Dialog toward truth: Educators and the public

In his call for scholars to become public scholars in the Buberian dialogic model, Piki Ish-Shalom (2011) writes, "Truth is a living entity constructed in an engaged and dynamic process and should be treated accordingly" (p. 839). What does this mean for those who live in the teaching and research world?

Gandhi also called for an ongoing and collaborative search for truth, which is to say, everyone has a piece of it and no one owns it all. Martin Buber asked for three levels of dialog and search for the truth: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and the public dialog that helped scholars and civil society more completely help each other learn those larger truths. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Buber disagreed about Israel, though they did so before Israel was founded, which was interesting, because Buber seems far more reasonable than does Gandhi in their 1938-9 disagreement, yet Gandhi proved correct in his assumption that founding Israel would require conquest, which it did.

Truth is infinitely complex, of course, because it is natural. Anyone claiming to completely understand any natural system is overestimating his knowledge, just as is anyone asserting he understands the absolute truth about any matter. There are always more factors and more complexities in any natural system and in any human reality.

Does this lack of total certitude about the truth stop us from acting? That is another question, of course, since the first order of business is to seek enough evidence from enough sources to justify action. But no, it wouldn't stop a person of conscience from acting on belief. Belief, supported by a preponderance of fact, crosses that threshold when it does--when the individual believes it does.

Buber (1878-1965) understood what happened when scholars either supported the state or were silent. He fled Germany and his academic appointment in protest of Hitler's election, eventually teaching sociology and anthropology at Hebrew University. While he was a Zionist in Germany and in pre-Israel Palestine, he was not a Greater Israel Zionist and took whithering blasts of criticism for his staunch support of a binational, or two-state, solution that was both sovereign Israel and sovereign Palestine. His life is an exemplar of what it means to be a public intellectual unafraid to pose dissenting views and seek greater and greater truth.

References
Ish-Shalom, Piki (05/01/2011). "Three Dialogic Imperatives in International Relations Scholarship: A Buberian Programme.". Millennium (0305-8298), 39 (3), p. 825.

Taxonomic challenges of struggle

The debate about whether a particular civil society struggle is nonviolent or not is interesting, I suppose--"I'll take Intifadas for $300"--but I think more to the point is attempting to estimate the effects of tactics. Did Egyptians win their struggle (at least this first major phase of it) as a result of, or despite, their relatively minor amount of stone throwing? Did that violence accelerate or retard their advance toward the goal of getting Hosni Mubarak to step down?

First of all, this great struggle will be known historically as a nonviolent uprising. The decision on the typology is fairly settled. So, given that, how will the tactics be understood?

I believe they will be regarded as a very minor departure from a similar display of nonviolence used in Serbia in 2000 and in the Philippines in 1986 and in South Africa in the late 1980s, and throughout the Eastern and Central European Velvet Revolution. I do not believe it will be thought of like either Intifada in Palestine Israel. In those struggles the rocks were pelted at Israeli Defense Force, an occupying armed force. In Egypt, the stones were thrown at attacking thugs paid by or otherwise beholden to Mubarak's machine. The rocks were not hurled at the military. Indeed, the military was treated well and in turn generally treated the civil society uprising with relative courtesy. The difference is significant.

Israelis and Americans reacted negatively to Palestinians winding up and hurling rocks at the heads of IDF troops, especially since Palestinian fighters were also sometimes sniping at the same IDF troops and, it was felt, the suicide bombers who blew up kids at the university or in pizza joints were from the ranks of the stone throwers. True or false, it was a logical assumption.

Everyone understood almost immediately that the aggressive violent attackers in Tahrir Square were the same men seen at past demonstrations and election polling places, intimidating and committing violent acts. They came in swords swinging, pistols drawn and pointed, on horseback or camelback, for heavensake. It was thuggery, organized violent crime, and that was far too obvious. The image of the protesters was not nonviolent when they responded with stones, but everyone sympathized--everyone Egyptian and from the outside. The protesters never claimed to be Gandhian or Quaker nonviolent sufferers. They are Egyptians using strategic liberatory nonviolent civil society struggle and they essentially pushed the pause button on nonviolence to defend themselves with crude projectile objects when they were brutally attacked without provocation by criminals well known to them. This did very little to erode their image as sympathetic to most people domestic and foreign.

The other kerfuffle about how much Gene Sharp affected their struggle is a bit like asking how much the Wright Brothers influenced the Russians as they work on a new jet design. Sharp never claimed his teachings were necessary to do this--otherwise, how did Gandhi manage to achieve what he did, how did MLK do the Civil Rights movement, how did Kwame Nkrumah ever manage his nonviolent liberation of Ghana? All those preceded Sharp's scholarship on the power, methods and dynamics of nonviolence. Sharp is proud of his life's work, as he should be, but he is the last one to claim that anything other than culturally specific and locally led nonviolence will accomplish anything. His teachings have helped and any Egyptian who denies this may live by the Nile but also lives in denial.

We are simply humankind trying to help each other understand this force, this power that is always there, usually latent, normally cloaked, and far more complex than Gandhi or Sharp or Ackerman or Stephan or Schock or Kurtz or Popovic or Presbey or Helvey or True or Chenoweth or Zunes or Nagler or Burrowes or or Boaz or Clark or Cortright or Weber or any of our outstanding analysts can describe. Describing nonviolence is like describing an ecosystem; it is always far more complex than our most intricate explanation and all our complicated exegesis is absolutely helpful and necessary.

Loss is just a stone's throw away

I was lucky enough to be invited to the Fletcher Summer Institute at Tufts this June, where we met the leader of the pretty much nonviolent movement to save the small Palestinian town of Budrus from bifurcation by the Separation Wall, an Israeli project futilely designed to gain security for stolen lands by walling off sections of the Palestinian portion of the West Bank. Earlier this month, the Christian Science Monitor asked in an article if the Budrus model was still viable.

They looked at various Palestinian villages and pointed out that the Israeli Defense Force was more active than ever and that other villages had not managed to replicate the Budrus success in rerouting the Wall. But the idea that this model will prove replicable is not credible when one looks at the film Budrus and notes that the "nonviolent" resistance included rock throwing by young men. This means the Budrus model is doomed.

One Israeli soldier was hospitalized in Bilin, another village that many leftwingers are touting as a purely nonviolent struggle. Getting hit in the head by a rock is violence. Period. The standard response that, well, those IDF soldiers have all the weapons and really are the violent ones is hogwash now and was hogwash when it was first claimed, as it so often is. To make the claim that relatively minor violence committed by the overmatched violent force in an asymmetric conflict equates to nonviolence is ignorant or disingenuous--false in either case.

