Non​vi​o​lence​.Org was founded by Mar­tin Kel­ley
out of a home office way back in 1995. Eleven years later, it’s 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.

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:

• Quak​er​Ran​ter​.org, per­sonal webpage;
• Sto­ries from Non​vi​o​lence​.org
• Mar​tinKel​ley​.com, web design

A Non​vi​o​lence​.org Timeline

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 then with any tra­di­tional
media. For three years I lived off of sav­ings, very part-time jobs and
occa­sional small grants.

Through 1998, Nonviolence.ommarg 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, the Non​vi​o​lence​.Org became a “sticky“
site, one which attracted reg­u­lar vis­i­tors. The com­bined vis­i­bil­ity for
mem­ber groups was much greater than any­one could obtain alone and we
earned plenty of awards and links. There was a major New York Times pro­file and I was invited to write the guest Op/Ed in USA Today.

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 advent of “Blogs” and
open-source bul­letin board soft­ware, Non​vi​o​lence​.org has con­tin­ued to
evolve and stay relevant.

2005

Non​vi​o​lence​.org con­tin­ues to be one of the most highly-visible and vis­ited peace web­sites, being highly ranked through Gulf War II, the biggest U.S. mil­i­tary
action since the web began. This model of inde­pen­dent activist web
pub­lish­ing is still crit­i­cal and becomes more appre­ci­ated every day.
The Non​vi​o​lence​.org mis­sion of fea­tur­ing the best writ­ing and analy­sis
from a non­vi­o­lent view­point continues.

Mar­tin Kel­ley more or less moth­balled the Non​vi​o​lence​.org project in 2008.