This article explains why we can make significant progress on any of the issues we care about by organizing nonviolent grassroots movements: Nonviolent Grassroots Organizing Creates Real Progress
On January 22, 2022, the Olympia Coalition to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (OCANW) joined with other peace groups all over the world and celebrated the first anniversary since the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) went into effect. Now 59 nations have ratified the TPNW. See information after the next paragraph’s report on a victory at the local government level. City of Olympia’s proclamation: Bob Delastrada, Bob Zeigler, and other members of OCANW reached out to Olympia City Council member Clark Gilman, and during the Council’s regular meeting on Tuesday January 18, they adopted a proclamation supporting the […]
Mohandas Gandhi (the “Mahatma”) was a very savvy and strategic organizers of nonviolent grassroots movements. He knew first-hand what it was like to organize against a powerful Establishment, such as the racist, oppressive, exploitative British Empire. See this brief quotation, which all of us underdogs should find encouraging as we organize uphill against powerful political, social and economic oppressors: Gandhi quotation encourages underdogs fighting the Establishment
The Olympia Coalition is joining the WORLDWIDE CELEBRATION of the first anniversary after the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) went into effect on January 22, 2021. I sent our Saturday celebrations to ICAN, and they posted the information to the ICAN events calendar: https://www.icanw.org/106247/bannering_and_sign-holding_at_olympia_wa_usa Also, I wrote an EASY-TO-UNDERSTAND ONE-PAGE FLYER/Fact Sheet that succinctly explains the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, why it’s important, and how people can get more information. I promote our Olympia group, our statewide WANW coalition, and ICAN. It needed a 14-inch page, so – if you want to print it […]
Some people think nonviolence is nice and ethical, but not strong enough to win results in the real world. Actually, “people-power” movements that are strictly nonviolent have been proven to be much more effective than movements that include some violence. Nonviolence is a powerful methodology, especially when the organizers develop savvy nonviolent strategies to activate their principles. See this article about bridging the gap between strategic and principled nonviolence Stellan Vinthagen’s 2015 book “A Theory of Nonviolent Action” develops a new theoretical framework for what nonviolence is. https://wagingnonviolence.org/rs/2019/05/stellan-vinathagen-book-theory-nonviolent-action-review/
Our society and our whole world are in several serious crises all at once. Powerful forces keep making things worse. They want to intimidate us — to make us sit down and shut up so they can continue to oppress us. But better values do exist, and nonviolence is actually more powerful than The Establishment. (My free online workshop series “Nonviolent Grassroots Organizing” helps us understand and use nonviolence in clever, strategic ways.) Ever since the Civil Rights Movement’s era, I have appreciated Martin Luther King’s strong, bold, radical message and his methodology. I have read his books and studied […]
The people reading this blog know a lot about the many problems — the many VERY SERIOUS problems — that endanger our world, our nation, and ourselves. It would be easy to sink into cynicism and despair. Powerful forces want us to do that and to give up. But even while Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., recognized the horrible problems, he remained hopeful that we can indeed solve the problems. We also need to stay hopeful — and stay strategically focused and active — until we win. I appreciate King’s “Testament of Hope.” It still sounds as relevant today […]
Trump pushed an “America First” dogma, but the slogan pre-dated him by nearly a century. Isolationists tried to pretend that the U.S. could exist by itself without regard to the well-being of the rest of the world. They believed we could get away with being selfish. Also, that was the English language translation of Hitler’s slogan, “Deutschland uber alles,” which meant Germany over everybody else. Selfishness and contempt for other people are morally wrong for reasons any decent person should immediately understand. The “America First” dogma leads directly to cruelty toward other nations. The “America First” dogma also leads […]
This information came from a great non-profit organization, the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (www.orepa.org), which organizes against nuclear weapons. It is located near the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, plant where the U.S. government makes plutonium pits, etc., for our nuclear weapons. More than fifty years after his death, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered as a civil rights icon, recalled for his stirring words at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 when he declared “I have a dream!” Beyond that, for lots of people, things get blurry. When an MLK parade is led by the local high […]
The January 2022 episode of “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” provides a fresh perspective — and proposes a fresh solution — for some environmental problems that are serious but are not being solved by conventional methods. Glen Anderson interviewed two experts — Kai Huschke and Elliott Moffett — who have savvy insights and practical experience working to protect environments and establish legal rights for nature. Very often, when people want to protect the environment by filing appeals in governmental hearings or in courts, the environmentalists’ cases are dismissed because – even though the environment is being hurt – those individuals themselves are […]
Smarter ways to communicate — instead of “the seven deadly sins of politi-speak”: https://www.nationofchange.org/2021/06/30/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-politi-speak/ Users’ Guide: Climate Messaging 1. Start with people, stay with people. Say why it matters (to you and your audience). Connect with values—family, community, working together for good. 2. Use facts wisely. Talk facts not science. You lose people with jargon and too many numbers. A memorable fact from a trusted source is far more powerful. 3. Make it concrete. Keep language vivid (wind and solar, not “alternative energy”). Start with personal (what we see at home), scale up to global. 4. Focus on […]
Olympia’s weekly peace vigils occur all year around, regardless of holidays and regardless of weather! We warmly (!) invite you to join us FRI DEC 24 and FRI DEC 31 (and every Friday) from 4:30 to 6:00 (or as much of that time as you can spare) at the SW corner of 4th & Water downtown (across the street south from the Kissing Statue). (This is for 2021, and our vigils will continue every week in the future too.) I’ll bring a good, varied selections of signs, or you may bring your own. We support peace, human rights, nonviolence, […]
My notes here summarize some main points of the article I’ve linked below – and add some of my own thoughts: The article I’ve linked below says that – although 70% of the public is worried about the climate – this has not translated into real organizing. Instead of playing politics (nice words and political wheeling-dealing, but falling short of making the bold changes that are necessary, the article says we need to deepen the public’s concern with a profound “change of heart.” Instead of “transactional” politics, we need “transformative” politics. Without a profound change of heart we’ll be […]
This was written by Doug Milholland, a savvy and compassionate peace organizer in Port Townsend, Washington: Little Blue Top
This powerful speech really nails it: WATCH: “It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure.” – Greta Thunberg
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