and military expenditures, including a resurgence of nuclear weapons. The U.S. and NATO are leading the way for the militarization of the globe at the expense of human and environmental needs. We say no to nuclear weapons, no to the out-of-control defense spending and no to the logic of violence.

The G8 — the Group of Eight, including the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan, Italy, Germany, France and the U.K. — represent the destructive engines of capitalism whose “growth-at-all-costs” mentality has desecrated communities, the environment and human rights all in the name of progress. As people of faith and conscience, we advocate relationships and economics rooted in love: the works of mercy at a personal sacrifice, craft and worker-based cooperatives, gift and barter economies, agrarian communities and a more simple lifestyle. Let love be our guide for our collective future without war and capitalism.

As Catholic Workers, we call for May 18-21 to be a weekend of nonviolent protest against the capitalism and militarism of NATO/G8. Catholic Worker communities around the country are invited to engage in “A Weekend without Capitalism” — a four day act of noncooperation where we refuse to participate in the political and economic structures that oppress our sisters and brothers, harm our communities and destroy our environment. We will take time off work and school and, instead, invest this time into healthy, just and sustainable alternatives for our communities. We will not support the corporate state by using our cars or consuming goods or services from which the state profits. Instead, we will do as Jesus taught us: feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the imprisoned. We will protest injustice and war, host free markets and skills shares, work on community gardens, invest in alternative economics, act as peacemakers and organize our neighborhoods for direct action.

The building manager told us we had to leave and the police echoed his sentiment, warning that arrests would follow if we did not leave. But eight people chose to ignore this warning, demanding to at least be able to deliver their invitation to the Obama campaign. They were arrested and are currently being held in Chicago’s First Precinct. The National Lawyers Guild, which is providing free legal and jail support for all NATO protesters coming to Chicago, is following the arrestees’ status through the system.

Our hope for yesterday morning’s action was to create a narrative of possibility and hope in the power of community over NATO’s continued war-making in Afghanistan and its role of corporate protector. Our protest — nonviolent but assertive, invitational but clear — was intended to counter the dominant myth that our only choices are violence or passivity. It was very clear who had the power in the lobby in the Prudential Building and it was only cooperation that prevented mass arrests from happening, which was never our intention anyway.

The media response has been overwhelmingly positive — thanks in part to hard work, a creative (and fun!) action, boldness, a willingness to risk and a little bit of grace. As a movement, we are succeeding in connecting economic austerity and militarism for a larger public as well as encouraging more resistance, protest and disruption to NATO as legitimate activities for ordinary people. We are grateful for the convergence of movements that are uniting in the Chicago streets this week, culminating with the May 20 CANG8 rally and march against NATO/G8, as well as the May 21 day of action to shut down Boeing. The Catholic Workers will be a part of them.

People all over the world know the struggles and problems their communities are facing and are the ones best poised to solve them. The paradigm shift that we — along with so many others, like the Occupy movement — are calling forth, is that we can live in a world without NATO and the G8 by empowering our own communities to be places of justice, sustainability, peace and hope.

We caught glimpses of that reality yesterday as police officers slipped us quiet words of encouragement and firefighters excitedly honked their horns for us. The systems of violence and capitalism that keep us apart need to be forcefully challenged with attractive alternatives. For us, our alternative is love, community and powerfully confronting violence with creative nonviolence.

Bhutan's Prime Minister Jigme Thinley (left) and Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla at the UN, via AFP.

The monks of South Asia have been chanting on behalf of the happiness and well-being of all creatures for 2,500 years. Now, the spirit of those mantras has marched out of the monastery and into the streets, even into the halls of the United Nations.

Calling for nothing less than nonviolent resistance against the failed global economic system, the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan, sandwiched between India and China, took to the world stage last month by leading a “High Level Meeting on Happiness and Well-Being.” Its recommendation: Replace the Bretton Woods economic paradigm, imposed on the world by the United States in the wake of World War II, with an entirely new and inherently more just system.

The prime minister of Bhutan, Jigme Thinley, called on the people of the world to demand a change. Scholars, Nobel laureates, political actors, U.N. officials and staff, and spiritual and civil society leaders, many from the Global South, affirmed that the current system serves neither the human community nor other creatures on the planet.

“The GDP-led development model,” Thinley told the gathering, “compels boundless growth on a planet with limited resources.” Moreover, “it no longer makes economic sense. It is the cause of our irresponsible, immoral and self-destructive actions.” Finally, the prime minister concluded, “The purpose of development must be to create enabling conditions through public policy for the pursuit of the ultimate goal of happiness by all citizens.”

Most of the 600 in attendance shared Bhutan’s vision. Indian activist Vandana Shiva emphasized the importance of such a basic human need as food, the source of profit for a few and misery for many. As she has noted before, “The poor are not those who have been ‘left behind’; they are the ones who have been robbed.” The current paradigm creates a flow of financial, social, human and natural capital to the United States and other rich nations at the expense of everyone else.

Although Bhutan has faced criticism in the past for its treatment of Nepalese immigrants and the jailing of smokers, it has made considerable progress in recent years by establishing a new democracy and implementing creative efforts to measure its citizens’ well-being and happiness. The concept of Gross National Happiness was coined by the former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who abdicated in 2006 and set the democratization process in motion. To its credit, Bhutan is setting high standards for itself that may be difficult to reach, but the country is not alone in this endeavor.

Costa Rica’s President Laura Chinchilla gave the keynote address, sharing the experience of her country, noting, “In 1948 we decided to consolidate the best of our civic values, and abolished the army. We chose to solve our disputes through the ballots, not the bullets; we decided to invest in schools and teachers, not garrisons and soldiers.” Rather than decreasing the national security, “This uninterrupted path turned Costa Rica into the most stable and longest living democracy in Latin America.”

Interfaith spiritual leaders at the meeting, including the moderator of the Church of Canada and the Buddhist supreme patriarch of Thailand, as well as representatives from major religious traditions, issued their own statement calling for a new economic paradigm “based upon compassion, altruism, balance, and peace, dedicated to the well-being, happiness, dignity and sacredness of all forms of life.”

Meanwhile, economists John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs distributed copies of the World Happiness Report. They argue, “We live in an age of stark contradictions. The world enjoys technologies of unimaginable sophistication; yet has at least one billion people without enough to eat each day.”

The official statement that came out of the meeting calls for a new paradigm with four pillars: ecological sustainability, happiness and well-being for all, fair distribution, and efficient use of resources. An unexpected 200 participants remained at the U.N. for two additional days to clarify what the new paradigm would look like, to propose new solutions, and to strategize how to mobilize a global movement in civil society to resist the current one and implement the change. Relevant civil society, educational, spiritual and activist organizations worldwide are being informed about the process, with an eye toward a 2014 convention that would replace Bretton Woods.

