organizing
Blog: Civil resistance runs on people power: How to shift allegiances
Powerful opponents seem to have everything: money, guns, supplies, the army and police, institutions and prisons. How can simple citizens, with scarce resources and unarmed, succeed against opponents wielding deadly weapons? “Look at us,” you say, “we are no match.”
Find out about how nonviolent struggle can achieve victory, in large part by shifting alliegeances among three main groups of people.
Blog: Theatre for Bread and Liberation: An interview with Janelle Treibitz
Photo: Philippe Duhamel
Janelle Treibitz is a proud puppetista, organizer and waitress who also likes to hone her training skills on the side. In this interview, she shares her passion for puppets, wholesome bread and liberation.
Q. Please tell me, Janelle Treibitz, how did you come to puppets?
J. T.: I have always cared about social justice issues and people. I attribute some of it to judaism and the way I was raised as a Jew, to my synagogue and to my parents teaching me to question, and make opinions for myself.
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Blog: Nine ways nonviolent action workshops make better activists
In
the yard behind Christian Peacemaker Teams' headquarters in Chicago,
trainees stage a realistic role-playing exercise to prepare for
nonviolent accompaniment work in Hebron. Photo cc: delayed gratification.
The goal of training in nonviolent conflict is to prepare activists and supporters politically, physically, and psychologically to wage powerful campaigns and actions. Here are nine ways nonviolent action workshops help individuals hone their skills and nurture the courage and resilience they need to withstand the pressures of unarmed struggle.
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Blog: Nonviolence training, what is it good for?
photo cc: treviño
There's an idea out there that anyone can take to the streets and make themselves heard. You just head out and start demonstrating to confront power. It's a beautiful idea.
Sooner than later, however, any assertive form of mass mobilization will cross path with agents of authority, be they security guards, police, or military. These forces are armed, and trained.
Blog: Four leverage points on the money
Photo cc: macca.
Do you feel the Earth is getting trashed faster than we seem to be able to save it? Do you sometimes share in the despair that our dependance on Big Oil & SUV's — with their attendant wars, food to ethanol follies, and other tar sands insanities — will bring down civilization faster than the ice caps and Greenland are melting?
Petroleum, mining and other corporate interests are in a head-on collision against local, land-based cultures, in a conflict so deep the whole world is its battlefield. Solutions based on morality, human values, respect for nature, and sheer common sense appear more inaccessible now than ever.
It's a battle of two worlds, simply said. A global clash: Earth and living creatures on one side, Cash on the other.
Well, here's how leverage works:
1. Find a place to stand (the support base, also called the fulcrum, or pivot);
2. Find a lever (a long enough stick);
3. Locate the pressure point (where you stick the lever);
4. Work like hell from your end of the stick;
5. Move the world (...thanks Archimedes!)
Because it funds and underwrites all large-scale projects, when you want to save some corner of the planet, you may find yourself in need of moving the world of Finance. That's when knowing about the following four leverage points could come in handy.
Blog: When they just don't care
It's not like you state your case, show the damage, the injustice... and then they say they're sorry and mend their ways.
Let's face it: some opponents are ruthless. They just don't seem to care. Public opinion doesn't sway their behaviour.
Take gold mining corporations that have wrought horrible, unspeakable environmental destruction. Some use cyanide — cyanide! — to extract from open pit wounds the 2% to 3% of precious gold content, leaving the remaining poisonous 97% to leach and seep, for generations.
Water. Public health. Farming and the right to eat. The environment. Global sanity. What can you do? Whole communities are at stake.
A number of mining companies don't care much about communities. They will, and they have, killed for the money. And once the money is gone, they're gone.
How do you influence a company that doesn't seem to care about anything? Faced with an opponent that is impervious to logic, human sensitivity and public pressure, where do you turn?
Blog: Organizing Tips for Citizens Tribunals
Photo cc: bloomsberries.
A mock tribunal is not a kangoroo court. The more your mock tribunal adheres to recognized standards of a fair trial, and resembles the existing proceedings in your country, the more credibility the endeavour can earn.
We have explained previously how citizen-based mock tribunals make good use of premonitory power, discussed the impact of repressed testimonies towards making truth and reconciliation possible, and covered 14 things to think about before you organize a mock tribunal.
In this last piece on paralegal forums, we turn to practical advice on conducting non-governmental "trials", with some ideas for follow-up activities that can prolong and widen the tribunal's impact.
Blog: Before you organize a mock tribunal: 14 things to think about
Photo cc: JaHoVil
When faced with problems such as weak or no enforcement of human rights law, or even the lack of proper national legal instruments, how can you determine whether a mock tribunal is the right tactic for you? What factors should you weigh in before you decide?
And if you thought a citizen-based tribunal could be a useful tactic, how would you go about organizing it? What are some of the steps involved in setting up such a large-scale, public event? For instance, how should you choose those who will play a direct part in it, especially judges (or commissioners)?
In A Mock Tribunal to Advance Change, Mufuliat Fijabi has helped us answer those questions. The following checklist includes some of her advice, and other tips.
You can quickly scan through the list to see what organizing a tribunal entails. The checklist includes 11 "before you organize" items, and 3 "early prep" tasks.
Blog: Hard truths and the way of the anger and the tears
photo cc: mick y
When whole systems were erected for the sole purpose of repressing and silencing you, how do you recover your voice?
On far too many continents, in far too many remote villages, tumultuous townships and forgotten urban alleyways, whole generations have witnessed their pregnant daughters being raped as evening entertainment for armed men, have survived the terror of disappearances in the dead of the night, and have seen the charred bodies of their sons in bombed car carcasses.
Where can these communities turn for a silver lining of justice, a possibility to heal and recover, a sense that the future may be livable?
When the level of atrocities finally recedes, what great big tide can come to cleanse with salty waters the bruised bodies and tortured souls left as wrecks on the shores of history?
Truth be told. Reconciliation is hard. But the only thing harder than that, apparently, is a lifetime of bitterness and hatred, being eaten away with fantasies of revenge, and the unspeakable grief that secret crimes beget.
Blog: Lessons from a successful media campaign
Ottawa, Sept. 2003 — Monia Mazigh holds a procession for the return of her husband, Maher Arar. She's joined by their two children, Barâa (to her side) and Houd (in stroller), her own mother (left) and Maher Arar's mother (right). Photo: Philippe Duhamel.
When I met Monia Mazigh in 2003, she was a dignified, immensely worried lone campaigner for her husband's release.
On September 25, 2002, Maher Arar left his wife Monia, their 5-year old daughter Barâa and 7-month baby son Houd in Tunisia, where they were vacationing on her side of the family. He had to return to work in Canada. The rest of the family would return later. They bade him farewell and he took a taxi to the airport.
This was the last time Monia and the kids saw him for over a year.
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