By Mubarak Awad, founder Nonviolence International 

President Trump and his son-in-law’s “peace” plan would worsen the long term subjugation of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and even Israel itself.  This is a plan for extended injustice, second class citizenship, and continuing hatred. Sooner or later, if implemented, it will erupt into the opposite of peace, not to speak of solidifying a deepened antipathy towards the United States.

Many Israelis and Americans don’t support this plan. This is a campaign stunt orchestrated by President Trump to support his own re-election campaign, as well as Bibi Netanyahu’s. This peace plan is akin to one hand clapping,  (or perhaps better said, one hand slapping) since only the Israelis were consulted, and therefore only their interests were considered. 

This plan would give Israel all it has sought during decades of conflict, including nearly all Palestinian land on which Israel has built settlements, the Jordan Valley and almost the totality of Jerusalem . Palestinian leaders have denounced the plan as "a new Balfour Declaration" that heavily favors Israel and would deny them a viable independent state.

Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, particularly Israel's settlements in the West Bank, has been declared illegal by the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.  . Security Council Resolution 2334 states that Israel's settlement activity constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and has no legal validity. As long ago as 1978, and repeatedly since then,  the U.S. State Department opined that the settlements were “inconsistent with international law”.

Palestinians and the entire world will resist. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has  rejected US President Donald Trump's recently unveiled Middle East plan. The 57-member body, which held a summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on February 3 to discuss the plan, said in a statement that it, "calls on all member states not to engage with this plan or to cooperate with the US administration in implementing it in any form.” The European Union is also in opposition.

With the announcement of the Trump administration's "deal of the century" on January 28, the Palestinian Authority (PA) sprung into action. Within hours of the White House ceremony, at which US President Donald Trump released the details of his plan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said, "a thousand no's to the deal of the century”.

But we need to understand the Palestinian context in which this imperial decree is landing.

By now, many Palestinians have lost trust in the Palestinian leadership. They see the PA--despite its protestations against the Plan--as in many respects little more than an Israeli cat’s paw in their oppression.  For example, many know that the PA's threats to cut ties with Israel's intelligence agencies are empty ones. In 2017, the PA announced that it had cut ties and it was subsequently found that 95 percent of security coordination with Israel was maintained.  Apart from clamping down on Palestinian dissent, the Palestinian leadership, whether in the West Bank or Gaza, has also sought to control mass mobilization for its short-sighted political goals. The PA and other Palestinian factions and political parties consider Palestinian protest to be a weapon only when it suits them or is led by them.

The PA’s attitude, along with years of suppression of nonviolent dissent and harassment of civil society has added another layer of repression - on top of the Israeli occupation- leaving Palestinians disenchanted and damaging their ability to effectively mobilize for their rights and dignity.  Over the years, many stopped seeing a reason to take to the streets because their nonviolent protest would either be brutally cracked down on or co-opted by political forces they see as illegitimate. It is no wonder then that when the PA called for mass mobilization in the streets against the "deal of the century" few turned up. Today, the PA is only able to mobilize those loyal to its political structures and its partisan arm - Fatah. To get a crowd in Ramallah, it had to bus people in from outside the city.

But despite the political and moral bankruptcy of their leaders, Palestinians have not despaired. They will continue their struggle for justice, rights, and the end of the Israeli occupation and apartheid. They continue to mobilize despite their leaders’ complicity with Israel.

The spirit of the Palestinian Street is alive, and it can no longer be manipulated by duplicitous political forces. It will only come out in defense of the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people. 

Palestinians have no choice but to unify across party and geographic lines. Hamas and Fatah and civil society must start talking with each other and publicly speak with one voice. Palestinians facing apartheid in Israel, exile in refugee camps, occupation, and prisons, must increase cooperation and mutual support.  Internationally, countries and civil society must stand up for human rights and international law. The Arab street is unified in support of Palestinians and their governments must support Palestinians or face peril.

Palestinians should ignore the Trump administration. They must talk directly to Israelis and find ways of communicating in good spirit both by action and deeds. Israel’s efforts to use US dominance to impose its will in the Middle East will end in a disaster for everyone.

As a long time leader for a two-state solution, I am calling on Palestinian intellectuals to help the Authority to develop a different plan that focusses on a  “ONE STATE SOLUTION.” Israel has twisted a two-state option into Gaza as a rump Palestinian state connected to a Bantustan-like polity on the West Bank.  A one-state democratic solution means all will be equal; Israel can call itself a Jewish/Israeli state and Palestinians can call it an Arab State. Mutual respect and equal rights are the only way to end apartheid, and to end the violence and hatred between the two sides. Genuine equality is far more important than the names and titles given to political entities.