Widespread civil resistance movements would be a vital component in bringing about a shift toward so radically different a paradigm as this. Yet the meeting suggests that insufficient use has been made of the United Nations as a venue by change activists. Despite the U.N.’s obvious shortcomings — for instance, OWS recently protested the influence of corporations on environmental proceedings — it is nonetheless an infrastructure where every nation has a voice, at least in theory. Paradoxically, Global South elites who are also victims of the current economic paradigm provide an entrée into the system for grassroots activists, and this meeting demonstrates that the U.N. can offer a venue for radical critique. But the U.N. will only work on behalf of the people if the people insist that it does and begin to explore the possibilities that it might offer as a space for challenging injustice at a global level.

Dutch Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp, a long-time veteran of international meetings, observed that this one had “a different spirit” and that the time was ripe for unprecedented change. His call for a 0.01 percent donation of everyone’s income, especially from the rich nations, was received with enthusiasm by the civil society working group, which is creating a World Happiness Bank (a tentative name) that would promote and model the new economic paradigm.

This change will not happen, of course, without the mobilization of a nonviolent resistance movement. That’s where we come in; we have a new opportunity to act against a system that is robbing humanity and its fellow creatures through what the meeting’s statement calls the “private capture of the common wealth.” And we can do so by following the lead of the marginalized.

Following the huge turnout of Bersih 2.0 in 2011, Bersih 3.0 returned on April 28 with renewed vigour and determination to make the voices of Malaysians heard. Meaning ‘clean’ in Malay, Bersih calls for clean and fair elections in a country fed up with problems of electoral fraud, phantom voters, vote-buying and a lack of independent public institutions. Following recent amendments to the Election Offenses Bill that have led to the removal of election monitors, Bersih 3.0 was seen as an opportunity to make the unhappiness of Malaysians known to their government and the international community.

While last year’s event was mainly focused in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, Bersih 3.0 saw gatherings in 11 Malaysian cities, as well as solidarity events from around the world. Bersih 3.0 Singapore, though, came with a twist: although there was a solidarity event for Malaysians living and working in Singapore, it was held in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Effectively, the event became Bersih 3.0 for Malaysians in Singapore… in Malaysia.

In Singapore, most public assemblies require permits from the police. Cause-related activities involving foreigners are rarely — if ever — allowed. Last year’s gathering of Malaysians at Hong Lim Park resulted in an organizer being called in for questioning by the police, and so it was no surprise when the permit for a gathering this year was rejected.

Bersih 3.0 Singapore therefore organized for Malaysians in Singapore (referred to as MiS) to meet up and travel across the Causeway to Johor Bahru, the closest Malaysian city. Organizers said that over 150 people made the trip.

Once in Johor Bahru, they assembled at Waterfront City for a photo session with Singapore’s skyline in the background — the closest they could get to Singapore without being arrested. The group also sang their national anthem, “Negaraku,” before heading towards Dataran Bandaraya to join their fellow Malaysians for Bersih 3.0 in Johor Bahru.

“Turning up today … is such a small thing to do, but it means something,” Johanna Lau, a student at the National University of Singapore, who is originally from Penang, told me as she followed the long line of yellow-clad protesters. Cars zipped by as we trudged along the road under the merciless sun. Many honked their horns, shouted their encouragement through open windows and gave a thumbs-up in support.

With the main part of Dataran Bandaraya occupied by a rock concert and the field taken up by a football match, Bersih 3.0 was relegated to a corner of the square right under the clock tower. Some suspected that both the match and the concert had been hastily organized to prevent protesters from being able to take over the whole space, but Bersih organizers and volunteers made sure that no one intruded upon the other activities.

Tan Tack Poh, a volunteer wearing a black T-shirt with “SECURITY” printed on the front, explained his role to me. “I’m here to make sure that no one messes with anybody,” he said. “We watch out for people. We have to be prepared in case there are thugs or troublemakers trying to stir things up.”

In addition to Bersih’s volunteers, local police also made their presence felt in the square but made no move to stop or obstruct any of the proceedings. During their speeches, leaders indicated that the rally had no intention of breaching the newly-enforced Peaceful Assembly Act, which prohibits “assemblies in motion.” In keeping with Bersih 3.0’s call of “Duduk Bantah,” or sit-in protest, people sat on the grass, shielding themselves with multi-colored umbrellas.

Over the course of the afternoon, the space was flooded by a sea of yellow. Flecks of green — representative of protesters against Australian rare earth plant Lynas — were seen amongst the crowd, and welcomed. “We want a clean Malaysia. Clean elections and clean environment,” said a protester who noticed me reading his “Stop Lynas!” sign.

“All we want is free and fair elections. The government media doesn’t tell us the full story, but alternative media spells out cases of fraudulent activity during voting. The government just gives us excuses,” said volunteer Munikrishan s/o Ponnan. “The people are serious about reform. We don’t want words, we want action.” His colleague Murugan s/o A. Kaliappan agreed: “This is for the good of our country. We’re here for our children’s future.”

At the designated end-time of 4 p.m., everyone got to their feet to sing the national anthem once more, then dispersed, thanking the volunteers and policemen as they left the square.

It was estimated that 4,000 people had turned up at Dataran Bandaraya in peaceful protest, a far cry from how things eventually unfolded in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, where the main Bersih protest saw at least 25,000 people swarming the streets.

After the sit-in was declared a success and the crowds were asked by Bersih co-chairperson Ambiga Sreenevasan to disperse, a group of protesters broke through the barricades, preventing people from entering Kuala Lumpur’s Dataran Merdeka. Police retaliated by using water cannons and tear gas on everyone, and mayhem erupted in the capital. A police car crashed into the side of a building after being attacked by protesters, hitting two people. Hundreds were arrested and many journalists were manhandled, their cameras smashed and memory cards confiscated.

The violent way in which Bersih 3.0 in Kuala Lumpur eventually ended led Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to characterize the protest as an attempt by opposition parties to make the government look bad in the international community.

Yet, in most other parts of Malaysia and around the world, Bersih 3.0 was like what I observed in Johor Bahru: a peaceful gathering of Malaysians seeking to change systems they deem corrupt.

An installation art piece that was set up in Speaker's Corner in Singapore on Human Rights Day in 2011 to represent the 170 who have been executed between 1999 and 2010. There was a blank canvas card for each person and a list of names that are known, with a voice in a little speaker reading out the names.

Execution day is always a Friday in Singapore. As the night sky slowly lightens into day, the inmate is taken from his or her cell and escorted to the gallows. At 6 a.m., the trapdoor opens and the inmate falls through. By the afternoon, the family should have collected the body, or the state will deal with it as it sees fit. And that, as far as Singapore’s authorities are concerned, is that.

