Making Nonviolence Work
by Starhawk An ecological understanding of violence sees it as a pattern of relationships that underlies all systems of domination and control. Such systems are characterized by: –the concentration of resources and the fruits of labor to benefit the few. –top-down decision making. Bosses who give orders and issue directives that others must obey. Violence underlies these systems. Violence is : –the capacity to inflict physical pain, harm or death. –the capacity to punish by restricting freedom and limiting choices. –the capacity to withhold vital resources or rewards. –the capacity to inflict emotional and psychological damage and to shame and humiliate. Systems of domination, no matter how powerful they seem, are unstable. They are inherently unsustainable, because to...
Strategy Resources & Nonviolence
Strategy WHAT IS PEOPLE POWER? From winning concrete improvements in people’s lives to toppling dictators, people power is a method that works. Every successful social change movement in US history has had a key element of people power and mass direct action; abolition, women’s suffrage, workers, civil rights, anti-Viet Nam war, anti-nuclear, Central America solidarity, global justice, and other recent movements. It was in the heat of struggle by communities of color and poor and working white communities that people-power methods were developed in the US. But people power is more than just a set of civil-disobedience and direct-action tactics. It is a different understanding of power and a wide range of organizing and tactics based on that...