I call on Americans and Israelis to reject this campaign stunt and to support genuine equality and mutuality as the basis for peace.  As Dr. Martin Luther King said, we can choose nonviolence or nonexistence. Let’s choose nonviolence.

By David Hart, Co-Director Nonviolence International 

The world is facing a series of devastating interrelated crises. Our friends at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have just updated their well known and respected Doomsday Clock. No surprise to those following the news, but their Science and Security Board has declared that we are closer than ever before to apocalypse. They are announcing this news not to freeze us in fear, but instead to offer us a chance to act while we still can. And, act we must. 

The time for small ideas is over. History has proven that powerful people’s movements can make what once seemed impossible become inevitable. Again and again we have seen that when people rise up together and declare they see a path out of the darkness, the world can change in major ways. 

The crises we are facing provide us with an opportunity to create real and lasting change. Below, you will see that the Bulletin rightly considers the threats of climate change and nuclear weapons to be existential threats to our very existence. True, and only part of the picture. We also face a crisis of avoidable suffering worldwide. We can and must do better. For the future and for those suffering now. 

Many people may see this clock ticking closer and closer to midnight and wonder what we can do. We often seem so small and the problems seem so vast. At Nonviolence International, we proudly declare that the world can be better than it is today and it up to us to direct that change.  

Nonviolence International serves as a backbone organization of the global nonviolent movement. We provide fiscal sponsorship to some of the most amazing bold, creative, hardworking nonviolent movements worldwide. And, we provide much needed resources to activists and scholars all over the world. 

Our Nonviolence Training Archive is live online now built in partnership with Kurt Schock and the Rutgers International Institute for Peace. This is the world’s largest archive of training material on nonviolence. Check it out at: http://nonviolence.rutgers.edu/s/digital

Within a few months, our longtime Executive Director, Michael Beer, will be publishing his first book - an update to Gene Sharp’s seminal work The Politics of Nonviolent Action, with our friends at the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict. This monograph, which was blessed by Sharp, includes 346+ powerful tactics of nonviolent action. We are developing an online database that will allow activists and scholars worldwide to learn from this resource. It will be a living document that grows as friends and allies provide feedback and new ideas. You can get a preview of the online database at: https://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/tactics

When we say… we are Building a Global Culture of Nonviolence and Building Hope in Troubled Times… we mean it. 

2020 is going to be a pivotal year for our planet and we know active nonviolence can prove once again that it is indeed a force more powerful. 

Please read the post below, share it, and commit to take action now and throughout the coming year to help create a better future for all. 

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https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/

It is 100 seconds to midnight

Editor’s note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 13 Nobel laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies in other domains.

To: Leaders and citizens of the world

Re: Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight

Date: January 23, 2020

Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode.

In the nuclear realm, national leaders have ended or undermined several major arms control treaties and negotiations during the last year, creating an environment conducive to a renewed nuclear arms race, to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and to lowered barriers to nuclear war. Political conflicts regarding nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea remain unresolved and are, if anything, worsening. US-Russia cooperation on arms control and disarmament is all but nonexistent.

Public awareness of the climate crisis grew over the course of 2019, largely because of mass protests by young people around the world. Just the same, governmental action on climate change still falls far short of meeting the challenge at hand. At UN climate meetings last year, national delegates made fine speeches but put forward few concrete plans to further limit the carbon dioxide emissions that are disrupting Earth’s climate. This limited political response came during a year when the effects of manmade climate change were manifested by one of the warmest years on record, extensive wildfires, and quicker-than-expected melting of glacial ice.

Continued corruption of the information ecosphere on which democracy and public decision making depend has heightened the nuclear and climate threats. In the last year, many governments used cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns to sow distrust in institutions and among nations, undermining domestic and international efforts to foster peace and protect the planet.

This situation—two major threats to human civilization, amplified by sophisticated, technology-propelled propaganda—would be serious enough if leaders around the world were focused on managing the danger and reducing the risk of catastrophe. Instead, over the last two years, we have seen influential leaders denigrate and discard the most effective methods for addressing complex threats—international agreements with strong verification regimes—in favor of their own narrow interests and domestic political gain. By undermining cooperative, science- and law-based approaches to managing the most urgent threats to humanity, these leaders have helped to create a situation that will, if unaddressed, lead to catastrophe, sooner rather than later.

Faced with this daunting threat landscape and a new willingness of political leaders to reject the negotiations and institutions that can protect civilization over the long term, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today moves the Doomsday Clock 20 seconds closer to midnight—closer to apocalypse than ever. In so doing, board members are explicitly warning leaders and citizens around the world that the international security situation is now more dangerous than it has ever been, even at the height of the Cold War.

