By Kate Laverty

Sometimes, I wonder if being nonviolent is being “too much” against the grain. But, nonviolence is all around us. We are not alone. We are not on the fringes. We are not fighting a losing battle. Here’s proof, on a global scale.

1. 30 June — Cape Town, South Africa: standing between migrants and xenophobia. Around 20 organisations gathered at Salt River Circle under the banner “Workers of Africa Unite – Immigrants Welcome”, forming a human chain as a deliberate counter-presence to anti-immigration demonstrations elsewhere in Cape Town. What makes this especially interesting as nonviolence is what surrounded the protest: Muslim, Christian and other faith leaders convened emergency meetings, organised food, hygiene supplies, blankets and pastoral care for foreign nationals, and created a coordinated relief response. Here nonviolence was not merely opposing hostility; it was physically replacing hostility with hospitality. Muslim Views, reporting in July 2026. (Muslim Views)

2. 2 July — Paris, France: marching in silence for Gaza. Several hundred people joined a silent march through Paris, carrying portraits of people killed in Gaza and walking behind a commemorative banner. Some participants dressed in black. Whatever one’s politics around the conflict, the method itself is striking: silence used as witness rather than shouting used as confrontation. Reuters Connect/Anadolu, 2 July 2026. (Reuters Connect)

3. 5 July — Mallorca, Spain: a human chain to defend a landscape. Residents and environmental activists joined hands along Es Trenc beach to protest proposed changes they feared would weaken protection of the Es Trenc–Es Salobrar nature reserve. The symbol was beautifully simple: people using their bodies not to damage or occupy the landscape but to draw a protective human line around something they believed should be preserved. Majorca Daily Bulletin and Reuters imagery, 4–5 July 2026. (Majorca Daily Bulletin)

4. 6 July — Washington DC, United States: an interfaith alternative rather than an enemy. Around 200 Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist participants marched across Capitol Hill as part of Interfaith Action for Palestine. The three-day gathering also included interfaith worship and visits to congressional offices. One particularly important detail is that organisers said that, unlike previous years, their emphasis was less on disrupting the organisation they opposed and more on creating an alternative vision based on equality, care and solidarity. That is almost textbook constructive nonviolence: don’t merely resist the thing you oppose; embody the alternative. Religion News Service, 8 July 2026. (RNS)

5. 11 July — Hong Kong: remembering when public protest becomes impossible. Former Tiananmen vigil organiser Tang Ngok-kwan has continued acts of remembrance despite the disappearance of Hong Kong’s mass candlelight vigils and the imprisonment of colleagues. AP documented him returning quietly to former commemorative sites, bowing at Victoria Park and softly reading victims’ names. He has also repeatedly walked a route containing 64 steps—an allusion to 4 June—and while imprisoned once marked the anniversary by running 35 laps barefoot. This may be one of the most beautiful examples I found: when power removes the demonstration, remembrance itself becomes resistance. Associated Press, published 22 August 2026; AP photographed Tang on 11 July. (AP News)

6. 18–24 July — New Delhi, India: fasting, human chains and keeping your own protest peaceful. Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk undertook a prolonged hunger strike amid youth protests over alleged examination irregularities. But one of the most interesting smaller stories came from the protesters themselves. On 23 July, demonstrators formed a two-layer human chain specifically to maintain discipline and prevent their own crowd moving towards security forces. Other volunteers formed chains to manage crowds while people collected rubbish from the protest site. That is nonviolence not simply as refusing to attack police, but as a movement deliberately regulating itself so anger does not become violence. Wangchuk eventually ended a 26-day fast on 24 July. Reuters, NDTV and Reuters Connect, July 2026. (Reuters)

7. 16 July — London, UK: Muslims and Jews choosing relationship amid division. Muslim and Jewish leaders, interfaith activists and young people gathered in Westminster for the Together We Rebuild summit, jointly convened by the UK Muslim Network and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The point was not pretending that profound disagreements had disappeared; it was rebuilding relationships after years in which the Israel-Gaza conflict had severely strained relations between the communities. This belongs in a discussion of nonviolence because remaining in relationship with someone whose community carries a radically different experience of the same conflict can itself be a disciplined act of peace. Jewish News / Board of Deputies, 16–17 July 2026. (Jewish News)

