The killing of George Floyd, an African-American man, by Derek Chauvin, a white policeman in Minneapolis on May 25 2020 has unleashed a worldwide wave of protests against racism and police brutality. Though most of these protests have been nonviolent (even under provocation from aggressive policing and the presence of military forces on the streets), looting, property destruction and attacks on security personnel have also occurred, though exactly who is responsible is unclear. There is evidence of infiltration by far-right agitators as well as coordinated actions by so-called ‘antifa’ and ‘black bloc’ anarchists on the left (“The truth is, nobody really knows,” said Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”). This has revived an old but crucial debate about the use of violence in defense of human rights.
As a section of openDemocracy, Transformation is committed to nonviolent action as the centerpiece of struggle (self-defense notwithstanding), because we believe that violence leads to more violence further down the line. To make lasting progress that cycle must be broken. But nonviolence is a complex and challenging field of strategy, methodology and tactics which are always context-specific, eschewing easy generalizations about ‘what works’ from one time and place to another. To explore these complexities - and often borrowing material from incredible partners like Waging Nonviolence and YES! Magazine - we have published over fifty articles on nonviolent protest since 2013. Here are 30 of the best which provide important guidance both now and in the future.
Perhaps the best place to start is with this piece which has been read over 50,000 times since the protests began last week – a clue to how useful it is in understanding the realities of structural racism and white privilege as the underlying causes of police violence and other forms of race-based oppression (even if you think you are ‘woke’):