Civilization-ending nuclear war—whether started by design, blunder, or simple miscommunication—is a genuine possibility. Climate change that could devastate the planet is undeniably happening. And for a variety of reasons that include a corrupted and manipulated media environment, democratic governments and other institutions that should be working to address these threats have failed to rise to the challenge.

The Bulletin believes that human beings can manage the dangers posed by the technology that humans create. Indeed, in the 1990s leaders in the United States and the Soviet Union took bold actions that made nuclear war markedly less likely—and as a result the Bulletin moved the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock the farthest it has been from midnight.

But given the inaction—and in too many cases counterproductive actions—of international leaders, the members of the Science and Security Board are compelled to declare a state of emergency that requires the immediate, focused, and unrelenting attention of the entire world. It is 100 seconds to midnight. The Clock continues to tick. Immediate action is required.

Much more at: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/

Michael Beer, Director, Nonviolence International

I could have done a river clean-up on Martin Luther King Jr. day, or gone to a celebration of his life, but instead I thought the best way to honor Dr. King would be to stand up to injustice. I decided to spend the day focused on gun violence.

I went down to Richmond Virginia on January 20th, Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day, to lobby and counter a pro-gun rally. At 8am, I left Arlington Virginia in a Prius with a friend from Moms Demand Action ( a group opposed to gun violence). We had intended to support counter-protesters.

I was expecting enormous pro-gun crowds and feared that parking would be difficult. But we kept driving to the capitol and found mostly empty streets with some charter buses. In a parking garage, we pulled our little car into a space between two gigantic pickup trucks. There were many such large gas-guzzling vehicles with many out-of-state license plates.

We walked to the capital and passed many police working for the State, the city of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University. We talked to 2 African American men in their 30’s with big orange stickers that said “guns save lives.” We said we were going to join a lobbying event focused on the needs of people of color.  Unfortunately, this event was cancelled. They said they were veterans and wanted guns to provide home security. We wandered through the streets of the capitol that were shut off to traffic. We greeted some with “Happy MLK Day”.  We always got courteous responses, despite my colleague’s pussy hat and my buttons of progressive causes. We waded through crowds of men who were dressed up like soldiers and carrying semi-automatic weapons.  Looks like people were really into showing off their hardware.

I was afraid that some folks would see my anti-gun button and mob us. So I kept moving, kept my eyes down and never had anyone pay us attention.  People were happy to be there and everyone was polite. Luckily we didn’t see any Neo-Nazi flags and just a few confederate ones. We were surprised at the paucity of Trump stuff.

Everywhere we looked there were identical orange stickers that said “guns save lives”. It was surprising to see so few hand-made signs, although many folks wore t-shirts, hats, and jackets that had various messages.  There were almost no children but quite a mix of adult ages. Also, mostly men, and overwhelmingly European American. As a veteran of hundreds of protests, I’d say there were 6 to 8 thousand people, much fewer than I anticipated.  Folks did some chants of USA…and “Northam Out” but there were not many bullhorns. We took some selfies with the crowds in the background to post on our social media pages to let our friends know where we were…and then decided to get out of the crowds and go see our legislators. Unfortunately, the capitol was difficult to get to because of the crowds.

At 11am, we waited in a short line at the Pocahontas building, went through a metal detector, and headed up the stairs to cheer-up and lobby our legislators. None of the legislators were there, so we decided to thank the offices of 11 legislators who we have relationships with. Many had large groups of pro-gun advocates early in the morning, but by noon, the halls were remarkably empty despite crowds outside.  Many wanted to display their guns but were not permitted in the building with them. Perhaps this is because many Americans don’t know how to lobby or don’t see its value. So yes, the rally was burdensome on the government because so many police were mobilized and paid overtime. And yes, many legislative staff stayed home. But actually the overall legislative pressure from the pro-gun crowd was modest.

We thanked staffers (see photo below) for their commitments to end gun violence and talked to them about a range of issues that are important to us.  Many staff didn't want us to leave..and were grateful for our encouragement. Sure enough, the legislators passed gun control measures the very next day.

As we walked back to the car, the streets were rapidly clearing by 1pm. Organizers were picking up trash and cigarette butts off the streets. This is commendable. Rather than use their guns, they used classic nonviolent tactics found in our global database, such as rallies, flags, music, stickers and banners.

