The United States Institute of Peace just posted this wonderful new piece.
See an excerpt below and read the full piece on their site.
Nonviolent Action in the Time of Coronavirus
Popular movements are confronting the challenge of how to practice social distancing while still acting to advance their demands. By Jonathan Pinckney and Miranda Rivers
How Popular Movements are Pivoting
Today’s activists are already putting this lesson to good use by broadening their tactics to focus on actions that don’t involve concentrating mass gatherings. For instance, in Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters have been gathering signatures for an online petition, and organized Hong Kong’s largest-ever medical workers strike, with more than 9,000 health professionals refusing to work until the government improved its coronavirus response. And in Brazil, millions of people are participating in a massive nonviolent action against President Jair Bolsonaro by coming to their windows at a specified time and banging pots and pans together.
One critical part of this tactical diversification has been moving activism from the streets to online. While online activism has long been an important complement to real-life action, with public gatherings off the table many activists are making it a much more central aspect of their activities. In Israel, over half a million people joined a Facebook Live online protest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to adjourn the Knesset in response to the coronavirus emergency. Members of the global climate movement are keeping the movement alive through digital protests, posting pictures of themselves holding protest signs in their homes. The climate activists are hoping #ClimateStrikeOnline, #DigitalClimateStrike and other online initiatives will continue to build the movement and keep climate change on the agenda of national governments and world leaders.
On a more strategic level, movements have also used the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to provide services for the general population, to be proactive on health and safety even when governments refuse to and to reveal inequities in the existing health and economic systems. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the health system has finally gotten under control a series of deadly Ebola outbreaks, the citizen’s movement LUCHA has urged the government to strengthen its response to COVID-19. These measures include the creation of provincial-level committees of public health experts equipped with adequate resources to address the crisis and ensuring everyone's access to water and hygienic products. In Senegal, social movements have also pressured the government to increase the robustness of its response, and launched a campaign to improve social solidarity to fight the virus. Y’en a Marre, a group of Senegalese rappers, students, and other youth, released a music video spreading awareness about the virus and necessary safety precautions. In Nicaragua, a coalition of movements working to bring democratic change, has created a coronavirus emergency committee after criticizing the government for their insufficient response to the crisis.
As the global pandemic crisis continues to evolve, movements’ plans and tactics will evolve as well. The dominance of the street protest as a central tactic of nonviolent action may make this evolution difficult. But the need to shift within the broader range of nonviolent action tactics is also an opportunity for creativity and growth, as activists, just like the rest of us, are forced to innovate in response to a changing world.
Read the full important and timely article on USIP's site.
David Hart
In this time of crisis, it is vital that we focus our attention on those who are most in need. This has long been a central guiding principle of active nonviolence.
Recently, I had the great joy of being on a call with a religious leader who is carrying on the grand tradition of nonviolent witness and action - Rev. William Barber. He is among the many leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign whose vision is needed now more than ever.
Rev. Barber calls on us to, “Take a collective oath that we won’t be silent anymore. When we get a handle on this virus, we won’t return to our apathy that has for far too long ignored the moral crisis of poverty and the racial disparities that mark American inequality.
Take time in this moment to let it change your insight forever, so that from now on we can see how connected we are, how frail we are, and how easily our lives can be disrupted. We cannot go back to business as usual.”
Rev. Barber’s prophetic words ring true. Now more than ever we must transform our society from a thing center view to a people and planet first approach. This is not new, but it is more urgent in this moment than ever before. We could and should have acted decades ago to build a more just and sustainable society. We still can take this moment to create the deep transformational change that is so clearly needed.
Our good friends at the Metta Center for Nonviolence recently hosted a fascinating conversation online and are now releasing a series of short videos capturing key parts of that discussion. In the video below, the great Professor Clayborne Carson, whose seminal work on MLK should be read by all who want to understand the power of nonviolent action, reflects on Gandhi and King’s shared commitment to those at the bottom of the social order. Please watch this short video and ponder what this calls on us to do in this time of the global COVID 19 crisis. What does this mean for each of us personally? What does it mean for active nonviolence in 2020 and beyond?
2 cases of COVID-19 in Gaza were confirmed by Palestinian officials on Sunday, March 22. Two patients returning to Gaza from Egypt were identified as having COVID symptoms and have since been isolated in the border town of Rafah. 
