Nonviolent resistance in Indonesia

NVI Raises Up The Good Work of the Damai Pangkal Damai 

We met Diah Kusumaningrum, an impressive nonviolent trainer and activist, through collaboration on our Malaysia training.  

She just shared with us this impressive report. As far as we know, there is no place else in the world where there has been an ongoing effort to catalogue every nonviolent direct action. They use Gene Sharp's groundbreaking work on NV Tactics and kindly thank NVI's own Michael Beer in this report. 

This important work not only records and categoriezes NVDA, but also makes important suggestions on how to increase our impact.

NVI is inspired by all the good work being done around the world. Even as struggle to face the painful reality of the as it is, people everywhere are building towards a better future. 

Diah wrote, 

As usual, the annual reflection has 4 parts -- respectively, on Indonesia, maximalist campaigns around the world, issue-based campaigns across the globe, and a special topic.

The first part underlines how nonviolent resistance in Indonesia has stagnated in 2022 and suggests building a number of infrastructures of resistance to overcome it.

The second part highlights how a number of maximalist campaigns around the world stagnated, transformed into (or from) reformist campaigns, or emerged in 2022.

The third offers a global outlook on a number of issue-based campaigns: gender equality, climate justice, and workers’ rights.

The fourth looks into nonviolent resistance in the face of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, calling for the need to revisit and revamp the literature on nonviolent defense and civilian-based defense.

Damai Pangkal Damai is a database project that records nonviolent actions that took place in Indonesia 1999 onwards -- that is, after the fall of Suharto’s dictatorship. Its database can be accessed here: ugm.id/DPDdatabase (case sensitive), its monthly kaleidoscope through Instagram @damaipangkaldamai, and its other products here: linktr.ee/DamaiPangkalDamai

Please feel free to forward the above information to your networks. Also, please do not hesitate to write to me if you have ideas for collaboration or you’d like to be a contributor to next year’s reflection or next month's kaleidoscope. If scholars on democracy studies can put together several annual reports on the state of democracy worldwide, I don’t see why a group of scholars on civil resistance can’t put together an annual reflection on the matter that’s close to their heart.

 

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