Pictured Below: Barbara Wien (center) with legislative staffers

A Doctor’s Remedy for Peace: Follow the Path of Nonviolence

By Connor Paul

Most people never fully experience life and death during their existence even though we all live, and eventually die. Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish has certainly encountered his fair share of both states of being. An internationally renowned doctor in obstetrics and gynecology, Dr. Abuelaish works to help conceive and deliver life on a daily basis. As an infertility expert, his work, research, speaking appearances, conferences, and counseling regarding the conception of life are all part of his effort to provide humanity the greatest gift we receive. “Using my skills to save a life or help a patient in distress or bring a newborn into the world was what I became most excited about,” he recalls of his preliminary studies at the University of Cairo in his memoir, I Shall Not Hate. But he has also grappled with death on a personal level that few of us have ever experienced.

Born and raised in Jabalia Camp, located within the Gaza Strip of the occupied-Palestinian territories (oPt), Dr. Abuelaish witnessed the death and destruction caused by the Israeli occupation throughout most of his life. From the Six-Day War of 1967 at age twelve through the Gaza War of 2008-2009 at age fifty-three, Dr. Abuelaish saw how a path to peace based on mistrust, hostility, revenge, and political maneuvering produces cycle after cycle of violence instead of lasting results.  “It seems humanity has still not learned their lesson,” he told me in our recent conversation. “Even though we are in the twenty-first century, we continue to try to solve our conflicts with wars and violence instead of working to find out their root causes.” This path of darkness taken up by both sides replaces nonviolence with coercion; coercion which directly impacts and destroys the lives of ordinary civilians.

On January 16, 2009, the violence finally touched Dr. Abuelaish and his family more tangibly than they could ever imagine.  Two days before the parties signed a truce ending the Gaza War of 2008-2009, an Israeli tank fired multiple rockets at his house.  Three of his daughters, Bessan (twenty-one), Mayar (fifteen), and Aya (thirteen) died instantly, as did his niece Noor (seventeen). The shelling also left his daughter, Shatha, his niece, Ghaida, and his brother, Nasser, critically injured. Innocent lives lost. A father in despair. A family overcome with grief. But just like the title of his memoir indicates, he refuses to hate.

After enduring such heartbreak, how does one prevent hate from seeping into their heart and filling them with a desire for revenge and violence? The answer lies in the emotion's corrosive abilities. Just like a cancer, it spreads throughout the body and ingrains itself deeply within, blinding those afflicted from being able to positively engage in conflict resolution. Dr. Abuelaish described the emotion of hatred to me in our recent conversation as, “a destructive, contagious, disease. It is most harmful to the one impacted by it as it is like a poison that weighs us down and prevents us from moving the dialogue forward.” Hate confines people to approach the reconciliation process from the path of darkness where ignorance, arrogance, and greed dictate the terms of negotiations. But there is a more humanistic path to achieving peace, a nonviolent path, a better path--the path of light.

Dr. Abuelaish embraced the path of light long ago which seeks to counter hate and violence by building upon commonalities that we share across humanity. From his endless hours in the maternity ward and intimate work with human life, he notices our commonalities as early as birth. “No one can discriminate or differentiate between the cry of a newborn baby. American, Palestinian, Israeli, male, or female, their cries cannot be distinguished from one another. But even more importantly, humanity has the same reaction to a newborn’s cry. Once we hear the cry of a newborn baby, we all smile because it is the cry of new life.” But even before beginning his medical career, Dr. Abuelaish learned very early on from his own life experiences how similar we all are across our different societies, including Israelis and Palestinians. At fifteen years old, he spent the summer in Israeli working on a Jewish family farm. In his memoir, he talks about the powerful impression the family left on him by not only how kindly they treated him, but also how similar they were to his own family. While working to resolve conflicts, the path of light helps illuminate all of our shared similarities that get obscured when we fixate on our differences.  When we are able to see the experiences, emotions, and values that so many of us have in common; we are able to come together to make lasting change that will better all of our societies. Dr. Abuelaish chose to construct his path of light and nonviolence on the strengthening of the solidarity that societies exhibit within the fields of healthcare, education, and the role women maintain. By building upon the shared values of these societal spheres, we will all be able to follow this path of pacifism to achieve a deeper understanding of one another’s situations, making peaceful resolutions much more obtainable in the future.

