Articles written by Rivera Sun


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  • It's time to ditch the draft, once and for all

    RIVERA SUN, Contributor|Updated Apr 22, 2021

    It’s outdated. It’s dysfunctional. It’s hated by most of the populace. No, we’re not talking about the line at the DMV. We’re talking about the Selective Service and the military draft. For decades, young men have had to register. Now, congress is considering expanding draft registration to women. Here’s a better idea: let’s abolish the Selective Service and end draft registration for everyone. A new bill in congress calls for the repeal of the Selective Service Act. Introduced by a bipartisan group, it eliminates th...

  • The bottom line in affecting change: Go for the money

    RIVERA SUN, Contributor|Updated May 30, 2019

    It’s rare to hear business magazines admit the power of nonviolent action. As the editor of Nonviolence News, a service that collects and shares 30-50-plus stories of nonviolence in action each week, I often see business journals minimizing the effect of activism. Usually, industry tries to conceal the impact nonviolent action has on their bottom line by chalking it up to market pressures — as with the case of Shell’s Arctic drilling rig. Business magazines credited falling fossil fuel prices with the decision to withd...

  • The time is up. The time is now: An essay of the 'Man from the North'

    RIVERA SUN, Contributor|Updated Nov 29, 2018

    (Editor’s note: The “Man from the North” is a fictional character from Rivera Sun’s first series of novels. She has him offering essays beyond her novels.) The time is up. The time is now. Gather the people to do the work: the healing, transformative, deepening work of building community, solutions, understanding, skills, knowledge, and hope. You must be the one to make a change, to step out of the rutted tracks of the looming train wreck that is our culture. You must have the courage to walk into the wilderness of what yo...

  • 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail' poignant, timely

    RIVERA SUN, Contributor|Updated Apr 14, 2016

    On April 16, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was sitting in a stark jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, where he had been arrested for engaging in nonviolent direct action. An ally had smuggled a newspaper into the jail that contained the recently published piece, “A Call To Unity,” written by eight local white clergymen who thought civil rights should be won in the courts, not in the streets. King began drafting his response on the margins of the newspaper — the only paper he was allowed at first. Later, a black trust...

  • Revolution's matchstick: The Trans-Pacific Partnership

    RIVERA SUN, Contributor|Updated Jul 2, 2015

    Rolling down the corporate-political assembly line is a trade deal so treasonous to the people of the world that it should serve as revolution’s matchstick. The treaty is secret, but one fact is well known: the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is being negotiated by transnational corporations without a single U.S. legislator present. Each time I hear this, my eyes blink in disbelief. Without a single legislator present ... without their presence at negotiations, without so much as seeing a draft of the deal, and most treac...