Recently, several people have been using the phrase “No Business as Usual” to explain the way some individuals and groups have decided to react to oppression around the world.

Rights Hawks and unREVISE believe the implementation of this slogan is often exactly what is needed today.

Basically, the phrase means that if a government is committing ethnic cleansing, genocide, torture, intentional starving, mass murder, enslavement of others, etc., we who oppose them will not let them go on with “business [or life] as usual,” but we will instead strive to disrupt their lives and activities through protests, boycotts, strikes, shutdowns, and, in some cases, even destruction of property and sabotage.

A good example is the Houthis of Yemen, who are blocking shipping in the Red Sea to try to end the ethnic cleansing and genocide efforts of the Israeli government against millions of civilians in Gaza, Palestine. The Houthis say that until the attacks on Palestinian civilians by Israel and its allies, including the United States, stop, they will shut down all shipping that aids Israel. More recently, after they were attacked by the U.S. and England, they’ve also threatened their ships as well.

The Houthi attacks on shipping are not a perfect solution, of course, because innocents might be harmed, even though they have clearly warned certain ships to avoid the area. However, their stated purpose is to stop a potential genocide in which more than 25,000 people that we know of have been murdered in less than four months. And, in fact, there could be thousands more who are still buried in the rubble from Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate bombing campaign. Even potentially worse, the remaining civilians may be on the brink of starvation.