I remember when I first discovered internet porn – I was 17 years old. Fascinated by this world of unleashed sexual expression and fantasy, I couldn’t get enough of it. I thought I'd outgrow my porn habit over time. But I never did.

Civil disobedience is vital, but it is insufficient to transform society. A new science of cooperation illuminates the path ahead.

Living on an isolated island with my dog, it was a departure to find myself with 4,000 other LGBTQ people at the Creating Change conference. From Laverne Cox's opening speech to my yoga workshop, I learned that love is central to queer liberation.

Hardly a year goes by without at least one new Hollywood film about the Nazis and World War II. But these offerings rarely feature the many Germans who resisted Hitler using nonviolence.

From singing in New York courtrooms to gluing door locks in Berlin: the struggle to protect housing rights is about more than bricks and mortar. 

“There are places on this earth where color has absconded.” One man’s protest against force-feeding at the Guantanamo detention camp.

To effect social transformation, fighting is essential, but if we take fighting too far then we risk destroying what we are trying to create.

Illegal firearms, mostly smuggled in from the USA, are fuelling violence in Mexico. In response, thousands of guns have been transformed into gardening tools, musical instruments and public art.

For many anarchists, real liberation manifests itself through flashpoint: sudden, unannounced acts of violence. These people see themselves at war with the world, and are often derisive towards broader organizing. But successful resistance movements - whether violent or nonviolent - need community or solidarity to succeed. 

Today Transformation published the first article in our debate on flashpoint action. Yalla Matame argued that flashpoints are a way of creating and radicalizing larger social movements. On 6th December we will publish Bellamy's response. Here is a reading list for the interested reader to find out more.

Flashpoints are moments of resistance - often violent - against systems of oppression. Can such actions build social movements or do they destroy solidarity and community? Yalla Matame argues in favor of their potential and Bellamy responds to her arguments here.

Growing up with an abusive father, Ouyporn Khuankaew learned a distorted version of the Buddhist teaching on karma: her mother had done something in a past life to deserve the violence. Now, as a radical feminist lesbian, she teaches activists that Buddhism can be a way to fight oppression

Veganism is often seen as a vain attempt to dismantle market demand for animal products, one block of tofu at a time. This debate overlooks the radically transformative potential of compassion.

In these moments of rupture, people find themselves members of a "we" that did not until then exist, at least not as an entity with agency and identity and potency. New possibilities or the old dream of a just society emerge and shine.

There are no shortcuts to building the kind of power it takes to win meaningful change. As an organizer in a county with an acute housing crisis, simmering racial tension and little unionization, I learned that I had to help the community to take on the fight themselves. The final article in our "Transformative Nonviolence" series with Waging Nonviolence. 

In conventional histories, violence is generally celebrated. National memorials glamorize death, bloodshed and warfare. This hides a global tradition of nonviolent struggle. This is the third article in our "Transformative Nonviolence" series with Waging Nonviolence. 

What is the best kind of defection? During Egypt's recent turmoil there was too much collusion between nonviolent people power and security forces. Instead, civil resistance campaigns should focus on producing shifts within several different elite groupings. This is the second article in our "Transformative Nonviolence" series with Waging Nonviolence.