To understand why and how a conflict method might work requires honesty, not partisanship. Believing that one side is entirely just and the other side is entirely unjust is a person's prerogative, but to allow that to color interpretations of what nonviolence might be is incorrect analysis.

In the end, we are still waiting for "The Palestinian Gandhi." Or the Palestinian MLK, or the Palestinian Cesar Chavez, or the Palestinian Dorothy Day. We are waiting for that person to emerge as a publicized leader of a disciplined nonviolent movement, something we haven't seen in Palestine and which guarantees that Israel will continue to justify what most of the world recognizes as unjust occupation of land that doesn't belong to them. If the strict nonviolence of Ali Abu Awwad or Mazin Qumsiyeh is adapted by actual movement of Palestinians, they have a chance for success.

Is this fair? Of course not; conflict forensics is not about who is on the side of justice more than another party. It is about deconstructing the dynamics of conflict and making professional observations, which is what I am doing in this case. Yes, making long-distance judgments about what might work and what might not are not brave, nor are they always accurate. Conflict science is not about being a radical; it is about trying to be accurate, which, one hopes, is helpful to some.

Here's hoping Mazin and other Palestinians who eschew stone throwing, not to mention bombing and sniping, are listened to and emulated so we can see movements that succeed more often in Palestine. You cannot reach hearts and minds by hitting people in the head with rocks any more than Israel can gain any friends by such massive criminal enterprises as Operation Cast Lead two years ago, which killed some 1,400 Palestinians, far out of proportion to the violence of Hamas then and now.

Israel v Palestine: First one to adhere to absolute nonviolence wins. This is completely counterintuitive in both societies and it's closer to the truth than what the leadership of either society demonstrates.

Grassroots nonviolence is conflict resolution

One wonders if we are ever going to experience a change of consciousness in this nation that will enable civil society to draw upon its latent power for good, for assertion, for really engaging well in constructive conflict. How many lessons do Americans need before they stop leaning on the crutch, the dysfunctional and inappropriate weapon of violence?

The world was taught another method of waging conflict by Gandhi, though every time the best of his methods were ignored in favor of something deemed faster or more convenient or easier--that is, violence--then all bets were off. Kriesberg (2009, p. 19) noted:

“The Satyagraha campaigns and related negotiations influentially modeled methods of constructive escalation. The strategies of nonviolent action and associated negotiations were further developed in the civil rights struggles in the United States during the 1960s. For many academic analysts, the value of conflicts to bring about desirable social change was evident, but the dangers of failure and counterproductive consequences also became evident."

Unlike conflict scholar Kriesberg, too few other conflict scholars have paid attention to conflict waged from the grassroots, from civil society. Too few conflict practitioners have learned to wage it in an integrated fashion, weaving back and forth from negotiation to civil resistance to implementation to civil resistance to negotiation and so forth. Joan Bondurant analyzed Gandhian nonviolence campaign by campaign--when are we going to get a solid, grounded theory that explains how this works in broad brushstrokes?

My hypothetical is that the difference between nonviolent reformer and nonviolent revolutionary is that the reformer picks a winnable goal and strives for it without a vision for much beyond that. The nonviolent revolutionary envisions a different system, one of egalitarian, nonviolent, liberation of all, sustainable relationships, conflict management systems that don't include retributive justice or war. Then the nonviolent revolutionary works with value-affinity kith and kin to construct one winnable campaign after the next, all toward the vision. It is a lifetime effort and thus must be sustainable for the revolutionary over decades. One must learn to handle and defeat frustration and savor victories, even if one must learn the art of reframing in order to declare them.

The violent revolutionary, however, has it far worse. If, as does happen some 26 percent of the time, he succeeds, he is then in power and must defend that revolution by force of arms against enemies internal and external. There is no end to the violence and it becomes a lifetime of bloodshed without cessation until death. If, as is the case in 74 percent of the cases, he fails, then he lives in ignominy or in more bloodshed as he mounts another war. Either way, it's a life of carnage and killing, never knowing if you've just killed another innocent as collateral damage or if you've just killed a better human than yourself.

The failure of nonviolence often produces counterproductive consequences. So does the failure of violence. So does the failure of apathy and conflict avoidance. While Kriesberg (pictured) is correct that we learn to choose our battles and our methods carefully or risk failure, our chances for success with nonviolence are best, are greatest, and can win without causing massive losses for anyone. It is long past time to end war. It's a stupid problem and humanity needs a nonviolent intifada to shake off war.

References
Kriesberg, Louis (2009). The evolution of conflict resolution. In Bercovitch, Jacob; Kremenyuk, Victor; & Zartman, I. William (Eds.). The Sage handbook of conflict resolution. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. p.p. 15-32.

It's just their nature

Even before there was a United States, the Quaker reformers bequeathed to the nation-to-be a rich legacy of thinking about nonviolence (Chernus, 2004, p. 25).

Yes, Gandhi was the guru, Gandhi was the guy, Gandhi got game. He discovered that principled nonviolence--the kind of nonviolence that wells up from religious, spiritual, moral and ethical thinking and feeling--can also be used to conduct strategic campaigns designed to win. He struggled through his process, which itself was overlaid and shot throughout with his own cultural tilt. He is one of three primary reasons that many Westerners believe Hindus are more naturally peaceful and nonviolent than others from other traditions.

Reason two: the sacred cows. We in the West see images of cows wandering unmolested and uneaten all over India, including places that feature hungry children and we are stumped. We believe that people this holy, this committed to peace and nonviolence, must just be culturally wired for it, since our culture is such a McFatty Hamburger Helpless slaughterhouse. Those Hindus--they let cows live and eat even if they themselves are starving. They must all be holy.

Reason three: a general Western intellectual bafflement about the East. We mentally wander through a kind of bewilderness when we think of those inscrutable swamis and gurus who can get their people to sacrifice lives, sleep on spikes and stroll on coals. Obviously, these are not exactly humans--they are spiritual beings who would rather fall off cliffs than run over a cockroach.

As with most "facts," there are kernels of truth that are extrapolated into generalized notions that then gain Conventional Wisdom or Received Truth status. And we all engage in our own logic that feeds our wisdom and truth into the questions of the day, arriving at clear and unbiased conclusions, as far as we are concerned--even when the assumptions are drastically biased and even backward sometimes.

