Peace activists pledge resistance against U.S. military intervention in Central America, 1984-1990

In the early 1980s, it was no secret that United States president Ronald Reagan would use any means necessary to end or prevent the influence of Communism and the Soviet Union around the globe.

The two countries had been engaged in a bitter ideological struggle since the end of World War II, and each sought to expand their influence to other, mostly developing nations.

From Central America to Sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East, the U.S. pursued a foreign policy that made frequent use of military aid—open and clandestine—to countries suspected of either showing or being vulnerable to Soviet influence.

While Reagan was one of the era’s most outspoken and influential anti-Communists, his foreign policy by no means represented an exception to Western, particularly U.S., relations towards the regions like Central America.

Like Reagan, multinational corporations operating in Central America  (many based in the U.S.) viewed the spread of Communism as a threat to their interests; low levels of regulation and taxes on business in developing nations friendly to the United States made for a safe business environment for such corporations. 

Furthermore, U.S. influence, either monetary or physical, had been operating for over a century in the region, well predating the Cold War. In the 1980s, one country—Nicaragua—was feared by peace activists to become the site of the next Cold War battlefield: it began to look more and more like the U.S. would pursue a full-scale invasion to overthrow the country’s leftist Sandinista government, or Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

Another concern to peace activists was increasing aid to Contra fighters, an umbrella term for any number of organizations carrying out guerrilla warfare against the FSLN operating in and around Nicaragua; they were notorious for human rights violations and attacks on civilians.

In 1980 and ’81, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attempted to unite the disparate groups so that it could more effectively administer aid. In January of 1982, the Reagan administration secretly granted the CIA $19 million in military aid to recruit and train Contras.

This would be one of the first in a series of supports the administration would give to the Contras in exchange for their opposition to the FSLN. Aside from flagrant human rights abuses, Contra activity and U.S. support for it was seen by many activists as a sign of things to come; if they could not curb the FSLN to U.S. and industry’s liking, a U.S. invasion would be all the more likely.

At the 1983 annual meeting of the New Abolitionist Covenant, an amalgamation of Christian peace activists, the group decided to take action against ever-escalating U.S. military involvement in Latin America, a policy which had dramatically increased since the Reagan administration took office in 1981. 7,000 U.S. troops had invaded the island of Grenada in order to overthrow Maurice Bishop’s leftist government.

The Covenant’s 53 members feared that this “intervention,” along with the administration’s increasingly hawkish rhetoric, would result in a massive U.S. offensive.

In response, Covenant members Jim Wallis and Jim Rice drafted “A Promise of Resistance,” in which they vowed as Christians to physically obstruct any U.S. invasion of the country.

The letter, published in Sojourners magazine (of which Wallis was an editor), also called upon Christians throughout the country, in case of invasion, to nonviolently occupy congressional offices until the Congress moved to end the invasion.

The magazine sent a copy of the letter to all Congress-people, the Departments of State and Defense, the CIA, and to President Reagan, and each Covenant member presented it personally to the peace group they worked with at home.

After receiving support and input from a number of peace organizations, the Covenant published in Sojourner’s August issue an edited document called the “Pledge of Resistance,” which placed less emphasis on traveling to Nicaragua to nonviolently prevent a U.S. invasion.

It also gave readers contact information for seven regional Witness for Peace chapters that volunteered to serve as regional coordinators for the circulation and implementation of the Pledge.

After reading the letter, Berkeley graduate student Ken Butigan, with the support of David Hartsough of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) began again reworking the document to reach a larger, perhaps less faith based community, as well as to refocus efforts on action in the United States.

He then gathered the support of groups working on a wide variety of issues, including feminists and anti-nuclear activists, to create a coalition committed to the ideals outlined in the document and to taking action in support of them.

In October of 1984, Butigan and allies rallied for the first public signing of the document in front of the San Francisco Federal Building. The event included 700 people signing the Pledge, with many giving testimonies of their reasoning to the crowd.

A number of participants cited religious reasons. Later that month, Sojourners hosted a meeting for peace and justice groups to discuss the Pledge’s implementation.

Citing the San Francisco action, Butigan, speaking on behalf of the AFSC and its allies, called for a highly public, organized and decentralized model of organization, as well as an option for Pledge signers to wage legal protest in addition to civil disobedience.

Coming out of this meeting, the number of regional coordinating offices was expanded from 7 to 10, and Butigan published Basta! No Mandate for War, an instructional pamphlet for local Pledge chapters incorporating new ideological and logistical details for the campaign.

Local activists began to organize more Pledge groups across the country. They sponsored nonviolent direct action trainings, collected signatures, and organized affinity groups.

