Nonviolent Econ 101 (aargh!)

From Schindler's List to Paul Nitze's creation of the National Security Agency to the received wisdom that the way out of an economic depression is to go to war, we are immersed in that assumption. War is good for business. Fix up your economic problems with a good war.

Not so. In a piece in Dollars & Sense, Heidi Garrett-Peltier (research fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, pictured paddling)

argues that an economic recovery for working people, for the middle class, is going to rely not on war but on peace conversion.

Jobless recovery? No wonder. From Garrett-Peltier:

"For each $1 billion of spending, over 17,000 jobs would be created in clean energy, close to 20,000 in health care, and over 29,000 in education. That same $1 billion would create only 11,600 jobs as a result of military spending. If we look at well-paying jobs, those that pay over $64,000 per year, these alternative domestic spending areas also outperform military spending. The same $1 billion would create 1,500 well-paying jobs in clean energy and just over 1,000 in the military—clean energy creates 50% more good jobs than military spending. Education, which is labor-intensive and creates many well-paying jobs per dollar of expenditure, creates close to 2,500 jobs paying over $64,000—that’s 2.5 times as many as the military."

But, we wonder, how can we maintain the disparity between us and the world if we stop controlling markets militarily?

We can't. And we shouldn't. We are long past the time when we should stand down with violence and stand up for nonviolence. Yes, Nonviolent Econ 101 tells us we are going to have to learn to live on less, materially, but was our lifestyle so bad before we became rulers of the Earth?

And yes, it's true, we cannot quite know, since the US was founded on violence and land theft, as well as slavery and its stolen labor. That formula--obtain cheap human and natural resources by violence or the threat of violence--is the logic of the pirate. We need to grow up and give up those ways and learn to live in peace and justice.

Nonviolent Economics is complex and far beyond the meager capabilities of this old hippie professor. It is a lifestyle, a lifetime, and a collective discussion that precedes action. Last evening little Alexa and I prepared a tiny garden plot, planted some freesia bulbs, and then planted three calico magic beans. The tiny garden space at Whitefeather Peace House is meant to be part of Nonviolent Econ 101, as are most Catholic Worker communities (with whom we identify, at least in part).

We talk about the great Portland program of Food Not Lawns and hope that, one day, Whitefeather folk can carve out enough time to approach someone in the neighborhood with too much lawn and negotiate a sharecropper deal--we garden part of it and we leave part of the produce for the owner.

This 'locavore' ethic is Gandhian, after all, his swadeshi campaign modernized to also account for the other piece of the war economy--the link to oil. Stop the massive transport of food and you delink war from eating, a fairly basic Nonviolent Econ 101 step. Pictured is a bonfire of British clothing, a real and symbolic destruction of the British control of India, and the precursor to spinning for independence.

Bill Hartung also wrote a germinal piece on military spending and employment, noting the poor track record of the F22 military program in particular. And the overall growth in militarization of the US economy can be seen in this chart:

Time to end the Jolly Roger School of Economics and go Gandhian. We may never totatally succeed, but the goodwill and independence of such Nonviolent Econ 101 trends would do a great deal for our image abroad and our self-image.

Ronald Reagan and the advent of nonviolence

Where Jimmy Carter had been trying to tie human rights to other issues of foreign policy way on back in the 1970s, Ronald Reagan stopped all that and began to overtly and prodigiously support those who John Kennedy quaintly called "son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." This meant that the 1980s, the Reagan Era, was when the people of much of the world became rebellious toward the despots that the US was supporting.

Some chose violence. In El Salvador, that meant that the guerrilla, the so-called vanguard of the people, were also terrorists along with the US-backed military government (or thinly veiled, military-controlled, government). Same in Guatemala.

Some chose nonviolence. In the Philippines, People Power overthrew a dictator who had been backed for about a quarter century by the US. In Iran, same thing.

It looked like the US was losing ground, but the main opponent, the Soviet Union, had far fewer reserves and lost ground faster. They collapsed for a number of reasons, but the final stages were all nonviolent noncooperation from within.

Of course, in the US and still the case, the Reaganistas claimed the victory. But the Russian people attended to their own overthrow, as did the people of the various republics within the erstwhile Soviet Union. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the open borders first at Hungary, and the overthrow of Soviet puppet governments were done with nonviolence, not by any violent threat.

So the great robbery of the US national savings to create a massive arms buildup did little or nothing in this regard--indeed, the increasing supply of arms to those dictators who turned around and crushed labor unions (urban and farm) and who made sure that environmental laws were non existent or not enforced all generated more resistance.

So, in the end, Ronald Reagan's military spending made the world react more generally and more profoundly to throw off these puppets (as well as reject the Euromissiles and nukes in general in Europe), and most of that liberation was done with nonviolence. In a perverse way, his skewed and sad priorities helped promote nonviolence. We cannot thank him for that, but it is at least instructive to think about what hypermilitarism can cause, as we see it still.

Reference

Zirker, Daniel (1999). The Brazilian Church-State crisis of 1980: Effective nonviolent action in a military dicatorship. In Zunes, S.; Kurtz, L. R.; & Asher S. B. Nonviolent social movements: A geographical perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

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.

Nonviolence and nature

How realistic is the notion that nonviolence with nature is a path we should seek?

It is far past time when our species should be listening to the wisdom of the United Nations Environmental Programme and its post-conflict assessment units; finally, humankind is beginning to at least monitor and begin to remediate the damage done to the soil, air and water from war.

Turns out that nonviolence with our fellow humans is the most major step toward nonviolence with the Earth. As UNEP notes, "Since 1990, at least eighteen violent conflicts have been fuelled by the exploitation of natural resources, and many countries continue to face significant development challenges relating to the unsustainable use of natural resources and the allocation of natural wealth. Although environmental factors are rarely, if ever, the sole cause of violent conflict, the exploitation of natural resources and related environmental stresses can become significant drivers of violence."

And so the global conflict map on the UNEP site reveals a swathe of hot conflict and associated environmental wreckage linked to conflict over resources. Thus, a positive feedback loop with negative consequence is the result of conflict over resource and its resource damage. Unless we learn to value the ecology we are stuck in that sad and downward spiraling dynamic.

(Jinin refugee camp)

Thus the ancient nonviolence of at least some of the Stoics, of Jesus, of the Buddha and of the Jains turns out to be the practical way forward. Who knew? Doesn't this make the ascetics who consume such few resources and value peace seem prophetic?

Indeed, in her reflections on the 50th anniversary of Gandhi's death, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire noted that, "For many people, this ancient wisdom of the heart, the wisdom of nonviolence, may seem too religious and too idealistic in today's hard-headed world of politics and science. But I believe with Gandhi that we need to take an imaginative leap forward toward a fresh and generous idealism for the sake of all humanity. We need to renew this ancient wisdom of nonviolence, to strive for a disarmed world, and to create new nonviolence cultures."

Peace heals the Earth and a healed Earth provides for so many more people. Thus is conflict avoided, if we but have the wisdom to know and practice nonviolence.

Tx for the disease of war

We live in a war culture and we are about to pony up our annual tribute to that culture on Tax Day, since more than half of our annual taxes go straight to some aspect of the military.

War is the disease that is killing our culture, our economy, our ecology, our educational integrity and our collective spirit.

What is the treatment? Where is the pill? The surgery? The diet plan? The exercise regime?

The paradox is that each piece of the cure is tiny and the cumulative connected effects are systemic.

Recycle. Vote. Bike. Install solar panels. Lobby for nuclear disarmament. Join in mass nonviolent demonstrations. Hold your elected officials accountable. Teach children peace. Do random acts of kindness and compassion. Spend your money on sustainable goods. Bring cloth bags to the grocery store. Take risks for nonviolence. Learn de-escalation techniques. Contribute to organizations that work for peace and justice by peaceable means.

Oh, one might say, that's just a Band-aid. You can't cure a terminal disease that way. You need sweeping change.

True.

And are those people willing to wait until that wondrous day of nonviolent revolution, when all those systemic changes will sweep across our culture, our society, our academy, our religious institutions, through our Congress and wash all violence out of our military in a Great Nonviolent Tsunami of Goodness?

Gandhi wasn't willing to wait. MLK wasn't. Dorothy Day wasn't. No nonviolent leader was ever willing to wait. They had an endless series of smaller and larger actions, each one a reform by itself, with a never-ending and transparent agenda of nonviolent transformation of society.

That is the difference between reform as a Band-aid and revolution as a cure. It is not waiting until massive sudden change can produce some kind of nonviolent nirvana; it is the everyday actions of the true nonviolent revolutionary. Pushing the envelope, educating oneself and acting accordingly, and never ever stopping in the perpetual push for more nonviolence and against violence.

This is how we hope. Gandhi was a karma yogi, an action practitioner, and even when his actions were on behalf of some group of workers in one town trying to gain more justice, he devoted himself to that. Dr. King died working for more justice for garbage haulers in Memphis. Dorothy Day fed a few homeless.

And the activities of our nonviolent revolutionaries were so much more, so complex, so challenging systemically, that I believe the revolution will come softly on little rabbit feet, the result of the small things, the endless efforts, and the iron determination that we will resist militarism and violence in a dialectical relationship so that the militarism will not change us and we may transform the militarism.

Only when we 'accomplish' something and cease our efforts in a self-congratulatory retirement from nonviolent revolution as a life mission do we cease being revolutionaries and earn the Band-aid reformer pejorative. Enough small actions can prepare the way for large and sweeping changes--changes that were only made possible by the daily smaller acts.

Waiting for massive, sudden change is how we guarantee it will not ever arrive. Like the Filipina nuns who faithfully taught and trained nonviolence for 10 years, inputting this knowledge and gaining commitment, they actually achieved two amazing, transformative results in February 1986, when the people came into the streets and the world watched them gain true democracy and stop a civil war, all with the nonviolence they had been learning.

This is a lifestyle of nonviolent revolution, not a sudden effort. That is the challenge, that is the treatment, and that is the cure for the disease of militarism.

Seeing through the lies of violence

If you practice nonviolence, you tend to favor transparency. Peace is open; war machines benefit enormously from secrecy (the military covered up the My Lai massacre--hundreds more than just these two poor Vietnamese in photo--for as long as it could, just as it covered up the 2007 massacre of civilians in Iraq until this past week).

And so ecological damage, civilian death, loss of civil rights and human rights, and even major disasters quickly are wrapped in the cloak of "national security" and you no longer have a need to know.

Democracy, on the other hand, is predicated upon having an informed electorate. How is voting and accountability meaningful without transparency? Indeed, there is an inverse relationship between violence and democracy, violence and transparency, war and an informed electorate.

Does this mean all government records should be open to all? Of course not. Any government records that pertain to any individual who is not a public official are private, not public, information and need to be closely guarded.

But the days of "you need to shut up about what the military says because they know more than you and we need to follow them" should have gone by the boards when the Founders wisely put the elected civilian leader, the President, in charge of the military.

Sadly, because military secrecy is indeed necessary when we decide we have enemies we need to crush, transparency is lost. And that works out very well for war profiteers, because they can act with impunity in nearly every way if we are in a state of fear and we believe the only ones who can defend us are the armed forces.

It is indeed pretty much a consensus amongst those who theorize, study, and practice nonviolence that transparency is the ideal and that even in the midst of the most serious nonviolent conflict transparency is almost always the rule and certainly lowers costs. All this is precisely the opposite of violence, which should again reveal the natural connections between nonviolence and more robust and healthy democracy--and show again the disconnect between violence and democracy.

I'd like to do what Sam Day did in Madison, Wisconsin, when he invited police to nonviolence trainings in preparation for the resisters getting arrested. That level of transparency is so very healthy and cuts way back on incidents of police violence against resisters.

In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan we sent out media releases whenever we planned to dismantle the US thermonuclear navy's survey through portions of four state forests in preparation for expanding the command facility. We copied the sheriff. That is transparency that worked quite well to recruit support and sympathy from all, even though it meant that we risked arrest more directly. This is a risk we took willingly.

(secrecy for military bases, even when people drinking the migrating pollution in the groundwater develop cancer, as though they have no right to know)

Deming, Burrowes, Zunes, Sharp, Lakey and other theorists all include transparency as a component and concomitant to nonviolence. It simply makes more sense, though it would be wrong to claim consensus. Phil Berrigan and some others were fairly secretive, which they deemed necessary to the Plowshares movement. I chose to experiment toward more transparency and it worked very well toward gaining the community trust so necessary to convincing my fellow citizens that my acts were reasonable.

Without making it into a fetish, I'd propose that transparency should be considered a necessary ingredient in any successful nonviolent campaign.

Lean but not mean

The war machine is grotesquely bloated and it is shamefully mean. It takes and takes and takes and just when we have suffered unprecedented loss, it takes more.

The Cost of War website is rapidly approaching the $1Trillion mark, and this is just for the wars since 2001, not for the war machine that operates to make these wars possible. The War Resisters League budget chart shows the obscene level of military spending above and beyond war; this opportunity cost is why our various budgets are suffering, including education and environmental protection.

Peace is skinny.

Peace is hungry.

Peace is malnourished and yet blooms healthy anytime it's given a chance.

Peace is lean but not mean.

Peace is overpraised and underfunded. War is condemned and overfunded.

Let's start to live our rhetoric.

I'm getting to be a geezer; I'll be 60 this year. I can't run anymore with my bum Achilles tendon, but I can still bike. I got rid of my car years ago as a bad bet for peace. I'll bet on bikes.


When I lived in the country, I couldn't bike 50 miles to work in the snow and I focused on driving a fuel-efficent car while making sure my cabin was superinsulated and solar heated alongside the ubiquitous woodstove.

Was this activity a hardship? No, it was simply minor accountability as an educated human who understood the connections between resource consumption, war, and individual participation. I had many friends who did the same or whatever their own mix of conservation and efficiency might have been. Indeed, we had a group for years we called People Attempting Self-Sufficiency, PASS. We held annual Energy Fairs to showcase alternatives, and people flocked to attend. I've added some images from our resident artist, Francene Hart, and invite you to check out her other art.

The spirit of helping, of living appropriately, is always ready to be fostered and engaged. It doesn't work to be self-righteous, but it does work to bring the information to your fellow citizens.


Connecting nonviolence to conservation is an easy thing and this is part of going on that diet America's been promising itself for so long. Of course with oil it's like we've been binge drinking at the same time, so we need some really serious methods of drying out and getting right with all those we've hurt. Once Americans understand this, we can begin to make ourselves loved and respected not for our big military but for our big hearts and helpful honesty.

Nonviolence struggles toward meme status

When I suggest that humankind has out-evolved cannibalism, slavery, the divine right of kings and other noxious notions, and that therefore we might someday out-evolve war, some students balk at the idea.

After all, they correctly point out, all those things still exist and they might come roaring back to dominate our social norms globally someday.

Correct. This is exactly why changing and maintaining social norms is a perpetual upkeeping effort, not something that can ever be "resolved for good."

As Barbara Ehrenreich described persuasively in her book Blood Rites, war may out-evolve humanity. It is a powerful meme, existing almost as a super-parasitical idea that, if not guarded against constantly, will kill off its host. Its host is humanity, after all, since the only other species that wages war is the occasional species of ant, and ants will never destroy the atmosphere and soil and water by blowing off 'sophisticated' weapons of mass destruction that will cause nuclear winter. Humankind will out-evolve war or it won't matter once war out-evolves humanity and winks out alongside the wink out of humanity.

So our choices are to settle in for the struggle or roll over and give up. Allowing the war culture to continue is to give up, because there is simply no more unsustainable human collective activity than war. Yes, war has been around for thousands of years and is natural. But it has come to an unnatural stage since July 16, 1945, the testing of the first atomic bomb, aptly code-named Trinity.









Since that moment humanity has been racing toward two outcomes and we now sit at a crossroads.

One outcome is a war system that consumes us. War in the 20th century consumed more human lives than in any other previous century and the war machine now consumes human lives by both direct violence and the rapid consumption and pollution that is killing the ecology crucial to humanity's survival.

The other outcome is a peace system that is characterized by a massively complex and interlocking human ecology of peace institutions and values that can help humanity avoid war and the war machine that is so threatening to all of life. Nonviolence has evolved in the past 104 years from a nice notion of individual witness to a mass strategic phenomenon that can replace violence as a social conflict management tool.


The research is showing that our global war machine is approaching the tipping point of radical unsustainability and nonviolence is coming in as the most effective and least costly mode of social or group-to-group conflict management. We are in the crosshairs of choice; we can continue or we can die. We can out-evolve war or we can let it consume our civilization.

Those who call for a peace system are simply the new realists and those who claim war is forever are woefully naive. War cannot sustain and out-evolving it is our single greatest evolutionary challenge. If peace is the new meme that we learn to sustain, we win. If war wins, we lose. It's simple, and yet infinitely complex. We see it or we see nothing.

Plowshares the nonviolent Che Guevaras?

Though he was brilliant and brave, Che Guevara was sadly misinformed and mistaken in his revolutionary theories, which attempted to generalize the lessons learned in the foco uprising of a tiny rural-based armed resistance in Cuba begun in a very minor way in 1956 with most of the estimated 5,000 war dead occurring in the 1958-59 period. Those lessons told Guevara that he could go to other developing countries as they decolonized and form small rural bands of revolutionaries that would be supported by the people and who would be able to topple colonial powers or domestic thugs supported by imperialist foreign powers.

It was called the triggering theory, or foco.

It is arguable that this notion has cost more lives in Africa, Asia, and South America than any other idea. Universalizing his theory--based on urban uprisings led by the armed vanguards of Marxist-Leninist theories, but substituting popular armed groups "in the mountains" instead--he hit the road to bring this great news to all oppressed people. Even though he was killed in the attempt in 1967 in Bolivia, his theory was spread so it could give hope and then crushing losses to so many.

But the idea did work, after a fashion, in Cuba. Part of the concept was inspiration and it doesn't take a large group to do that. What Guevara failed to see was that you must hit precise notes to generate inspiration, and those notes must be timed exquisitely. His ideas were crude, as are many new notions.

I'd suggest that Plowshares actions (original Plowshares Eight in photo), when done in certain ways at certain times, can serve an analogous function, inspiration and a spark to recruitment.



But they need to be framed properly and tirelessly explained. They need to be explicitly and undeniably nonviolent. Transparency and personal accountability are also requisite characteristics. But without the repeated explanations, they will fall flat. The sacrificial nature of such actions will be easily dismissed by mainstream citizens if they somehow associate Plowshares actions with violence or religious lunacy, but if they can be characterized successfully as actions undertaken by regular folks who are simply passionately willing to sacrifice to protect others using methods that never hurt people, that can be powerfully touching to some.

Some have charismatic spokespeople who can generate public sympathy and support.

Some have popular members who can spark lower level actions.

Some put on a world-class trial that persuades many of the correctness of their activities.

And some of us are just dogged. I am not a charismatic speaker. I am not a moral leader. What I did that helped our cause was that I wrote an article or a letter to the editor every day while I was in jail awaiting trial and in the months of incarceration following conviction and sentencing. Friend Mike Miles sent me a list of media addresses and I was disciplined about being sure to write one a day, sometimes more.

Most of these letters or op-eds were printed, I believe, launching many local discussions and generating some interest. So there are many ways in which the sacrifice offered by Plowshares can be used by a movement to make gains. Wasting this is not helpful to either the movement or the resister. The tip of a spear is of no value without the heft of the shaft, and the little tip of Plowshares people in jail and prison means little in a practical sense unless a movement can be brought to action by the sacrifices and appeals of the resisters and their allies.

Working to make a strong contribution of every style of nonviolent resistance is how the best organizers pick up followers and supporters. The willingness of Plowshares resisters to risk 18 years in prison (longest sentence to date) can be used to help activate folks and should be. All nonviolent actions should be integrated in the most helpful fashion into the overall campaign to shut down some piece of the war machine. It has been done and should be done more.

Nonviolent training without trainers

Nonviolence trainer George Lakey


Decades ago writing teacher Peter Elbow wrote a little book, Writing Without Teachers. Many of us of a certain (advanced) age have participated in such groups, and it involves lots of groupwork and feedback and iterative steps. Some of us who engaged in one or more such writing groups have written a fair amount since, in part due to his method.

I'd like to posit that groups can also do that with nonviolence in its various forms.

Do you want to learn Rosenberg's nonviolent communication? Get the book and organize a group who meets regularly to practice, critique, and learn from each other.

Do you want to prepare a campaign to shut down a nuclear power plant? Get any number of excellent books, choose one at a time, and develop a regular process of reading, discussing, and creating components of a campaign. Fold pieces of the theory in as you organize and act. Gandhi called it experiments in truth and the groups that learn as they organize are operating in a dialectical theory-practice environment that is quite rich.

The trainerless training



Do you plan to do your first group act of nonviolent resistance? View the DVD A Force More Powerful and prepare. Role play and evaluate. Help each other develop a code of behavior under duress and continue to role play that duress until you feel more natural in your responses.

If you choose a low level action with anticipated light consequences you can put your trainerless group into play with low risk and high chances for learning good lessons. Reality is a great teacher if you take the time to reflect together and fold your learnings into your next plan.

I had the opportunity to participate in some trainings years ago with George Lakey and I appreciated and learned from his method, which I characterize as 1-2-3. That is, take one part frontload, two parts role play, and three parts debrief.

How would this work for a trainerless training?

One person would take, say, one minute to describe the scenario that she had thought of before the meeting.

The roleplay itself would time out at two minutes.

Then the group would talk about it for three minutes.

The stress on evaluation is exactly opposite of many groups' approach. Many take three parts prep, two parts action, and perhaps one part (or almost no parts) reflection and evaluation. I have come to believe this is backward. I think the Lakey method is best.

If we continue to incorporate both the theoretical and experiential learnings into our trainerless trainings, I think we can advance steadily and productively. Reading Lakey, Sharp, Deming, Zunes, Ackerman and DuVall, