• Russian riot police broke up an Occupy-style protest against President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, forcing dozens of people out of a central Moscow park where they had staged a week-long sit-in and detaining about 20 people. Protesters then moved to Kudrinskaya Square in Moscow, where they remain encamped.

• In Chile, a crowd estimated at more than 100,000 marched through the streets of Santiago on Wednesday to support the demands of the nation’s students.

• Thousands of student protesters flooded the streets in Montreal on Wednesday evening after Quebec Premier Jean Charest announced a proposal for a new ‘emergency law’ in a bid to end the ongoing 14-week-old student uprising and strike.

• About 2,900 Moroccan judges began a week-long strike to protest against judicial corruption and interference by the executive branch that they say undermines their independence.

• Two Greenpeace activists were arrested after being pried from a giant iPod in front of Apple’s headquarters Tuesday during a protest against using dirty energy to power data centers.

• Dozens of Spaniards lined up outside a bank in Madrid on Monday to close their accounts to protest the unfair seizures of homes.

• Israeli and Palestinian officials announced Monday that more than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners had agreed to end a nearly month-long hunger strike in exchange for concessions by Israel, including a modification to its practice of detention without charge or trial.

• A three-week-long protest on UC Berkeley agricultural research land in Albany came to a quiet close early Monday when police arrested nine protesters who had set up an urban farming camp.

Violeta Parra.

For Mother’s Day, I’ve been thinking about some of the powerful and provocative creative nonviolent activist work that mothers have done through the ages — and there is a lot of it. So much of popular history tells the stories of the men who “led” the charge in struggles, but my thoughts went to South America, and Chile in particular, because of the richness of the cultural methods used, and the leadership of mothers in the face of brutal and patriarchal regimes.

“You can’t have a revolution without songs,” read the banner behind Salvador Allende when he became president of Chile in 1970, highlighting the role of Nueva Canción (New Song) in the emergent resistance movements in South America. This style of musical resistance didn’t just include the voices of women, though one of its early proponents was Violeta Parra, a mother, who wrote the song “Gracias a la Vida.” Nueva Canción was intentionally used to unite and identify concerns of oppressed peoples, as it integrated native and rural musical instrumentation with urban and European styles to speak to ever larger communities. Only three years later, when Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile, his regime outlawed several instruments identified with Nueva Canción, recognizing and attempting to stop the powerful spread of political ideas, courage and resistance through music.

Still, the music lived on. Today, the tradition continues thanks to, among others, the son and daughter of Violeta, who instilled a love of this music in her children. What an amazing gift.

Even as music served functions of education, empowerment, community-building and the putting forward of alternate visions for society, it was not the only cultural work that significantly contributed to the effectiveness of the movement for justice. During the brutal dictatorship of Pinochet, mothers spent hours stitching stories of resistance and suffering in the 1980s into a traditional tapestry form, arpilleras. Disregarded as inconsequential women’s work, it was possible to smuggle and sell these beautiful quilts both into and out of jails, and outside of Chile — moving information to sons and husbands, and spreading news beyond the borders even when a suppressed press corps could not. This galvanized anti-Pinochet sympathizers globally and resulted in both financial and political support for the resistance.

Arpillera, via the Royal Alberta Museum.

As the arpilleraistas gathered, often in church sanctuaries, the threads of their handiwork not only provided income to support their families, but also sewed together a growing consciousness of their own power. The craft provided a very accessible and low-risk entry point to the movement for many, while preserving collective memory and building capacity to go public with their demands, both on the political and home fronts — confronting the dictatorship and later the culture of machismo itself.

Another protest against Pinochet evolved from Chile’s national dance, the cueca. As thousands were “disappeared” by the regime, a symbol of resistance became “la cueca sola.” Originally done with partners, it was now being performed solo by women, clutching photographs of their missing loved ones, to confront the denial of the death squads.

Chilean women’s integration of cultural resistance into movement strategies seems to have contributed greatly to the outreach, education, accessibility, endurance and, therefore, effectiveness of their protracted struggle. The mothers’ motivation to better their children’s lives and future living conditions inspired many to take action, however risky. Day to day concerns of finding food for empty bellies moved mothers to stitch together rags to not only fill wallets but also to make change.

Thank you, arpilleraistas, singers and dancers for giving us more reasons to celebrate mothers today.

Guatemalan women marching in Antigua. Photo by the author.

May Day events in the city of Antigua Guatemala — the regional capital of Sacatepéquez — are traditionally lighthearted and festive. People from Guatemala City, especially the mestizo population, travel to the colonial city to enjoy its historical atmosphere, eat delicious food and enjoy the landscape at the base of the Hunahpú volcano. But on May 1 this year, visitors encountered a very different scene: a march of both commemoration and protest for International Workers’ Day. Never before in recent memory have Antigua’s workers, peasants and unions organized a May Day march like this to demand economic rights and an end to the increasing militarization of the country’s security policy.

Many of the 300 participants were indigenous peasant women, wearing traditional dress. These women marched through the streets of Antigua with posters demanding better work conditions and shouting out worker and campesina slogans: “Only united can women defend their rights!” and “The working woman of Santa María de Jesús is here!“ The Union of Education Workers of Guatemala (STEG), the Council to Protect the City of Antigua, the Municipal Market Workers and the recently-organized Photographers’ Union all participated.

The protesters arrived at Antigua’s Central Plaza and stopped in front of El Palacio de los Capitanes Generales. There, they made public denouncements against the governor of the municipality — as a representative of the Guatemalan president, Otto Pérez Molina — and against two legislators to whom they also presented a document outlining their goals: justice for the assassinations of activists, sufficient budget allocations for the school year, an increase in budget destined to protect Antigua’s historical monuments, and better government control over the consumer baskey, fuel prices and electricity prices in light of unprecedented increases.

Upon presenting their demands, the marchers lamented that the regional governor, Teresa de Jesús Chocoyo Chile, and Congressman Rolando Pérez were not present. In their place, Congresswoman Regina Guzmán, of President Otto Pérez Molina’s right-wing Patriotic Party, received the document. She asked for “patience” given that “when we took power we encountered a difficult situation which we have had to work on fixing, and that takes time.” Also receiving the demands was Congressman Sergio Leonel Celis Navas from the Renewed Democratic Liberty Party (LIDER), who said that the workers’ demands were just and that efforts should be made to address them. Celis also lamented Chocoyo Chile’s absence.