By the end of 1984, less than 3 months after the San Francisco action, organizers nationwide had collected 42,352 signatures, with half of signers pledging civil disobedience.

College campuses as well as such organizations as the National Lawyers Guild and the Jewish Peace Fellowship continued to publicly endorse the document, and Sojourners sent copies of the collected signatures to the State Department.

The San Francisco Pledge chapter began to enact “peace maneuvers” outside of the city’s Federal Building, a guerrilla theater performance pre-enacting the response of Pledge signers to a possible U.S. invasion in Nicaragua.

Pressure mounted on the U.S. government. The U.S. Congress refused President Reagan’s request for $14 million in aid to right wing Contra fighters, partly because they were known to perform illegal executions (often involving civilians). 

The Reagan administration then imposed an economic embargo on the Nicaragua. In retaliation, Pledge groups across the country planned and executed acts of civil disobedience across 80 cities in 16 states, with over 10,000 demonstrators and 2,000 arrestees.

In June of 1985, the Congress approved $27 million in aid to Contra fighters. In response, the national Pledge leadership expanded its focus from direct U.S. intervention to aid to Contra warfare and carried out massive demonstrations in 42 states, with 1,200 arrested for acts of civil disobedience.

By September, 80,000 people had signed the Pledge and agreed to resist U.S. funding of extra-judicial killings in all of Central America. While Pledge leadership had a clearly defined focus on Nicaragua, the Pledge itself provided something of an umbrella for civil disobedience actions by peace groups and individuals concerned with the larger Central American region.

Many took up action around El Salvador and Guatemala, two more countries negatively impacted by U.S. aid. For instance, the allied group Witness for Peace acted mostly around Nicaragua, but other allies such as CISPES focused almost exclusively on issues in El Salvador even as Pledge leaders redefined goals in relation to Nicaragua.

The wide reach of the Pledge manifested itself not only in issues, but also in tactics, with a number of groups carrying out autonomous actions separate from national leadership. Sources on the Pledge are often unclear as to which actions were which, though all were undertaken in solidarity with and fulfillment of the original Pledge.

All furthered the larger goal of a peaceful Central America, and served to fit Nicaragua—the Pledge leaders’ focus—within that narrative. Throughout 1986 regional chapters led both a massive expansion in Pledge involvement and an escalation of tactics. Activists occupied congressional offices, blocked gates to facilities training Contra fighters and blocked highways and airplane runways, through marches and sit-ins.

Pledge signers showed up en mass to candidates’ campaign appearances in order to bring Contra aid to the attention of potential voters. Around Christmastime, activists also flooded shopping malls to drop banners and sing politicized holiday carols.

In February 1987, U.S. National Guard troops were deployed to Honduras, just north of Nicaragua. Pledge activists staged vigils outside of Congressional offices and mass-mailed legislators’ mailboxes with letters of protest.

An “April Mobilization” brought together activists fighting both U.S. support for Contra fighters and apartheid South Africa; 567 were arrested at the CIA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Next came a “Summer of Resistance” where protesters blockaded roads and railways to military bases. The Reagan administration, now restricted by Congress from fully supporting the Contras fighting the Nicaraguan government, found a way to evade Congressional decision – to send aid to the Contras by way of Iran. 

When Congress found out about this move – probably illegal and unconstitutional – Congress convened lengthy hearings about the matter. A group of peace-minded U.S. Armed Forces veterans held a three-month vigil outside the Congressional hearings.

In August, the same group of military veterans embarked on a forty-day hunger strike where they blockaded train tracks near Concord, California. During the blockade, one veteran, Brian Wilson, was amputated by an oncoming train. 

Wilson’s injury increased participation in the blockade campaign, drawing the support of Pentagon whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg and folk singer Joan Baez among other celebrities.

On a rotating basis, an energized group of roughly 1,000 protesters in a human blockade succeeded in blocking arms shipments to the Concord base for over two years.

Because the campaigners across the U.S. stepped up their activity in 1987, 1,200 were arrested in acts of civil disobedience. In February and March of 1988, activists involved in the Pledge’s “Days of Decision” helped to successfully block the passage of two White House proposals for aid to Contra-fighters.

The Reagan administration then sent an additional 3200 troops to Honduras. In the following months, because the campaigners saw increasing U.S. military presence in Honduras as a prelude to a Nicaraguan intervention, 900 activists were arrested in 150 cities throughout the country with 30 military bases targeted with nonviolent direct action for their support of ongoing armed conflicts in Central America.

That October 1988, 500 demonstrators took on the Pentagon itself, blocking entrances, occupying the building’s heliport and planting 500 crosses on the lawn to represent those killed by U.S. support for and instigation of the conflicts.