Indeed, one of my best students is Hindu and she just laughs at our assumptions about her and other Hindus. She knows that we are all just folks, petty and heroic, selfish and altruistic, hateful and loving, stingy and generous, smart and stupid, violent and nonviolent. She does not deny culture, but notes the underlying identical humanity across cultures, languages, skin colors and countries of origin. "Oh, yes," she'll say with a twinkle, "we Hindus are soooooo peaceful." Then she'll note the bicommunal violence in India, the Indian nuclear weapons, and just shake her head.

Our militaristic US does indeed have a rich history of nonviolence that influenced Gandhi, as Chernus documents, and others preceded him in this assertion, including George Lakey, who wrote about it from his Philadelphia Quaker movement roots and who was then cited in the magisterial Lynd and Lynd history, Nonviolence in America.

Gandhi read Western philosophers and found himself very good friends with many Quakers, discovering their common roots of compassion and empathy and connecting to the notion of religious witness for nonviolence, even as Gandhi taught them to think strategically instead of solely about conscience. This cross-fertilization has helped us all progress together as we think about culture and conflict management methods.

In the end, all of us can learn to override cultural cues and even personal trauma prompts toward destructive conflict management. For some of us, this means unlearning quite a bit. For others who were gifted with calmer natures as individuals or who are from cultures that tend to honor peacemakers more than warmakers, the unlearning is not so monumental. But war and peace are both in our nature as humans and we can choose which one to feed, which style to learn more about, and in which domain to train. We choose this as individuals and we choose it politically and we choose it culturally. Humanity is quite capable of decisionmaking, even though it's not always simple or easy. Facing that responsibility is our first and last distinctively human characteristic, and our real nature.


References
Chernus, Ira (2004). American nonviolence: The history of an idea. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Lynd, Staughton. & Lynd, Alice. (1995). Nonviolence in America: A documentary history (2^nd ed.). Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books (original 1966).

Join the Natural Guard

"Conflict prevention is a less costly policy than intervention after the onset of armed conflicts," from Contemporary conflict resolution (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, & Miall, 2005, 2nd ed., p. 125).

This morning I went to church. For those who might know me, that's kind of a punchline, since I usually describe the forest as my temple, and in fact the Sequoia sempervirens as the most holy meditative church for me. Indeed, that should be the slogan of the Natural Guard: Sempervirens! Hoo hah!

But the church I went to was really a complex of church, school, community center and, in the church basement, a Severe Weather Shelter serving homeless folks when the temperature plummets hereabouts in the winter. Every year at this time they bring volunteers together to ready them for the shelter season--the frigid, freezy, snowy, freezing rain time of year here in western Oregon, where the conditions can kill because first they soak and then they freeze. Straightforward deep cold is also lethal, but the relatively easy conditions in western Oregon are still very dangerous in their combinations.

So my section of the training is de-escalation for the volunteers. Homeless folks are most often in pain, emotionally and physically. They feel disrespected all day long. They are a part of an economic system predicated upon a background rate of unemployed, in which corporate elites profit from unemployment because it makes workers desperate and afraid to organize or bargain with vigor. Workers know that feeding their families will be possible with lower wages and poor benefits but impossible if they have no job, so they shrink from that confrontation as unemployment sends more hungry workers into the job-seeking ranks. People sometimes fall into cycles of substance abuse to self-medicate, which causes relational breakups, which can also contribute to sending them onto the streets. No money, no partner, no respect. Sometimes the stress can produce depression and other mental challenges that can fairly quickly send a person into homeless status, creating a positive feedback loop of negative consequence.

If the volunteers encounter a person just looking for a confrontation, they need to know that handling that is usually quite possible. I teach that, indeed, the costs of a humble cheerfulness in the face of rudeness are small in contrast to the costs of allowing the conflict to escalate. Letting go of ego, getting centered and grounded, and projecting an image of calm in the face of the worst storms--these are the small costs. Getting defensive or hostile, escalating toward a zero-sum outcome can produce very high costs indeed. The confrontation is usually more likely to get physical when a volunteer mirrors angry behavior or begins to get in touch with his Inner Tyrant.

Key is being authoritative without being authoritarian, in control without being controlling, helpful with being patronizing (or matronizing), and seeking common understanding. This is essentially the same skill set required of nonviolent actionists as they take to the field confronting oppressors. Center. Get grounded. You are on spiritual duty in these instances.

Some folks were born beatific. Good for Gandhi. For the rest of us, training is key. When a member of the military or police is brutalizing anyone, our goal is to confront and calm them. I've been badly beaten by police and both times it followed my own escalatory behavior. Were the police correct to beat me? No. I was no threat to anyone in either case. Pacifists, however, can still exhibit dysfunctional escalation and I did. I paid high costs for my lack of competence combined with their lack of professionalism, and I learned deep and personal lessons. I recall my friend Doctor Dave when I told him my nose might be broken. He laughed. "Might be? My friend, they broke it well and truly." My nose is forever crooked from the fists of the deputies and I am very lucky indeed to have vision in both eyes, since they required more than 30 stitches in one case. My technique was so poor that I even abandoned my first enraged reaction, to sue them.

Youth. Sigh... I was 19 in one case and 25 in the other. I was a pacifist, but an ill-trained one. Mixing provocation with pacifism is flat stupid, and I was.

So when I train now, I stress the alternatives and tell the trainees that listening instead of talking, asking instead of demanding, inquiring instead of interrogating and compassion instead of judgment are the ways of the Catholic Worker and the best of the shelter workers too. "Catholic Workers are not officially part of the Catholic church," I told my Catholic trainees. "We won't call police because they have guns. We work without a net." Blame it on Dorothy Day; she started it. I tell them of little CW women evicting big belligerent drunken men using techniques that have very low costs and very high success rates. Stack that against the possibility of police violence or violence on the part of the enraged person who knows you've called the police, and you can imagine that cost-benefit analysis.

It's helpful to think about all conflict with a mix of morals and rational CBA; I believe we will increase the peace and the skills to gain it when we do.

References
Ramsbotham, Oliver, Woodhouse, Tom, and Miall, Hugh (2005). Contemporary conflict resolution (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Silencio y nonviolencio

For the past few days, but only really for two nights, we at Whitefeather Peace House have been gifted with a family of gracious guests. Pancho was our connection; he is involved in the Metta Center for Nonviolence, and we have a couple of strong connections there, including Stephanie Van Hook and Michael Nagler.

