For decades, it seems, Diane Nash has been asked about women’s role in the civil rights movement: what it was, why it hasn’t been more widely acknowledged, if she can describe her fellow organizers’ contributions. Ms. Nash, now 79, led students in sit-ins and helped coordinate the historic 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery. She has been...

As governments and communities seek the right combination of methods to halt terrorism, one that we too often miss is nonviolent resistance. It’s not that we haven’t seen the power of protest movements that use mass marches, sit-ins, boycotts and other forceful but nonviolent tactics. To the contrary, people worldwide have been moved by...

Landlessness and homelessness are the two most prominent problems among rural populations in India. Close to 100 million (or about 56 percent of rural families) in India do not own agricultural land. A majority of the Indian population relies on land to survive, and thus millions today are living in a permanent state of land insecurity. These...

Most activists and other practitioners of civil resistance realize that governments can use various methods of digital surveillance to find and silence dissenters. The question of how to protect ourselves can seem overwhelming. Wherever you look there are different and often contradictory recommendations. It can all seem too complicated, just...

The United Nations has declared a priority this year to unify and strengthen its work in building peace—and U.N. bodies will meet in the next two months to advance that change. U.N. leaders have acknowledged that a vital element in peacebuilding is nonviolent, grassroots movements that can prevent violent conflict by providing ways for people...

The place doesn’t matter. Nor the food, nor the rain. What matters is that we have made ourselves heard. The revolution doesn’t happen in 5-star hotels with buffets of food and it doesn’t happen in the springtime when everything is beautiful. It happens in the moments of crisis,” said 15-year old Alfredo Turqui about demonstrations in La Paz,...

If we learnt anything in 2017 in the aftermath of Trump’s election shock, it was that the face of resistance to today’s autocrats would be that of a woman. Women were the first to take to the streets the day after Trump was inaugurated in the largest street march in US history and have since been at the forefront of resistance to his toxic...

There was a time when his name was tied to the headlines. Now, you have to burrow through the history books to find it. Just as well. It was always the mission, never the fame that drove Rev. James Lawson. It’s why he was more than content to work behind the scenes with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement. From...

In July this year thousands of Polish citizens took to the streets to protest a judiciary reform they believed would threaten the democratic constitution of their country. During the protests, Solidarnosc leader and national hero Lech Walesa stated at a demonstration in Gdansk that it is now time to defend the democracy that they achieved...

From humble beginnings three decades ago, Ekta Parishad (“unity forum” in Hindi), a pluralistic movement for defending rights of marginalized communities in India, has grown to become today one of the world’s most massive—and exemplary—nonviolent movements. Last fall I met Ramesh Sharma, National Coordinator of Ekta Parishad, and came to...