Sparking Change: How Movements Pass On Inspiration

Change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Resistance is a continuum. Nonviolent movements arise amidst the efforts of many other struggles. The knowledge of how to organize for change is a global legacy passed between movements and generations of activists through lineages of inspiration that stretch through hundreds of years. (The first recorded strike happened in 1170 BC when Egyptian pyramid builders refused to work until they were paid; they’ve been happening much the same way ever since.) We learn from one another both directly and indirectly. We mimic creative tactics. We replicate strategies. We learn from mistakes. We are emboldened by others’ courage. 

I collect 30-50 stories of nonviolence in action each week for Nonviolence News, a news round-up that shows how people around the globe are making change. In the news articles, I often notice clear examples of knowledge-sharing and inspiration passing between global movements. 

Wunseidel, Germany’s 2014 involuntary walkathon pledged money to social justice causes for every alt-right marcher that showed up for the march, thereby making them fundraise for causes they hate. This inspired a similar action in Portland, OR, that raised $36,000 for immigrants’ rights groups during a mass rally for the alt-right. Recently, Hong Kong protesters deliberately organized a 28-mile human chain inspired by the 1989 Baltic Way – a human chain involving 2.2 million people that stretched hundreds of kilometers across Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. They even named it the Hong Kong Way. When migrant rescue boat captain Carola Rackete was arrested for saving lives, the crew of a second ship, the Alex,was inspired to defy the law as well.

While the Internet has aided this phenomenon, the way ideas leap from one movement to the next is not new. Throughout history – albeit at a slightly slower pace – this has occurred. The word “boycott,” for example, was coined in 1880 when Irish tenants launched a campaign of social ostracizing against Captain Charles Boycott for his role in brutal evictions. Within six weeks, newspapers as far away as New York City were using the term. A few years later, as the term continued to rise into popular usage, guess which student in Britain was reading the British newspaper reports on the Irish and other struggles? A young guy named Mohandas K. Gandhi.

This was far from Gandhi’s only inspiration as he mobilized mass strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience in the struggle for India’s independence from British rule. He was both highly innovative and a deep thinker and strategist. He clearly learned from the struggles of his time. He drew ideas for nonviolent action and philosophy from a wide range of global writers and thinkers, both Eastern and Western. His unique stamp would have, in its own turn, global impact.  

Some of this was spontaneous – but much of it occurred through direct connection. African-Americans, for example, had a long and well-documented exchange with both Gandhi and his successors. Letters and essays on nonviolent struggle were published in African-American newspapers and journals. 

In the early 1950s, Rev. James Lawson traveled to India just after Gandhi’s assassination to deepen his study of nonviolent resistance. Upon his return, he became one of the foremost strategic architects of the US Civil Rights Movement. In later years, he has worked with numerous labor justice and other movements. He has also taught countless organizers throughout his long life and emphasizes the importance of training and study to movement success.

Movements share tactics and strategies, and they also share artistic themes. When I wrote my novel, The Dandelion Insurrection, using the dandelion as a symbol of resistance, numerous readers wrote to me about its use by movements as disparate as Norway’s resistance to joining the European Union, the United States’ 1970s Movement for a New Society, the recent Black Lives Matter Movement, and even the global climate justice movement. Like its namesake, it’s a symbol that continues to pop up all over the place. 

Music, art, slogans, and imagery circulate between movements in innumerable ways. To highlight one example, the iconic song of the Civil Rights Movement, We Shall Overcome, has had many incarnations. The first version was written in 1900 by African-American Rev. Joseph Tidley under the name, I’ll Overcome Some Day. This version was well-known throughout the labor movement of that decade. A second version, I Will Overcome, was sung in a 1945 cigar workers strike in Charleston, South Carolina. Pete Seeger and Zilphia Horton (music director of the Highlander Center) included this version in a book of folk songs they published. It was rekindled within the Civil Rights Movement at the Highlander Center. Guy Carawan is credited with selecting it as the closing song of a training attended by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. From there, they and many other folksingers helped to popularize it in the movement.

There are dangers with superficially mimicking movements, however. One of the assessments of the Arab Spring uprisings is that later movements failed because they learned largely from watching television and Internet footage of Tunisia and Egypt’s mass demonstrations. Replicating only the mass street protests, movements in other countries failed to see – and use – the strikes, boycotts, and mass noncooperation campaigns that had effectively eroded the regimes’ power in the first two countries. When protesters flooded the streets in subsequent countries, the brutal repression of police and military was able to crush the movements because other strategies – especially economic resistance – that could have been shifted to had not been developed.  