As a practitioner of medicine his whole professional career, Dr. Abuelaish sees how humanity’s shared worldview regarding the importance of healthcare can serve as a great starting point to begin constructive dialogue. Dr. Abuelaish rightfully pointed out to me that health is one of the few indiscriminatory “human equalizers” among our distinct societies. “When you go to any hospital and treat any patient there, all of them are treated equally. Treatment is not based on ethnicity, religion, skin color, gender, or name; it is based on the patient’s need and the physician’s diagnosis.” Just as doctors treat all their patients equally and humanely, we all need to learn to apply the same approach to our day-to-day interactions with each other. One of the most important aspects of good health is learning to coexist with one another in stable, peaceful, nonviolent environments. Dr. Abuelaish goes on to note, “Health is peace and peace is health. My health and my peace are linked to your health and your peace. I am not in an environment of good health and peace as long as you are not and vice versa.” More often than not though, the politics we implement on the ground, instead of the healthcare we provide, dictate and create the environments of our societies. These politics so frequently neglect the humanistic aspects of our cultures. We must learn to act based on the needs of the people, not the needs of our governments, as our fundamental needs cross borders and created shared experiences through which we can establish dialogue. “If I come to someone who is in labor and ask what is health, she would tell me a successful delivery; if I come to someone who is thirsty and ask what is health, they would tell me a drink of water; if I come to someone who is oppressed and ask what is health, they would tell me freedom.” Just like how we provide healthcare by listening to the needs of the people we strive to help; we must learn to reconcile our differences through the same measures.  Once we actually listen to and acknowledge the realities of our concerns through dialogue, will we then be able to follow the path of light in our efforts to achieve peace through humanity.

Education is just as important of a tool in Dr. Abuelaish’s humanistic approach to peace as it helps eradicate the hatred and discrimination that lead us down the path of darkness. “Education enlightens the people, it gives wisdom to the people, it allows us to see things outside of the box.” He then went on to wisely point out what happened regarding the public education campaign to quit smoking. “When people began to learn that smoking was harmful, what did they do, nothing? But once they began to educate themselves as public awareness of the dangers increased, they began to stop.” The same concept can be applied to hatred as we need to understand the dangers of the emotion.  It is our responsibility, as Dr. Abuelaish practices himself so often, to increase the awareness of how hatred and violence spread and to educate ourselves on their root causes.  But one of the most important aspects of education is that it not only brings people together, it allows us to learn from a diversity of perspectives. “Education is the passport that enables us to travel and cross this small world, it brings people together.” When we learn together, we share knowledge and experiences that help us reconcile our differences in a proactive, nonviolent way.

But to fully embrace a humanistic approach to peace, our governments and societies need to operate at their full capacities. By this notion, Dr. Abuelaish means we must involve women to participate in the resolution of conflicts to a much greater degree as their perspective provides invaluable input which is so often missing from the discussion. “Women symbolize the humanity, the passion, the love, and life itself; yet more often than not, they are not the ones involved in the decision-making, they are not the ones who wage the war…They do not wage war yet they bear most of the consequences from it.” When we fixate on statistics and numbers from violent conflicts, we so often overlook the wife left without a husband, the mother left without a son, sisters left without brothers. Females are so often the guardians of the house, where they defend what is theirs just as staunchly as men do in wars, but by projecting the values of love and compassion.  It is exactly this approach that is so often lacking in the decision making of executive offices, congresses, parliaments, and military headquarters. Dr. Abuelaish sees a quick fix to this problem. “the more we see women sitting at the table, being part of the decision-making, the world will be a better place.”  As the keepers of the family unit, females are so much more in touch with humanity than men and can use their perspective and experiences to overpower the hate and vitriol that so often cloud male-led reconciliation. Women are emblematic of following the path of light and serve as an example of how we should embrace nonviolence and humanity when we attempt to foster peace.

Dr. Abuelaish has delivered so many lives into this world, endured death so close to his heart, and yet he never deviates from the path of light. The hope that radiated from his tone when we spoke shows his unique ability to find the positive in bad situations. “We always have to see the positive, and during the bad we must maximize the positive and give hope.” Even in the tragic deaths of his daughters and niece, he managed to find the light and salvage life through the establishment of his ensuing foundation, Daughters for Life. The foundation provides scholarships and awards to young girls from the Middle East who seek to empower themselves and improve their lives through education. Dr. Abuelaish keeps the positivity of his daughters alive through his foundation, just like his tireless work in the maternity ward keeps alive the many babies he delivers or his embodiment of nonviolence and dialogue keeps alive the aspirations for peace in the Israel-Palestine conflict. By following the path of Dr. Abuelaish, we shed light on the path of darkness and make the road to peace much more visible and achievable.

Rivera Sun, syndicated by PeaceVoice, has written numerous books, including The Dandelion Insurrection. She is the editor of Nonviolence News and a nationwide trainer in strategy for nonviolent campaigns.

Here’s the good news: The debate is over. 75% of US citizens believe climate change is human-caused; more than half say we have to do something and fast. 

