Book review. Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know by Erica Chenowethby Ian SinclairPeace NewsFebruary-March 2022 Nonviolent resistance campaigns have been twice as successful as violent campaigns in achieving their objectives. That was the conclusion of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan’s Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, making it a seminal book […]
Rosa Parks: The Real Story
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
25 February 2020
In December an exhibition about the life of Rosa Parks opened at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The same month a new statue honouring the civil rights icon was unveiled in Alabama’s state capital, Montgomery.
Howard Thurman travelled to India and returned to the U.S. intent on bringing nonviolence to the struggles of African Americans, writes Walter E. Fluker. Howard Thurman’s image on Howard University chapel’s stained glass window. (Fourandsixty from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA) By…Read more →
The strategic and tactical genius of the US Civil Rights Movement
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
25 April 2018
The recent death of American nonviolence guru Gene Sharp and the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King provide a good opportunity to reflect on the key role nonviolent action has played in winning progressive change.
Why are we so ignorant about the rich history of nonviolent struggle?
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
26 April 2018
Writing about the recent death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch made an extraordinary claim about the ending of Apartheid in South Africa in 1994.
The legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was assassinated 50 years ago today, has been cynically exploited by corporate and political leaders who care more for the needs of their rich donors than black constituents, comments Margaret Kimberley. By…Read more →
Elevating the gun crisis to the moral level of the 1960s civil rights struggle, Rep. John Lewis led a House floor sit-in to demand a vote on a bill to restrict access to deadly weapons, write Bill Moyers and Michael Winship. By Bill…Read more →
Much has been made in the days since the death of Muhammad Ali about the ‘whitewashing’ of his life and legacy. There’s no real question that Ali was, at least at one time, a radical; and that aspect of his story has been largely glossed over in much of the coverage. This has been motivated […]
While no one is likely to dispute Muhammad Ali’s claim to the title of Greatest Sports Star of All-Time, it was his potency and relevance as an inimitable cultural and social icon that many more people beyond the realm of sport will always remember him for. There has been no one else in the world […]
This is an edited version of an older article, exploring the life and legacy of Malcolm X, including in relation to Martin Luther King and the two Kennedy assassinations. It is also about the 1960s as a cultural era, about his adoption of Sunni Islam and later Pan-Africanism, and about the time he almost brought […]
