Dancing with History: A life for peace & justice
Get George Lakey’s 2023 memoir, books, videos, and  “Citizen George,” the 2024 film bio about his six decades of leadership, strategy, training for nonviolent change.

Altar to an Erupting Sun
Chuck Collins’ intriguing and inspiring 2023 novel addresses challenges facing climate change and justice activists. Also see his 5-min. video interview and review. Buy now.

Visit Professor Stephen Zunes’ site for his many articles, interviews, videos and books, including: Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution; Nonviolent Social Movements; Tinderbox and more. Also see his videos and other alums’ plus best nonviolence resources from the MNS 50th Anniversary.

Download Free: How Agent Provocateurs Harm Our Movements by Steve Chase (2022, 45 pages), from Solidarity 2020 and Beyond and ICNC Press. Or order paperback or e-book copies. George Lakey’s review.

International Center for Nonviolent Conflict releases Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century, by Michael Beer, veteran activist, organizer, and executive director of Nonviolence International[Download it free.] In their 108-page “monograph,” Beer and colleagues  painstakingly identified 360 tactics or “methods” of nonviolent action, expanding on 198 Dr. Gene Sharp described in his three-volume 1973 “The Politics of Nonviolent Action.” Beer’s publication adds scores more tactics and proposes helpful new categories, and is available as a 1-MB free download. See the webinar below.

Former MNS members have published scores of books and hundreds of articles and pamphlets
addressing and fostering Movement for a New Society: Training, vision, strategy more. Here are a few of the more prominent MNS authors, theorists and strategists. Find  many more on our MNS 50th Anniversary page. Click each name to find their writings, bios and photos, or on any cover image above or below:

David H. Albert (books), Michael Beer (NonviolenceInternational.net), Steve Chase (Solidarity 2020 and Beyond), Chuck Collins (IPS-DC.org), George Lakey, Robert A. Irwin ( Building a Peace System ; digital searchable), Barbara Jensen, Jerry Koch-Gonzalez, Pamela Haines, Betsy Leondar-Wright, Peter Woodrow, Stephen Zunes. Prolific MNS writers now deceased include: MNS co-founders Bill Moyer, Lynne Shivers, Lillian and George Willoughby, plus George Fischer, Judith Lashof, Pat Parkman, and Felice Yeskel.

Bill Moyer (1933-2002) developed the widely acclaimed “Movement Action Plan.”
Doing Democracy, and Paul & Mark Engler’s follow-up,
This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the 21st Century.]
See Bill’s others’ best training resources at ActivistTraining.org:

• “A Nonviolent Action Manual”
• “Dedeveloping the U.S. through Nonviolence”
• “Rome II: A Strategy Game on World Hunger”

Moyer was a globally acclaimed organizer, strategist, writer, educator and trainer in nonviolent social movements, active in a dozen countries for forty years. He was SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) staff for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the American Friends Service Committee, Movement For A New Society, Keystone Safe Energy Alliance, and Executive Director of the Social Movement Empowerment Project in San Francisco. (See his wiki page.)

MACRO-ANALYSIS SEMINARS Perhaps no process MNSers developed has been more ambitious or used than “Macro-analysis” study groups, in which participants prepare presentations summarizing select readings, so all may discuss and benefit from a wide range of articles on each week’s topic. Alumni are now updating both the process and readings, but meanwhile, please Download and use free these 4 editions of the Guide: 1973, 1976 Pages 1-42 & Pages 43-106, 1981 and START 2014 (i.e., Study Think Act Respond Together).

URL has been copied successfully!

