Tag Archives ⇒ money

History of Non​vi​o​lence​.org, 1995 – 2008

October 13, 1995
· Martin Kelley

Non​vi​o​lence​.Org was found­ed by Mar­tin Kel­ley out of a home office way back in 1995. Over the 13 or so years of its exis­tence, it won acco­lades and atten­tion from the main­stream media and mil­lions of vis­i­tors. It’s arti­cles have been reprint­ed in count­less move­ment jour­nals and even in a fea­tured USAToday edi­to­r­i­al.

From 2006:

The past eleven years have seen count­less inter­net projects burst on the scene only to with­er away. Yet Non​vi​o​lence​.org con­tin­ues with­out any fund­ing, attract­ing a larg­er audi­ence every year. As the years have gone by and I’ve found the strength to con­tin­ue it, I’ve real­ized more and more that this is a min­istry. As a mem­ber of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends I’m com­mit­ted to spread­ing the good news that war is unnec­es­sary. In my per­son­al life this is a mat­ter of faith in the “pow­er that takes away occas­sion for all war.” In my work with Non​vi​o​lence​.org I also draw on all the prac­ti­cal and prag­mat­ic rea­sons why war is wrong. For more per­son­al moti­va­tions you can see at Quak​er​Ran​ter​.org, my per­son­al blog.

A Non​vi​o​lence​.org Timeline

Screenshot from 1996 via Archive.org
Screen­shot from 1996 via Archive​.org

In 1995 I was edi­tor at an activist pub­lish­er strug­gling to adapt to a rapid­ly chang­ing book world. Many of the inde­pen­dent book­stores that had always sup­port­ed us were clos­ing just as print­ing costs were ris­ing. The need to re-invent activist orga­niz­ing and pub­lish­ing for the 1990’s became obvi­ous and I saw the inter­net as a place to do that. One of the ear­li­est man­i­festos and intro­duc­tions to the Non­vi­o­lence Web was an essay called The Rev­o­lu­tion Will be Online.

I began by approached lead­ing U.S. peace groups with a crazy pro­pos­al: if they gave me their mate­r­i­al I would put it up on the web for them for free. My goal was to live off of sav­ings until I could raise the oper­at­ing funds from foun­da­tions. “Free type­set­ting for the move­ment by the move­ment” was the ral­ly­ing cry and I quick­ly brought a who’s-who of Amer­i­can peace groups over to Non​vi​o​lence​.org. I knew that there was lots of great peace writ­ing that was­n’t get­ting the dis­tri­b­u­tion it deserved and with the inter­net I could get it out faster and more wide­ly than with tra­di­tion­al media. For three years I lived off of sav­ings, very part-time jobs and occa­sion­al small grants.

Non​vi​o​lence​.org devel­oped into a web por­tal for non­vi­o­lence. We would fea­ture the most provoca­tive and time­ly pieces from the NVWeb mem­ber groups on the newly-redesigned home­page, dubbed “Non­vi­o­lence Web Upfront.” A online mag­a­zine for­mat loose­ly mod­eled on Slate and the now-defunct Feed mag­a­zine, it also con­tained orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al and links to inter­est­ing threads on the inte­grat­ed dis­cus­sion board. With these pop­u­lar fea­tures, Non​vi​o​lence​.org attract­ed a grow­ing num­ber of reg­u­lar vis­i­tors. The com­bined vis­i­bil­i­ty for mem­ber groups was much greater than any­one could obtain alone and we earned plen­ty of awards and links. Some media high­lights of the era includ­ed a New York Times tech pro­file, a fea­tured guest Op/Ed in USA Today, and an inter­view on Oliv­er North’s nation­al­ly syn­di­cat­ed radio show.

But this mod­el could­n’t last. A big prob­lem was mon­ey: there’s were too few phil­an­thropists for this sort of work, and estab­lished foun­da­tions did­n’t even know the right ques­tions to ask in eval­u­at­ing an inter­net project. Non​vi​o​lence​.org was kept afloat by my own dwin­dling per­son­al sav­ings, and I nev­er did find the sort of mon­ey that could pay even pover­ty wages. I took more and more part-time jobs till they became the full-time ones I have today. At the same time, inter­net pub­lish­ing was also chang­ing. With the addi­tion of blog­ging fea­tures and open-source bul­letin board soft­ware, Non​vi​o​lence​.org con­tin­ued to evolve and stay relevant.

Through the ear­ly 2000s, Non​vi​o​lence​.org con­tin­ued to be one of the most highly-visible and vis­it­ed peace web­sites, being high­ly ranked through the first Gulf War II, the biggest U.S. mil­i­tary action since the web began. This mod­el of inde­pen­dent activist web pub­lish­ing was still crit­i­cal. The Non​vi​o​lence​.org mis­sion of fea­tur­ing the best writ­ing and analy­sis con­tin­ued until 2008 when Mar­tin final­ly moth­balled the Non​vi​o​lence​.org project and sold the domain.

The Revolution will be Online

August 6, 1995
· Martin Kelley

This essay was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in 1995.

IT’S HARD TO IGNORE the sor­ry shape of the social change com­mu­ni­ty. The signs of a col­lapsed move­ment are every­where. Orga­ni­za­tions are clos­ing, cut­ting back, lay­ing off staff, and drop­ping the fre­quen­cy of their magazines. 

On top of this, the basic resources we’ve depend­ed on are get­ting scarcer. Paper prices and postage prices are going up. Direct mail solic­i­ta­tions are for many economically-unfeasible now. With every aban­doned mail­ing list, with every dis­con­tin­ued peace fair, we’re los­ing the infra­struc­ture that used to nour­ish the whole movement. 

Here in Philadel­phia, the last few years have seen food coops close, peace orga­ni­za­tions lay off staff, and the book­stores dis­con­tin­ue their polit­i­cal titles. I’ve been meet­ing peo­ple only a half-generation younger than I who aren’t aware of the basic orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples that the move­ment has built up over the years and who don’t know the mean­ings of Green­ham Com­mon or the Clamshell Alliance

Like many of you, I’m not giv­ing up. We can’t just aban­don our work because it’s becom­ing more dif­fi­cult. We need to strug­gle to find cre­ative ways of get­ting our mes­sage out there and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with oth­ers. What we need is a new media.

The Promise of the Web

The Web’s rev­o­lu­tion is it’s incred­i­bly min­i­mal costs. Fif­teen dol­lars a month gets you a home­page. As an edi­tor at New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers (1991 – 1996), I’ve always had to wor­ry whether we’d lose mon­ey on a par­tic­u­lar edi­to­r­i­al project, and it some­times seemed a rule of thumb that what excit­ed me would­n’t sell. With the Web, we don’t have to wor­ry if an idea isn’t pop­u­lar because we’re not putting the same lev­el of resources into each publication.

Nev­er before has pub­lish­ing been so cheap. Just about any­one can do it. You don’t need a par­tic­u­lar­ly fast or fan­cy com­put­er to put Web pages online. And you don’t have to wor­ry about dis­tri­b­u­tion: if some­one sets their Web brows­er to your address, they’ll get you “prod­uct” instantly.

All the forces push­ing move­ment pub­lish­ing over the edge of finan­cial insol­ven­cy dis­ap­pear when we go online. Switch­ing to the Web is a mat­ter of keep­ing our words in print. The Web is the lat­est inven­tion to open up the dis­tri­b­u­tion of words by birthing new medias. The print­ing press begat mod­ern book pub­lish­ing just as the pho­to­copi­er begat zine cul­ture. The Web can like­wise spawn a media where words can flour­ish with less cap­i­tal than ever before.

Advertising Each Other

The prob­lem with the Web is not acces­si­bil­i­ty, but rather being heard above the noise. Peo­ple gen­er­al­ly find your web­site in two ways. The first is that they see your web address in your newslet­ter, get on their com­put­ers and look you up; this of course only gets you your own peo­ple. The sec­ond way is through links.

Links take you from one web­site to anoth­er. Web­page design­ers try to get linked from sites of sim­i­lar inter­est to theirs, hop­ing the read­ers of the oth­er site will fol­low the link to their web­page. This bounc­ing from site to site is called surf­ing, and it’s the main way around the web.

Link­ing is a very prim­i­tive art nowa­days. The Non­vi­o­lence Web has inter­nal links that active­ly invite read­ers to explore the whole NV-Web. Every­time some­one comes into the NV-Web through a mem­ber group, they will be inticed to stay and dis­cov­er the oth­er groups. By putting social change groups togeth­er in one place, we can have a much-more dynam­ic cross-referencing. Think of it as the equiv­a­lent of trad­ing mail­ing lists in that we can all share those web surfers who find any one of us.

In the web world as in the real one, coop­er­a­tion helps us all. If you’re an activist group doing work on non­vi­o­lent social change then con­tact us and we’ll put your words online. For free. If you have your own web­site already, then let’s talk about how we can crosslink you with oth­er groups work­ing on non­vi­o­lent social change.

Come explore the Non­vi­o­lence Web and let us get you con­nect­ed. Come join our revolution.

In peace,

Mar­tin Kelley