Deep centered preparation

Nonviolent civil resistance preparation 

In the Wabanaki languages, there are a number of words that define warriors, or warrior philosophy. Not one of those words represents fighting or violence. Every word represents humane service to the community.” 

--We’na Ha’mu Kwassett (Sherri Mitchell)[1]

Rev. Lawson breaks down civil resistance preparation into four overarching steps: Focus, Negotiation, Direct action, and Follow-up.[2]From Reverend Barber:

In any nonviolent struggle, civil disobedience is a tactic that must be employed strategically. Dr. King learned from Gandhi and taught the civil rights movement the basic, four-stage process that leads to effective civil disobedience. First, a campaign against injustice must do its homework and gather the facts. Second, we attempt to negotiate with the ruling authorities. Only after they’ve refused us can we move to stage three: self-purification;stage four: direct action.[3]

When the initial attempt at negotiation fails, Dr. King, Reverend Lawson, and Reverend Barber all describe the process of self-purification in preparation for offering direct action. This involves understanding that it is time to execute the best alternative to a negotiated agreement.[4]

The process of self-purification is coupled with nonviolent resistance training to test ourselves. Have I centered myself enough to withstand the natural defensive impulses that might rise up inside me if I see or experience oppression, intimidation, threats, insults, or violence? Can I maintain the code of conduct required by our campaign even under extreme duress? Can I witness a dear friend being beaten and not use violence, no matter how justified? Can I be the one to keep my calm when nothing around me is calm and all is chaos?

If we cannot answer positively to these self-questions we must not engage in civil disobedience. That is not shameful; the nonviolence training should be robust enough to help us make those determinations. As Serb nonviolence leader Ivan Marovic answered when asked “What do you do when someone is on your side so passionately that he tells you he cannot promise to stay nonviolent if he is struck by police or thugs?”: “Tell him to go to the kitchen and make sandwiches.”[5]In other words, there are roles for everyone, all of great value, but those who cannot commit to nonviolent discipline under all circumstances cannot place themselves in the front lines of civil resistance. 

Civil resistance, however, is not devoid of a fighting spirit; indeed, even nonviolent revenge for grievous wrong is fuel for the fire in the soul of disciplined nonviolent combatants, as is evidenced by Rosa Parks noting that the ghastly murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 helped drive her to sit in quiet, unmoving dignity on the bus later that year.[6]

“We shall not be moved” is the Civil Rights Movement refrain that valorizes exactly that spirit of what Dan Berrigan described as “Don’t just do something, stand there.” Jim Forest catalogs it in his biography of Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day as “Revolutionary sitting.” From Rosa Parks to Nashville’s Sit-In campaign to Dorothy Day sitting outside by the entrance of the racially integrated Koinonia community in Americus, Georgia, after they had been bombed in 1956. She sat in defiance of the local KKK and at one point a car drove past and shot at her, missing her by inches.[7]Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Charles Liteky was a chaplain in Vietnam who carried more than 20 wounded men to safety under withering gunfire in a four-hour battle in Vietnam, yet in 1986 renounced that medal and sat, fasting, on the Capitol steps, asking Congress and the American people to stop US aggression in Central America.[8]Sometimes it takes far more courage to sit in nonviolent witness and dignity than to charge around. The centered grounding it takes is every bit as fierce as any military discipline.

In the struggle against nuclear weapons the first resistance came from those engaged in what they sometimes called “divine obedience,”[9]that is, adherence to a higher law that mandated actions in line with a Biblical prophesy to hammer swords into plowshares.[10]When religious figures enter a weapons manufacturing site and hammer on a nuclear weapon, that shocking act can be the galvanizing action that ramps up mass action, and in the case of nuclear weapons, it helped lead to the largest act of direct democracy in American history, the Nuclear Freeze referenda that showed an estimated 80 percent of the citizenry wanted a reduction or elimination of nuclear weapons, which helped prompt lower risk arrests by the thousands, and ultimately the first actual nuclear disarmament treaty in 1987. Like the Civil Rights movement, the anti-nuclear movement was generally trained in and observant of a disciplined code of nonviolence.

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[1] We’na Ha’mu Kwassett (Sherri Mitchell) (2018). Sacred instructions: Indigenous wisdom for living spirit-based change. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books (p. 138).

[2]Sharma, Preeti (2016), “The philosophy of nonviolence,” (pp. 5-27) in Lawson, Jr., James; Wong, Kent; Gonzalez, Ana Luz (Eds.). Nonviolence and social movements: The teachings of Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr.Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education.

[3] Barber (p. 77)

[4]DeMarr, Beverly J.; de Janasz, Suzanne C. (2019). Negotiation and dispute resolution (2^nded.). Chicago, IL: Chicago Business Press. From Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail we can connect this best alternative to a negotiated agreement to the classic negotiation strategy of letting your opponent know ahead of time that a particular consequence will be the result of a failure to negotiate in good faith. Dr. King’s development of this logic preceded its appearance in the literature of negotiation by two decades. 

[5]Marovic, Ivan (2014), remarks at the second James Lawson Institute, Nashville.

[6] Barber (p. 118). Both MLK and Gandhi wrote about harnessing the power of anger to help drive the willingness to engage in committed and courageous acts of nonviolent resistance. Gandhi compared it to steam that can build up until it blows up or it can be channeled to do a great deal of work.

[7] Forest, Jim (1986).  Love is the measure: A biography of Dorothy Day. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis (p. 102).

[8]Everett, Melissa (1989). Breaking ranks. Philadelphia, PA: New Society (p. 30).

[9] Anne Montgomery, RSCJ (1984), “On divine obedience,” pp. 3-5 in Herngren, Per, et alia. Violence ends where love begins. Washington DC: Plowshares Press. 

[10] Isaiah 2:4.