The unions, in particular, called attention to the militarization that the country has been undergoing as a means of improving security. According to Professor Rodrigo Hernández Boche, secretary general of STEG:

A key part of Otto Pérez Molina’s platform was security. In fact, one of the mottos of the current government is that of a “heavy hand against violence.” Ever since his government began, insecurity has increased and our colleagues have been assassinated. Up until now, we haven’t received any clarification of the events, but we don’t doubt that these could be repressive tactics that the military government was accustomed to perpetrating in its day.

The new “heavy hand” remilitarization security policies are already affecting the country, especially in areas like Santa Cruz Barillas, Huehuetenango, where the government declared a state of emergency in April. Hernández expressed fears that the war-torn country might be remilitarized. “The opposition will do everything necessary to avoid this,” he said. “The [1996] peace accords, even though they were never properly implemented, are a reference for international law and a touchstone that will help us to avoid the remilitarization of the country.”

Currently, Otto Pérez Molina’s government is following through with its promise to respond to the often drug-related criminality now sweeping Guatemala with a “heavy hand,” as well as legal reforms that threaten respect for human rights. STEG has declared that it is

a shame on an international stage that Guatemala has chosen a military man as president, bearing in mind the massacres that even he is implicated in, and that have never been investigated. But organized civil society will persist in its opposition. We did so in our call for people not to vote for military officers, because we should not lose our historical memory, just as other countries should not lose theirs.

According to Rodrigo Hernández, “This is about the beginning of strengthening the workers of Sacatepéquez. As we have always said, the teachers also teach by fighting, and today we are teaching that only through organizing ourselves can our labor rights be respected and, above all, only through organizing ourselves can we breathe life into the struggle that we must now undertake out of necessity.”

From Amnesty International's replica of a cell at Guantanamo Bay. Photo by Mushroom and Rooster, via Flickr.

On Thursday, April 19, the Pentagon announced the transfer of two men from Guantanamo to El Salvador. Abdul Razakah and Hammad Memet tasted freedom for the first time in 10 years last month and began a new life in their new home.

El Salvador is a long way from China’s Xinjiang Province, where they were born. In 2001, Abdul and Hammad — along with 20 other Uighurs — fled China. As members of that country’s ethnic Muslim minority, they faced growing repression due to a military crackdown on an armed separatist movement in the region. The men ended up in Afghanistan — a place where they thought it would be safe to be Muslims — but it was the fall of 2001 and the United States had declared war. When a U.S. bomb destroyed the house where they were staying, they fled again, this time to Pakistan. There, they were arrested late in 2001 and turned over to the United States military as suspicious foreigners. They ended up in Guantanamo in 2002, where they have been ever since.

Beyond the hardship, dislocation, terror and confinement of Guantanamo, the Uighurs faced another particular challenge while in custody: an illogical legal limbo. The Bush administration determined early on that the men were not enemy combatants, that they had no ties with Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and that they should not continue to be held. But U.S. law prohibited their return to China because they faced the threat of persecution or torture there.

The next logical place was the United States, specifically the D.C. suburbs in Northern Virginia, which is home to a large, wealthy and well-established Uighur population eager to welcome their brethren and help them settle into a new life. The United States arrested these men without cause and held them for years without charge, so letting them into the United States seemed like the least we could do.

But it was not to be. A fierce anti-Guantanamo sentiment took hold of Congress, and in the deluge of ignorance, cowardice and recalcitrance on Capitol Hill, the Uighurs and others cleared for release but unable to be repatriated were caught in a terrible trap.

Five were eventually released in 2006, but they were settled in Albania (of all places). Over the next six years, the majority of the Uighurs have left Guantanamo and settled in Bermuda, Palau, Switzerland… and now El Salvador. Three remain in Guantanamo. According to The Washington Post, El Salvador would have taken all five of the last Uighurs, but three of the men decided that they wanted to live where they could practice Islam openly and with fellow believers.

In preparation for their new life, Abdul and Hammad have learned Spanish. Susan Baker Manning, a member of their legal team, told the Associated Press, “They are well and very happy … We are extremely pleased that the government of El Salvador has taken them in and granted them refuge.” As part of the release agreement with the United States, these former prisoners will not be granted passports or be allowed to leave the country.

Along with two friends, Luke Hansen, a Jesuit seminarian, traveled to Bermuda in 2010 to meet the four Uighur men transferred there from Guantanamo. Bermuda is a beautiful place, but it is not home. Luke said that in his conversations with the men, it became clear that their life on the island constitutes

another form of imprisonment. In Bermuda, a tiny island in the North Atlantic, the Uighur men can travel only as far as they can swim. Upon their arrival in Bermuda, an overseas territory of Great Britain, the Uighur men were promised British passports. Nearly three years later, it is believed that the men will never receive passports. Even though an ocean has replaced the prison walls, the separation from community and family remains the same.

On hearing the news of the United States’ latest transfer, Luke wrote:

I feel shame and outrage that our government has forced two more detainees into such a tragic and inhuman choice: continued imprisonment or “freedom” in an entirely foreign land — without community, family, or (presumably) the ability to travel beyond El Salvador’s borders.

Another participant in that Bermuda trip, Jeremy Kirk, wrote:

I am joyful that they no longer live in indefinite detention in cages at Guantanamo. I am outraged that it has taken so long for this relocation to occur and am concerned how little control these men may continue to have over their future; their ability to see their families, to travel and to start families of their own.

The tiny Central American nation of El Salvador was the site of a brutal civil war throughout the 1970s and 1980s, in which the United States backed the iron-fisted oligarchy with weapons, money and advisers against FMLN guerrillas. Tens of thousands were killed in the decades of war and many more fled the country. Now, the president is a member of the FMLN, and El Salvador has not forgotten that the world offered its people sanctuary during the war. Their foreign-affairs office issued a statement that the invitation was offered on “humanitarian grounds and in recognition of the fact that other countries have taken in their citizens as refugees in the past because of the 1980–1992 civil war.”

