George Lakey

‘In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist: in such a world a non-revolutionary pacifism is a contradiction in terms, a monstrosity.’ The words of US radical pacifist AJ Muste, who lived an astounding life of commitment, in 1928.

This powerful statement about pacifism and nonviolence comes from Muste’s classic September 1928 essay, ‘Pacifism and class war’. A radical Christian pacifist, Muste warned against the assumption that ‘violence is…

George Lakey photo: john Meyer

Nearly 200 years ago, revolutionary English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley argued that poets were the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’. The poet ‘not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered’, Shelley argued, she also ‘beholds the future in the present’, and her thoughts are ‘the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time’.

We began with laughter, as George Lakey expressed his disbelief at the technology we were using. It was his first-ever internet video call: Skype had been installed on his computer only the day before, specifically for our interview.

Two hours later, with many questions still unasked, we were both on the verge of tears, as George haltingly recalled a transformational moment in his political and personal development, a process that stretches unbroken from the 1960s to his continuing…

George Lakey

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They ‘fired’ the top 1% of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something…

1.5 hours

As activists, many of us love tactics! So here's a tool which uses that to help us think about overall strategy more effectively.

Two methods for introduction:
Method 1: Mingling

Hand out letter-sized pieces of blank paper…