Online Readings for SOC 410/510: Nonviolent Social Change


The links below are organized by themes and, mostly, by historical sequence. They provide access to a range of historical reflections and original thoughts and movements of nonviolence. Please read them in descending order. By no means are these readings meant to serve as an exhaustive history of nonviolence. As you  progress through the readings, you will find, toward the end of our course, links to groups active in nonviolence today. Enjoy.

Follow this to explore any doubts about the horrors of this war

Beyond Vietnam - 4 April 1967 - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Address delivered to the clergy and laymen concerned about Vietnam, at the Riverside Church.


Overview by Elise Boulding, chapter 4 from Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History.




WEEK 2 READINGS:


Christian Pacifism

Quakers and Christian Pacifism - John Woolman



Summary of Abolitionism


Letter to Garrison from Harriet Beecher Stowe
1853


Brief Bio of Frederick Douglass
1818 - 1895





Feminism and Peace

by Rosemary Reuther

Also See Chapter 2, by Pam McAllister, in Nonviolent Social Movements



Progressives

Henry Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience."
Minnie Low, A biography of a grassroots social worker.
Jane Addams, a brief bio. 

The Moral Equivalent of War  by William James



Labor and Nonviolence

Protests of A. J. Muste

Sitdown Strikes

Cesar Chavez



WEEK 3-5 READINGS:


Peace Movement

Conscientous Objectors
Vietnam Vets Against the War

Veterans for Peace
Helen Caldicott



Nonviolent Communication

Sun Magazine Interview with Marshall Rosenberg,  ("Beyond Good and Evil: Marshall Rosenberg on Creating a Nonviolent World.")

WEEK 6 READINGS: Gandhi's teachings.

Read the following Select Chapters from the online compilation of Gandhi's "Philosophy: All Men are Brothers."
Chapters 5-14


For additional optional online readings on Gandhi's philosophy, see "The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi."




WEEK 7 READINGS: Civil Rights Movement and the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Chapters 1-16 of, Clayborne Carson, ed. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Warner Books, 1998). 


Selection from Why We Can't Wait.


Beyond Vietnam
speech. April 4, 1967.


"Letter from a Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963.

I've Been to the Mountain Top His last Speech, Church of God in Christ, in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 3, 1968.




Cesar Chavez - a brief biography.



WEEK 8 READINGS: Other Online Readings on Nonviolent Movements

Treesitting and forest defense as nonviolent civil disobedience - visit treesite.org

Crist, John T. Strategic nonviolent conflict [electronic resource] : lessons from the past, ideas for the future Publisher Washington, DC : U.S. Institute of Peace, [2002] 

Richard Falk on Gandhi.


Alternative Communities - Some local Examples that live toward Nonviolence.

Oregon Peace Works
Eugene Peaceworks

Lost Valley


WEEK 9-10: Links on Nonviolence Today