Abdul and Hammad are already having an impact on their new home. Just a week or so after they came to El Salvador, Archbishop José Luis Escobar of San Salvador called for closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. After a Sunday mass, he gave a press conference, saying “Let’s hope that the whole Guantanamo prison ends. It would be ideal for the good of the world, of democracy and of liberty. It is an issue of humanity, it is necessary that we have a solidaristic and positive attitude in face of situations such as these.”

Amen, Padre! Good news. But incomplete. Imperfect. A very small step toward justice.

In central San Salvador this morning, members of three organizations representing veterans of the historic FMLN guerrilla forces and labor rights leaders handed over the Metropolitan Cathedral after three months of occupation, in exchange for assurances that sincere dialogue addressing the groups’ demands with the Salvadoran government will begin immediately. Their struggle will continue at the negotiation table, mediated by a permanent commission promised this morning by the director general of human rights for the Salvadoran government, Oscar Luna, who will serve as a mediator along with representatives of civic and faith-based organizations.

While in El Salvador last month on an election observation mission arranged by the Episcopal Church, I hardly expected to find myself sitting across the table from three former guerrilla fighters in the crypt where Archbishop Oscar Romero lies entombed. I had wanted to visit the tomb during my first trip to the country, but I soon learned that the Metropolitan Cathedral had been nonviolently “taken” in January by a group of former FMLN combatants and labor rights activists, and they were not permitting the public to enter the grounds. Days after learning of the occupation, though, I was invited to hear their story.

I arrived with a small group at the locked gates early in the afternoon and was greeted by one of the occupiers dressed in camouflage and dark sunglasses, looking much like I had imagined a guerrilla soldier might — intimidating. But he smiled and greeted us with small talk and the offer of a place to sit in the shade, a reprieve from the scorching sun. When the introductions were through, I was led down a cool, dark stairway to the foot of the bronze shrine to the man responsible for making the Metropolitan Cathedral “the people’s house”: Archbishop Romero, who was assassinated while celebrating mass in 1980, and remains for El Salvador a symbol of justice and struggle for equality. Beside his tomb was a table and chairs, which would be our meeting place for the next two hours.

In those weighty surroundings, we discussed the ongoing struggle for justice in the country, 20 years after the 1992 peace accords. All the while, their camouflage and berets kept causing my mind to see visions of machine guns and child soldiers. But their message that day was one of nonviolent struggle — the guerrillas are fighting with new weapons.

For years, this resistance movement has been evolving. While 14 different organizations in the country represent veterans’ interests, leaders of the groups which occupied the cathedral these months say too many of their comrades have died in poverty waiting for government action, and they decided it was time to take more drastic measures to force the government to address continued marginalization of former veterans. Collectively, veterans’ rights groups FUNDELIDDI and AVERSAL, and members of the labor organization SITRAL are seeking benefits for disabled former FMLN veterans and their families, the reinstatement of former FMLN police officers who were dismissed for allegedly political purposes, the reinstatement of a labor leader who was arbitrarily dismissed and the recognition of their labor organization. To make their voices heard, the organizations’ weapons of choice have included public demonstrations, marches, letters of denouncement, calls for negotiation, hunger strikes and finally, the occupation of this sacred space.

The organizers say that approximately 3,000 police officers, all former FMLN combatants, have been dismissed from the Civil National Police (PNC) for political purposes, in clear violation of the ’92 peace accords, which required demilitarization of the police and fair representation of both sides of the armed conflict in a newly-formed civilian police force. The officers were allegedly dismissed without due process or respect for union policy. Under the current president, Mauricio Funes, a former military general has been named director of the PNC — another step, the organizers claim, toward the remilitarization of the police force. Luis Ortega, secretary general of the Legislative Assembly Union, was dismissed in what occupiers call an attempt to undermine the strength of labor unions by means that violate international labor standards. Ortega says the denouncement of his dismissal from the International Labor Organization in Switzerland has fallen on deaf ears. Proponents of the struggle insist that the stance of the current administration, including the president and the FMLN party deputies, has been anti-union and must change.

Former FMLN combatants currently claim a pension of as little as $98 per month. This has resulted in increased marginalization of former FMLN combatants and their families, and high rates of cyclical poverty. Families of fallen veterans of the armed conflict have been denied dignified benefits by the government, resulting in extreme poverty and even death due to malnutrition and lacking the means to purchase necessary medication. While pensions have increased in the years since the peace accords, which the protesters say required “dignified compensation” for disabled and fallen FMLN veterans and their families, benefits still fall short of national minimum wage standards and are far below the poverty line.

In January, the government announced an agreement with the occupiers which included meeting some of their demands and making others a priority on the legislative agenda. In exchange, the occupiers left the cathedral on January 8, as agreed. Three days following the announcement, though, the occupiers returned to the cathedral, claiming that the government had broken its promises as outlined in the agreement. Until this morning, the cathedral remained closed to parishioners and the public, and tensions and fear of potential forced removal of the occupiers grew as people were unable to worship there during Holy Week.

As recently as last week, mediators claimed they were not making much headway with the government, which has recently sent only low-level representatives to the discussion. Occupiers claimed the government has ignored their cause and in failing to comply with agreements reached in January, are responsible for the extended occupation. FMLN deputies had claimed it was the occupiers who refused to collaborate and were exacerbating the conflict by continuing to lock people out of their cathedral. With today’s agreement, the veterans groups are hopeful that their continued struggle will end in justice for their comrades, but they say that continued pressure from the public and international community is essential to keep the process moving forward.

The proponents of this struggle with whom I met have committed themselves to nonviolent tactics, transforming El Salvador’s history of violent conflict to one of more responsible civic engagement. So far, this has been a local movement that has yet to attract the attention of outsiders, but we should all be watching. Serious labor and human rights concerns are at stake, and a truly nonviolent campaign has achieved the first step toward success. The failure of governments anywhere to recognize and respond to rights violations with due process has broad implications, potentially undermining struggles throughout the world if we choose not to engage. Write a letter, blog about this important movement and show support for continued commitment to nonviolent resolution by staying informed. This is how peace and justice are won.

Chilean arpillera. Photo by Colin Peck.

