Articles by Rivera Sun

We found 26 results.


We Need a Culture of Nonviolence
Rivera Sun | Waging Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2022

8 Jun 2022 – The culture of violence is failing us. It’s time to change everything. U.S. society is defined by a culture of violence. This year, Campaign Nonviolence’s Action Days aim to build momentum toward a radical, nonviolent future.

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How Nonviolent Action Is Protecting the Earth
Rivera Sun | Waging Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Jan 2022

18 Jan 2022 – Nonviolence toward the Earth is neither a lofty dream nor a utopian vision. It is practical, necessary and our only choice.

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The Architecture of a Nonviolent City
Rivera Sun | Waging Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 May 2021

10 May 2021 – By replacing systems of violence with practices rooted in nonviolence, social justice movements are creating blueprints for nonviolent cities. For several years, Pace e Bene has organized the Nonviolent Cities Project to help people envision and construct a city rooted in nonviolence, rather than violence.

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Creativity Is Our Superpower — 13 Stories of Inventive Nonviolence
Rivera Sun | Waging Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 May 2021

21 Apr 2021 – This collection of stories from the news showcases the incredible versatility, imagination, and super creativity of nonviolence in action.

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These Six Global Struggles Show the Power of Nonviolence in Action
Rivera Sun | Waging Nonviolence - TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Feb 2021

3 Feb 2021 – From India and Palestine to Canada, these ongoing campaigns demonstrate how ordinary people are mobilizing for worker’s rights and an end to war.

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Sparking Change: How Movements Pass on Inspiration
Rivera Sun – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Sep 2019

30 Aug 2019 – 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.

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Creative + Strategic = Effective Movements for Change
Rivera Sun – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

8 Jun 2019 – If you want to make change, think outside the protest box. It’s easy to get hung up on protests. We’ve heard about them, they’re highly visible, and they’re relatively easy to pull off. The problem with protests is that – all too often – they’re easily ignored. Creativity is key to making your actions meaningful and memorable. Paired with a sound strategy, creative actions can be unstoppable.

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The Bottom Line: Go for the Money
Rivera Sun – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

24 May 2019 – It’s rare to hear business magazines admit the power of nonviolent action. As the editor of Nonviolence News, a service that collects and shares 30-50+ stories of nonviolence in action each week, I often see business journals minimizing the effect of activism. Usually, industry tries to conceal the impact nonviolent action has on their bottom line by chalking it up to market pressures.

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Shifting Systems with Nonviolent Strategy
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Apr 2018

The old adage, we have more power than we think, is true. Our opportunities for successful and effective struggle are numerous. But to access them, we need to use wise analysis and careful strategic planning. We need to understand what the destructive systems require to operate and then we must deny them those resources until the demand for change is met. Simple. Complex. Effective.

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Radical Love
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 May 2017

Perhaps people in the social justice movements don’t notice. The feelings of solidarity that can arise within movements can mask the ways hate for one’s opposition depletes the soul. More obvious is the effect within the opposition. Sensing hate from the movement, their hearts close off, the deficiency of love drops further, and they lash out violently, entrenching in defense of their actions.

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What Kind of Nonviolence Training Do You Need?
Rivera Sun for Campaign Nonviolence | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Jan 2017

Campaign Nonviolence is often contacted by people who are looking for nonviolence trainings. Frequently, they are not sure what type of training they need, or what the catch-phrases are to describe what they’re looking for. This guide is offered as a resource in identifying which type of nonviolence training supports the needs of each situation.

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Thrown under the Automated Bus
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Sep 2016

We can praise the timesaving efficiency of automation, but we must also deal with the unintended consequences. The potential of automation comes with a shadow side, which must be rigorously discussed and addressed in our nation and around the world. People will be replaced by machines. Profits for the already wealthy will soar. Millions will be left without jobs.

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Nonviolent History: South Africa’s Port Elizabeth Boycott Begins July 15, 1985
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Jul 2016

The Port Elizabeth boycott was a powerful moment of consolidating and demonstrating the power of nonviolent action to place economic sanctions on white South Africans. This piece of the long South African anti-apartheid struggle helps us remember the scope, arc, and duration of working for change. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and every step counts.