A webinar co-hosted on Monday, March 23, by CODEPINK and our fiscally sponsored partners We Are Not Numbers and Freedom Flotilla Coalition described the situation on the ground as worrisome and panicked. Due largely to the blockade of Gaza, COVID has taken longer to spread to Gaza than other areas of the world, but now that cases have been identified panic is beginning to spread. The government has thus far responded by limiting gatherings of people and suspending schools.
However, the medical infrastructure in Gaza is incredibly tenuous and cannot handle a large influx of patients due to the spread of COVID. Capacity in hospitals is limited to the hundreds, advanced medical equipment such as ventilators are sparse, and electricity is unpredictable. Should the virus continue to spread in Gaza, the results will be devastating.
And spread is likely. The vast majority of Palestinians lack access to clean water that can be used to effectively wash one's hands. With 2 in 3 Palestinians living below the poverty line, quarantine is simply not an option for most of society. Daily work is required to provide the bare necessities of life. If quarantined, people will be unable to feed themselves or their families. Further, Gaza is only 365 square-kilometers, yet is packed with 2 millions people. In such an environment, it is practically impossible to practice the necessary levels of social distancing.
To make matters worse, Israel has only provided Gaza with 200 COVID tests kits for their 2 million population. With the ability to test only .01% of the population, it is impossible to know how far COVID has already spread.
Still, the people of Gaza will not give up. Raed Shakshak of We Are Not Numbers stated in Monday’s webinar that he has faith that the more fortunate will help their neighbors and society will band together as best they can. But without the proper medical infrastructure to manage a pandemic, the situation is critical. You can read more from Raed in his recent article on COVID in Gaza.
Protests against the occupation of Gaza have grinded to a halt in response to the pandemic. This includes our partner organization’s, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, plans to once again attempt to break the blockade of Gaza. In addition to the health risks associated with the extensive travel this mission would require, the leaders of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition want to direct fundraising to organizations that can directly aid the humanitarian response to COVID in Gaza. This unfortunately means their plans to send a flotilla to Gaza in May have been suspended. They, as well as all of us at Nonviolence International, hope we can provide resources to groups who are best able to save lives on the ground.
Once such organization is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which already has infrastructure in place to provide such resources. Although recent funding cuts from the United States have made it more difficult for this organization to be effective, additional funding would allow it to ramp up its current efforts.
We want to thank CODEPINK, We Are Not Numbers, and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition for all of the information provided in their webinar. This is a critical situation that needs to be closely monitored. We hope to check into future webinars to follow up on the situation on the ground.
If you would like to get involved, consider donating to UNRWA or another organization on the ground in Gaza. Further, fill out CODEPINK’s petition to the World Health Organization and United Nations, encouraging them to take action. If you are a US citizen, CODEPINK can assist you in reaching out to your Senators and Representatives on this issue.
Although there is a long road ahead, we at Nonviolence International truly believe there is always hope in hard times, particularly when we focus on our shared humanity. May we band together to help those in Gaza.
Images courtesy of We Are Not Numbers.
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War is a non-partisan federation of national medical organizations in 64 countries, representing tens of thousands of doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned citizens who share the common goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation.
IPPNW was founded in 1980 by physicians from the United States and the former Soviet Union who shared a common commitment to the prevention of nuclear war between their two countries. Citing the first principal of the medical profession—that doctors have an obligation to prevent what they cannot treat—a global federation of physician experts came together to explain the medical and scientific facts about nuclear war to policy makers and to the public, and to advocate for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the world’s arsenals.
IPPNW received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.
Celebrating 30 Years of Nonviolence International
Professor Abul Aziz Said
Check out this video produced by our friends at Nonviolence International NY.
Abdul Aziz Said co-founded Nonviolence International in 1989 and devoted his life to inspiring students to promote peace and global understanding.
This video is part of a series celebrating our proud history and calling us to do even more in the years to come.
Please check back for more.
Our good friends at Beautiful Trouble just posted this wonderful piece on Waging Nonviolence, an impressive project that got its start as a fiscally sponsored partner of NVI.
We celebrate their loving and irreverent approach to this challenging moment. See excerpt below and read the full piece on Waging Nonviolence.