In the past, very few people spoke against the death penalty. The message most children received in schools was that it is part and parcel of the tough laws that distinguish Singapore from other dangerous, crime-ridden cities. It was not something to be questioned, or even mentioned much at all. Apart from the sense of it being irrelevant to the average law-abiding citizen’s life, the topic of death is considered inauspicious and therefore not often a subject of conversation in Singapore’s Asian communities. In recent years, though, thanks to the growing influence of the Internet and social media, an increasing number of inmates’ stories are being told, and awareness of the death penalty is slowly rising.

A few keystrokes and a click of the button

When the state-owned newspapers, radio stations and TV channels that dominated the Singaporean media landscape and public gatherings were all subject to censorship, getting the word out about the death penalty in Singapore was difficult. To learn about it, people would have to already have made the decision to seek out more information themselves. Attracting new faces to a movement against it was a huge challenge.

But the proliferation of new media has made it much easier. News, photographs, event notifications and even excerpts of Singapore’s penal code are being shared with the click of a button, reaching a larger audience than activists could possibly have hoped for previously.

Organizations such as the Singapore Anti-Death Penalty Campaign (SADPC) and We Believe in Second Chances — a group that I co-founded — quickly set up social media networks to disseminate information as quickly as possible. “Social media got involved to lend us the publicity that the campaign needs, which is a very good thing as the mainstream media usually block such news out,” says Rachel Zeng from SADPC, in an email interview.

Alternative websites such as The Online Citizen have also contributed to the discourse on the death penalty by featuring articles that shed light not only on legal and philosophical arguments, but also stories of individuals on death row. One such individual — arguably the one who has attracted the most attention to the issue in recent years — is a young Sabahan named Yong Vui Kong.

A boy and the campaign

Arrested in 2007 at the age of 19, Vui Kong was convicted of trafficking 42 grams of heroin into Singapore and sentenced to death under the mandatory death penalty as stipulated in the Misuse of Drugs Act.

Vui Kong’s story is a sad tale of poverty and desperation. As a child he grew up on his grandfather’s plantation, going to school early in the morning and coming home to work late into the night. His mother, a single parent, continues to suffer from clinical depression and relies on medication. He left school and made his way to Kuala Lumpur while in his early teens, where he fell in with gangs that led him towards a life as a drug runner.

At the time of his arrest, Vui Kong was illiterate, unaware that his actions would attract such a harsh punishment. But once in remand — and later on death row — he began to turn to Buddhism, rising early in the morning to meditate and study scriptures. He also started to educate himself, learning to read and write in Mandarin and Malay, and making some headway with English. His family and lawyers have all remarked upon his remarkable transformation and reform.

Vui Kong’s case has since sparked off campaigns for his life in both Singapore and his home country of Malaysia, which also has the mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking. Malaysian Chinese media featured his story in newspapers and on the covers of magazines, galvanizing the Malaysian Chinese community into action — especially those in his hometown of Sandakan in Sabah.

Part of the 109,346 signatures delivered to the president of Singapore at Istana in August 2010.

On August 24, 2010, his family, accompanied by Sabah Member of Parliament Datuk Chua Soon Bui, walked to the back gates of Istana (the official residence of the president of the Republic of Singapore) to deliver a petition signed by 109,346 people asking for a second chance for Vui Kong. Images of his family kneeling before the guards at the gate quickly spread through Facebook and Twitter.

Vui Kong’s story of youth, repentance and reform appealed to many, drawing them into the campaign.

“At the age that Vui Kong was caught, I was so much more fortunate than he was. I didn’t have to worry about income, a roof over my head, and I had good education,” says Priscilla Chia, founding member of We Believe in Second Chances. “It made me sympathize with Vui Kong a lot more.”

Vui Kong’s story has also inspired a song written by Singaporean musicians and a play produced by Amnesty International Malaysia.

A boy and the law

While activists appealed to the public to support Vui Kong, his lawyer, M. Ravi — incidentally the only human rights lawyer in Singapore willing to consistently take up death penalty cases, often pro bono, and work with campaigners — took on a series of challenges in court.

“In my opinion, this is a landmark case,” says Rachel Zeng. “In the past, once a convict is sentenced to death and the appeal period was over and clemency denied, the court would never allow anymore challenges or appeals from the defense.”

Singaporean lawyer M. Ravi

In Vui Kong’s case, however, Ravi had managed to win not one, but two stays of execution so as to be able to challenge his client’s sentence on legal grounds. Ravi and Vui Kong returned to court again and again, raising issues such as the constitutionality of the mandatory death penalty, the president’s discretionary powers in granting clemency and prosecutorial discretion.

Every appeal and application made was dismissed by Singapore’s highest court, the Court of Appeal. But with every trip to the Supreme Court, Singaporeans began to learn more about the death penalty and its application. For the first time, many Singaporeans discovered the difference between the death penalty and the mandatory death penalty, which removes discretionary powers from the judges when it comes to sentencing.

We learned that in granting clemency, the president is required to act according to the advice of the very legislators who implemented the mandatory death penalty in the first place. We learned that it is possible to convict and sentence drug mules to death while masterminds have all charges against them dropped.

“People found out from these challenges of the inherent injustices and systemic obstacles stacked against people who are from similar socio-economic background like Vui Kong,” says Ted Tan from ThinkCentre, a local NGO that carries out research on democracy and human rights issues.

Slow progress with a long way to go

Having been involved with the anti-death penalty campaign in Singapore since 2009, Rachel Zeng has seen many changes:

More people are aware of how the mandatory death penalty works. More people have taken an interest in discussing it, whether they are pro or against, on blogs and online forums. People have stepped up to voice out against it, and groups have worked together, and are still working together, on the campaign against the death penalty. Social media has chipped in to help us publicize the campaign.

“[The Vui Kong campaign] has also generated support and awareness of civil society across the causeway [linking Singapore and Malaysia] in a more sustained way than in the past that I can recall,” Ted Tan adds. “But collaboration could be better.”

While Vui Kong’s campaign appears to have made much headway in Malaysia, with the de-facto Law Minister Datuk Seri Nazri Abdul Aziz and the Malaysian Bar Council coming out to voice support for abolition of the death penalty, things are moving along at a slower pace in Singapore.

Even though awareness and discussion has increased over the years, the fact remains that many Singaporeans are still pro-death penalty. After a lifetime of being told by authorities that the death penalty is a necessary “trade-off” for safety and security and the well-being of our children, the task of overturning people’s belief in capital punishment is a thankless uphill battle.

It doesn’t help that different groups are sometimes unable to agree on fundamental stances. Certain groups favor the complete abolition of the death penalty in Singapore, while others are only opposed to the mandatory death penalty. And amidst such discussions, all campaigning is required to be extremely fluid and adaptable as cases sprout up, families approach activists with pleas for help, appeals are dismissed and the clock counts down on inmates’ lives. The demands are heavy on activists who can only volunteer their time, money and energy on top of already-exhausting full-time jobs.