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Campaign Nonviolence: A Growing Movement for a Culture of Nonviolence
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jul 2016

From the increased involvement in Campaign Nonviolence, the grassroots movement that organized more than 375 actions in a single week in all 50 states and seven countries to end all forms of violence, it appears that many Americans are serious about creating a culture of active nonviolence.

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Helen Keller: Socialist, Pacifist, Women’s & Workers’ Rights Advocate
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

Helen Keller is one of the most beloved figures in American history. Few people, however, remember her as a socialist, pacifist, and activist. Wikipedia reports, “A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled and outspoken in her convictions. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, she campaigned for women’s suffrage, labor rights, socialism, and other similar causes.”

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Dorothy Day Refuses to Duck-And-Cover
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2016

On June 15th, 1955, Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day joined a group of pacifists in refusing to participate in the civilian defense drills scheduled on that day. In this particular case, Operation Alert was a nationwide, mandated, legally enforced drill.

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Remembering Nonviolent History: Freedom Rides
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

The Freedom Rides are a powerful example of the use of nonviolent direct action to enforce justice and fair laws.

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Celebrating Mother Jones and Labor on May Day
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 May 2016

While Mother Jones sometimes used violent rhetoric in her inflammatory speeches, the actions she organized were nonviolent actions – boycotts, strikes, marches, walk-outs, work stoppages, rallies, speeches, and picketing. When she was denounced on the floor of the US Senate as the “grandmother of all agitators,” she replied: “I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators.”

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22 April: On Earth Day, Commit to the Great Turning
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Apr 2016

Hold actions to slow the destruction of human-based systems on the Earth and other beings. These activities include all the political, legislative, and legal work required to reduce the destruction, as well as direct actions–blockades, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of noncooperation and nonviolent intervention.

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Gandhi’s Salt: How a Fistful of Mud and Seawater Shook the British Empire
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Apr 2016

On April 6th, 1930 at 6:30 a.m. after morning prayers, Mohandas K. Gandhi raised a lump of salty mud and declared, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.” Salt was an unexpected choice for the revolutionary nonviolent movement.

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Letter from a Birmingham Jail: Poignant and Timely
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Apr 2016

In Letter From A Birmingham Jail, Dr. King responded to criticisms of nonviolent direct action on religious, moral, legal, historic, and political grounds. He chastised the attitudes of the white clergymen, and other white progressives.

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Celebrate Boycotts on St. Patrick’s Day
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Mar 2016

There is hardly a nonviolent movement around the world, out of hundreds of case studies, that has not used some form of a boycott! Think of Gandhi’s spinning wheel and concurrent boycott of British cloth imports, the American Independence movement’s boycott of tea, the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the United Farm Workers’ Grape Boycott, the boycott of white-owned stores in South African townships during the anti-apartheid struggle: the examples are numerous.

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10 Things to Know about Nonviolent Struggle
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Mar 2016

4. There are more than 200 methods of nonviolent action, including marches, demonstrations, rallies, boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, blockades, noncooperation, civil disobedience, work stoppages and slowdowns, refusal to provide services and much more.

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Got Fascism? The 1942 Norwegian Teachers’ Nonviolent Resistance to Nazis Has Answers
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

In April 1940, the Nazis invaded Norway and occupied the country. In 1942, as part of an attempt to implement a fascist curriculum in the schools, Minister-President Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian collaborator, disbanded the existing teachers’ union and required all teachers to register with the new Norwegian Teachers’ Union by February 5.

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What the Women of Berlin’s Rosenstraße Protest Can Teach Us about Trump
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Dec 2015

The parallels between the 1930s-40s in Germany and the United States in 2015 are frightening. It is clear to many citizens that the rise of bigotry and fascism in our nation cannot be allowed to continue unchallenged. Organized resistance is essential. In this effort, revisiting the history of resistance to the Nazis offers us some tantalizing concepts.

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Sanctuary for Refugees: André Trocmé and Le Chambon-sur-Lignon
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Dec 2015

What are we going to do? The moral obligation of compassion is clear. U.S. governors, like the officials in Europe, like the Vichy government and the Nazis, and all the cruel oppressors throughout history, must be resisted nonviolently. Like André Trocmé and Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, we must make our communities havens for those fleeing violence and death.

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