In between staying at Whitefeather last Thursday night and leaving last evening for points south, this lovely family visited Bainbridge Island to visit the offices of Yes! magazine and to talk to David Korten. So we were the pitstop before and after.

The father, Victor, is an economist and taught at the university in Mexico City on and off for some 25 years. He studied in St. Paul in the mid-1970s and then in Switzerland to earn his Ph.D. He is gregarious and multilingual. Conchita is his wife; she and Pancho prepared a most delicious and beautiful meal last evening, as traditionally Mexican as they could from what was on hand. Ivan is the 12-year-old, quiet and curious, connecting with big brotherliness to Alexa, the five-year-old Center of Energy hereabouts.

Pancho is the Mexican Gandhi, even practicing a day of silence each week, on Mondays. I told him my favorite story about Gandhi's practice, told by a woman who lived and worked on one of his ashrams (paraphrase):

A few of us women were working in the ashram office on a Monday morning, laughing and chatting as we worked. Gandhi came in, silent as on all Mondays, and sat off to the side, doing his office work. We started to gossip about some bureaucrat who had come to 'inspect' the ashram, a most pompous man. One of us said, "And he was the ugliest man in the world." Suddenly we all saw Gandhi scowling. "What?" we asked, but it was his silent day. He continued to scowl as we looked at each other in consternation. Suddenly, one of us said, "The second to the ugliest man in the world!" and he beamed at us.

Pancho laughed a long time at that one, for the beauty of it at so many levels, for the egolessness that the aspirant can learn, for the commonplace and thus accessible office gossip of the ashram, for the endless plague of bureaucrats from society to society, and for the communication of silence. Indeed, while many spiritual traditions practice versions of vows of silence, it turns out to be one of the connections to our theories of conflict resolution and is crucial to the strategic success of nonviolence. How can the necessary coalitions be built without listening more than we talk?How can the stories of those with grievances be truly heard and deeply felt without trading periods of intent silence?

How can a leader learn to be a vector of messaging, a conduit of concern, and thus a node bridging subnetworks into larger and larger networks without simple silence, but the silence of rapt attention to the problems, ideas, inspirations and process of all the parties?

Silence is how we attain the spinfree mental state necessary to those Archmedian Eureka! moments, the condition necessary to reach the empty mind, dialtone brain that allows the elements of complex problems to resort, reframe, and reassert themselves in a new configuration in our thinking. Silence gives the great composers the blank score they fill with the notes that move magically through the generations.

So, silence is the inner work of the creative and the connecting intake of the leader; Gandhi connected the two. His inner jihad, his silent struggle to overcome his turmoil and express an organized response, informed his work in the world, the jihad of nonviolent liberation of a huge pluralistic people from the largest and most widespread empire the world had seen.

Sigurd Olson, one of my Minnesota childhood heroes, founded the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. He called his wilderness cabin Listening Point.
My father gave me both trips to the wilderness and the Sig Olson books, one of which was in fact titled Listening Point. Sig went to pay attention to the wild and he preserved a great section of it.

Nowadays, social psychologists and activists have been conducting listening projects, seeking the stories of constituencies. These have been a major piece of some of the best community organizing. The gang member has a story and if he can tell it perhaps he won't have to make his mark with his gun. Same with a cop. And when they hear each other's pain and hopes, the violence isn't quite so likely, not as necessary. In the end, violence and nonviolence are communication. Words to fists to guns to bombs--we do what it takes to get our presence, if not our accurate message, across. Meeting it all with silence, with listening, is how we de-escalate and move back to our human gift of speech, which is meaningless without the corresponding silence of the listener. Indeed, when I train those who are going to take the field to Vibeswatch large social events that are also contentious, I let folks know that the fastest way to convert the energy of the angry one to manageable levels is to ask a question and then honestly listen. If the angry one is heard, there is no need to escalate to the fist or beyond. Just notify the belligerent that you want to know what is wrong and then prove it by listening and acknowledging.

Of course, there is also the story of the Trappists who took a vow of silence. After three years, one said at the long wooden dinner table, "Please try not to leave the bathroom water basin dirty, thanks so much." After another two years of silence one other monk said, "I think I've been scrubbing the basin very clean, my friend." After another four years of silence a third monk observed one evening, "Can we please stop this constant bickering?"

Comments? I'm listening.

Be amongst them

Any good community organizer knows that there is a continuum of citizenry views on matters of peace, justice and basic rights. There are those who share all our values--that we are called to nonviolence, that we stand for human rights, and that we believe in freedom. When we who are trying to wage a campaign are communicating to that group of kindreds, we are calling them to action. We beg their involvement.

Then there are the middle-of-the-road folks with generally good values but who know little about our issue and are rarely active. We hope to educate them and to activate a few.

Finally, there are those who push back, who despise our values, who are authoritarian and who see America as exceptional, as the just rulers of a rabble of humanity, as prepared to use any means to crush the unjust opposition to our righteous dominance of Earth. They summon all the rhetoric of the founding of America, stripped of its painful reality of slave-owning and Native genocide and land theft, and scorn all who cannot agree with their one and only and obvious set of values and choices. That constituency deserves none of our time if we are good community organizers because our time is precious and wasting it on them is far less productive than spending it with those whose values are closer to ours.

Still, when we are attacked by these people, it is often helpful to respond for a few good organizing reasons.

One, the more timid amongst them are likely open to conversion. They are sometimes there because they have a hegemonic presence in their lives who have dragged them along, but inside they are looking for better reason. If you can give it to them in a kind way, you can convert some of those folks.

Two, other witnesses are often up for grabs, so your real messaging is to them, even though you are responding to some attack by someone you have zero hope of converting. It becomes not just a debate on content and glib ability to hold the stage, but on reaching hearts and minds with a decent communicating style.

Three, these are the people who will probe for weaknesses in your arguments and engaging them keeps your pencil sharp. It can be wearisome when the same turf, so well trod, is where you must go to respond yet again to the same challenges, but at times that old muddy patch reveals new points of iterative challenge. This is part of how your reasoning grows keener and your answers to objections can be refined.

So, I like to know what those with whom I generally disagree are thinking. What is their leadership telling their followers? How are they reframing issues so that inconvenient truths are obscured and fewer object to them? If I know how they are being informed, I can counter that better and I can learn their language more fluently--and the far right in the US speaks a different tongue, rest assured.

