Violence & nonviolence
James Lawson, who died in June aged 95, was described by Martin Luther King Jr. as ‘the greatest teacher of nonviolence in America.’
Best known for his activism during the US civil rights movement, Lawson travelled to the then segregated city of Nashville, Tennessee in the late 1950s, after King implored him to join the struggle.
Heavily influenced by Gandhi and working as a field secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Lawson started running regular workshops on…
At its most basic, Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP) refers to ‘civilians protecting themselves and other civilians, without the use or threat of violence,’ co-editor Ellen Furnari explains in her introduction.
Fellow co-editor Randy Janzen lists three broad categories of UCP: creating space for nonviolent activism (for example, North American activists accompanying human rights defenders in South and Central America in the 1980s); traditional peacekeeping; and protecting communities…
While nowhere near as famous as Martin Luther King Jr, James Lawson was one of the most important leaders of the US civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, until his death in June, he was, without a doubt, one of the greatest living practitioners of radical nonviolence anywhere in the world.
As a young man, Michael Honey notes in his introduction, Lawson ‘didn’t expect to live to age forty.’
Committed to a ‘radical overturning of the systems that hurt and cripple…
‘In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist: in such a world a non-revolutionary pacifism is a contradiction in terms, a monstrosity.’ The words of US radical pacifist AJ Muste, who lived an astounding life of commitment, in 1928.
This powerful statement about pacifism and nonviolence comes from Muste’s classic September 1928 essay, ‘Pacifism and class war’. A radical Christian pacifist, Muste warned against the assumption that ‘violence is…
Back in the 1970s, Peace News used to advertise itself in the pages of Freedom, the anarchist paper with these words: ‘“Peace News” – the other anarchist weekly.... “Peace News” for the theory and practice of nonviolent anarchism.’
Freedom no longer exists as a printed paper, sadly – that disappeared 10 years ago – but its online version continues to carry reports of anarchist action around the world.
Peace News has long been committed to…
According to organisers Pace e Bene, the US Campaign Nonviolence Action Days 2023 involve 4,915 activities between 21 September – 2 October, ‘our BIGGEST year yet.... and a reflection of 10 years of relentless outreach, collaboration, and persistence’.
This year’s Campaign Nonviolence events include: a nonviolent vigil at an arms fair in Washington, DC; the 11 Days of Global Unity Summit; a nationwide Fast For Peace; a DIY solar installation action; a primary school peace walk; a Sing…
The most effective action both resorts to power and engages conscience. Nonviolence does not have to beg others to ‘be nice’. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences - or to pretend to have them.
Nor does it petition those in power to do something about a situation. It can face the authorities with a new fact and say: Accept this new situation which we have created.
If greater gains have not been won by nonviolent action it is because most of those trying it…
Reluctantly, I finally read How to Blow Up a Pipeline (author: Andreas Malm, Verso, 2020) and went to see the feature film of the same name (director: Daniel Goldhaber, 2022).
When I finished the book, and when I walked out of the cinema, I had the same feeling. I was sad.
I felt sad that hundreds, maybe thousands, of committed young activists are going to come away from these experiences feeling that they ought to be taking on the climate criminals with high…
‘In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist: in such a world a non-revolutionary pacifism is a contradiction in terms, a monstrosity.’ – AJ Muste, 1928
This insight is a foundation stone for the tradition of revolutionary nonviolence that Peace News comes out of and, in decades past, has contributed to.
In his classic 1928 essay, ‘Pacifism and class war’, US Christian pacifist AJ Muste warned against the assumption that ‘…
Abraham Johannes Muste, known to the public as ‘AJ Muste’, was a remarkable and in some ways enigmatic figure bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Born in Holland on 8 January 1885, Muste was brought to the US as a child of six and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by a Republican family in the strict Calvinist traditions of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1909, he was ordained a minister in that church, and married Anna Huizenga, with whom he was to share the next 40 years…
On 26 March, the people of Slavutych caught the imagination of the world with their nonviolent defiance, apparently driving Russian soldiers out of their city.
Slavutych, in the very north of Ukraine, was built in 1986 to house workers evacuated from the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the disaster.
Russian forces captured the power plant on the first day of the war, as it is right on the border with Belarus, a launching pad for the invasion. The Russian military had…
On 20 March, US author and activist George Lakey delivered a talk based on his 25 February article on Waging Nonviolence: 'Ukraine Doesn't Need to Match Russia's Military Might to Defend Against Invasion'
George's argument is that, throughout history, people facing occupation have tapped into the power of nonviolent struggle to thwart their invaders.…
Many are probably giving much attention and concern to what is happening on the Russian/Ukrainian border and the megaphone posturing going on around it, so may not have noticed what has been happening out in the Atlantic on the southwest part of Ireland’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
Russia announced that its navy would be carrying out live-firing exercises there and other ships and aeroplanes were advised to avoid the area. Under international maritime law, Russia can do this as it is…
Peace News carries some of the responsibility for me spending much of the last two years writing a book about constructive nonviolent action.
I was quite young when I became convinced that killing people was wrong, and I began to take on the identity of a pacifist. Peace News was one of my main sources of insight into what pacifism entailed, leading me to an interest in anarchism as part of a search for nonviolent and non-coercive modes of action for change.
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It is not an exaggeration to say that there is a ‘before Jean-Marie Muller’ and an ‘after Jean-Marie Muller’ in the study and practice of nonviolence in France. Jean-Marie was also a committed internationalist who worked with thinkers on and practitioners of nonviolence in a wide range of countries, from Lebanon to the United States.
Jean-Marie Muller was working as a philosophy teacher when he staged his first major (and much-publicised) protest in 1967. Defying the authorities, he…