HOLY SH*T! 7 things to do instead of hoarding toilet paper
We’re facing down a global pandemic. If you find yourself saying “Holy shit! What do I do?!” you’re not alone.
A renegade bug is showing how deeply broken our system is. Beyond the absolutely critical tasks of taking care of yourself, harm-reduction, social distancing, hand-washing, and looking out for those around us who are most struggling, we must also make that brokenness plain.
We do not get to choose the historic moments we are born into, but we do get to choose how we respond. And as we recover, and put our world back together, we have a chance to put it back together differently and better.
In that spirit, we’ve done a roundup of the most creative and effective social movement responses to COVID-19, filtered through seven of the most relevant tools from the Beautiful Trouble toolbox, with links to resources compiled especially for this moment:
Read the full important and timely piece on Waging Nonviolence.
By Stephen Zunes who thanks the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict for supporting his research.
When the turbulent and often tragic history of the past decade in the Middle East and North Africa is written, the 2019 pro-democracy revolution in Sudan will likely be considered one of the few bright spots. One of the world’s most brutal dictatorships—in power for over 30 years—was overthrown in a massive nonviolent civil insurrection involving millions of Sudanese, and a liberal technocratic civilian administration put into place. Whether civilian democratic rule will survive the serious challenges still facing the country remains to be seen, but for now a key question is: how did they do it?
One of the world’s most brutal dictatorships was overthrown in a massive nonviolent civil insurrection, and a liberal technocratic civilian administration put into place.
Sudan did not fit into what some Western analysts see as the conditions for a successful pro-democracy civil resistance movement. The regime was thought to be too oppressive, too entrenched, and too successful in their divide-and-rule tactics of the large and ethnically heterogeneous nation. Their reactionary Islamist rule disempowered women. Civil society had been decimated under the three decades of military rule and the Sudanese people were seen as too impoverished, uneducated, and isolated. Over five million of the country’s brightest, most educated, and most ambitious potential leaders had emigrated. Wealthy Gulf monarchies were helping to prop up the military regime. And most of the West had largely written off Sudan as a hopeless case.
Despite this, starting in December 2018, a movement emerged which eventually brought millions of Sudanese into the streets. By April 2019, General Omar al-Bashir was overthrown by fellow military officers. Protests continued and, despite hundreds of additional deaths, by August the military stepped down in favor of a civilian-led transitional government.
The reasons for their success appear to include the following:
There was precedence: Long before the Arab Spring, the Eastern European revolutions, and other popular democratic uprisings which caught the world’s attention, the Sudanese had toppled dictatorships in 1964 and 1985 through massive civil resistance campaigns.
One advantage was that some of the main elements of the repressive apparatus of the regime—the police, intelligence, military, and special forces—were divided, and the opposition did an excellent job of exacerbating those divisions and using them to the movement’s advantage. Another factor was that the African Union and the Europeans were on the movement’s side, thanks in part to efforts of the exile community and others to mobilize their support. An additional factor was that business people, even those who had supported the ruling party, realized that—for the sake of the economy and therefore their own self-interest—they had to end their support for military rule and support democratic governance.
The Sudanese regime was also simply incompetent. The economy was in shambles.
The Sudanese regime was also simply incompetent. The economy was in shambles. Education, transport, health care, agriculture and other basic infrastructure had deteriorated significantly during their three decades in power. They had lost the southern third of the country along with most of the oil reserves when South Sudan became independent in 2011. International sanctions added to chronic corruption and mismanagement in weakening the economy of an already impoverished nation. Despite its brutality, the state was in many respects weak. Young Sudanese had had enough. They felt they had no future and they had nothing more to lose.
More important was what happened on the ground. A critical factor was the scope and the scale of the movement. Unlike some civil insurrections—which were almost exclusively in the capital with mostly middle class support—the Sudanese revolution took place all over country, in all the different regions, with diverse class and ethnic participation. Professional associations played a key leadership role, but popular resistance committees were also active in even the poorest neighborhoods. Indeed, the ability to build such a broad coalition of forces was vitally important, given the size and complexity of the country.
For decades, the regime tried to divide Sudanese by North and South, Arab and non-Arab, Muslim and non-Muslim. The pro-democracy protesters recognized that national unity was critically important and consciously resisted efforts at divide-and-rule.