Here’s even better news: A new report shows that more than 200 cities and counties, and 12 states have committed to or already achieved 100 percent clean electricity. This means that one out of every three Americans (about 111 million Americans and 34 percent of the population) lives in a community or state that has committed to or has already achieved 100 percent clean electricity. Seventy cities are already powered by 100 percent wind and solar power. The not-so-great news is that many of the transition commitments are too little, too late. 

The best news? The story doesn’t end there.

We can all pitch in to help save humanity and the planet. And I don’t mean just by planting trees or changing light bulbs. Climate action movements are exploding in numbers, actions, and impact.  Groups like Youth Climate Strikes, Extinction Rebellion, #ShutDownDC, the Sunrise Movement, and more are changing the game.  Join in if you haven’t already. As Extinction Rebellion reminds us: there’s room for everybody in an effort this enormous. We all make change in different ways, and we’re all needed to make all the changes we need.

Resistance is not futile. As the editor of Nonviolence News, I collect stories of climate action and climate wins. In the past month alone, the millions of people worldwide rising up in nonviolent action have propelled a number of major victories. The University of British Columbia divested $300 million in funds from fossil fuels. The world’s largest public bank ditched fossil fuels and said it would no longer invest in oil and coal. California cracked down on oil and gas fracking permits halting new drilling wells as the state prepares for a renewable energy transition. New Zealand passed a law to put the climate crisis at the front and center of all its policy considerations (the first such legislation in the world). The second-largest ferry operator on the planet is switching from diesel to batteries in preparation for a renewable transition. Re-affirming their anti-pipeline stance, Portland, Oregon city officials told Zenith Energy that they would not reverse their decision, and instead would continue to block new pipelines. Meanwhile, in Portland, Maine, the city council joined the ever-growing list endorsing the youths’ climate emergency resolution. Italy made climate change science mandatory in school. And that’s just for starters.

Is it any wonder Collins Dictionary made “climate strike” the Word of the Year?

Beyond planting trees and changing lightbulbs, here’s a list of things you can do about the climate crisis:

1. Join Greta Thunberg, Fridays for the Future, and the global Student Climate Strikes on Fridays.

2. Not a student? Join Jane Fonda’s #FireDrillFridays (civil disobedience is the latest workout fad; everybody looks good saving the planet).

3. Take to the field, like the students who disrupted the Harvard-Yale football game to demand fossil fuel divestment. You can’t play football on a dead planet, after all.

4. Stage an “oil spill” like these 40 members of Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard (FFDH) and Extinction Rebellion. They staged an oil spill in Harvard’s Science Center Plaza to call attention to the university’s complicity in the climate crisis.   

5. Get in the way with city-wide street blockades like #ShutDownDC. People from an alliance of groups blockaded the banks and investment firms in the nation’s capital to protest the financing of fossil fuels, and the ways the banking industry drives the climate migration crisis while profiting from the devastation.

6. Rally the artists and paint giant murals to remind people to take action, like this skyscraper-sized Greta Thunberg mural in San Francisco.

7. No walls handy? Print out a scowling Greta and put it in the office to remind people not to use single-use plastic.

8. Crash Congress (or your city/county officials’ meetings) demanding climate legislation, climate emergency resolutions, and more. That’s what these climate justice activists did last week, protesting legislative inaction and demanding justice for people living on the front lines of the crisis. 

9. Occupy the offices: Sit-ins and occupations of public officials offices are one way to take the protest to the politicians. Campaigners occupied US Senator Pelosi’s office and launched their global hunger strike just before US Thanksgiving weekend. In Oregon, 21 people were arrested while occupying the governor’s office to get her to oppose a fracked gas export terminal at Jordan Cove.

10. Organize a coal train blockade like climate activists in Ayers, Massachusetts. They made a series of multi-wave coal train blockades, one group of protesters taking up the blockade as the first group was arrested. Or rally thousands like the Germans did when they gathered between 1,000-4,000 green activists, made their way past police lines, and blocked trains at three important coal mines in eastern Germany.

11. Shut down your local fossil fuel power plant. (We’ve all got one.) New Yorkers did this dramatically a few weeks ago, scaling a smokestack and blockading the gates. In New Hampshire, 67 climate activists were arrested outside their coal power plant, calling for it to be shut down.

12. Of course, another option is to literally take back your power like this small German town that took ownership of their grid and went 100 percent renewable.

13. Like Spiderman? You could add some drama to a protest like these two kids (ages 8 and 11) who rappelled down from a bridge with climbing gear and a protest banner during COP25 in Madrid.