Some important aspects of struggle – such as organizational infrastructure, widespread training programs, acts of noncooperation, and covert resistance – tend not to be as visible to people from the outside. Studying nonviolent movements helps to illuminate these aspects beyond what we see in the news.

It is undeniable that media coverage of movements helps to inspire subsequent uprisings. The Arab Spring is cited as one of the main inspirations for the Occupy protests in the United States. The Occupy protests launched in New York City in September 2011, in part because of an Adbusters Magazinecall-to-action. Within two weeks, 951 Occupy encampments had sprung up across 82 countries, 600 in the United States . . . and a new phrase had entered movement organizing circles: multi-nodal actions.  In a country with the geographic expanse of the United States, the notion – while not new – was a revelation for many. Instead of organizing people to go to big city demonstrations, actions in every city and town were organized.  

In the United States, this tactical approach has been replicated continuously since the Occupy protests of 2011. The 2017 Women’s March, for example, mobilized one million people in the streets of DC and another 2.7 million across 500 other locations. One out of every 100 Americans participated in either the Women’s March or the Sister Marches (as the multi-nodal actions were called). This multi-nodal organizing approach also lies at the heart of the Student Climate Strikes, which organize weekly student walkouts and days of larger mobilizations. 

The stories continue: global labor movements; women’s suffrage movements in the UK and US; Indigenous solidarity movements around the globe; intersectional movements of the 70s and 80s; anti-globalization protests at major trade conferences that shared tactical philosophies; environmental movements that adapted blockades and tree-sits from forest protection to blocking pipelines; and so much more. Each one of these examples deserves a full article. Both contemporary and historical strands of learning and inspiring can be traced through movements. 

The circulation of texts, books, and manuals on nonviolent struggle has played a major role in the ways movements share tactics and strategies. The works of M.K. Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gene Sharp have had global impacts. The advent of the Internet made accessing knowledge and following contemporary movements even more common. Current campaigns seem to draw knowledge from a wide variety of sources, including traditional cultural references, organized training programs, current and recent movements, previous campaigns in their history, and local innovation. 

In collecting and circulating the weekly Nonviolence News, one of my goals is to help light the sparks between people working for change. By reading about creative actions, wise strategies, and courageous resistance, we can learn from the endeavors of our fellow human beings. The more we learn, the more the sparks of inspiration lead to robust, strategic, and powerful movements for change. 

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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. www.riverasun.com

The Many Faces of Nonviolence

by Emily Mattio

In April 2018, twelve women in red cloaks and white bonnets stood behind California State Treasurer John Chiang, voicelessly embodying the handmaids from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel of a future where women’s rights are nonexistent. These costumed protesters, among many others, gathered in support of Chiang’s announcement that he would circulate a petition to direct part of California’s state budget to end rape backlog and begin testing approximately 13,000 untouched  rape kits. Out of the many survivors of sexual assault, only some go through these invasive examinations to help prosecute their attackers. However, many of these kits remain untested, which prevents thousands of survivors from building a strong legal case. Chiang’s call to action, inspired by these powerful protesters, is a step towards justice.

Among the crusaders was Chelsea Byers, who was asked to not only organize, but also to speak at the press conference. She founded her organization, the Campaign to Abolish Statutes of Limitations on Rape and Sexual Assault (CASOL), after observing the power of grassroots movements and hearing survivors’ stories firsthand. Its message is simple and straightforward: it is time for every state across the nation to eradicate statutes of limitations (SOLs) for rape and sexual assault.

SOLs restrict the amount of time between a crime and the ability to charge someone for it. SOLs for rape and sexual assault ignore the holistic knowledge that we now have about survivors of such crimes, along with recent technological developments that make it easier to identify and prosecute perpetrators. This prevents survivors from speaking their truth and bringing their attacker to justice once they are emotionally and physically ready to do so. 

Due to societal stigma, a broken justice system, and the severe emotional and/or physical trauma that results from an sexual violence, many victims choose not to report their attackers. SOLs don’t take these factors into account, and instead gives victims a time limit to come forward. It disregards the fact that the time provided by the SOLs might not be sufficient for the victims to heal and prepare to report their attacker. Chelsea Byers has heard this story countless times. A specific instance that came to Byers’ mind concerns a nurse in the Midwest, whose daughter was sexually assaulted but unable to prosecute her attacker once she felt ready to speak with law enforcement officers. This mother now works with CASOL to rally her community behind this issue.