8. 27 July — Israel/Palestine: refusing a hierarchy of grief. Palestinian peacebuilder Aziz Abu Sarah and Israeli peace activist Maoz Inon gave a remarkable joint interview to Le Monde. Abu Sarah’s brother died after being tortured in an Israeli prison; Inon’s parents were killed by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Yet they work together, tell both narratives and insist on equality between their losses. Inon explained that they deliberately use the same language to describe each other’s bereavement, refusing a relationship in which one person’s pain is treated as more legitimate than the other’s. This is a profound form of nonviolence: not denying injustice, but refusing to make empathy conditional upon identity. Le Monde, 27 July 2026. (Le Monde.fr)

9. 28 July — Florida, United States: ringing a bell against execution. Outside the execution of James Duckett, opponents of the death penalty gathered peacefully. One person rang a bell and called out “not in my name”; a priest also rang a bell, while another protester held a sign calling for justice rather than execution. There is something powerful in the simplicity of it: standing beside an institution of state violence and answering it with a bell, presence and words. USA Today Network via Reuters Connect, 28 July 2026. (Reuters Connect)

10. 29 July — Ecuadorian Amazon: teenage girls using law and persistence against environmental harm. The Guerreras por la Amazonía—the Women Warriors for the Amazon—continued pressing Ecuador to implement a landmark court judgment requiring the removal of harmful oil-industry gas flares near communities. Members include Indigenous girls and young women, some only 15 or 16. Their campaign has relied upon litigation, testimony, organising and international solidarity rather than retaliation, despite Amnesty reporting stigma and attacks against campaigners. Their persistence has already helped produce legal and political change. It is a useful example of nonviolence as stubbornness: continuing to return to institutions and demand that justice already promised be delivered. Amnesty International, 29 July 2026. (Amnesty International)

11. 1 August — Wilmington, Delaware, United States: responding to a police shooting with a peaceful procession. Following the fatal police shooting of Kadir Skinner, protesters walked peacefully from the location where he was killed to Wilmington Police Department headquarters. It is an old nonviolent form but a powerful one: taking grief and anger—the emotions most capable of producing retaliatory violence—and turning them instead into collective movement, speech and public witness. Delaware News Journal/USA Today Network via Reuters Connect, 1 August 2026. (Reuters Connect)

12. 18 August — Dhaka, Bangladesh: standing together against attacks on Indigenous people. Members of the Indigenous Forum formed a human chain at Shahbagh in Dhaka to protest attacks on Indigenous communities. Again, the human-chain method is significant: there is no weapon and no attempt to injure; the bodies of participants become the message—we will stand beside one another. Reuters Connect/NurPhoto, 18 August 2026. (Reuters Connect)

13. July — Drumcree, Portadown: choosing not to march to the police line. For the first time in more than 25 years, Orangemen at Drumcree did not undertake their customary Sunday walk towards police lines at the Garvaghy Road. The decision was made while a High Court challenge was ongoing. Whatever one’s position on the underlying parading dispute, the act itself is significant: a tradition containing decades of confrontation was interrupted by a deliberate decision not to enact the confrontation that year. In thinking about everyday nonviolence, this is interesting because sometimes restraint is itself an action. Belfast Telegraph, 5 July 2026. Read the Belfast Telegraph article

14. 6 July — Alexandra Park, North Belfast: friendships across a wall. An Irish News feature found residents on both sides of the Alexandra Park peace wall talking not simply about removing physical barriers but about the relationships that have gradually made removal imaginable. Carmeela Hamill, from the Antrim Road side, described making friends through a cross-community group with people from Tiger’s Bay and being invited to their Eleventh Night bonfire. Michelle McEwan from Tiger’s Bay talked about Protestant and Catholic children needing opportunities to meet rather than being taught implicitly that they cannot venture into one another’s areas. Community worker Kate Clarke described how relationships between residents on both sides have allowed problems to be resolved together, with consultation rather than decisions imposed on communities. This may be one of the purest examples of gentle nonviolence: friendship slowly making a wall less necessary. The Irish News, 6 July 2026. Read The Irish News article

15. 14 July — Ardoyne, North Belfast: one drumbeat past an old flashpoint. The Ligoniel Orange lodges’ return parade passed Ardoyne peacefully after the Parades Commission scheduled the return for the following morning rather than the previous evening. This is an interface that has witnessed serious violence in earlier years. Instead, the bands passed with a single drumbeat, a small police presence and no incident. There is something almost symbolic about that image: where there could once have been competing noise, anger and confrontation, there was one restrained drumbeat and people simply passed one another. The Irish News, 14 July 2026. Read The Irish News article

16. 15 July — Ballymena: answering horrific violence with silence and solidarity. After the deaths of a woman and her eight-year-old daughter in a suspected double murder-suicide involving their family, scores of people gathered at the Braid Arts Centre for a vigil. The family had Polish roots, and organisers Youth Ambassadors Northern Ireland issued their invitation in English and Polish, asking people to come together for quiet reflection, light and unity and explicitly standing alongside the local Polish community. Prayers were also offered at All Saints. It is an example of a community responding to violence not with spectacle, blame or suspicion, but with silence, flowers, prayer and presence. The Irish News, The Irish Times and UTV, 15–16 July 2026. The Irish News report | The Irish Times report | UTV report

17. 24 July — Stranmillis, Belfast: Israeli and Palestinian girls playing on the same team. Seven Israeli and Palestinian girls, mainly from East and West Jerusalem, came to Belfast as members of one of the Middle East’s few integrated basketball teams. They joined young people from across Northern Ireland at PeacePlayers’ annual Interface Games at Stranmillis College. The young people played Gaelic games, rugby, football and basketball together and talked about the parallels between divided societies. One participant described friendships that otherwise would never have happened; PeacePlayers’ Gareth Harper said reconciliation had to be worked at every day. That sentence is important: peace was not being treated as an agreement signed 28 years ago, but as something practised repeatedly through relationship. The Irish News, 24 July 2026. Read The Irish News article

18. 9 August — Belfast: 10,000 young people at a dance rather than destructive bonfires. This is perhaps one of the strongest examples for your purposes. More than 10,000 young people attended Féile an Phobail’s Dance Night in Falls Park on 8 August. Organisers explicitly described it as a diversionary event intended to draw young people away from the destructive anti-internment bonfires and antisocial behaviour once associated with that night. Belfast was reported to have had no republican bonfires that evening. This is nonviolence as constructive programme-building: you do not merely tell young people don’t build the bonfire; you create somewhere else to go, something better to belong to, music, celebration and community. Belfast Media and The Irish News, 9 August 2026. Belfast Media report | The Irish News report

19. 9 August — Belfast City Hall: a Shankill flute band welcomed at the Fleadh. On the final day of the Fleadh, the Shankill Road Defenders flute band performed at the City Hall Gig Rig. Afterwards, band representatives described receiving an “extraordinary welcome” and stressed that the Belfast Bands Forum had not simply been included symbolically: representatives had been involved in planning, listened to when concerns arose, and given genuine ownership. This is worth distinguishing from tolerance. Nobody was being asked to hide their tradition. A loyalist flute band was able to perform within the world’s largest festival of Irish traditional music and be received warmly. The Irish News, 12 August 2026, reporting the 9 August performance. Read The Irish News article

20. 12 August — Bogside, Derry: asking for “level heads” when confrontation was possible. Following the removal of controversial bonfire material near Lecky Road, tensions rose. But Bogside Community Support appealed explicitly for calm and urged young people not to give anyone the reaction they might be seeking. The group had been working with young people around the bonfire issue and attempting to reduce tensions ahead of the August 15 period. This is the kind of nonviolence that is easily overlooked because success often looks like something not happening: community workers entering an angry situation and trying to prevent grievance becoming confrontation. The Irish News, 12 August 2026. Read The Irish News article

21. 21–22 August — Inner East Belfast: community representatives doing the work of de-escalation. Groups of young people from rival factions gathered around Bryson Street and Pitt Park and threw bottles and stones at one another; objects were also thrown at police. Yet the PSNI specifically reported that officers “worked with local community representatives to reduce tensions”, remaining until the young people dispersed. That brief sentence in a news report conceals a great deal of work: people knowing the young people, talking, negotiating, crossing an interface, moving groups, staying present and preventing something worse. The Irish News and Belfast Telegraph, 24 August 2026, reporting incidents beginning 21 August. The Irish News report | Belfast Telegraph report

Nonviolence is not weakness, and it is not silence in the face of injustice. It is the stubborn refusal to let hatred decide who we become. It is the courage to stand firm without dehumanising, to resist without destroying, to protect without humiliating, and to keep making room for the humanity of the other even when that humanity is difficult to see.

Our communities do not need more people skilled in outrage; they need people brave enough to interrupt it. So let us be the ones who lower the temperature, who cross the road, who make the phone call, who hold the boundary, who refuse the insult, who stay at the table, who stand beside the threatened and who build another way when violence tells us there is no alternative.

Nonviolence begins wherever we are. It begins in the next conversation, the next disagreement, the next moment when we are tempted to wound because we have been wounded.

Choose peace there. Practise it there. Make it visible. And keep choosing it until the gentler way becomes the stronger way.