MORE BOOKS BY OR ABOUT MNS ALUMNI

• George Lakey: Viking Economics, Facilitating Group Learning, How We Win, Toward a Living Revolution: A five-stage framework for creating radical social change (and more)
• Christopher Moore and Peter J. Woodrow: Handbook of Global and Multicultural Negotiation 2009
• Peter Woodrow and Diana Chigas: Adding Up to Peace: the Cumulative Impacts of Peace Programming, CDA Collaborative Learning, 2018
• Pamela Haines: Muscle Building for Peace and Justice: a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century, Alive in this World (poetry), That Clear and Certain Sound,
  Money and Soul; Quaker Faith and Practice and the Economy, Toward a Right Relationship with Finance, and Envision or Perish with George Lakey 2021 (also see her blog and Public Banking Revolutionary Reform)
• Robert Irwin‘s Building a Peace System (digital searchable)
• START Guide: Macro-analysis update by Pamela Haines and Randy Schutt
• Macro-Analysis Seminar Manual, under Creative Commons
• Betsy Leondar-Wright: Missing Class: Strengthening Social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures, Class Matters, The Color of Wealth (with Chuck Collins) and articles
• Chuck Collins: The Wealth Hoarders, The Color of Wealth, Born on Third Base, Wealth and Our Commonwealth, The Moral Measure of the Economy and Class Lives (with Felice Yeskel)
• Barbara Jensen: Reading Classes
• Daniel Hunter: End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide,
  Climate Resistance Handbook and Strategy and Soul
• Shel Horowitz: Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World,
  Blog: Seabrook Occupation influences four decades on,
  Save the Mountain to Saving the World (freebies) and articles
• Steve Wineman: Power-Under: Trauma and Nonviolent Social Change
• No Turning Back: Lesbian and Gay Liberation for the ’80s
  by Gerre Goodman, George Lakey, Judy Lashof and Erika Thorne
• Kathy Baxter, a memoir: In the Shadow of the Hanging Tree
• Sandra Boston’s 2015 memoir: Out of Bounds Adventures in Transformation
• A Biography of Lillian and George Willoughby by Greg Barnes, 2007
• Resource Manual for a Living Revolution by Coover, Deacon, Esser, Moore, 1978

Members also established two activist publishing houses, New Society Publishers and Common Courage Press. Former MNSers founded and/or contribute frequently to other news and activist sites, including: Institute for Policy Studies and WagingNonviolence.org, whose writers have appeared on the BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera and Democracy Now!  Many larger outlets have republished their movement coverage, including: The Guardian, The Nation, In These Times, Salon, Huffington Post, Yes! Magazine and OpenDemocracy.org . Some have been cited by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Vox and Peace News (UK).

Find more key and historic MNS documents in the Swarthmore Library Peace Collection.
For a critique of MNS and why it disbanded, read “Oppose and Propose: Lessons from MNS“

* More historic MNS documents and theory

• MNS Organizational Handbook, January 1986
• The No Magic Method of Meeting Facilitation by Berit Lakey, 1980
• Building Alternative Global Institutions through Transnationalism by Jon Johanning 1984
• MNS Activist Support Network Conference Panels 1989
• Nonviolence Training in Sri Lanka by Joanna Macy & Lynne Shivers, 1980
• New Society Publishers: A History by David Albert

And by George Lakey:

• Revisiting “Manifesto for a Nonviolent Revolution,” 2013
• The Life and Death of MNS: Personal, Political, Spiritual 1976-79
• Leadership for Change, WIN Magazine, 1978 (with Bruce Kokopelli)
• How to Conduct a Street Meeting, 1968 (with David Richards)

• OTHER BEST ACTIVIST AUTHORS & VIDEOS:
  Adrienne Maree Brown, Naomi Klein, Ralph Nader, Thomas Piketty, Robert Reich, Rinku Sen
• Movement for a New Society Authors, Trainers, Strategists
• New Society Publishers
• Island Press
• Politics-Prose.com, DC
• Powell’s Books, Portland, OR
•  TheNation Books
• WagingNonviolence: Best, most timely articles and strategy
•  Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way by Hillary Rettig
• Find more Activist Training Progressive Change Resources Skills Books, links and leads at ACTIVISTTOOLS.ORG

Borrow/Download Great Books, Articles & Videos Free!

• OpenLibrary.org, Archive.org, Archive-it.org, and Wayback Machine
• Open Book Projec & iBiblio.org (Library of E-books)
• Public Libraries, most of which also subscribe to Kanopy.com,
  where cardholders can view thousands of free films and videos
  including 1,000 from The Great Courses — See if yours subscribes.