So, in that spirit, I try to listen and learn from them. Here is their latest strategic move, a fundraising push to subscribe to their magazine, with a special August issue called Battle Plan that purports to teach the true patriots of America how to wrest control back from the dangerous Marxists who have taken over. Here is how they tell their own what is in the advertised issue:

Highlights of "BATTLE PLAN" include:


"How to make the Obama nightmare go away" by Joseph Farah

"How to take back America" by Phyllis Schlafly, who tells how to combine old playbooks with new tools to build a "solid conservative majority"

"The block captain revolution" by John Burns, a proven, step-by-step plan for restoring America, neighborhood by neighborhood

"Turning the tables on evil in America" by David Kupelian, an in-depth, sophisticated look at how to prevail against a government and culture gone mad – with specific examples of winning strategies

"Karl Rove: 6 things that will determine November's election outcome"

"Glenn Beck on re-founding America" – focusing on the necessary attitude and principles necessary to win

"A model for unity and action" by Sean Hannity, who outlines the urgent need for an updated Contract with America

"Saving America from 'Obama's secular-socialist machine'" by Art Moore, profiling former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his call for citizens to bravely mobilize to face the "mortal threat" to their nation

"Forget about third parties" by Rush Limbaugh, who reveals that "the Republican Party has lost its way because of one issue"

"Out-of-touch Congress sounds our clarion call to take a stand" by Sarah Palin, who cautions Americans to "remember the outrages of Obamacare when you vote" this November

"GOP on track to snatch defeat from jaws of victory" by Ann Coulter, a timely warning on the extreme dangers of overconfidence when things look good

"Dick Morris: Work your 'electronic precinct'" by David Kupelian, who explains the top strategist's key advice this November: Since Obama won the presidency through innovative use of the Internet, to take America back, conservatives can do no less – and Morris tells how to do it

"Final thoughts: My very best advice to anyone who wants to take America back" by Joseph Farah

What an interesting set of plans and intentions. And all for only $39.95 annual subscription. I learned a lot just reading the contents' titles annotated for us. The assumptions are too numerous to enumerate in one short blog entry, but the seriousness of their efforts, and the practicality of some of it, cannot be doubted or discounted, Glenn Beck's tautologies and Dept. of Redundancy Dept. language notwithstanding.

WWGD? What on Earth would Gandhi do about such a situation? It's hard to know if he would engage door-to-door, on the Internet and Democracy Now!, strive to place op-eds into mainstream newspapers or return to the ashram to work on some spinning and goat-tending. We can all decide for ourselves. But I think he would have been the Gandhi Godfather, keeping his friends close and his opponents closer. Listening to rage and learning of plans to put it even more in power is a Gandhian first step, I think. While we may be amazed that anyone could believe that what Obama has done is outside the war system, these people intend to strengthen it even more. They are misguided and are the reason our nation is so reviled around the world, but our great error would be to ignore them or fail to engage.

And finally, from the Dept. of Deep Ironies, these people call that magazine Whistleblower--and they are calling for Julian Assange's head on a pike. Not figuratively, literally. The most serious whistleblower of our millennium is now the target of a massive rightwing call for his execution. Obama himself--the despised peacenik appeaser--is spearheading an effort to get several governments to issue arrest warrants for Assange and the entire relationship to Iceland--which has sheltered him--is now under review at the top levels of the US government.

The far right always believes they are called to action.

We on the nonviolent and inclusive side believe we are called to education, which is indeed first. But action is also crucial. The stakes are so high, from off-shore drilling to alternative energy to basic human rights to civil rights to an economy based, for once, on a partnership with humankind instead of war profiteers. We cannot sit back and let the war system drive us all over the cliff into the abyss that the suffering people of Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere can show us right now. Collapsed economy? It's there and coming here. Violent anarchy? Same thing. As Malcolm X said, the chickens are coming home to roost. In the case of the rightwing, it's the chickenhawks, but the dystopia they prepare for us is something we can reject with enough civil society organizing. I hope we're up for it. It's always people power v profiteer power and it's always a battle first for hearts and minds.

Speaking truth to power

All power to the people! was the ignorant but well meaning shout of the 60s, from whence I came (b 1950, teen and young adult in 60s). I claim ignorant because all the power is already in the hands of the people, of the populace, if only they would awaken to that fact. This is always true, whether they have taken it or whether they have let it languish. This is true in the most advanced, participatory, direct democracy and in a brutal closed dictatorship. The question is not how to take power from the leaders, but rather how to stop ceding it to them. Indeed, Gandhi noted that Britain had not taken India, India had given itself to the empire. With just 100,000 troops, the British empire held command over 300 million Indians--until they stopped cooperating.

This is how a war system operates in our name, around the world. We let it. We could stop it, but we don't. We pay our federal taxes, half of which go to war, war preparation, or the cost of past wars. We do that every year. We vote in politicians who promise peace and vote for war. We do this every two years.

And the endless reports on how poorly these dollars are actually spent has no discernible effect. The multiple and endless failures in Afghanistan produce a liberal Democratic president who escalates the war and Republicans who criticize him for not escalating it more. Each and every US program there is a failure, even though the Pentagon paints a huge mural of rosy success. Independent reports peel off that veneer and show the sad and predictable truth. From the New York Times: "Despite spending by the United States of $27 billion on the training of Afghan security forces since 2002, the report found that even top-rated Afghan units could not operate independently and that the ratings of many security forces overstated their actual capabilities."
(Heck of a job, Stanley; you're fired)
This week we see the spectacle once again of the US committing more massive amounts of money so desperately needed to create US jobs sent into the deep pockets of the war profiteers. Congress will vote on pumping another $33 billion from your paycheck into the veins of this war. How will your representative vote? Will you tell him or her how you feel about this? If we wanted to, we could be power speaking to our public servants, "Vote no." Or we can whine and sigh and pay up for more blood on our hands. Those are our primary choices.

Back in the day, this required a piece of paper, and envelope, a stamp, finding addresses, writing a letter, and mailing it. In our easy democracy it is pick up a phone or click your mouse:
Call:
The Capitol Switchboard is 202-225-3121. Ask to be connected to your Representative's office. Try to get the Foreign Policy Legislative Assistant on the phone; tell whomever you get to speak with that you urge the Representative to vote no on war funding and to co-sponsor McGovern's bill and vote for McGovern's amendment; try to get them to say how the Representative will vote; report back to us any result of your query at the following link:
http://noescalation.org/2010/05/05/withdrawal-timetable/

Email:
www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern

Comparing apples and...landmines?

