“We must do something! Let's call a rally!” Speakers are organised, leaflets produced and participants get to show solidarity with the cause. End of story?
Not quite. Although many rallies are routine affairs, this form of action still holds the potential for threatening the status quo. This is most obviously the case in repressive regimes where any form of protest is taboo. Massive rallies were a key to the collapse of the East German communist regime in 1989.
Even in…
The upcoming Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference could be the beginning of the end for nuclear weapons.
Under the terms of the NPT “nuclear weapon states” – the US, Russia, UK, France and China – promised 40 years ago to pursue nuclear disarmament but have failed to do so.
But momentum for a nuclear weapons convention is building across civil society and governments. The mayors of 3,680 cities in 135 countries are calling for abolition by 2020.…
While trying to illustrate the inter-ethnic hatred that reigned in his native Bosnia in 1993, a deserter who had just arrived in Belgrade told me: 'You know, these Serbs hate Bosnian Muslims just as we hate Albanians.'
The 'we' this deserter used was supposed to mean 'us - normal people', who don't hate each other (except for the Albanians). Though disparaging Albanians was quite common and self-implied in former Yugoslavia, I could do nothing but vigorously confront him, saying I did…
Though women have often manufactured weapons and serviced armies—and in an age of nuclear weapons are equally targeted— it is historically rare for women to be in combat. The twenty million members of the world's armed forces today are overwhelmingly men. In many countries all soldiers are men; and even in those countries which admit women to the military, commanders are almost exclusively men. Men also dominate other branches of enforcement, both in the public sector as police officers and…
Today is a new day
Last night the rains came and washed away all our sins
The violence
The complacency
The anger
The apathy
All gone with the break of dawn
Today the taxi driver will not stop near the field where the latest body has
been found to see if it's someone he knows.
Today no one will be threatened in the port, no one will hear gunshots in
the night, no bodies will be thrown into the river.
Today…
Do you want to remain pure? Is that it?” a black man asked me, during an argument about nonviolence. It is not possible to act at all and to remain pure; and that is not what I want, when I commit myself to the nonviolent discipline. I stand with all who say of present conditions that they do not allow men and women to be fully human and so they must be changed - all who not only say this but are ready to act.
When one is confronted with what Russell Johnson calls accurately “The…
At any one time there are hundreds of political wall murals throughout Northern Ireland. The tradition goes back a century in loyalist areas, but only a quarter of that time in republican areas.
Yet this phenomenon is often rejected out of hand. The art establishment is quick to point out that the murals are not “art”, but propaganda, the supposed antithesis of art. Many mainstream politicians view the murals simply as incitement to sectarian hatred, which ought to be obliterated.…
According to the South Korean government's estimate, the amount of food needed to feed the North Korean population for the grain financial year of 2003 (November 2002 - October 2003) is 6.32 million tons, up 60 thousand tons from last year. North Korea's total production of grain this year, however, is only 4.13 million tons. Even with the 510 thousand tons provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the 250 thousand tons provided by the South Korean government, the hunger stricken…
After experiencing my first couple of week-long prison sentences in the 1980`s - when all I did was keep my head down - I started to learn how to continue my actions and resistance from “inside”. I decided that I must be myself and really live, wherever I was, and that I did not stop being a conscious, political person just because the state had incarcerated me.
I now consider nonviolent resistance whilst in prison to be part of our struggle for a better world—a way of confronting…
In the spirit of the protests against Menwith Hill and against the “long arm” of US militarism, 35 Finnish and Swedish peace activists set up an action camp in Fauske, in northern Norway, between 17 and 20 June.
Fau
Towards the end of 2005, an assortment of environmentalists met to discuss squatting a field next to a big source of carbon emissions, in order to shut it down and kickstart more radical action on climate change. The Camp for Climate Action was born.
In February this year, a few of those people, with many others, met at Monkton Wyld in Dorset and decided not to hold a camp this year, and to freeze the ongoing process of the national climate camp.
Whether this marks a…
At a recent seminar on peace building in Africa, the question of why gender and not women was raised. What is the difference? Although I was surprised that this question came up at all, it made me realise that one makes the assumption that this question has been sufficiently dealt with and that everyone is moving on from there.
Yet, this question helped me to understand why we often remain stuck in our attempts to transform gender relations in our society. The politics of gender…
Recently, Turkey witnessed an unusually spirited long weekend. There was action almost everywhere in the country starting on Friday 24 January.
In expectation of the UN Weapons Inspectors' reports, people from different political backgrounds and worldviews stood united against the war plans on Iraq. With significant international participation in some of the events during this “peace weekend”, anti-war messages were conveyed in the streets, congress halls, theatres, music clubs and…
In comparison to rape, perpetrating mass murder, or other terrible things, street demonstration is rel-atively less traumatic. However trauma is very much an individual thing and people can be severely effected by imprisonment, gassing, beatings by police, betrayal, or even unexpected behaviour by comrades or the state.
We can mourn little things as well as big things and it's healthy and we should. Spending time in the “sad space” intentionally allows us to delve deeper into the…
Just the facts M'Lud...
On 22 March 2003, three coaches carrying around 120 protesters travelled to USAF Fairford from London for an anti-war demonstration. It was the first weekend of the Iraq War. They were stopped and searched at the village of Lechlade, three miles from Fairford. After being held for two hours they were let back on the coaches, but instead of being allowed to proceed to the authorised demonstration they were forcibly escorted, non-stop, back to London. (For…
The 31 October 2000 was more than just a Halloween celebration for thousands of women watching the UN Security Council on that day. Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) was an unprecedented event—a unanimous adoption of the first resolution on women, peace and security. Among other features it calls for the prosecution of crimes against women; increased protection of women and girls during war; more women to be appointed to UN peacekeeping operations and field missions; and more women in…
David
On the face of it, and for most of the time, men and women have been able to work well together in the TP campaign, but I am far from sure why this is so. I recall the early discussions about a related issue —the extent to which we should have a rigorous approach to decision-making-by-consensus. We have opted for a more easy-going style on that one, on the ground of pragmatism, but we get quite uneasy about it from time to time in spite of regular checking out with our…
The most common representation of peace emblems in Britain occurs on people's clothing and attire in the form of badges, ear-rings and the like, or in the guise of “bumper stickers” and other emblems attached to cars and bicycles - personal possessions emblazoned with such symbols as rainbows, doves, olive leaves, broken rifles and “smiling suns”.
These are mobile peace symbols, worn for display and as items of fashion, but they can also signify something about the general…
Utopia - no place, a never-never land beyond the realm of everyday experience, a dream world that is unattainable, a fantasy vision to which people might like to fly in their dreams and escape the chains of reality.
Utopian was the pejorative term also used by Marxs associate Freidrich Engels to dismiss the work of early nineteenth century socialists like Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, who were naïve enough to believe that you could create a world based on the values of…
A Greenpeace-commissioned satellite map of the world released on 13 April has shown that only 10% of the world is covered by intact forest, at the same time the most valuable of these forests are being threatened by logging and farm expansion.
In Papua New Guinea (PNG), activist groups are working with local organisations to stop the destruction of the largest remaining forest in the Asia Pacific region. On 11 April activists from the Rainbow Warrior demonstrated in front of a ship…
