30 Articles on Nonviolent Protest
"Even under aggressive provocation, nonviolence remains the key to success in the struggle against injustice. 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 par... posted on Jun 05 2020, 4,465 reads

7 Ways Protestors Showed Up For Black Lives
Amid the outpouring of outrage over George Floyd's killing, are glimpses of solidarity and hope around the world. YES! Magazine shares more.
... posted on Jun 04 2020, 8,302 reads

Deep Water-- A Conversation with Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee of the Global Oneness Project is a surfer, a filmmaker and an environmentalist inner and outer. His love of water led to his film, Elemental. The destruction of our water systems is a prime example of how separated we've become from whats fundamental to our survival. Rajendra Singh is one of the three people in Vaughan-Lees film. He brought seven rivers back to life in an ari... posted on Jun 03 2020, 2,466 reads

Activism in a Pandemic : Progressive Examples from Australia
Each month the Commons Library provides a small taste of actions and events which challenged the status quo and pointed to better ways forward via their ever growing "From Little Things Big Things Grow: Events That Changed Australia" list. These posts generally focus on events from a particular month, but in response to the Coronavirus pandemic they are sharing protests, campaigns and events from ... posted on Jun 02 2020, 4,897 reads

Zadie Smith on Optimism and Despair
"Caught in the maelstrom of the moment, we forget this cyclical nature of history -- history being merely the rosary of moments the future strings of its pasts. We forget that the present always looks different from the inside than it does from the outside -- something James Baldwin knew when, in considering why Shakespeare endures, he observed: "It is said that his time was easier than ours, but ... posted on Jun 01 2020, 8,851 reads

Eight Verses for Training the Mind
The Prison Mindfulness Institute's mission is to provide prisoners, prison staff and prison volunteers, with the most effective, evidence-based tools for rehabilitation, self-transformation, and personal & professional development. In particular, they provide and promote the use of proven effective mindfulness-based interventions (MBI's). Their dual focus is on transforming individual lives as wel... posted on May 31 2020, 19,578 reads

Wells of Living Water
Poet and writer, Ron Hobbs, has explored life from many angles and has the stories to prove it. He writes, Many years later I was working on a tramp-steamer that had pulled into Haiti. I hiked off on my own to learn the island. It was hot and mid-afternoon and I thirsted. I saw an old woman working her garden. Ma'am. Ma'am! Excuse me. I'm a stranger here and I am thirsty. Could I please have a dri... posted on May 30 2020, 3,251 reads

Freedom from Addiction: The Presence of a Moment
"Millions of recovering addicts the world over can trace their spiritual lineage back to the Mayflower Hotel. Back to the exact moment when the psyche of the Western world slipped a cog, to the sliver of a choice of one man, when inevitable destruction, despair, and eventual death enveloping the world of alcoholics jumped into what Bill Wilson would come to describe as a fourth dimension. Back to ... posted on May 29 2020, 5,762 reads

NBA Mental Coach Shares 7 Ways You Can Thrive Under Pressure
Do you ever wonder how a basketball player can stand at the free throw line with the game in his hands in front of 30 million viewers and casually sink a shot? How about when a surgeon is in the middle of a procedure and the patient starts to bleed profusely, or when a lawyer has to convince a jury that her innocent client isn't guilty of murder? How do they keep their heads?Graham Betchart, the d... posted on May 28 2020, 7,004 reads

Turning Ourselves Towards Stability and Hospitality
"The Benedictine-Camaldolese monk, Bruno Barnhart says it very well: We humans prefer a manageable complexity to an unmanageable simplicity.
A complex instability is our typical default setting. Restless with where and how and who we are, we think we need to be somewhere else, or live some other way, or be someone else." David Mckee shares more.... posted on May 27 2020, 6,286 reads