14. Ground the private jets. Extinction Rebellion members went for the gold: they blockaded a private jet terminal used by wealthy elites in Geneva.

15. Sail a Sinking House down the river like Extinction Rebellion did along the Thames to show solidarity with all those who have lost their homes to rising seas.

16. Clean it up. Use mops, brooms, and scrub brushes for a “clean up your act” protest like the one Extinction Rebellion used at Barclay’s Bank branches.

17. Blockade pipeline supply shipments like Washington activists did to stall the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. 

18. Catch the eye with a Red Brigade Funeral Procession like this one during the Black Friday climate action protests in Vancouver.

19. Tiny House Blockades: Build a tiny house in the path of the pipelines, like these Indigenous women are doing to thwart the Trans Mountain Pipeline in Canada. 

20. Make a racket with a pots-and-pans protest. Cacerolazos – pots and pans banging protests – erupted in 12 Latin American countries last week. The media focused on government corruption and economic justice as the cause, but in many nations, including Chile and Bolivia, climate and environmental justice are included in the protesters demands. 

21. Share this article. Action inspires more action. Hearing these examples – and the successes – gives us the strength to rise to the challenges we face. You can help stop the climate crisis by sharing these stories with others. (You can also connect to 30-50+ stories of nonviolence in action by signing up for Nonviolence News’ free weekly enewsletter.)

Plus! Here’s a bonus idea from friends at World Beyond War: Connect peace and climate, militarism and environmental destruction, by pressuring your local government to divest from both weapons and fossil fuels, like Charlottesville, VA, did last year, and Arlington,VA, is working on right now. 

Remember: all these stories came from the Nonviolence News articles I’ve collected in just the past 30 days! These stories should give you hope, courage, and ideas for taking action. There’s so much to be done, and so much we can do! Joan Baez said that “action is the antidote to despair”. Don’t despair. Organize.

Rivera Sun, editor of Nonviolence News, the author of The Dandelion Insurrection and other novels, and a nationwide trainer in strategy for nonviolent movements. www.riverasun.com

This story was produced by Metta Center for Nonviolence

And posted on Waging Nonviolence 

There’s a secret to success for nonviolent movements for change: solidarity. Instead of “going it alone,” movements can amplify their message, leverage collective power, and build strength by seeking solidarity from aligned organizations and groups. Movements can also mobilize thousands of people into tangible, game-changing strategies by consciously designing solidarity actions to support their primary campaign.

Look at Oakland’s Solidarity Schools. During the 2019 Oakland Teachers Strike, a team of volunteers got involved in a much-needed solidarity action: delivering lunches to school children. In Oakland, California, 75 percent of the district’s 37,000 students relied on school lunch. Not wanting the kids to go hungry; the food bank, parents, teachers, and students worked together to organize and distribute lunches for the duration of the strike. This helped the teachers maintain their refusal to work without dividing the community over hunger issues. Solidarity efforts also included alternative schooling and child care. After several weeks, the teachers won their radical demands that ultimately benefited the entire community.

Solidarity strategies can increase the chance of success for your campaign by widening the impact of your actions. Recently in Nonviolence News, I reported on a story from Finland. Postal workers went on strike for two weeks, but their victory wasn’t won by the massive backlog of undelivered holiday packages. The clincher on their struggle occurred when the airline and transport industry workers held a solidarity (or sympathy) strike, grounding over three hundred planes and causing chaos in the capital. As the strike impacted businesses and people across the country, the head of the postal service came under fire for mishandling the postal workers’ strike. The workers won their demands, thanks to the solidarity of other transport workers.

Nonviolent struggle succeeds or fails by the rate of participation in actions that tangibly impact the ability of the power holders to conduct business-as-usual. In fact, studies show that any movement that successfully mobilizes 3.5 percent of the populace into acts of noncooperation (boycotts, strikes, walk-outs) and intervention (blockades, sit-ins, occupations) always wins their campaign. And, sometimes, success comes with even fewer people. So, scheming up those solidarity strategies makes a lot of sense for your movement.

Take Standing Rock, for example. Not everyone could leave their jobs and families, pitch a tent in freezing weather, and take a physical stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL, in North Dakota. But all of us could support the legal fund, organize supply caravans, and (perhaps most importantly) take action against the 17-plus banks funding the Dakota Access Pipeline. Across the country and around the world, the protests outside of bank branches gave those of us horrified by the scenes of police repression at Standing Rock a way to turn outrage into action. We held signs. We delivered petitions and confronted bank managers. We organized our friends and colleagues to move our money and close our accounts. This put powerful pressure on the banks, forcing some to pull out of the DAPL project. While the pipeline at Standing Rock moved forward, a cascade of other fossil fuel projects lost their funding both in the United States and around the world. Also, the efforts during the Standing Rock campaign gave a boost to other fossil fuel divestment campaigns, leading to a ripple effect of institutional divestment. With greater mobilization around the solidarity strategy of moving our money out of the banks, we might have been able to defeat that pipeline project entirely.