The U.S. increased its funding to the military of the right wing government of El Salvador; in response, 1,452 people committed civil disobedience and were arrested in November and December.

President Reagan’s eight-year presidency ended in 1988. Reagan had not succeeded in overthrowing the Nicaraguan government by means of the Contra military action, nor had he launched a direct U.S. invasion. 

In 1989 the number of active Pledge chapters dwindled.  The movement continued, however, because U.S. military support for right-wing governments in other countries in Central America remained active under Reagan’s successor.

Expecting this would be the case, Pledge chapters organized a wave of actions around the January 1989 inauguration of Reagan’s successor and former vice president, George H.W. Bush.

The month of May saw banner drops at national monuments in Washington D.C. and cultural attractions in other large cities. Finally, in March of 1990, demonstrators commemorated the tenth anniversary of Oscar Romero’s assassination by U.S.-backed forces with a 15,000 person-strong march on the capital in which 580 protestors were arrested.

While U.S. aid continued to right wing military forces in Central America, the Pledge of Resistance was one of many campaigns in the U.S. Central American peace movement that succeeded in making such support a national issue, and an invasion of Nicaragua, or the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government by Contra forces, a political impossibility for the Reagan and Bush administrations.

From the Global Non-Violent Action Database.

• radio stations played rap song conveying the demands of the strike

In early September 2006, a group of Colombian women, the partners of local gangsters, declared a sex strike.  Their demand was that gang members turn in their weapons to the municipal government and agree to begin a vocational training program. 

The strike began during a meeting in which twenty-five women from different neighborhoods came together to oppose the violence of their partners or spouses. 

Said Julio Cesar Gomez, the security official in the city of Pereira’s local government, “this is about changing the cultural parameters: Some women thought that men wearing fatigues and holding guns looked more attractive, and most men are members of gangs not because of financial necessity but because killing is associated with power and sexual seduction.” 

The striking women, partners of pandilleros and pistoleros (gangsters and gunmen) worked in collaboration with Gomez and the municipal government. 

Pereira was considered one of Colombia’s most dangerous cities; in 2005, there were 488 homicides in the city, along with a per capita rate of 97 murders per 100,000 residents, twice the national average. 

Pereira is a small city, with only around 300,000 residents. “We want them to know that violence is not sexy,” said Jennifer Bayer, 18, the girlfriend of a gang member.

She and at least two-dozen other women (some reports say up to 100 women participated) promised to continue the sex strike until their demands were met. 

They benefitted from much public support – one month earlier, on 18 August, 140,000 people had voted in favor of disarming the civilians – which also extended to air time on the radio.

On September 11, the women released a rap song that was widely played on radio stations all over the city, with the chorus, “Como mujer, mucho valemos / que no nos deslumbre, un hombre violento / porque con ellos, mucho perdemos. / Yo elijo cómo, dónde, cuándo me entrego. / Todas unidas lo lograremos / contra los violentos, las piernas cerremos. / Paro sexual, / paro sexual”

(“as women, we have much worth / a violent man will not dazzle us / because with them, we all lose. / I will chose how, where, when I surrender. / All together, we will win / against the violent ones, with our legs crossed. / Stop sex work, / stop sex work!”)

While none of the news articles mention an end date for the strike, the results were very clear.  The Guardian reports, by “2010 the city’s murder rate saw the steepest decline in Colombia, down by 26.5%.” 

Columnists attribute this rapid decline to the action of these women years earlier.

Nonviolent Tactic #9 Leaflets, pamphlets, and books

This can also include webpages and internet media

Nisqually and Puyallup Native Americans win fishing rights through “fish-ins”, 1964-1970

Native Americans have long had to fight with the American government for recognition of their rights to land and to resources. Fishing rights were, however, one of the few rights Native Americans of Washington State thought they had secured.

In 1853, Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest were stripped of most of their land and resources and forced onto reservations. Because the Washington State Governor did not want to have to supply food for the Native American tribes, he agreed to include a clause in the land agreement treaties that guaranteed fishing rights to Native Americans on fish runs throughout the State.

There was little dispute over this right over the next hundred years. However, in the 1940s and 50s, fish supplies began to dwindle due to commercial over-fishing.

Despite their guaranteed fishing rights, Native American fishers were restricted to a repeatedly shrinking area of fish runs. Most court cases of that era sided with the government, resulting in the denial of Native American rights.

Those who ignored the new laws were at risk of arrest and confiscation of their fishing materials. As the situation worsened and the livelihood of many Native Americans were put at risk, opposition to the new fishing laws began to form.