For example, though historically in the Arab-dominated part of the Sudan, greater Khartoum is a multi-ethnic urban area, as those from minority regions fleeing violence and poverty have flocked to the capital area. When the protests began, the regime tried to blame the uprising on Furs, the people indigenous to the Darfur region who have been subjected to a genocidal campaign by the regime. In response, the largely-Arab but multi-ethnic protesters began chanting “We are all Darfur!” In solidarity, protesters in Al Fashir, the Darfur capital, started chanting “We are all Khartoum!”
Related to this diversity was the strong participation and leadership by women, which not only helped increase the numbers of protesters, but provided a perspective that encouraged nonviolent discipline.
Related to this diversity was the strong participation and leadership by women, which not only helped increase the numbers of protesters, but provided a perspective that encouraged nonviolent discipline, democratic process, greater credibility, and better popular perception of the movement and its goals. Under al-Bashir’s rule, women had been severely repressed in terms of dress codes, employment, and even the ability to leave home without the accompaniment of a close male relative. A frequent theme illustrated in murals, signs, and elsewhere during the revolution involved the Kandaka, a matrilineal dynasty of powerful queens from the first millennium BCE. It served as an inspiration for women and a reminder that the ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam, which severely circumscribed their rights was not inherent to Sudanese history or culture.
Perhaps the single most important factor was nonviolent discipline. Remaining nonviolent despite enormous provocation made it difficult for the regime to depict the movement in a negative light. Nonviolence gained the movement sympathy it would have otherwise lost through violent tactics and made it possible for people to feel more comfortable joining the protests, thereby increasing their numbers.
The opposition stressed the importance of maintaining nonviolent discipline not out of any moral commitment to nonviolence per se, but because of an understanding that tactically and strategically it was the best way they could win. If they had used violence, the regime would always have the advantage. By choosing what amounted to a different weapons system—peaceful protests, sit-tins, strikes, and more—they were unable to depict the protesters as terrorists who would bring violence and chaos.
The Sudanese opposition had engaged in violent struggle previously. Beginning in 1993, operating out of bases in Eritrea, an armed guerrilla movement was launched but it never got far, failing to provoke a more widespread popular uprising. The rebellion formally ended in 2005. Similarly, repression against the civil insurrection of 2013 resulted in many protesters fighting back and was crushed within days after scores of civilian deaths.
Recognizing that both armed struggle and rioting played into the regime’s hands, the opposition recognized that nonviolent discipline was critical.
Recognizing that both armed struggle and rioting played into the regime’s hands, the opposition recognized that nonviolent discipline was critical.
Importantly, the pro-democracy movement did not stop when al-Bashir was pushed aside by the military in April. Unlike in Egypt, where the opposition naively trusted the military, the Sudanese demanded they step down and allow for civilian leadership. A result was the June 3 massacre, causing well over 100 deaths. But this seemed to underscore to the military that they would have to engage in massive violence to suppress the rebellion which would discredit them further and put them in an even more untenable situation.
There is still much to do to consolidate democracy and civilian rule in Sudan. Though civilians dominate the transitional government, the military and other elements of the old guard are still part of the system.
The toppling of al-Bashir and his military backers is still an amazing accomplishment, however. It demonstrates that whatever the structural obstacles may be, good strategic thinking and tenacity by a popular opposition movement can ultimately win. This should be a lesson to those struggling for greater political freedom and social justice through the greater Middle East. Indeed, if an unarmed democratic civil insurrection can succeed in a country like Sudan, it can succeed almost anywhere.
Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he serves as coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies. Recognized as one the country’s leading scholars of U.S. Middle East policy and of strategic nonviolent action, Professor Zunes serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, and a contributing editor of Tikkun.
For a quick post about a mural in Sudan thanking Stephen Zunes and NVI's longtime Executive Director Michael Beer, please see: https://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/sudan_mural
Celebrating 30 Years of Nonviolence International
Daryn Cambridge
Check out this video produced by our friends at
Nonviolence International NY
https://daryncambridge.com/
This is part of a series celebrating our proud history and calling us to do even more in the years to come.
Here is the full interview with Daryn:
While you are on this page meeting Daryn, you might also enjoy this video on teaching and learning peace online.