By George Lakey. Originally published on Waging Nonviolence. Movement manuals can be useful. Marty Oppenheimer and I found that out in 1964 when civil rights leaders were too busy to write a manual but wanted one. We wrote “A Manual for Direct Action” just in time for Mississippi Freedom Summer. Bayard Rustin wrote the forward. Some…
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By Larry W. Isaac, Daniel B. Cornfield, Dennis C. Dickerson, James M. Lawson, Jonathan S. Coley. While it is generally well-known that nonviolent collective action was widely deployed in the U.S. southern civil rights movement, there is still much that we do not know about how that came to be. Drawing on primary data that consist of detailed semi-structured interviews…
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By Lester R. Kurtz. CONVENTIONAL wisdom assumes that power grows out of the barrel of a gun, as Mao put it, or is given to those who steer a course down the mainstream. Mahatma Gandhi, however, is a “counterplayer” whose success lies not in accepting dominant paradigms but in challenging them. Most of the world’s…
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By Mary Elizabeth King. BACKGROUND In 1838, when the Antislavery Convention of American Women adopted a policy of using sit-ins and protest rides to resist slavery in the United States (Mabee, 1970, p. 115), it underlined the importance of refusing to cooperate with that cruel and inhumane system and foreshadowed the crucial role of women…
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By Anne-Marie Codur and Mary Elizabeth King. Recent scholarship has revealed contributions of women throughout the ages to the development of nonviolent methods for waging conficts. The fndings are unearthing a version of history in which women’s involvement has been conducive to the use and expansion of civil resistance and nonviolent struggle. With women, until…
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By Stephen Zunes. Aminatou Haidar, center, is a Sahrawi human-rights defender, activist, and former political prisoner (1978-91). This photo was taken in 2006, when Haidar and other political prisoners were released by Moroccan authorities after pressure by human rights organizations. Sahrawi is a term for a group of Hassaniya speaking Arab-Berber Bedouin tribes traditionally located…
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By Walter H. Conser Jr. Stories of national origin provide conceptions of national identity for the people who share them. They celebrate the charter events of a people, enshrine particular historical episodes, and privilege specific historical interpretations. People in the United States, by eulogizing stories of violence in their national origin, have effaced or…
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The Rev. James Lawson addresses the audience at the Allen Temple Baptist Church at a commemorative service for Martin Luther King Jr. By LOU FANCHER OAKLAND — The use of violence as a means to gain freedom or to protect a citizenship never fulfills its promises to humanity, the Rev. James Lawson said. “World War I…
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By Peter Dreier. Reprinted with permission from the author and Truthout. Peter Dreier offers an inspiring book for progressives describing how 100 people in the 20th century brought positive change to the United States. Dreier describes his book as a “Social Justice Hall of Fame.” You can obtain it with a minimum contribution to Truthout…
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By Erica Chenoweth. The politics of dissent is back in the United States. Since 2011, the country has witnessed the resurgence of popular action — from Occupy Wall Street to Flood Wall Street to Black Lives Matter to Standing Rock. Since Nov. 8, many Americans have participated in protests and marches in nearly every major city…
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