CASOL is in the process of publishing an advocacy toolkit and organizing an advisory committee to combat SOLs on sexual crimes. The toolkit will compile relevant information that will make it easier to share ideas, give advice on how to influence local legislation, and run meetings/campaigns. Additionally, CASOL will start an advisory committee to represent different communities across the country in order to build a stronger support system, decentralize efforts while maintaining a central body, and address intersectionality. In the meantime, CASOL continues to support active campaigns in five different states. As the movement grows, CASOL hopes to grow with it, offering solutions and resources for any problems that arise.

CASOL also offers Nonviolent Direct Action Training (NVDA), which plays a large role in the organization’s activities. NDVA puts power back into the hands of a survivor by providing them with effective tools to rise up against injustice. Byers believed that a legislative approach alone would miss the greater movement-building opportunity inherent in this cause. Investing in building capacity for nonviolent action is the best way to create a large base of people power, which then puts pressure on lawmakers to change legislation.

Byers argues that everyone, not just survivors, should be working to abolish SOLs for sexual assault. Movements such as CASOL and #MeToo demonstrate that our current criminal justice system cannot adequately address sexual violence. While CASOL cannot change the past, it provides survivors with tools that will empower and motivate them to advocate for a future where individuals are able to come forward once they are ready. Nonviolence International is proud to be partners with such an incredible organization that is making significant strides in using nonviolent action to support the rights of survivors. We are grateful for the opportunity to tell their story.

The Many Faces of Nonviolence

by Emily Mattioli

Surrounded by thousands of people, an activist named Renaldo Pearson stood on the steps of the Capitol and sang, “the only thing we did right was the day we started to fight.” One of the thousands was Tania Maduro. She had stepped out of her Connecticut home in April 2016 to take part in the largest American civil disobedience action of the 21^st century. It was a march from Philadelphia to Washington D.C., followed by a weeklong protest led by Democracy Spring demanding the removal of big money from politics and the expansion and protection of voting rights.

99 Rise, one of Nonviolence International’s former partners, created Democracy Spring to address problems that are keeping democracy in the United States from thriving. As a grassroots social movement, it uses civil resistance demonstrations to bring attention to voter suppression and the outsized influence of big money in politics. Maduro joined this movement in 2016 after learning about the extent of the issue.

Very few bills get passed in Congress without some input from wealthy donors and their lobbyists. And politicians have good reason to listen. The Washington Post found that better-financed candidates win elections 91% of the time. Through demonstrations, marches, and advocacy, Democracy Spring brings the issue into the public view so that the people will demand greater regulation of money in politics.

Another obstacle that Democracy Spring addresses is voter suppression. While Maduro was initially motivated to end corporate corruption, she soon experienced the threat to voting rights first-hand. She lived out of state due to her work for Democracy Spring, but she went back to her home state of Connecticut to vote in the 2016 primaries. However, officials turned her away, saying that she was ineligible because she did not vote in the last election. Voters laws vary by state, but nearly all of them disproportionately make it harder for minority populations to vote.

The 2018 Midterm Election is one of the most recent displays of voter suppression. The Center for American Progress documented many barriers, from strict registration laws to administrative mistakes, that kept thousands of minority voters and college students from casting a ballot. Similar to Maduro’s experience, many Ohio citizens couldn’t vote because they had not made it to the polls for the previous two elections. These discrepancies, and many more, make voting more difficult for specific populations in the United States, creating unrepresentative election outcomes.

Maduro contends that one of the greatest challenges to rallying people behind these causes is that the discussion surrounding them is very academic, leaving many without the vocabulary or understanding on how to address the injustice. This is one of the reasons why nonviolent direct action is an important tool for the movement. NVDA is unique because it is accessible to everyone and will help the conversation to become more prevalent. Both big money in politics and voter suppression threaten American democracy. While partisan divisions may seem insurmountable, this is something that all Americans can come together on. Nonviolence International supports 99 Rise’s and Democracy Spring’s efforts to enforce a democracy where money does not corrupt and every citizen has an equal opportunity to vote.

Follow  Tania Maduro on Facebook to keep up with the Pro-Democracy Movement.