Direct-action organizing pioneer George Lakey offers an important new essay, “Strategizing for a Living Revolution,” where he outlines a coherent framework for understanding the stages in the development of radical movements and the key role of mass nonviolent direct action, using the recent uprisings in Serbia and Argentina as examples.

 "It's clear that the anti-war movement needs a strategy and as usual it is the courage of young people in the military, on the campuses and in the streets who, by example, show us how to assert our people power. A people power strategy can stop the war and occupation if we clearly articulate it and organize and organize relentless innovative campaigns against the pillars the war." by David Solnit, AlterNet. Posted May 9, 2005.

"The anti-war movement needs a strategy of how we are going to stop the war and occupation of Iraq. People power is an assertion of real democracy. Every successful movement in U.S. history, from the workers and civil rights movement to today's farmworker-led Taco Bell boycott, and every dictator toppled in recent history have relied on people power methods."  by David Solnit, AlterNet. Posted February 18, 2005.

by Mike Kress, Published December 14, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

 

America is now enmeshed, much like Israel, in a spiraling cycle of violence. For the sake of Iraq’s people and our nation’s future – and for the benefit of all humanity – we must end the occupation of Iraq. The question is, how?

Gene Sharp, a leading nonviolence educator and author of The Politics of Nonviolent Action, teaches that change is possible when a movement adopts a strategy that undermines a regime’s “pillars of support.” The Bush regime’s pillar of support in Iraq is the military. The peace movement’s adoption of a strategy that reduces first time military enlistments and the number of current service members willing to serve in Iraq could make the occupation unsustainable.

Or, How They Got Rid of a Tyrant in Bolivia by Andrea Arenas Alípaz and Luis Gómez, Special to The Narco News Bulletin , October 18, 2003

 

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA; OCTOBER 17, 2003: It wasn’t a coup. It was the people.

And nobody, not even Viceroy David Greenlee, could stop it.

A New Victory for the Bolivian People
by Luis A. Gómez, Special to The Narco News Bulletin. January 14, 2005

EL ALTO, BOLIVIA, JANUARY 14, 1:00 AM: We turn once again to El Alto, to its power and its grace. And now, we see not only a government beaten, forced to obey its people, but also the exit of a transnational corporation over the issue of water, much like what happened with Bechtel in the city of Cochabamba in 2000. We will witness years of marginalization and discrimination, five months of pressure, three days of strikes, and a victory march, all here, in this indigenous (mostly Aymara) city of nearly 800,000. The inhabitants of this place already overthrew a murderous president in October 2003, and now they begin a long march to win back all that which has always belonged to them. El Alto, on its feet (“never on its knees”), at four thousand meters (13,000 feet) above sea level, is the highest point of social mobilization.