The earliest proponents of the growing field of peace studies were well aware that their work had as much to do with provoking creative nonviolent conflict as with conflict resolution. That spirit of resistance was alive and well at the University of Massachusetts Amherst last month for the traveling international exhibition “Transforming Threads of Resistance,” which brought together the weavings and stories of women from Chile and close to a dozen other countries throughout Latin America, Europe, and Africa.

Exhibition coordinator Leah Wing introduced curator and activist Roberta Bacic by noting that it is not unusual for “conflict resolution scholars and practitioners to view resistance as a barrier to conflict resolution.” This dynamic can be doubly the case after a peace accord has been reached or a dictator overthrown — when resistance “can be seen as contributing to the perpetuation of the conflict rather than to peace.” Wing argues that this narrow approach “contradicts the wisdom and life experience of most people who themselves have suffered from state violence and who have used resistance to survive and attain their freedom.”

Rooted in the traditional textile craft form known as arpilleras, the practice of stitching colorful threads or cloth onto cut squares of burlap bags has long been an inexpensive way for Chilean women to express themselves. They turn the scraps from food packaging and the torn rags of their lives into striking representations of their thoughts and dreams. During the vicious dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet — which was kicked off on September 11, 1973 by a CIA-directed coup d’etat against democratically-elected socialist Salvador Allende — the mothers, grandmothers, sisters and daughters of the so-called “disappeared” people turned their crafts into symbols of resistance. Although the official militaristic desire was for the lives and legacies of the thousands of desaparecidos to be erased, the arpilleras, then and now, graphically bring to life the struggles of the time. In this way and for these families, historical memory becomes an act of resistance and ongoing social change.

Some of the weavings from the Pinochet era — which lasted until an ever-bubbling series of nonviolent organizations and actions spurred an unstoppable wave of anti-dictatorship sentiment in 1990 — depict simple cloth dolls of women standing in a line, holding a banner with the question “Where are the Disappeared?” Some show more intense imagery, of prisoners languishing in hidden-away torture chambers or of the huge water cannons used to target those brave enough to demonstrate under incredibly repressive conditions. The protesters — often women armed with nothing more than pots and pans, clamoring for help in finding their loved ones — were not only hit with highly pressurized water making it impossible to stand or walk, but were also sprayed with colored dye, so they could be identified and rounded up even if they did manage to get away.

The spectacularly dramatic Sebastian Acevedo Movement Against Torture — named after the father who immolated himself when the Pinochet regime seized his son and daughter — gained a reputation for staging “lightening” demonstrations. These progenitors of today’s smart/flash mobs (coordinated decades before cell phones and “tweets”) brought dozens of activists into the public square, in loud calls for democracy and an end to injustice — handing out informational leaflets and giving on-lookers the courage to oppose the regime. By the time any police or military arrived, the organizers were already gone.

In finding new means of voicing protest and staging collective action through the making of political “crafts,” the women of Chile also often utilized scraps of clothing left over from their disappeared loved ones. “Thus the women used not only their material resources, but something deeper than that” noted curator Roberta Bacic — a former staff person of Chile’s Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ) nonviolence network. “They sewed their lives and their loss into the tapestries.”

Based on her work with families and former prisoners after Pinochet was forced out of office, Bacic recounted how the “apparently innocuous” became “acts of subversion.” Arpillera workshops themselves became training centers for civilian empowerment. Although a critic of the accommodation which was reached between the military and the mainstream Chilean political parties resulting in the end of Pinochet’s presidency, Bacic was appointed to the Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission and subsequently became a program officer with War Resisters International. Bacic’s global encounters have led her to collect textiles from other parts of the world, connecting and spreading their messages of resistance to ever-widening audiences.

Zimbabwean weaving of "a day we will never forget.” Photo by by Shari Eppel.

Observation and gallery-gazing, of course, is far from the final goal of exhibits like these. The Amherst gathering brought together weavings from Ecuador and Colombia, as well as from Ireland and Germany, where images of devastation and genocide mixed uneasily with images of hope brought about by solidarity. West Bank weavings showcased the plight of Palestinian refugees and a tapestry from Zimbabwe served as the recorded history of “a day we will never forget,” — when attacks on a village brought untold devastation but failed in its attempt to undo the community.

Survival in bleak times must be about making these transnational solidarity connections. The arpilleras, as Roberta Bacic explains, must “act as a reminder to us of what we have, and startle us into seeing what others have lost. And in their startling simplicity, the arpilleras compel us to do something.”

Memorial in Delhi to Ganhi's Salt March. By Tom Jordan, via Flickr.

What do Native Americans, Costa Ricans, Thai villagers, Hispanic students in U.S. colleges, Indian independence activists and Maasai women have in common? They’ve all organized long marches as part of campaigns for justice. Their campaigns’ very different choices about how to use the tactic raises strategic questions for us today. In some campaigns the long march was used primarily to heighten awareness, while in others it was to gain new allies. Sometimes it was used to launch other kinds of direct action. It has also been used at the end of a campaign, to escalate the pressure (just as a general strike is sometimes used). But what conditions make a long walk a truly effective tactic in a campaign, rather than just a chance to get some good exercise?

For me, that question is personal right now. On April 30, I will begin a 200-mile walk to the Pittsburgh, PA, headquarters of the PNC Bank to challenge its funding of mountaintop removal coal mining. The march is organized by the Philadelphia-based Earth Quaker Action Team as part of its BLAM! campaign: Bank Like Appalachia Matters! For that reason — and with the help of the Global Nonviolent Action Database — I’ve been reviewing the ways in which long marches like this have been used by others, with varying degrees of success.

One of the most recent long walks was taken by four Miami College undocumented students who walked from Florida to the U.S. Capitol in support of the immigration reform proposed in the Dream Act. They called their 2010 march The Trail of Dreams. They not only ended up expanding support for the legislation, but also stimulated five students to add an additional walk of 250 miles from New York to Washington, timed to arrive at the same time as the walkers from Miami. Although the Dream Act was not passed, the action certainly increased the momentum behind it.

In 2009, Tanzanian police set fire to eight Maasai villages to evict 3,000 people who were living on traditional land that the government secretly leased to a wealthy businessman from the United Arab Emirates for his hunting and recreation. Widespread protests were stonewalled by the government. Thousands of women in the region then decided to march back to the village area in April 2010; despite arrests and blockades along the way, 1,500 women made it. The women had as allies a network of NGOs, three leaders of which were arrested as well.