Still, every anti-death penalty campaigner in Singapore understands that things will not change overnight. And so we learn to recognize the little victories, and to stand our ground until the time when Friday mornings bring no more heartbreak.

The 2011 Freedom to Love celebration called Pink Dot, which is held annually at Speaker's Corner in Singapore.

Singapore, a “sunny island set in the sea,” is known for many things: economic prosperity, air-conditioning, malls and underground malls linking to more malls. What it is not known for, though, is a stellar human rights record or an active citizenry willing to take to the streets.

In October 2011, a Facebook page for Occupy Singapore sprung up, asking Singaporeans to gather at Raffles Place in the heart of Singapore’s Central Business District on October 15 as part of the Global Day of Action. The movement called for more accountability and transparency in the running of government-linked corporations, particularly the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and Temasek Holdings. In recent years, these two corporations had made huge losses on bad investments made with public money.

It was a demand close to the hearts of many Singaporeans who have been frustrated by the lack of accountability and responsibility taken by the senior management of these corporations. It was also good timing, in a year of watershed elections — when trust and accountability were hot-button issues — which saw the ruling People’s Action Party get its lowest vote share in the nation’s history. People appeared to be more fired up than they had been in years.

But when October 15 rolled around, Raffles Place was left woefully unoccupied. The space thronged with journalists and photographers (and perhaps a number of plainclothes policemen), but no protesters. Although the organizers of Occupy Raffles Place later expressed bitterness and disappointment at the turnout (or lack thereof), it is hard to imagine what they had expected. Protests, public demonstrations and civil disobedience are just not in the average Singaporean’s blood.

‘If I say this, will I get in trouble?’

Thanks to the government and the mainstream media, protests, demonstrations and strikes are often linked in the minds of Singaporeans to violence and unrest. This perception is further supported by the fact that law enforcement authorities often turn down permit applications for events by citing “law and order” concerns that would affect the stability of the country.

Restrictions on freedom of speech and the government’s willingness to make use of defamation suits have also encouraged people to constantly watch what they say. The porous and vague definition of “OB markers” (or “out of bounds markers”) make people unwilling to speak out, just in case what they say gets them into trouble.

The government has also often used Singapore’s multi-racial and multi-religious society as a justification for the curbing of freedom of expression. Singaporeans are often reminded of the race riots of the 1960s, when violent conflict broke out between the different racial groups, and told that everything must be done to ensure that we never return to such violence. People who make comments of a racial or religious nature can be charged under the Sedition Act, if said comments are deemed to have the potential of creating ill will between different racial and religious groups.

In December 2011, Singaporeans for Democracy submitted an application for a permit to hold an anti-racism rally to address a recent spate of racist postings on Facebook. The application was rejected. When a formal appeal was made, the authorities again cited “law and order considerations.”

Add to all this the belief held by many Singaporeans that we have it good — we have roofs over our heads, food on the table, there aren’t any wars or natural disasters, we have our shopping and our streets are clean. What more do you want? For most people, life is too comfortable to risk the repercussions of speaking out.

Laws, laws, laws

In 2008, around 20 people — children included — gathered outside Parliament House to protest against the rising cost of living in Singapore. The protesters, mostly associated with the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), carried placards and wore T-shirts that read Tak Boleh Tahan, meaning “Cannot Take It” in Malay. (The phrase is also commonly used in Singlish, an English-based creole spoken by most Singaporeans.)

Eighteen protesters, including SDP’s Secretary-General Chee Soon Juan, were arrested and charged under the Public and Nuisance Act on two counts: for participating in an assembly, and for participating in a procession without a permit. Fines of up to S$2,000 (approx. US$1,588) or jail terms of up to two weeks were meted out.

In 2009 the new Public Order Act stated that “cause-related activities will be regulated by permit regardless of the number of persons involved or the format they are conducted in.”

This effectively means that even a single person could constitute an illegal assembly and be subject to intervention from law enforcement if they have not obtained a police permit for their activity. It is also up to the authorities to define the term “cause-related activity.”

The only areas in which police permits do not need to be obtained before an activity are in indoor venues, and at Speaker’s Corner in Hong Lim Park — a small green space not too far from Singapore’s Central Business District. However, organizers are required to register their names, identification card numbers and contact details with the National Parks prior to an event at Speaker’s Corner.

Non-Singaporeans are prohibited from participating in events and activities related to domestic affairs, even in indoor spaces and at Speaker’s Corner. At the annual Pink Dot (a day to celebrate acceptance of the LGBTQ community), Permanent Residents and non-citizens are not allowed to be part of the giant pink dot formed by all participants at the end of the day and are required to stand behind a cordon.

What do activists do, then?

Despite restrictions, activists often find other ways and means to carry out their activities and push their causes. As the sole outdoor space in Singapore where activities can be held without a permit, activists and campaigners often turn to Speaker’s Corner as an option for public events. Although the turnout will likely be limited to those who have actively made a point of showing up at Hong Lim Park, the benefit of having an event in the park is that there is a certain amount of visibility.

Another popular move is to hold private indoor events where attendance is “by invite only.” Although this greatly restricts the turnout to the number of invitations, and to some extent restricts the potential of new people attending, making an event private means that it will be easier for non-Singaporean citizens to participate.

That said, during investigations over a private forum organized by Singaporeans for Democracy, the police said that having a foreigner speak at a forum without clearance was tantamount to an offense. Otherwise, most activism and campaigning are done online, which makes sense in a country with about 72.4 percent internet penetration and a mainstream media that’s largely owned by the state.

Changing mindsets

Although anyone unafraid of arrest could still stage demonstrations and protests in Singapore, it’s not a move often contemplated, as civil disobedience is unlikely to gain a movement much sympathy in a society bred to consider law and order as sacred.

Many Singaporeans are quick to equate public demonstrations with violence, and are more likely to view an arrested activist as a troublemaker than as a victim of oppression. Stories of strikes in other countries are also often viewed with scorn: What a mess! We should be grateful that this would never happen in Singapore.

And that mindset is the first major hurdle for any activist in Singapore — to convince people committed to not rocking the boat that speaking out is not a form of violence but a right due to every citizen, every day of their lives.

• On Saturday, thousands of students in Quebec were joined by residents young and old for a protest against planned tuition hikes that coincided with the anniversary marking Premier Jean Charest’s taking power nine years ago.

• In Pakistan, a crippling strike paralyzed life in the provincial capital of Quetta on Sunday as people protested Saturday’s target killings of nine people, including eight Hazaras, and the government’s failure to improve the law and order situation.

• About 30 members of Afghan Young Women for Change staged a protest march in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul Saturday, denouncing violence against women.

