Nonviolence News: Protest Weddings, Mock Funerals, Train Blockades & Rainforest Protection

Photo Credit: Young people from Amazonian communities march during the Pan-Amazon Social Forum in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia on June 12. Photo by Katie Surma/Inside Climate News

Protest Weddings, Mock Funerals, Train Blockades & Rainforest Protection

Editor's Note From Rivera Sun

Let’s celebrate a small victory in a bigger, still-ongoing struggle. Striking South Korean junior doctors walked out by the thousands months ago – and the government suspended their licenses. Now, the authorities are promising to restore the licenses as part of its effort to get the junior doctors back to work, ending the ongoing medical impasse.

Other victories in this week’s Nonviolence News include a Swiss pension raise, Chicago’s unique bicycle giveaway program, how speed cameras are saving lives in Pennsylvania, Minneapolis’ cancellation of $100 million in medical debt, Michigan’s new law that requires homeowners associations to allow solar installations, and how Hawai’i banned ocean-floor mining.

Climate action is heating up along with the summer temperatures. Elders blocked Citibank’s doors in New York, holding cardboard tombstones with real stories of people killed by the climate crisis. Australians stopped trains. Following the Pan-Amazon Social Forum (pictured above), Amazonian rainforest inhabits have released a detailed plan to save their home – and the lungs of the world. A county in Oregon is suing the major fossil fuel companies for causing the 2021 heat dome that killed 69 people. An orchestra played classical music outside the Hague in protest of rising sea levels. Cambodian climate activists were just hit with hard sentences, but remain defiant even as some head to jail.

Peace activists around the world took action on several fronts. A 24-Hr Peace Wave was held continuously to protest war and militarism, and celebrate peace. The ports of Genoa, Italy, were blocked for 10 hrs over weapons shipments to Gaza. More actions for a ceasefire took place in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and in Israel. Hundreds of activists ‘unwelcomed’ NATO at its 75th anniversary party in Washington, DC. And more than 700 scientists called upon the Biden administration to stop a $100 billion ‘boondoggle’ in nuclear weapons expansions.

Find this week's Nonviolence News here>>

A favorite story? There’s a pair of them … and they involve love in the time of Pride Month. In Latvia, same-sex couple lined up to get married under the country’s new civil union law. Meanwhile, Hong Kong couples held non-sanctioned weddings to defy the lack of legal rights for same-sex marriage. Each is a good example of collective nonviolent action either in support of a fair law or in protest of the absence of such laws. Love is powerful … especially love-in-action.

In solidarity,
Rivera Sun