Nonviolence is force. Violence is force. The questions about the two methods include:
• Can serious change happen more readily with nonviolence or violence?
• If violence can impose higher costs, why choose any other method of challenge to oppression and injustice?
• Can nonviolence impose different costs than can violence?
• What are the long term outcomes of the two methods, that is, are there any significant differences?
• Which is faster?
• Which is cheaper?
• Which method is more natural for humans?
• Which method entails more risk?
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the questions that arise when a movement considers how it will wage conflict, engage in contest, challenge injustice or solve massive social problems in a society structurally committed to ineffective practices. And no short piece can address all these questions adequately.
Briefly:
• Can serious change happen more readily with nonviolence or violence?
Joan Baez said a violent revolution is a contradiction in terms. This may or may not be an overstatement, but in a 2005 study of 67 regime changes over the previous 33 years, nonviolence had a higher success rate (Karatnycky).
• If violence can impose higher costs, why choose any other method of challenge to oppression and injustice?
The idea should be to come out further ahead with a method, not just to come out ahead of the opponent. If I gain $50 but spend $49, my gain is $1. If I gain only $10 but spend only $3, I’m further ahead. Those who do the demography of war show us wars that gained victory for one party but cost millions of lives, billions of dollars, a massively damaged environment, huge human costs of rehabilitation and care for the injured, and both individual and social psychological costs, with far lower costs on the nonviolent side (Sharp, 2005). The costs of overthrowing Milosevic were for some cell phones and bumperstickers, t-shirts and press releases.
No one even did any long prison sentences nonviolently resisting him and he was toppled.
• Can nonviolence impose different costs than can violence?
Nonviolence cannot draw blood or it no longer qualifies as nonviolence. Nonviolence can destroy an investment climate by boycotts and strikes (Sharp, 2005). Violence can destroy everything. Nonviolent force both demoralizes and converts opponents, causing loyalty shifts more surely than does violence, which usually—but not always—increases resolution and defensive commitment (Popovic, Milivojevic & Djinovic, 2006). When negotiation convinces a violent opponent that the nonviolent challenger does not intend to destroy the oppressor but will never cease in imposing costs until the oppression lifts, space can open up for a victory (Lynd & Lynd, 1995).
• What are the long term outcomes of the two methods, that is, are there any significant differences?
Real measurement of the metrics of civil liberties and human rights in the aftermath of regime change show a significant but not inevitable advantage to nonviolent methods (Karatnycky, 2005). Further, violent conflict has a longer trail of vulnerability to the resumption of hot conflict as the result of a triggering action (Darby, 2001). The overwhelming costs to women and children of most modern warfare, in which civilian casualties are higher, is enduring (Mertus, 2000).
• Which is faster?
This is highly situational and contextual (Zunes, Kurtz & Asher, 1999). It took Gandhi from 1919-1947 to free India from British rule using nonviolence. It took decades to free Guatemala from a string of military dictators and juntas. It took four days to liberate the Philippines using nonviolence in 1986. A military coup can happen in hours. There are no firm conclusions here (Sharp, 2005).
• Which is cheaper?
Nonviolence. In every case, people power is simply not capital intensive. Net victories are far less costly with nonviolence (Ackerman and Kruegler, 1994). Even preparing for violent conflict is massively expensive (Sivard, 1996).
• Which method is more natural for humans?
In some situations, violence seems quite natural for humans, and in others, nonviolence is almost intuitive. Risk assessment and collective memory about atrocities affect the conditioned responses (Gregor, 1996; Groebel & Hinde, 1989; Grossman, 1995).
• Which method entails more risk?
Risks are highly situational and are mitigated along with potential rewards. Paying others to engage in violence is only risky to an economy. Imposing costs using nonviolent methods such as boycotts or sanctions can be risk-free (Swiss Confederation, 2001). Both methods can be mortally risky.
These are not moral considerations, but all ethical and moral choices have psychological components (Teichman, 1986). If you kill my daughter as collateral damage in an otherwise just war, do you think I’ll stop feeling overwhelmingly hurt by you and eager at some level to see you suffer? If you do, you have a higher opinion of me than I do of myself. The descendents of those British defeated and evicted by Gandhi seem positively favorable toward India but still quite nervous about Germany. Some argue for mixed methods (e.g. Evans), but one might also argue that such methods expose the nonviolent actionists to more risk than the violent actors face in some cases (Weber, 1996). Indeed, in the case of the Zapatistas, it is clear that the Acteal Massacre of the nonviolent parishioners was in revenge for those nonviolent resisters refusing to repudiate the violence of the Zapatistas. Research into collective memory shows passive-aggressive behavior repeatedly in human history.

References
Ackerman, Peter and Christopher Kruegler (1994). Strategic nonviolent conflict: the dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers.
Darby, John (2001). The effects of violence on peace processes. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.
Evans, B. Revolution without violence. Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 21:85–94
Gregor, T. (Ed.) (1996). A natural history of peace. Nashville TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
Groebel, Jo, and Robert A. Hinde (1989). Aggression and war: Their biological and social bases. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Grossman, Lt. Col. David (1995). On killing: The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Karatnycky, A. (2005). How freedom is won: From civic resistance to durable democracy. New York: Freedom House.
Lynd, Staughton. & Lynd, Alice. (1995). Nonviolence in America: A documentary history (2nd ed.). Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books (original 1966).
Mertus, Julie A. (2000). War’s offensive on women: The humanitarian challenge in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Bloomfield CT: Kumarian Press.
Popovic, S., Milivojevic, A., Djinovic, S. (2006). Nonviolent struggle: 50 crucial points, a strategic approach to everyday tactics. Belgrade, Serbia: Centre for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies.
Sharp, Gene (2005). Waging nonviolent struggle: 20th century practice and 21st century potential. Boston: Extending Horizon Books.
Sivard, Ruth Leger (1996). World military and social expenditures 1996. Washington DC: World Priorities.
Swiss Confederation (2001). Targeted financial sanctions: A manual for design and implementation. Providence RI: Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies.
Teichman, Jenny (1986). Pacifism and the Just War: A study in applied philosophy. New York: Basil Blackwell.
Weber, Thomas (1996). Gandhi’s Peace Army: The Shanti Sena and unarmed peacekeeping. Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press.
Zunes, S.; Kurtz, L. R.; & Asher S. B. (1999). Nonviolent social movements: A geographical perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Gandhi v the dragon

"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him."--J. R. R. Tolkien (pictured)

The dragon of structural violence is what Gandhi wrestled with as he sought justice via the methods that would create the least misery for all. So, while he eschewed violence entirely, he used methods that caused loss of income for some back in England, and, I might add, loss of income for many in India at a few points too.