• On Saturday, up to 4,000 opposition supporters marched through the southern Russian city of Astrakhan in support of a hunger-striking local politician who says he was robbed of an election victory by vote rigging.

• Police arrested about two dozen people who barricaded themselves inside the Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic on Chicago’s South Side on Friday to protest its planned closing.

• Ten Cuban former political prisoners protesting their “total abandonment” in Spain launched a hunger strike on Friday to press their demands for government assistance.

Dear friends of ordinary 99 percent Afghans,

We thank you for your love and your hands and feet, in organizing for the upcoming Chicago protests!

In these killing days, we in Afghanistan do not expect the interests of people to triumph over self-interests. But your efforts prove that another world is possible.

However, respectfully, late May demonstrations are probably too late to request that the majority of public opinion against the Afghan war be placed on NATO’s table, so as to end the ineffectual wasting of tax money on a futile war strategy. War doesn’t work!

By the time you take to the streets in Chicago on May 20, the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement for a long term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan will have been signed.

As General John Allen remarked last Sunday:

The US is fully committed to an enduring strategic partnership with Afghanistan … and now that we have concluded these two critically important MOUs [memorandums of understanding] — one on detentions and one on special operations — we are ready to look forward to a successful summit in Chicago in the wake of the signing of the Strategic Partnership.

The talk of a 2014 withdrawal is a distracting side show, and the recently clinched “important MOUs” for detentions and night raids/special operations were the token bait. In General Allen’s declaration, we will be protesting “in the wake” of the signing of this so-called partnership. Permits! Protests! The deal will have been done.

Perpetual war in South Asia will have been sealed in Washington and Kabul, in the sacred names of global and national security.

But, our names are not global and national security.

Our name is love.

If at all possible, please take to the streets earlier.

For us here in Afghanistan, where the streets are too deadly, on April 21 we’ll take to the Afghan airwaves again!

With year-round gratitude and spring warmth,

The Afghan Peace Volunteers

Afghans for Peace

• Trayvon Martin protesters on Monday blocked the front doors of the Sanford Police Department in Florida for nearly five hours but walked away peacefully after convincing city officials to hold a community forum.

• In Tunisia, police fired tear gas Monday to disperse a rally of hundreds on a central Tunis avenue where demonstrations are banned.

• Pilots for Spanish airline Iberia, part of International Airlines Group, went on strike on Monday, grounding 150 flights in the first of 30 one-day strikes to protest against the start-up of low-cost carrier Iberia Express.

• Egyptian train drivers staged a sit-in in Cairo’s Ramses Train Station on Monday, bringing rail traffic across the country to a halt for more than seven hours, to demand an additional allowance for working on Saturdays, bonus increases and risk allowances.

• Opposition supporters wearing white ribbons walked in a circle during a Red Square protest against the rule of Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Sunday. At least three activists were arrested after pitching a tent near Lenin’s Mausoleum.

• Thousands of Shiite Muslims from Islamabad and Rawalpindi on Sunday participated in a sit-in outside the parliament to protest the killings of Shiite Muslims in Pakistan and government crackdown against the innocent people of Gilgit City.

• Bahraini security forces fired tear gas and water cannons at thousands of protesters marching Friday in support of a jailed human rights activist whose nearly two-month hunger strike has become a powerful rallying point for the tiny nation’s Shiite-led uprising against the Sunni monarchy.

• On Friday, police in India dispersed protesters who staged a sit-in protest against the gang-rape of a woman.

Aung San Suu Kyi waves to the crowd in Burma, with her party celebrating a major victory in the by-elections. Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images

The excitement on the streets of Rangoon is palpable, and who can deny their right to celebrate this moment? When I arrived on the Thai-Burma border four years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest, and over 2,000 political prisoners were behind bars. This week’s by-elections in Burma brings Daw Suu, as she is respectfully called, and 42 other members of her until-recently-banned party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) into the belly of the beast — Burma’s fledgling parliament.

There is real cause to celebrate — not in Burma’s apparent democratic transformation (which, for the record, remains to be seen), but in the very climate of public engagement in politics. The significance here is not the now 5 percent presence of the NLD in an otherwise military-dominated parliament, but the potential for people to move the political conversation from hushed whispers in a teashop corner to the classroom, the streets, and at the ballot box in 2015′s general election.

As Human Rights Watch’s David Scott Mathieson has pointed out, “The real danger of the by-elections is the overblown expectations many in the West have cast on them.” It is an opinion shared by many of my friends and colleagues in the Burma movement, who have kept the movement alive and well since the crushed student-led uprising of 1988, here on the Thai-Burma border, during the many years Daw Suu was locked up by the military regime. Some may feel the words of caution expressed in the interviews and op-eds of exiled movement leaders intend to dampen the mood of an otherwise celebratory occasion.

But there are plenty of reasons to remain skeptical. Daw Suu’s party will have just 43 out of approximately 600 seats in parliament (only 45 were contested in these by-elections). The parliament remains under the control of the military’s National Security and Defense Council, which holds the legal right to stage a coup should they feel their power is sufficiently threatened. Perhaps most significantly, as Zoya Phan and other leaders of Burma’s ethnic minority communities have emphasized, conflicts in Burma’s ethnic areas are far from over. While Daw Suu’s popularity among Burma’s diverse ethnic groups continues (as exhibited by her election to a largely ethnic Karen constituency in the Irrawaddy Delta), the significance of the election for the tens of thousands of ethnic people still displaced from civil war remains to be felt.

As Daw Suu herself said on the eve of elections: “An election alone is not going to change the country. It’s the people, a change in the spirit of our people, which will change our nation.” Getting people engaged in politics again — this is the reason Daw Suu has given time and time again when explaining her party’s decision to contest elections they knew would be far from free and fair. It cannot be denied that elections have provided a renewed sense of hope, a change in “spirit” if you will, the power of which should not be undervalued. As Daw Suu and other NLD leaders take their seats in parliament, however, the responsibility for the larger movement — not just the NLD and other pro-democracy ethnic political parties, but the next generation of community leaders from all ethnic areas of Burma — to mobilize the grassroots will be even greater.

As Ko Ko Gyi, a student leader in the 1988 uprising said recently, “We accept the parliamentary process, but we cannot rely on parliament alone.” While all eyes are on the new parliament, the significance of the elections will be determined by the ability of the wider democracy movement to foster “direct democracy” in the townships and villages as far as the mountains of Kachin and Shan states. In the past twenty years, much of this critical work — of fostering the next generation of Burma’s democracy movement leaders — through trainings on community organizing and nonviolent action, has taken place on the Thai-Burma border. Ironically, with the focus on the spirited streets of Rangoon and on parliamentary politics in the new capitol Naypyidaw, there is markedly less attention and funding to support the critical cross-border work of organizations based in Burma’s neighboring countries.