The successes of the early U.S. labor movement relied heavily on solidarity and their solidarity actions were breath-taking in scope and generosity. To use just one of hundreds of examples, during the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Bill Haywood and others organized massive support for the striking women. The solidarity efforts included relief committees, soup kitchens, food distribution stations, volunteer doctors, and weekly benefits for strikers. The list of demands was translated into over 50 languages for the multi-national immigrant workers. The most dramatic of solidarity actions was arranging for several hundred children of striking workers to go to supporters’ homes in New York City. This kept the children safe, housed, and fed while their mothers faced arrests, evictions, reduced income, and beatings for participating in the strike.

These tangible forms of solidarity can mean the difference between success and failure. Showing support for the cause with demonstrations can also boost morale and determination. Just this past week, cacerolazos (pots-and-pans banging protests) erupted in twelve Latin and South American countries, including Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador. The united demonstration was organized to acknowledge the shared struggles of the people against widespread economic inequality, corrupt governments, and violence against Indigenous populations. Organizers even distributed a cacerolazo app – in case you weren’t by your kitchen, you could join in with a cellphone simulation.

Occasionally, solidarity actions up the ante on issues, and connect immediate crises to the underlying causes. In the wake of the massive Australian bushfires, citizens chose to do more than send blankets and meals to those who lost their homes. Rejecting the “sending thoughts and prayers” rhetoric of the politicians, Australians organized solidarity sit-downs to demand disaster relief and climate action. In this way, they went beyond simply calling for relief while ignoring the root cause: they connected the fires to global warming, and the human-made climate crisis.

For movement organizers, thinking about solidarity strategies ahead of time can improve your organizing. Who are the people who can stand up for your cause? What allies can’t be arrested, but would love to help organize relief efforts for those who can? What sectors of society could engage in solidarity strikes or walk-outs to broaden your impact? Who can demonstrate to boost the morale of those taking direct action? What groups align with your cause and could have a direct impact on your power holders? What could those groups do to pressure them?

These are important questions for all of us to ask. Get creative with the answers. Solidarity comes in a million shapes and sizes, and it can be the secret to success.

This past weekend, Nonviolence International attended the annual UN Humanitarian Disarmament Forum in New York City. The Executive Director Michael Beer and the Director of the Canadian Office Yeshua Moser attended along with interns Alyssa Scott and Roisin Putti. The forum was hosted by the Columbian Campaign to Ban Landmines and consisted of several presentations and panels as well as both large and small group discussions. Several of Nonviolence International’s partners and affiliates were also represented at the forum such as PAX Netherlands, Control Arms, and some member organizations of International Action Network on Small Arms. Also present were International Network on Explosive Weapons, Mwatana Organization for Human Rights, Conflict and Environment Observatory, Humanity Inclusion, Armed Conflict & Civilian Protection Initiative, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, Cluster Munition Coalition and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The goal of the forum throughout the years has been to share information about campaigns and efforts working for humanitarian disarmament around the globe.

Some of the topics discussed were the importance of maintaining and monitoring existing disarmament treaties as well as looking to the future towards preventing the development and use of autonomous weapons. One concern about autonomous weapons, or killer robots, is that they may not necessarily be regulated under existing treaties or international agreements. A main goal of many of the organizations and campaigns represented at the forum is to continue the discussion of disarmament using a victim or survivor centered approach for understanding both the effects of violence and what effective disarmament might look like. Victims and survivors of armed violence have been leaders in the movements to ban the weapons around the world; several such leaders were present either physically or virtually at the forum. Jesus Martinez for example, spoke about his work with the Survivors and People with Disabilities Network and why disarmament is important to him as well as the work he has been doing to advocate for the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

One challenge for the humanitarian disarmament effort is to make the global banning and regulations of weapons’ treaties more accessible to the public, to make them better known and to provide citizens entry points for advocacy and implementation at local, provincial, national and international levels. One solution to this has been the release of an informative brochure on the subject, Humanitarian Disarmament which was co-produced by PAX. Nonviolence International also maintains a data set which lists the signatory status of each state in regards to international disarmament treaties. With efforts like these and our extensive resource library, there is certainly hope to realize our vision justice peace and nonviolent solutions to conflict.