History and Practice of Nonviolent Resistance

Erica Chenoweth

Political scientist Erica Chenoweth unpacks what makes a successful movement against authoritarianism, and how nonviolent resistance can be used to uphold democracy.

Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know

Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, explains that civil resistance is a nonviolent strategy where ordinary people coordinate to demand and protect democracy.

Successful movements typically rely on four key factors:

Mass Participation & Momentum

Broad-based, active involvement (often referred to with the "3.5% rule") helps build pressure and legitimacy.

Loyalty Shifts

Civil resistance works when it causes key supporters of a regime (e.g., military, business elites) to defect or withdraw support.

Resilience Under Repression

Movements must stay organized and peaceful, even when facing crackdowns, using tactics like the "backfire effect" to turn repression against the regime.

Innovation in Tactics

Successful campaigns go beyond protests, using strikes, boycotts, and other forms of noncooperation to sustain pressure.

Chenoweth emphasizes that nonviolence is inclusive and more likely to succeed because it allows widespread participation.

Stacey Abrams’s campaign to fight authoritarianism gains steam: ‘We are a force multiplier’

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate has brought together a wide tranche of civic groups to build a groundwork to defend democracy

"Abrams launched the 10 Steps campaign last year to raise alarms about the threat of authoritarianism in the US, and to provide an organization framework for resisting authoritarian government."

The Commons Social Change Library

Resources on NVDA

a wide range of materials to inform folks about strategic nonviolence

Nonviolent Direct Action

Center for Applied Nonviolence

A toolkit — Methods & Tactics.

Spread Power, Not Panic

"False information about immigration enforcement and border patrol sightings can create unnecessary panic in immigrant communities.

"Before trusting or sharing posts on social media warning about ICE or CBP sightings, ask yourself: Is this information backed up with evidence?"

Nonviolent Action Lab

Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation

"Nonviolent resistance movements defended democratic values and institutions throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. However, the trend seems to have shifted. Over the past decade, authoritarian backsliding has occurred across the globe, and mass movements demanding democracy have been defeated in about 90% of cases since 2010.

"The Nonviolent Action Lab is an innovation hub for research on advancing democracy worldwide through civil resistance. The Lab produces and disseminates up-to-date knowledge on nonviolent action, how it works, global trends in success and failure, trends in political violence and state repression, and analysis of these trends."

American Spring? How nonviolent protest in the US is accelerating

an article from their research

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests this year have dwarfed those in 2017, and they have been extraordinarily peaceful."

De-escalation tactics at protests

Guide on how to diffuse tensions

"In this guide, you will learn how to de-escalate tensions at a protest. Using these de-escalation tactics will help keep your protest non-violent."

Say 'regime,' not 'administration':
Messaging guidance about fascism

"Politics and the English Language" is a 1946 essay by George Orwell that criticised the written English of his time. In it, Orwell wrote about the connection between bad prose and oppressive ideology.

In a nod to Orwell’s work, political messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio recently released a two-page guide titled Fascism and the English Language.

One of our core tasks, the guide argues, is to communicate that we are beyond the point of any type of normalcy. The current political period is a break from anything we’ve experienced in the US in recent history.

For example, instead of using language like government or the administration, which makes the situation more benign and lends legitimacy, we should talk about the regime. Instead of using the word deportation, which refers to specific legal procedure that uses due process, we should talk about abductions, or disappearing people, without trials, to foreign concentration camps.

• See the fascism messaging guide here.
• Watch the conversation with the author of the messaging guide.

FrameLab

FrameLab is a newsletter about politics, language and your brain. It was founded by Dr. George Lakoff and Gil Duran in 2017 (as the FrameLab podcast).

The goal of FrameLab is to help our readers understand how political language works, and to illuminate the key frames in our political discourse – ideological structures that are often hiding in plain sight. They also analyze and deconstruct propaganda tactics which, unfortunately, are accelerating in the digital age.

Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit

Generations of Americans before us have faced and fought oppression, confronting forces determined to harm their lives and endanger their livelihoods while still forging ahead toward the unrealized promise of liberty and justice for all. Now, it is our turn to pick up the baton and show up – marching, striking, voting and protecting each other – for our freedoms, our families, and our futures. We have won fights against exploitation by a wealthy, White few before, and by joining together, we will again.

The Authoritarian Playbook

7 characteristics

The press has a foundational role to play in how democratic systems hold leaders accountable, and doing so requires clarity about the gravity and implications of their actions. Understanding and recognizing the authoritarian playbook as a whole can help journalists not only decide what to cover as threats to democracy, but can also help enrich and contextualize coverage about how the individual components of the playbook fit together. Americans suspect that their democracy is at risk. But by identifying and connecting individual threats to democracy to the global whole, reporting can help inform voters about more than just what is happening — it can tell them what the news means.

Breach Repairers

Bishop William J. Barber II & Moral Mondays

Repairers of the Breach is a national organization that trains moral leaders and builds social justice movements that are rooted in a framework that uplifts our deepest moral and constitutional values.

We are committed to supporting moral movements for social change and training fusion leaders, including activists, artists, and people of faith, who organize and mobilize around a moral agenda that lifts from the bottom so that everybody rises.