Last week, on the eve of the election, I was facilitating a training for a group of 25 young community organizers representing a dozen ethnic communities throughout Burma. Some had traveled three days to reach the Thai-Burma border to attend a one-month training on nonviolent movement-building. “What would real democracy look like in your community?” It was this question that instigated the most passionate and insightful responses. Interestingly enough, none of the responses included “elections,” per se. In some of their communities, Kachin state, for example, the elections were cancelled, due to ongoing civil war. In others, pro-democracy ethnic political parties have parliamentary seats but have yet to respond to the most pressing issues in the community — forced labor and land confiscation as a result of destructive development projects, for example. Ultimately the list they came up with included local government responsiveness to community demands, reduced human rights abuses, freedom of association for political parties and community-based organizations, and a rise in living standards. These are the things they plan to monitor in their communities over the coming months, and of course, will be organizing around. They won’t be waiting around until the next general election in 2015 — there’s a lot of work to be done in the meantime.

Che Gandhi, courtesy Beautiful Trouble and Andy Meconi

When contemplating “The Marriage of Gandhi and Che,” the subtitle of my contribution to the new book Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution, I was originally thinking of something frilly with lace — perhaps an off-white gown of appropriate drama. Confronting this challenge of representation, Agit-Pop co-founder Andy Meconi came up with a more iconic image expropriation: the smiling old soul superimposed onto the dashing beret. Two great faces that face great together.

This week’s formal release of the OR Books publication put together under the auspices of Agit-Pop and the Yes Labs (“assembled” rather than edited by Andrew Boyd with Dave Mitchell) is indeed a cause for celebration. Bringing together more than seventy authors in a collection of two-page mini essays, Beautiful Trouble looks at interdependent theories, principles, tactics and case studies. Though largely written by a younger generation of agitators, including Waging Nonviolence’s own Bryan Farrell, Nathan Schneider and Eric Stoner, the book includes pieces by Starhawk, Lisa Fithian, Arun Gupta, Nadine Bloch, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and many others. Accompanied by a growing website of supplemental materials, the toolbox package seeks to put the accumulated wisdom of decades of creative protest into the hands of the next generation of change makers. Written in an engaging style and format and chock-full of photos, cartoons and visuals to incite and inspire, the book is sophisticated enough for antiwar and human rights veterans, while being easily accessible for newcomers.

The special timing of this effort has not been missed by any of the media-conscious movement-builders involved. With the birth of a new global people’s movement firmly in mind, the wranglers responsible for Beautiful Trouble understand that “the impossible suddenly seems possible, and all around the world ordinary people are trying out new tools and tactics to win victories where they live.” The urgency of this political moment, in the words of Andrew Boyd, “demands resources that will transform outrage into effective action” — action for building the next revolution.

For many of us, the revolution we seek must understand the connections between means and ends, as well as include the mass-based people power central to effective unarmed civilian resistance. Though the term “nonviolence” has long seemed negative to many, rehabilitating the phrase by reviving the more militant concept of “revolutionary nonviolence” is also a process whose time has come. Mainstream politicians and misguided textbooks have tried to convince us that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were extreme opposites whose visions and practices had nothing to do with one another, but the truth has always been more nuanced, dialectic and complicated than that.

It is not that Che Gandhi seeks to become the new “brand” (Che McGandhi, if you will) by accepting everything those two forefathers believed. This author, for one, does not think that Che’s idea of foco guerrilla warfare has much to offer modern-day radicals; nor do I accept Gandhi’s notions on abstinence and sexuality. The hero-worshiping of both of these figures has done much damage to their most significant joint legacy — that one must give one’s all to a total revolution which is based on love of the people. Che McGandhi’s mass appeal might not yet match the Mc-numbers we’d like — only 300 billion served? How about getting the other six and a half billion their social change with equal portions peace and justice, please? Perhaps we need to invent another prophetic hybrid, this time a West African woman — in tribute to all the women of the Global South who are leading nonviolent revolutions today. Let’s call her Cheluchi NGandhi (points for anyone who can parse the multiple hidden meanings).

What we surely and certainly need, in the U.S. and across the planet, is a new approach toward organizing that includes a sense of humor, breathtaking creativity and a focus on appealing to greater numbers of people without losing sight of how issues and struggles are connected. As we join together for that upcoming uprising, won’t we be causing some beautiful trouble then?

In 2009, Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives (before being overthrown in a recent coup), held a cabinet meeting underwater. He sat at a table anchored to the ocean floor, wearing a wetsuit and oxygen tank, and signed a law meant to make the country carbon neutral within a decade.

The Maldives is the lowest-lying nation on the planet, with 400 miles of coastline and one of the world’s most densely populated capitals. It is, according to Rob Nixon, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an “invisible nation of no apparent consequence,” and as sea levels rise due to climate change, it may well be the first nation whose entire population becomes climate refugees. President Nasheed’s underwater meeting was a desperate attempt to catch the world’s attention, to add dramatic urgency to a process that, however disastrous, occurs over a period of decades.

The Maldives are far from alone: 43 island states have announced that, without swift global action against climate change, they face “the end of history.” From far away on a bright spring morning, this statement could easily seem hyperbolic — if it were heard at all. But for those at risk, it’s the frightening truth. And therein lies the challenge.

In Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Rob Nixon writes pragmatically about the difficulties in fighting what he calls “spectacle deficient” environmental crises like climate change, compromised ecosystems and toxic waste, whose victims are spread over place and time; the Maldives’s plight is only one of countless examples, and perhaps even more evident than most. These processes, Nixon says, are “slow violence”: pervasive, devastating — and unnoticed.

Just as slow violence is made invisible by its subtle pace and scattered impacts, its victims themselves are invisible, at least in the tiny and shifting lens of the world media. These are the micro-minorities, the shantytowns downriver from the manufacturing plant, the marginalized women in an already-marginalized society. Often, slow violence “occurs in the passive voice”; the suffering is a shame, of course, but it comes as a side effect rather than through the immediate action of any responsible party, leaving a convoluted trail of excuses and denial. Whose fault is it when a child goes hungry because his region has lost its topsoil and his family cannot grow food? Whose fault is a leukemia cluster that comes 10 years after and 100 miles away from any sort of disaster? I don’t know, but it’s not mine.

Each chapter in the book profiles a writer-activist who uses his or her writing to memorialize and call attention to a case of slow violence. In contrast to scientific or political reports, which are often written with such opaque language that they are inaccessible to both the victims they describe and to potentially-sympathetic outsiders, these writers use their work to build connections between their communities and the outside world, to make accessible that which is hidden.