Also in 2010, Costa Rican protesters marched from San Jose to Las Crucitas, over 100 miles, to overturn a government decision that permitted open-pit gold mining. The stakes were high: A Canadian subsidiary wanted to mine an estimated $1 billion gold deposit, even though it would remove 600 acres of yellow almond trees — the main food for the endangered green macaw. The march, along with an occupation, hunger strike and other actions, forced a Congressional vote to ban all new open-pit mining projects, and in a court case the protesters won a ban of the Las Crucitas mine.

Most U.S. activists have heard of the 1965 Selma–Montgomery march in Alabama that brought to a peak a national crisis that forced the U.S. federal government to pass a voting-rights law to allow African Americans to vote in the South. The strategy in the previous cases I’ve mentioned was to use the long march as a “wake-up call” to mobilize a broader campaign for their cause. But in the 1965 civil rights movement, the long march was placed strategically at the end of the campaign, to escalate the pressure when allies around the U.S. were already mobilized.

A variety of tactics had already been used before the march: Alabama blacks showing up at voter registration offices even though they wouldn’t be allowed to register; sit-ins and picketing of white-owned businesses; short marches (sometimes even escalating to night marches — a highly dangerous tactic in that context); and other tactics usually involving tense confrontations and thousands of arrests. The young black protester Jimmy Jackson was shot and killed by police, and the white Unitarian-Universalist minister James Reeb was beaten to death.

The rising storm of protest around the U.S. forced the Attorney General in Washington to begin working on a voting-rights bill. President Lyndon B. Johnson urged Dr. King to de-escalate in view of the increasing violence. King, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and others in leadership believed that more pressure was needed. They planned a five-day march from Selma, which had been the center-point of the campaign, to Montgomery, the state capital of Alabama — since voting laws are usually decided by the state government.

The march would be extremely dangerous, passing through rural areas “owned” by the white terrorist organization Ku Klux Klan. Three hundred trained people were allowed to go the whole way, with the understanding that thousands could join on a day-by-day basis. Eight thousand people left Selma for Montgomery on March 21. Demonstrators marched through rain, singing and chanting, arriving safely on March 25, although the Ku Klux Klan murdered one more protester as she drove back to Selma.

This successful campaign spotlights two important strategic decisions: one was to place the timing of the walk near the campaign’s end, as a functional alternative to the tactic chosen in some labor-based campaigns: the escalatory general strike. The other was to base the campaign in a location other than where the power holders sit (in Alabama, the state capital, and in the U.S., Washington, D.C.). Because empowerment was a fundamental theme for civil rights organizers, emphasizing the grassroots rather than the seat of official power — and forcing the power holders to deal with the results — was often seen as most effective.

The Selma–Montgomery march was directly influenced by knowledge of the March to the Sea in India led by Gandhi in 1930. In that case, the long walk initiated the entire campaign: the Salt Satyagraha. The 240-mile march began at Gandhi’s ashram and ended at the sea, where the marchers made salt in defiance of the British Empire’s monopoly of salt manufacture. While the country was already well-organized and probably didn’t need the march to mobilize, the leadership wanted drama to kick off the campaign. The drama was provided by suspense: would the British arrest Gandhi or not? It was a classic dilemma demonstration. If the British arrested Gandhi they would make him a martyr and prove correct his claim that their presence was repressive and illegitimate. If they didn’t arrest him, he, the “Great Soul,” would be the first to make salt and defy the British. Either way, the British were in trouble; the campaign continued on a mass scale for two years and paved the way for India’s independence.

In Thailand, a rural campaign to re-open the Pak Mun Dam, whose construction had turned out to be an economic and ecological disaster for the region, used the long walk in the middle of the campaign. In 2000 the Assembly of the Poor first did a series of protests that culminated in seizing the dam and building villages there, preventing dam workers from gaining access. Although they had studies by academics and the World Commission on Dams to back them up, they realized that their struggle needed more allies, including among the urban poor, working class and middle class. So 150 representatives of impacted villages participated in a long march of 400 miles to Bangkok to win more allies. Once there, they began a hunger strike, created a mock village outside the seat of government, and did a “die-in” to dramatize their outreach.

Their success in winning allies even among the middle class resulted in the government not only compromising substantially — opening the dam gates four months each year — but also effectively ended new dam construction in the country.

In 1978, 26 Native American activists walked 3,000 miles in what they called the Longest Walk – from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. Thousands of people joined them at various points along the way. Symbolically they were reversing the Trail of Tears that marked the history of so many tribes, ejected from their homes by white supremacy and made to walk westward. Practically, they were walking to catalyze a new level of energy among allies, against the threat in the U.S. Congress. Congress was considering a set of 11 bills that would — once again — injure indigenous people in the U.S. The Longest Walk succeeded in blocking the bills.

The Global Nonviolent Action Database contains more campaigns that used long walks. Many activists have used this method, turning it into a tactic — as militaries use the term — by attaching it to a very specific objective. Campaigners in various situations have placed the long walk in the beginning of a campaign, or the middle or the end, making it serve one or another of a variety of campaign needs. Its strategic flexibility makes it tempting.

A downside is that effectiveness requires a great deal of organization, and many protest groups simply don’t have the infrastructure to carry it off to get what they want. I’ve known long walks that were intended to build allies but didn’t because the walk attracted hyper-individualists with nothing better to do than string along with the walk and alienate the potential allies along the way. Depending on the culture, those who initiate a long walk need to have serious skills in organization and conflict resolution. Depending on the level of danger, they also need skills in training. I was once called in to assist a group whose long walk resulted in several injuries and deaths among the walkers; we worked hard to build the capacity of the organization in nonviolent self-defense. In future walks, no one was killed.

The long walk is not the only method that has advantages and challenges to implement — most do. However, campaigners who rely simply on marches and rallies risk death by boredom, which is one reason why one of the most effective recent campaigns I know of began with a solemn agreement never to hold a march or a rally! Maybe a long walk is for you. Maybe you’d like to join us on ours? Follow #greenwalk and #m16 on Twitter for more details.