Tribe members began organizing themselves to protest the denial of their rights and to re-secure their lawful ability to fish throughout Washington State.

Throughout the early 1960s, Native Americans organized a few unsuccessful protests and marches against the new fishing laws. Many used the courts to fight for their case, but judges almost never ruled in their favor.

On January 24, 1964, one of these many cases resulted in a ruling that temporarily banned Nisqually Indians from engaging in any off-reservations fishing, even on normally unrestricted areas.

This harsh ruling spurred Nisqually Indians to action. Members of the Nisqually and Puyallup tribes formed the Survival of the American Indian Association (SAIA).

The Association formed a partnership with the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC); together, they worked to publicize their cause and win back their rights through civil disobedience.

The campaign’s main form of protest was heavily influenced by the civil rights movement that was occurring in other parts of the United States. Nisqually and Puyallup protesters staged ‘fish-ins’—illegal fishing at Frank’s landing, a settlement in Puget Sound where fishing was restricted.

The group, which was seen as radical, was disavowed by leaders of both the Nisqually and Puyallup tribes. Through the NIYC’s funds, the campaign was able to use the mass media to widely publicize their cause.

February 27, 1964 marked the campaign’s first fish-in. The media, which described the new tactic as a rise of a ‘more sophisticated’ type of Native American protest, began to show some empathy for their cause.

Also, Jack Tanner, a well-known attorney for the NAACP, agreed to defend protesters who were arrested during the campaign. His involvement with the campaign legitimized it by linking it to the civil rights movement.

On March 2, the campaign got its first big publicity boost when actor Marlon Brando and Episcopal Minister John Yaryan were arrested at a fish-in. To maximize exposure of the arrests, campaign leaders woke reporters at 2:00AM to ensure that they would not miss the arrests take place.

Campaign leaders were well aware that the key to their success would be in gaining as much publicity as possible so as to sway public opinion. Gaining the support of a famous actor like Marlon Brando would ensure that media sources would cover the event, and that the general public would take notice.

The next day, 1000 Native Americans, accompanied by Brando, marched to the capital building in Olympia, Washington. The Governor agreed to meet with Brando and several leaders of the campaign, but no settlement was reached.

Over the course of the year, the campaign continued to stage fish-ins and to maintain a high level of publicity. In October of 1965, several tense fish-ins resulted in violent conflicts between police officers and protesters.

Both sides engaged in violence and both sides accused the other of brutality. Despite the violence, support for the campaign continued to grow. In November, the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Olympia voiced his support for the campaign and made a donation to SAIA.

Other churches throughout Washington also made donations and pledges of support. The ACLU agreed to defend protesters charged during the fish-ins, and the American Friends Service Committee also voiced their support.

Dick Gregory, an African-American comedian, traveled to Frank’s Landing to participate in the protests. His arrest at the fish-ins raised publicity once more.

During 1966 and 1967, the campaign continued to stage fish-ins, but protests slowed and publicity dwindled. In September of 1968, leaders of the campaign decided it was time for a big push that would bring the protests back to the public’s attention.

Up until that point, fish-ins had mostly lasted for a single day. Leaders decided to stage a continual five-day fish-in, starting on September 4, 1968. The fish-in group included many non-Natives, such as members of the Washington Peace and Freedom Party, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Socialist Workers’ Party.

Over the next few days, hundreds turned out to witness the arrests of several of the protesters. The fish-in grew in length from five days to several months.

The trials and arrests of protesters created massive publicity, and public opinion seemed finally to be turning. Publicity of the fish-ins remained high as tensions between police and protesters rose and clashes escalated.

The leaders of the Nisqually and Puyallup tribes reversed their position and began supporting the campaign. They set up an armed ‘police force’ around the fish-ins as defense against police presence.

A police raid of the fish-ins in September of 1970 resulted in the most violent clash between protesters and police to date. However, in a huge success for campaigners, all Native Americans who were arrested for interfering with the police were acquitted.

Even more importantly, Attorney Stanley Pitkin, who had witnessed the violent police raid, later filed the court case U.S. v. Washington. This landmark case, which was eventually resolved in 1974, acknowledged the Native Americans’ equal share of the fisheries.

The ruling granted Federal support for the Native Americans in maintaining their fishing rights, and guaranteed Native Americans the right to regulate their own fisheries.

Although the campaign’s success did not follow immediately from the protests, the fish-ins raised public awareness of the issue and caused the eventual court case that ruled in their favor.

The campaigners’ incredible endurance and media savvy brought momentum and attention to the protests and enabled Nisqually and Puyallup tribe members to protect rights guaranteed to them over a century before.

From Global Non-Violent Action Database