We see Ken Saro-Wiwa, an Ogoni writer whose homeland in Nigeria was exploited for crude oil extraction, and who led a nonviolent campaign for environmental rights before he was put to death by the state. We see Wangari Maathai shaping Kenya’s Green Belt Movement as a feminist response to militaristic, male-dominated ideas of national security: “Losing topsoil,” she wrote, “should be considered analogous to losing territory to an invading enemy.” Nadine Gordimer’s short story “The Ultimate Safari,” about a group of refugees slipping through South Africa’s Kruger National Park, is read as a commentary on conservation refugees, the illusion of authenticity and the legacy of racism in South Africa’s tourist-oriented game reserves. The books and writers that Nixon profiles become opportunities for reflection, as he contextualizes each topic — dams, fossil fuels, depleted uranium — in terms of its global significance.

Nixon and the stories he tells also cast light on the differences between top-down and bottom-up environmental movements. “Full-stomach” environmentalism in rich nations, for instance, has tended to focus on the preservation of charismatic megafauna and majestic landscapes, often to the exclusion of the people native to those landscapes. This is the environmentalism of Priuses, debt-for-nature swaps, recycling campaigns and dreams of going “off the grid.” Poor-nation, “empty-belly” environmentalists, by contrast, “experience environmental threat not as a planetary abstraction but as a series of inhabited risks.” Although Nixon doesn’t address the environmental justice movement among poor and minority communities in the U.S. as an example, the principle is similar: environmental justice advocates, like poor-nation environmentalists, are often spurred to action by a direct threat to which the larger society — itself the perpetrator — pays little attention. There’s power to be gained by the two sides coming together, by environmentalists embracing the diversity of their causes alongside activists for women’s rights, minority rights and other rights discourses. If, as Maathai writes, “Poverty is both a cause and symptom of environmental degradation,” then each movement can be strengthened by joining forces with the other.

I thought the book was worth buying for its introduction alone, which presented the idea of slow violence and the practical and political challenges behind fighting it. The chapters that follow are a gallery of horrors: one scene of violence after another, each seemingly insurmountable and somehow less surprising than the last. Yet, remarkably, this is the least depressing environmental book I’ve read in years. By presenting these disasters alongside the writer-activists working to counteract them, Nixon leaves no room for despair. Instead I’m left buoyed, hopeful and — after 300 pages — impatient to learn more.

• In a march themed with fanciful allusions to Little Red Riding Hood, thousands of protesters swarmed Hong Kong’s streets on Sunday in the first large display of protest since the city’s elite tapped a Beijing ally to become the Chinese territory’s next leader.

• In the Dakotas, members of the proud Lakota Nation began a 48-hour hunger strike on Sunday in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline — and all tar sands pipelines — they say will destroy precious water resources and ancestral lands in the U.S and in Canada.

• Jordanian authorities arrested more than two dozen political activists during protests Saturday critical of King Abdullah II that called for a change of government.

• An estimated 800,000 homeowners in Ireland joined a tax boycott by refusing to pay a new flat-rate $133 property tax by Saturday’s deadline.

• On Saturday, nearly 100 people wore hoodies in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to protest the killing of Trayvon Martin.

• Thousands of Palestinians protested on Friday against Israeli policies of land seizure and control of Jerusalem, leading to clashes with Israeli troops in which a 20-year-old was killed and scores of others were injured.

• Three protesters were arrested Thursday at the UC Board of Regents meeting, when a few dozen activists, some stripped down to swimsuits, called for more transparency in state funding talks and an end to tuition hikes.

• On Thursday, hundreds of Bahrainis staged a sit-in outside the offices of the United Nations in Manama demanding action over the “excessive” use by police of tear gas against protesters.

• Some 50 students at the all-boys Frederick Douglass Academy in Detroit were suspended Thursday after walking out of classes in protest of absent teachers, inconsistent classroom instruction and other issues.

A child sitting on an army tank in Tahrir Square, with a banner that reads "Egypt is free" on January 29, 2011. By Hossam el-Hamalawy, via Flickr.

Nearly all successful movements need to attract allies in order to win. The U.S. Occupy movement in its first few months attracted widespread sympathy and support in opinion polls; but the function of allies is to translate favorable opinion into active support.

Some movements realize this and craft their messaging and tactics in order to expand their base and win active allies. They avoid what might be called “shrinking messages” that emphasize what happens to them (i.e. the latest police repression), and instead put out “expanding messages” that emphasize how the system oppresses other people — thereby giving reasons for other people to join them. This isn’t easy. What’s more natural than to become self-absorbed, especially when taking punishment? The advice commonly used in the civil rights movement, which took much more punishment than many U.S. movements do, was to “keep your eye on the prize.” When we remember the prize, we know we need to expand beyond our ranks and win allies.

Because the reader will easily think of obvious allies, we decided to stretch our strategic imagination to find unlikely allies that, at a critical moment, appeared and made a difference. Our aim is to push beyond unconscious activist assumptions and suggest that allies may sometimes be found in unexpected places. We’ll start, fittingly enough, with the story of an occupation.

In 1998, students in Indonesia launched a campaign to overthrow the country’s dictator of 30 years. Their numbers quickly grew to tens of thousands, and their street demonstrations outside campuses were greeted with tear gas and live ammunition from the military. That brought more Indonesians into the streets for several months and President Suharto realized he had a real problem on his hands.

Rumors spread of a more drastic military crackdown, but the weakening dictator needed a justification since the movement was largely (although not entirely) nonviolent. At that point, two days of widespread rioting broke out, reportedly instigated by government provocateurs and resulting in over 1,800 deaths. Most of those killed and injured were Chinese, suggesting that Suharto was playing the card of racial division in Indonesia to divert attention from himself.

The students were not deflected, however, and kept their focus on the dictatorship and continued their demonstrations.

The days following the riots revealed splits in the military and rising tension and uncertainty. The students escalated by launching an occupation of the parliament building in Jakarta. Soon after the occupation began, rumors spread that the military would attack the students in the building. To prevent the attack, foreign diplomats and journalists — some bearing video cameras for documentation — joined the student occupiers as third-party nonviolent interveners. They hoped that by showing that, as we now say, “the whole world was watching,” the commanders would hold back. Throughout the night, fear remained high within the parliament building as soldiers remained stationed outside of the gates.

The next morning brought a palpably different atmosphere. Troops that had previously been feared showed thinly-guised support for the occupiers. They allowed more students and guests to enter the parliament, and some soldiers even openly exchanged high-fives with occupiers.

Within two days Suharto had resigned, having lost much of his base in the legislature and military; even his minister of defense finally refused to use violence against the nonviolent protestors. These unlikely allies helped keep student leaders alive in the critical moments.

As extraordinary as the Jakarta spectacle was — diplomats and journalists protecting insurgent students — it’s not the only case in the Global Nonviolent Action Database where friendly interventions came from surprising places. The 1980s was a dramatic decade for South Korea, where the U.S. had backed a series of dictators ever since Korea was partitioned in 1945. The pro-democracy movement had been growing, and dictator Chun Doo Hwan began to try to purge his society of activists.

After several years, the movement’s resilience impressed political dissident Kim Dae Jung, who had been forced into exile in the United States. In 1984 he sensed that it was time to return to offer leadership to the movement, but returning would be highly dangerous. The previous year, Filipino dissident Benigno Aquino similarly tried to return to Manila and was assassinated by the U.S.-backed Marcos regime in broad daylight on the runway at the airport.

Kim was able to gain the protective accompaniment of members of the United States Congress for the flight back to South Korea. With them, in addition to journalists and others, South Korean reactionaries did not take the risk of a direct assassination attempt. Kim was briefly placed under house arrest. Once released he resumed his former role as an opposition politician, eventually becoming elected as South Korea’s president.

Kim’s safe return gave hope to the Korean grassroots movement, which less than two years later brought about democratic reforms through massive nonviolent direct action.

The most unlikely allies are those who were previously enemies, and the civil rights movement produced some of the most dramatic examples of this. Soon after sit-ins began in Greensboro, N.C., on February 1, 1960, students at the nearby historically-black Johnson C. Smith University decided to join the movement. J. Charles Jones, the student government president, later told me (George, that is) this story about a segregationist who eventually did a complete turn-around.

As Jones assessed the situation, he realized that their star football player would want to participate in the sit-in, and also that the man was esteemed partly because he was a warrior: He had led a group of students in fighting off some white hooligans who invaded a campus dance. When the football player came to Jones to volunteer, Charlie explained that the sit-in movement was committed to nonviolence and everyone would have to fit in. “No problem,” Jones said. “If others can do it, I can do it.”

On the first day of the sit-in at the local lunch counter, however, the big football player, once harassed, was barely able to restrain himself to keep from turning around on his stool and knocking a couple of white men out. The second day, he noticed that his student friends on each side of him didn’t seem to be sweating it out as hard as he was, and he began to wonder what they had that he didn’t. He began paying attention to the nightly trainings and mass meetings back on campus.

A couple of weeks later, the football player, once again at his stool at the lunch counter, heard a woman yelling in his direction. He turned just enough to see a white woman, almost hysterical, coming closer while screaming racist insults. She came up to him and, with all her might, pushed him off the stool. He fell to the floor, paused to collect himself, and noticed two stanchions that marked the aisle with a rope connecting them. He stood, reached and unhooked the rope from the stanchion, indicating with a smile and a gesture that she could go.

At first stunned, the woman collapsed in tears and was led from the store by a friend. A week later, the woman joined an informal “white ladies auxiliary” in support of the sit-ins.

Charlie laughed when he finished telling me this story. “Okay,” he said, “I know it’s pretty amazing to see the woman turn around like that, but how about the football player? Now that’s a nonviolent warrior!” Charlie went on to become an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Activists in the organization Otpor!, during the nonviolent overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, deliberately reached out to win unlikely allies among their opposition: the police. The police and military in Serbia were a strong pillar of support for Milosevic’s repressive regime. Otpor’s strategy counted on dividing the security forces when the critical moment came.

As Otpor grew stronger, police forces brutally attacked and arrested nonviolent protestors. Because the repression was so widespread, Otpor required training for all its members, and part of the training was how to handle a police beating nonviolently. They didn’t allow the repression to become the focus of the campaign — their messaging remained on “the prize,” which was the overthrow of Milosevic — but they did use the repression to undermine the morale of the police.

Students with heads bloodied by nightsticks were brought to an apartment by their comrades and photographed. The photos were blown up poster-sized, and then Otpor members went to the house or apartment building of the officer who had done the violence and held up the poster with the question: Why are you beating our young people? The police found themselves trying to justify to family and neighbors their actions, which of course they couldn’t do. Because this and other Otpor measures were so strategic, they didn’t need to pay off immediately. Throughout the campaign Otpor focused on gaining support from youth across a range of societal classes and regions within Serbia. As the movement gained momentum, Otpor also worked hard behind the scenes to cultivate allies within the police force, gaining agreement from large groups of police officers to refuse orders to attack protesters when the campaign reached its climax.

The campaign peaked in October, 2000, when up to a million people gathered in the streets of Belgrade in front of the parliament building. Milosevic was inside, and the police stood between him and the people. This was the moment Otpor had planned for. Milosevic gave the order to the police (backed by troops) to fire and turn away the people. The police refused. They knew that the campaigners’ numbers were overwhelming, and that among those masses of people were their sons and daughters, nephews and nieces. Milosevic was finished.

When Otpor began its campaign, few if any observers would have guessed that police, beating up students on the streets, would end up becoming the students’ allies.

Yet this phenomenon can be witnessed again and again. In 1989, while the Iron Curtain still stood separating the Communist East from Western Europe, previously repressive Hungarian border guards stood aside allowing East Germans to pass safely through Communist Hungary and into Austria — and freedom! An imaginative tactic set the stage.

Human rights activists in Hungary found a weak point in their regime and exploited it to organize a “Pan-European Picnic” on the border between Communist Hungary and neutral Austria. In the meantime, there was a strong build-up of pressure in East Germany both to overthrow the regime and to emigrate to freedom. The Hungarians realized that East Germans wanting to leave could easily cross the border into Hungary, a fellow Iron Curtain country, but not to go farther.

To create their Pan-European Picnic, the Hungarians gained permission for a few hours to cut the fence at the border so Hungarians and Austrians could cross back and forth and socialize while feasting. This was supposedly a restricted, symbolic festivity limited to Hungarians and Austrians, but hundreds of East Germans showed up. Hungarian border guards disobeyed direct orders from their commanders and allowed the East Germans to pass safely into Austria, then closed the fence again behind them.

Finally, Afghanistan gives us a recent, spectacular example of police support for nonviolent campaigners. When, in 2009, Afghan women’s rights advocates began a protest march against a recently passed Shia Personal Status Law, they were confronted by a mob of a thousand people who supported the repressive law.

The counter-demonstrators began peacefully, but then turned to throwing stones at the women’s rights advocates. Female police officers in the area quickly took action, but without responding violently. The policewomen formed a human chain around the original female protestors, facing inwards to protect them from the stones being thrown. With the human wall of policewomen now surrounding them, the women’s rights advocates continued their march safely.

By offering this brief sample of unlikely allies — soldiers, segregationists, border guards, journalists, U.S. members of Congress, police, diplomats — we’re suggesting that a nonviolent campaign can be full of surprises. The willingness of the campaigners to take risks for justice can inspire others also to take risks.

A condition for success, however, is that the central message of the campaign be larger than the campaigners themselves. A campaign that wins unlikely allies is not about victimhood; it’s not “all about us.” The message is expansive, in line with widely-held values, and it’s clear about the goal — in these cases, democracy, women’s rights or economic justice.