• Tens of thousands of students protested on Thursday against a 75 percent tuition hike at universities in Canada’s mostly French-speaking Quebec province, bringing downtown Montreal to a standstill. Since mid-February, nearly 300,000 students have boycotted classes, blocked bridges and held smaller protests around the province.

• More than 1,000 indigenous protesters reached Ecuador’s capital Thursday after a two-week march from the Amazon to oppose plans for large-scale mining on their lands. The protesters were joined by thousands of anti-government protesters in Quito.

• Hundreds of farmers gathered in the Vietnamese capital on Thursday to demand the return of rice fields they say were confiscated by heavily armed police just days after receiving an eviction notice.

• More than 1,000 people gathered in a downtown Brattleboro park on Thursday to call for the closure of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. It was the first day of the plant’s operation after the expiration of its 40-year license. Over 130 protesters were arrested for unlawful trespass as part of a civil disobedience action.

• More than a thousand people rallied in New York City’s Union Square on Wednesday evening with the parents of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager who was shot dead in Florida in late February.

• Portuguese workers halted trains, shut ports and paralyzed most public transport in the capital Lisbon on Thursday to protest austerity measures and labor reforms imposed as a condition of a 78-billion-euro ($103 billion) bailout.

• Three Tibetans who have been on hunger strike outside the UN headquarters for the past month ended their protest Thursday after the UN said investigators would look into events in Tibet.

• Several people were arrested on Tuesday after a rally in a Phoenix intersection to protest immigration policies of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

• Russian police arrested nearly 100 people on Sunday for picketing Moscow’s TV tower over footage that accused the opposition of paying anti-government protesters.

• On Sunday, after more than 150 protesters carrying signs calling for nonviolence and the rule of law began to chant the slogan that has echoed throughout the Arab revolts — “The people want the fall of the regime” — uniformed officers and men in plain clothes beat them with sticks and began making arrests.

• Argentina’s truckers called an indefinite strike on Monday to demand higher pay rates, parking their rigs in protest just as exporters were counting on them to haul freshly harvested soybeans to port.

• Thirty Palestinian prisoners have joined the hunger strike of Hana Shalabi, who was hospitalized on Monday evening after consuming only water for 33 days.

• In Cuba, three dozen members of the Ladies in White opposition group were detained on Sunday before their weekly march to press the government to free prisoners jailed for politically motivated  crimes.

• George Clooney was arrested for civil disobedience in Washington on Friday alongside his father Nick and other  protesters after a demonstration outside the Sudanese Embassy aimed at drawing  attention to the country’s president, Omar al-Bashir, and his government for provoking a humanitarian crisis and blocking food and aid from entering the Nuba Mountains from South Sudan.

• Some 200 Moroccan women staged an angry protest Saturday outside parliament a week after the suicide of a 16-year-old girl who was forced to marry the man who raped her.

• The April 6 Youth Movement declared on Saturday the start to an open-ended sit-in in front of Parliament’s offices, in which the group will demand the release of detained member George Ramzy.

• Several hundred Tibetans have protested against Chinese rule in the western province of Qinghai since a monk there set himself on fire earlier this week. The advocacy group Free Tibet has posted what it calls “unprecedented footage” of this highly restricted and restive part of western China.

• Between 5,000 and 7,000 Chilean high school students marched down Santiago’s main avenue on Thursday to demand free quality education and protest the expulsion of about 100 students who joined last year’s protests. Police broke up the march with water canons after a few hundred students crossed a police barrier and tried to march to the education ministry.

• Thousands of union workers gathered across Illinois on Thursday to protest Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed budget cuts that include mass layoffs and the closure and consolidation of several state facilities, including prisons.

• Hundreds of people gathered in the Rotunda of the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City on Thursday to urge Gov. Gary Herbert to veto a bill that would forbid school districts to teach use of contraceptives.

• Russian opposition activist Sergei Udaltsov started a hunger strike on Thursday after being sentenced to 10 days in jail for disobeying the police following a rally against Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

• Afghans took to the streets on Thursday to demand a U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 civilians be prosecuted in Afghanistan as word spread that the American military moved him out of the country.

• A group of about 75 demonstrators assembled at LOVE Park on Wednesday to support immigrant rights. Two college students were arrested after blocking traffic with banners and refusing to move

• As part of a campaign to fight violence against women, pictures of victims were hung on walls in the Cerro Gordo neighborhood of Ecatepec, outside Mexico City on Wednesday.

• Tens of thousands of South Africans marched peacefully through their main cities Wednesday to demand the governing African National Congress do more for the poor.

• Hundreds of native Ecuadorans began a cross-country march Thursday to protest policies by President Rafael Correa they say will result in more mining in the Amazon region and threaten the environment and their way of life.

• Hundreds of Saudi women took part in a protest against discrimination and mismanagement at the King Khalid University, in Abha, on Wednesday. At least 50 women were reportedly injured when security forces and religious police moved in to break it up.

• South Korean female workers performed in penguin costumes in Seoul on Wednesday to protest growth in temporary employment.

• Thousands of Taiwanese farmers took to the streets Thursday, staging the nation’s biggest demonstration in years against the government’s plan to allow U.S. beef imports.

• With elaborate make-up depicting bodies bruised, bleeding and burned by acid, four FEMEN activists were arrested in Istanbul on Wednesday to protest domestic violence in Turkey.

"The Storming of the Bastille," Jean-Pierre Houël (1735-1813).

In the discussion within the Occupy movement on whether violence is necessary for making change in the United States, the debate has so far conflated three of the movement’s possible goals. Are we talking about using violence to produce regime change? Or do we really mean “regime change with democratic institutions following the change”? Or is what we really mean “regime change followed by democracy in which the 1 percent lose their grip on power”?

Movements have sometimes produced regime change with no real democracy and the same 1 percent still in charge. The American Revolution did that: King George was booted out and the resulting government, to its credit highly innovative, was still not a democracy for women, the enslaved, and working class people. A couple of centuries later, the 1 percent are still running the United States. A number of other anti-colonial struggles had a similar result.

Many regimes are so oppressive that people will give their lives to change them, even without guarantees that the new regime will be a whole lot better. But as we consider what we want out of our sacrifices to the cause, we should ask: What’s the track record of movements that depend on violence to overthrow their regimes?