But he did something that those who commit violence can never do. He went directly, in person, to those most affected, and explained it to them in detail and apologized for their losses. He did that when he asked village headmen, employed by the British government, to quite their jobs as he sought to make India ungovernable. He did that most amazingly and innovatively by insisting that when he traveled to England to negotiate with the government of the empire he stayed in the poorest neighborhoods most affected by his boycott of British cloth, the Manchester mills working class section. He earnestly outreached to them in person, told them about bonfires burning British clothing, and they loved him. There is no record of anyone doing such a thing in human history of conflict until then. Impossible with violence. The enemy general going door-to-door to explain why he needs to kill your son? I don't think so. It was flat-out creative, brilliant, and successful. He told them about the dragon in India, the crushing poverty created by British extraction of human and natural resources, and they understood that he was only trying to create more justice with no violence. They accepted their hit, literally, smiling. Astonishing.

Gandhi and khadi--the original spinmeister.

A strong moral oak in our human ecology

(James Lawson then and now)

In late 1959, as most of the United States snoozed, politically, safe and secure in the knowledge that we represent the creator of modern democracy and the pinnacle of freedom and human rights on Earth, James Lawson began an insurrection. Although many in monochromatic America could not conceive of anyone challenging the rule of the majority as anything other than a dupe of the commies, James Lawson was training young people in the art of nonviolent combat so they could, in fact, strengthen our democracy.
Democracy is more than two cats and a mouse deciding what's for lunch.
And so Lawson, a young minister from Pennsylvania who had studied and taught for three years in India, began to train young black and white students in Gandhian nonviolence in Nashville, Tennessee. Jim Crow segregation had been legalized in the South beginning with the Supreme Court decision Plessy v Ferguson in 1896, which had lasted until nonviolent civil resistance by Rosa Parks began the process that resulted in Brown v Board of Education in 1954.
"December 6, 1955, is the day I heard about the Montgomery bus boycott," said Lawson in an opening speech to the Fletcher Summer Institute 20 June 2010. "I was in India and it was front page news. It gave hope to millions around the world." It was civil society rising up to gain human rights and that struggle became Lawson's and he came home to help lead it. "The bus boycott lasted 381 days and it did not begin with the use of the word nonviolent," said Lawson. Rather, it was a natural upwelling of the longing for justice by the most powerful and most legitimate means at hand. Only gradually did the movement acquire the Gandhian theories of mass action, stamping civil society struggle with its own improvements and adaptations.
"I didn't learn to sit-in from studying Gandhi," said Lawson. "That had been used by CORE and others, and we decided to start with that in Nashville." The young Congress of Racial Equality had used sit-ins in restaurants in Chicago and elsewhere beginning the late 1940s, but when Lawson decided to apply that technique in Nashville, he took another element from Gandhian struggle, from the salt plant campaign, when waves of satyagrahis came to the gates and were beaten down, showing the world the brutal injustice of British rule in India.
"So when we did our sit-ins," said Lawson, "we had 600 trained to engage and they did that in waves, like the salt manufacturing challenge in India."
Taking the best from one campaign, stitching it together with the best from another campaign, and framing it to fit perfectly into the self-image that Americans had created of themselves in that day was a public policy stroke of pure genius that proved itself victorious quite quickly. The first Nashville sit-in was in February 1960 and by April the mayor of Nashville, Ben West, had told the irresistable resisters that they were right and that Nashville should and would desegregate.
"It was scientific," said Lawson.
Indeed it was. And of course he was keying off of the subtitle to Mohandas K. Gandhi's autobiography, which was The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Humankind at its best operates just like this. Put together pieces of the puzzle in new ways, create something new out of disparate components and study the results.
We are still learning from James Lawson and I was so privileged to shake his hand and join a standing ovation when he finished. It was so fitting when Jack DuVall, President of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, announced the new James Lawson Award for Nonviolent Achievement, which will be given annually beginning 2011.
I was nine years old when Lawson started his Nashville experiments with truth and I'm an oldster now. Lawson still stands like a strong oak in our human ecology. I pay great tribute to him for helping America to live up to her ideals and I offer his model to our nation now as a curative for the national need to be strong yet civil, as we continue to engage our own democracy and work to make it better. Lawson still shows us the path forward.

Clothes down the occupation: Gandhian freedom fashion

Gonsalvez, Peter (2010). Clothing for liberation: A communication analysis of Gandhi’s swadeshi revolution. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

