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Explores the animating theories of the nonviolent direct action movement that, since the 1970s, has stood in opposition to nuclear power plants & weapons, US intervention in Central America, & the Persian Gulf War. It is suggested that the leading theory of social movements, resource mobilization theory, cannot explain the continual reappearance of the nonviolent direction action movement in the US cultural landscape, because it posits a process of social change in which excluded groups form social movements that eventually evolve into interest groups. Borrowing from the work of Alberto Melucci (1989), the nonviolent direct action movement is described as motivated less by the attainment of institutional structures & elite resources than by interaction within affinity groups in a decentralized organizational structure. The process of acting within such groups involves the creation of personal political identities in such a way that a multitude of identities can be connected through a chain of equivalences &, thus, energized to pursue direct political action. In both its explicit political actions & its implicit organizational structure & theory of political action, the nonviolent direct action movement challenges the discursive practices that support the security state. D. M. Smith

Making work a commission -- Helping others help themselves -- Thinking anew about the history of direct sales -- Healing the body through the mind -- Selling without selling -- Motivating rituals -- Planning the departure -- Bringing transformation to South America -- Moving forward, looking back