Nonviolence Works
 
        Throughout the 20^th and now the 21^st century, there have been so many nonviolent revolutions that they can be analyzed statistically. Erica Chenowith has found that when comparing violent and nonviolent campaigns with clearly stated goals, 26% of the violent campaigns achieved their stated goal, but 53% of nonviolent campaigns achieved their stated goal. So while almost half are not succeeding, nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to succeed as violent ones are, and may get better as the skill at strategy increases.
        Erica explains why in this 12-minute video, or see this written online.
 

 
Countries Move in the Right Direction
 
Countries that had used to have nuclear weapons but don’t any more:
Belarus, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Ukraine
 
Countries that had widespread legalized abortion but stopped:
Nicaragua & Poland (and they both had maternal mortality go down!)
 
Countries that have abolished the death penalty since 2000,
in rough order of having done so:
Cote D’Ivoire, Malta, Bosnia-Herzegovina Serbia, Montenegro, Bhutan, Samoa, Senegal, Turkey, Liberia, Mexico, the Philippines, Albania, Rwanda, Uzbekistan, Chile, Argentina, Burundi, Togo, Latvia, and Bolivia


 

Abortion Clinics into Plowshares
 
         Kelsey Hazzard has compiled a set of shut-down abortion clinics that have been put to more honorable use.
 

 
Quotation of the Week
Catherine Whitmire, Practicing Peace, 2007
 
            Bayard Rustin, chief organizer of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s March on Washington, D.C., once spent a weekend in New York City doing political canvassing . . . tall tenements loomed over narrow streets, filtering out most of the sunlight and darkening the debris-littered sidewalks. His canvassing partner for the weekend said that for the first hours or so he had a difficult time following Bayard because he was erratic in his canvassing . . . After a while, his canvassing partner recognized the pattern: Bayard walked only on the sunlit side of the street and lingered for a few moments on each corner where he took pleasure in lifting his face toward the sun. After observing Bayard finding enjoyment in difficult circumstances, his canvassing partner concluded that Bayard had the strength to survive the abuse and jail sentences he endured as a civil rights organizer, in large part because he so deeply cherished the gift of life.