The connection of homespun cloth—khadi—to India’s liberation is well known. But the progression of Gandhi’s increasingly radical dress and the communication elements and effects are documented and evaluated in Clothing for liberation: A communication analysis of Gandhi’s swadeshi revolution by Social Communication professor Peter Gonsalves (Salesian Pontifical University, Rome). For scholars of semiotics, social movements, nonviolence and Gandhi, this is a welcome addition to the ever-growing oeuvre of Gandhicentric analysis.
Gonsalves organizes his analysis in five sections. First, the overview and amazing statistics of Gandhi’s prolific output as assembled under the initial order of Nehru into the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, the sweeping blockbuster (or at least wheelbarrow buster) of 100 volumes of Gandhi’s writings, averaging 500 pages each. From his study of this and of other Gandhi scholars’ analysis, Gonsalves concludes that Gandhi “was convinced that only a communication strategy that was methodologically planned, hermeneutically relevant, creatively symbolic, morally disciplined, geographically extensive and founded uncompromisingly on satya [truthfulness] and ahimsa [nonviolence] would succeed” (p. 2).
Second, Gonsalves examines Gandhi’s fashion evolution through the lens of the theories of Roland Barthes, French cultural analyst, structuralist and semiotician. Key to this set of connections is the synthesis and illumination of the structuralist approach as “its fundamental tenet lies in its attempt to study not just the elements of a whole, but the complex network of relationships that link and unite those elements” (p. 50). In a cascading exegesis of what Gandhi’s choices denoted and signified, we see clothing communicating at several interlocking levels to a wider and wider cross section of India’s masses.
Third, Gonsalves turns to the tools and theories of cultural anthropologist Victor Turner for a view of the diachronic socio-psychological implications of the symbols Gandhi grew, from his political thinking about swadeshi to his definitional social drama. Gandhi spinning and Gandhi wearing fewer and fewer items of clothing drew him closer to the masses and his careful communication of that produced a nonviolent one-two punch that surprised an empire.
The British Government considered Gandhi’s switch from politics to social work just another new obsession. Only in 1930, when it became evident the khadi campaign was a part of a larger political struggle against the Empire, did the Government wake up to the consequences of Gandhi’s symbolization. But by then it was far too late to stop the rivers of men and women in white khadi walking courageously to manufacture salt at Dandi on 6 April 1930. Moreover, salt, a new symbol of freedom from the English yoke, was born (p. 82).
Fourth, Gonsalves directs the lights of symbolic interaction theory as offered by Erving Goffman to scrutinize the coherence and ever-sharpening resolution of the rhetoric and performance of Mohandas Gandhi. How did Gandhi conceive of his people as performers in his epic battle and how did he prepare and deploy them? How did his self-assessment coincide with his intentions for his nation? His first series of great battles was internal, waged concomitantly to the social struggles. “His desire to bring his exterior self in line with his interior principles was far from easy. It took him nearly 33 years” (p. 96).
Finally we come back ‘round to Gandhi himself to his unique ‘approach to symbolization.’ As he rejected the symbology that had been coopted to oppress his people he discovered his own symbols, drawing deeper, from the ‘bottom of society’ (p. 125) to an overarching purity that was irresistible and motivational to people supposedly noted for their fatalism and acceptance of poverty and oppression. As he shed accoutrement, he came into sharp focus to the millions in hundreds of thousands of villages, eliciting their loyalty based on identification with a champion, their hero.
Using western scholarship to evaluate Indian messaging is instructive, offers welcome connections, and is simultaneously suspicious, though the foreword by Keval Kumar asserts that the more worn path of identifying Gandhi’s clothing choices in the context of the spiritual evolution toward the Hindu sanyasi is inadequate. What Gonsalves gives us are the nonverbal communication theoretical elements that can see the fabric of Gandhi’s strategies synthesizing the spiritual, political, strategic and communication master into his holistic liberatory leadership over decades.
There are some hints at why it took so long for the liberation of India despite Gandhi’s national leadership and abilities to rouse the nation. For example, his decision to call off the huge hartal [stop work] and satyagraha struggle that began in 1921 and had made such amazing progress. On 22 February 1922 a crowd of approximately 2,000 in Chauri Chaura burned 22 police to death and Gandhi not only fasted five days in penitence for his self-perceived role in prompting the mob, but called off all protest, was promptly arrested and charged with sedition 10 March 1922, and essentially challenged the British judge who next presided over Gandhi’s trial to either resign the bench and join the struggle or sentence him to the maximum. Judge Broomfield played his part, acknowledging Gandhi’s special status and then indeed sentencing him to six years. Violence—historically regarded as the quick way to win—set back Gandhi’s efforts again and again. Despite his astonishing communication abilities, he was either forced to—or was too fast to—shut down campaigns when any violence broke out anywhere.
Gonsalves contributes a firm piece of scholarship to the study of Gandhi’s life and how he became the message. Just as “there is no way to peace; peace is the way,” (attributed to A. J. Muste) Gandhi’s very appearance became his message. His semiotics of struggle were remarkable in that they enmified no one, just poverty and oppression, while appealing to everyone, including those called enemy by others, to feel the friendship in seeking truth and nonviolence. His words are measured by the hundreds of thousands and ultimately his nonverbals were quite important and can be seen in just a few small but highly important symbols, from his scant diet to his scant clothing. His stage presence to his people and the world is exegeted deeply in this valuable volume.

Fashionable nonviolence

(Gandhi in London with Manchester women whose textile jobs were threatened by his call for spinning and khadi)
Looking at successful nonviolence you don't find many images of sinister, threatening, hard-edged individuals. Our image is usually soft, colorful possibly, and invitationally friendly. Even when we are most directly clashing with the opponent we have an undertone of humanity that suggests we are not a physical threat to the safety of anyone.

Thus, even though Gandhi's campaign for homespun cloth was hurting British textile manufacturers then unable to sell as much to Indians, Gandhi chose to stay in the workingclass neighborhood when he visited London following the 1930 Salt March and Salt Satyagraha. He was there in London to meet with Parliament, take an audience with the king, and negotiate in a Roundtable specially on the India question.

Gonsalves (2010) analyzes Gandhi's nonverbal communication in the context of his associated actions and finds a mutually reinforcing dynamic: "The very practice of satyagraha showed extreme media awareness. News coverage of the dramatic scenes of unilateral violence by the Government against submissive, nonviolent satyagrahis made extremely sensational stories for worldwide consumption" (p. 18).

What were the semiotics--the cultural meanings of symbols and signs--surrounding his choice of clothing?

They were nothing short of freedom.
(Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi on July 6, 1946)


Nehru was the one dubious about the efficacy of Gandhi's nonviolence and was impatient and scorned almost every Gandhian initiative--until they worked, at which point he participated. Nehru reluctantly went along with Gandi's nonviolence and his ambivilance can be seen in his dress choices--lingering British influences and less Indian commoner. Nehru didn't mind some khadi as long as he wasn't the spinner and as long as he could be stylin' between cultures.

Gandhi, on the other hand, was sure of the powerful imagery, strong connective fabric, and deep weave of his garments of liberation. His choices recruited the millions by instilling pride and showing humility and yet identification with the Indians who toiled and suffered under both the British and their Indian puppets.

Our symbols and signs--often reflected first in our dress--are our first impression and either recruit and reduce fear or alienate and draw repression based on fear (or the ability to manipulate the citizenry into fear). In the 1960s the hippies were nonviolent but Abbie Hoffman made it political and questionable, and the Yippies were attacked as violent subversives by police whose methods were rarely rejected by mainstream America. The playful dress of the Yippies seemed frightening to average middle Americans who had survived World War II and really just wanted a stress-free and comfortable existence. The wild side symbology of Yippie dress was too nervewracking for Americans and a violent response was acceptable. When Abbie Hoffman posed casually with a gun, all the buttons were pushed.


References
Gonsalvez, Peter (2010). Clothing for liberation: A communication analysis of Gandhi’s swadeshi revolution. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.