Mainstreaming Nonviolence Toolbox: Building a World Where Everyone Matters

 This blog by Ken Butigan highlights ideas, books, videos, websites, projects, campaigns, organizations and individuals offering new directions for mainstreaming the power of nonviolent change.  Click here for more about mainstreaming nonviolence.

Check Out these Websites!

While the challenges we face today are enormous – endless war, widespread poverty and unemployment, threats to human rights and civil liberties, and ecological devastation – an emerging global movement is tapping the power of transformative nonviolence for the long-term task of making change locally, nationally, and around the world.

Awareness, education, community building, and action for a culture of transformative nonviolenceEach of us can join these “brigades of ambulance drivers” responding to the emergency at home and abroad, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once put it.  Even more importantly, we can each play our role in small and large ways to design and construct a culture where nonviolent options are the default  But where are the resources to build the capacity this planetary initiative?

Happily, they are emerging everywhere, and this blog is devoted to highlighting some of them.  Here, for example, are three websites that are powerful resources for awareness and action for nonviolent change

Waging Nonviolence

Many years ago I hoped that a magazine would be published that would document the plethora of nonviolent actions and campaigns happening all around us but, without the media spotlight, remain largely hidden.  Now WagingNonviolence.org has answered this long-time hope – and then some.  This site offers a daily roundup of nonviolent action taking place around the planet.  It also highlights specific campaigns in depth, and features substantive reflections on the theory and practice of nonviolence. 

God Bless the Whole World

For those who are not religious, don’t let the name of this site deter you for checking it out.  It is designed to promote spiritual activism, but this is understood in a broad and inclusive sense. As the God Bless the Whole World site says, it is “an online educational resource that provides tools for personal and social transformation. The site features hundreds of videos, audio files, articles and courses on social justice, spirituality, activism, counter oppression, environmentalism and self care.”  There are many powerful resources here, and more every day. 

Change

The right-hand corner of the Change.org homepage announces the number of actions for change taken during the past week.  Today when I visited, the number was 135,182 actions!  Organized around 18 causes – from “Animals” to “Race in America” — This site is a comprehensive clearinghouse for information and action items, including signing petitions and writing letters.  It is very impressive.  If you are looking to get involved in one of the major challenges facing the planet, Change.org is a good place to start.

I invite you to bookmark these great resources!

In future blog entries I will highlight other sites that are offering tools for the key dimensions of building a culture of nonviolence: awareness, education, community building, and action. 

See the Mainsteaming Nonviolence Toolbox.

See all of Ken Butigan’s blogs.

Photo: Rev. Dorsey Blake addressing a peace rally at the San Francisco (California) Federal Building.