Political scientists (and Waging Nonviolence contributors) Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan analyzed 323 attempts at regime change between 1900 and 2006. They were curious about the comparative success of violent and nonviolent campaigns, among other things. They found that violent campaigns succeeded 26 percent of the time, and that nonviolent campaigns succeeded 53 percent of the time.

The good news is that regimes can be overthrown, even though dictators bring out the police and army to try to stay in power. The bad news is that the people didn’t always win; when they used violence they won only one time in four. They did, however, double their chances of success when they used a nonviolent strategy.

In our research for the Global Nonviolent Action Database, my students and I found a number of cases in which movements first tried violence, found it didn’t work, and then switched over to nonviolent struggle and won.

Researcher Anthony Phalen tells us, for example, that the Latvians tried guerrilla war against domination by the Soviet Union for years without success, then switched to a nonviolent strategy and succeeded.

In El Salvador, the military dictatorship of Hernandez Martinez had been in power for ten years and in 1944 was still strong enough to defeat a military revolt. Researcher Aden Tedla writes that university students then decided to try nonviolent struggle, even making a special point of the nonviolence, calling their campaign huelga de brazos caídos (strike with arms at your sides). The students catalyzed a massive insurgency, and won.

In the early 1970s, the United States got worried about Chile’s democratically-elected government led by left-leaning Salvador Allende. By 1973 the CIA joined the Chilean military to throw Allende out and install General Augusto Pinochet in his place. An armed struggle then developed against Pinochet’s military dictatorship, but it was unable to expel him. Researchers Shandra Bernath-Plaistad and Max Rennebohm describe what worked: a nonviolent people’s struggle succeeded in ousting Pinochet in 1988. The movement succeeded even though Pinochet used the existence of the Chilean armed struggle as a justification to use violence against the nonviolent campaign.

It says a lot about people’s flexibility that, even after losing lives in a violent struggle for change, they can be pragmatic and switch to something that works better. There is more and more evidence that, other things being equal, nonviolent action is more powerful than violent action.

In Serbia in 2000, the young people of Otpor! overthrew dictator Milosevic nonviolently, but failed to establish a solid democracy. Egyptians are working on that same problem right now, tackling a military that seems to want to be the new Mubarak.

Perhaps this problem can be solved with violence. Maybe movements forcing regime change using violent means are only half as effective as nonviolent ones, but what if they make up for their deficiencies by increasing the likelihood that, when violent movements win, democracy more often follows the change? In fact, Chenoweth and Stephan found the opposite.

They found it much more likely that nonviolent campaigns would lead to democratic societies after the regime was forced out. They also found that those societies where movements used nonviolent action were less likely to end up in civil war.

I interviewed South Koreans about their 1986–87 nonviolent campaign to overthrow the dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan, who was one of a series of dictators backed by the U.S. government. For the first three years of that decade, the government tried to “cleanse” the society of activists, purging or arresting thousands of professors, teachers, pastors, journalists and students. That wave of repression so aroused public hostility that Chun Doo Hwan felt forced to remove military police from campuses and pardon political prisoners.

Instead of restricting themselves to complaints that the government was making only small changes, the movement took advantage of its opportunity. Labor unions created a pro-democracy alliance and students organized themselves nationally. Action built on action, bringing in churches, farmers and civil society groups. Participation in mass rallies rose to 700,000.

The threatened government once again tried a wave of repression, including torture. When word got out that a student was tortured to death, ordinary Koreans joined the radical opposition and momentum increased. Hunger strikes followed and even more massive demonstrations. After a student hit by tear gas bomb fragments died, a million people marched—including middle-class elements who had held back before then.

People power put South Korea solidly on the road to democracy, reflected in 1997 when an opposition candidate, Kim Dae Jung, became president for the first time in Korean history.

South Korea, however, is one of the many examples of regime change in which democratic institutions replaced dictatorship but the same 1 percent continued to hold power. Decades of experiences like that in the 19th and 20th centuries, in which countries liberalized their governance under the pressure of largely nonviolent social movements while the 1 percent hung on to dominance, encouraged communist vanguards to assert that they had the solution to the problem of the super-rich.

A number of the movements that followed the Leninist path of armed struggle in the Soviet Union did indeed eliminate the power of the 1 percent in their countries. However, they didn’t establish democracy. In fact, their improved efficiency as authoritarians over the previous regimes often shrank the already-small space for individual freedom. There were sexual minorities, for example, who under the new regime looked back with nostalgia to the “good old days” of dictatorships that largely left them alone.

Actually, I can’t think of any countries where movements successfully

• used violence to get regime change
• and established democracy afterward
• and curbed the dominant power of the 1 percent.

The only movements that established democracy and curbed the dominant power of the 1 percent were those that used nonviolent revolution to overthrow the governing power. I’ve so far written about two: Norway and Sweden. Both countries are works in progress; there are visionary Norwegians and Swedes who would like them to go farther in refining democracy and reducing the power of their economic elites, though to a U.S. activist they have already gone a long way beyond us. (Free higher education, anyone?)

Bottom line: for those around the world who are committed to change and are considering violence as the way to get it, a track record is still a track record. Movements relying on violence were only half as likely as nonviolent movements to win a new regime, and even then didn’t do as well as their nonviolent cousins in establishing democracy in the new society. There’s no reason to link “violence” with that fine word “radical”—especially if by radical you mean democratic and egalitarian. Yes, violence has accomplished a lot of change in the world, but its track record is mediocre when it comes to the goals of the Occupy movement.

When he wrote The Conquest of Violence in the 1930s, Bart de Ligt didn’t have the data amassed by Chenoweth and Stephan, or the GNAD’s student researchers at Swarthmore, Georgetown and Tufts. But that Dutch revolutionary still got it right when we wrote, “The more violence, the less revolution.”

• About 20,000 Russians angry over an election campaign slanted in Putin’s favor and reports of widespread violations in Sunday’s voting rallied in Moscow on Monday. Riot police quickly moved in, dispersing the crowd and detaining hundreds of demonstrators.

• Lakotas on Pine Ridge Indian land in South Dakota were arrested as they blockaded tar sands pipeline trucks from entering their territory on Monday.

• Thousands of students and activists marched on the California State Capitol in Sacramento Monday to protest cuts in higher education in an action dubbed “Occupy the Capitol.”

• As U.S. President Barack Obama met with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington Monday, over 100 protesters converged at a park in front the White House, urging the United States not to support a potential Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

• A dozen female environmental activists in Ecuador were detained inside the Chinese embassy Monday for protesting Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s decision to sign a deal with a Chinese firm to open a massive copper mine in the Amazon.

• On Saturday, over 100 Bulgarian environmentalist staged a protest rally against looming amendments to the Forestry Act.

• On Friday, thousands of Bahrainis launched what they said would be a week of daily sit-in protests in a Shiite village to commemorate an uprising crushed a year ago.

• On Friday, over twenty-five hundred students protested the possible deportation of 18-year-old student and valedictorian Daniela Pelaez at the North Miami Senior High School.

• Several hundred public school students rallied in support of teachers at the offices of Premier Christy Clark at the World Trade Center in Vancouver on Friday.

• Millions of people, including members of the nation’s eleven largest trade unions, took to the streets across India today in a nationwide strike that seeks a remedy to rampant inflation, an end to the privatization of public entities, and increased labor protections — including calls for a social security system and a minimum wage.

• Tens of thousands of Muscovites wearing white ribbons ventured out under a light snow Sunday and formed a human chain along the entire 10-mile Garden Ring Road encircling the city center, creating a festive spectacle like nothing anyone remembers seeing before in the Russian capital.

• Thirteen Tibetans, detained last week for protesting against China in front of the United Nations office in Nepal, started an indefinite hunger strike on Monday to press for their release.

• Actress-turned-eco-warrior Lucy Lawless has been arrested with six Greenpeace activists after the group spent four days protesting aboard an oil-drilling ship docked in New Zealand.

• Dozens of women and young children from Kashmiri refugee camps holding placards inscribed with pro-freedom slogans staged a sit-in and a rally on Sunday to invite attention international community on Kashmir.

• In Pakistan, hundreds of tribesmen Saturday kicked off protests and a two-day sit-in against the U.S. drone attacks outside the Parliament House in Islamabad.

• Critics of the 22-year-old authoritarian rule of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev staged protests in four cities Saturday and were met by overwhelming police forces but little violence.

• Five disabled protesters in Bolivia have begun a hunger strike in their campaign demanding that the government pay an annual subsidy to disabled people. About 1,000 disabled Bolivians and their supporters rallied outside the country’s parliament building on Thursday following a 100-day protest journey to the capital to call for the $700 payment.

Home demolitions are a common practice for large landowners in Honduras. If a family is not residing on the land at the time when their land dispute comes to a hearing, they no longer have a case. Photo by La Voz de Los de Abajo

Most of what is found in the news regarding Honduras tends to converge on a single resounding theme—the deepening corruption of the state. Officials resign over scandals of embezzlement, police officers moonlight as armed robbers, entire state arsenals are found empty, supposedly the work of drug cartels. Carolina, one of many strong and energetic matriarchs who helps run—along with many other women and men—the June 10th Women’s Movement Farming Cooperative, has a different theory about the stolen arsenals. When a delegation I was a part of visited the farm last week, she told us:

The government only wants the United States to buy them more weapons, while they hoard the others. All those weapons are a direct threat against farmers. The government knows where they are hidden, and they will try to use them against us.

Communities like Carolina’s have good reason to suspect cynical motives. A week earlier, in the early morning of February 8, armed private guards of the Standard Fruit Company (Dole) invaded the campesino farming co-op of Salado Lis Lis and forced close to 500 families off the land. They had only enough time to grab their children and a few belongings before a Caterpillar bulldozer ripped through about 600 meager houses and tore wide, barren stripes through their crops.

On February 12, several brave families returned to Lis Lis to pick up the pieces of their lives in order to rebuild. When I arrived there on February 16, I saw that the bulldozer did not leave them with very much. Implosions of sticks, twine, and tin panels sat baking in twisted piles. “We also lost many animals,” said Luisa, who stood with her 4-year-old daughter in front of the littered patch of ground that used to be their home. “Chickens, dogs, cats, pigs—most of them were killed.” The loss of livestock and food crops is sure to worsen the problem of hunger in the community, where many are afraid of running out of food.

The history of Salado Lis Lis goes back at least to 1992, when a 100-year lease granted to Standard Fruit should have expired. Instead, the company remained illegally, then abandoned the land after much of their operation was destroyed by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Shortly thereafter, the families who now live there had come to clear the destruction of Mitch and to cultivate rice, corn, yuca, beans, coconuts and plantains.

An agrarian reform that was passed by the National Congress in 2008 started the process of granting title to the families who were using and improving the land for citizens’ benefit, but the military coup in 2009 and the repeal of the reform in 2010 made it easier for a foreign fruit company with a questionable title to evict small-scale farmers. Indeed, the case of Lis Lis is only one of about 50 evictions that armed agents have carried out within the last year and a half. As Luisa explained, “Honduras does not live in peace. It’s a country full of risks for us, the poor ones.”

Those risks hang like a cloud over Lis Lis—even though the campesinos are back on the land, they know that the guards could return at any time. If we don’t take back our community, if we don’t put all our efforts into keeping it, the government will never simply give it to us,” said Pablo Alberto, another associate of the co-op. In order to sustain this presence, the families have begun to rebuild and replant. The bulldozer left them with nothing more to eat than coconuts, so they have been hunting wild game until other crops can be harvested. Children are the first to be fed, then the women, then the men. They have pooled their resources in order to buy vegetables and milk from the town about 2 miles away. The campesinos showed us two intact buildings which used to be their school, and which they are now using for mothers and small children to sleep in, away from the threat of crocodiles.

The fact that the families are doing what it takes to remain living on their land, and reaching out to tell their story to outsiders, is all they can do right now to deter another violent eviction. They are showing the power of their resilience to the well-connected company that wants them off the land. As Pablo explained, “we feel fear, but also we feel the pride and the warmth of defending our community.”

You can call Dole Fruit Company toll-free at 800-356-3111 to object to the way it is treating small-scale farmers in Honduras.

The names of all people quoted in this article have been changed in concern for their safety.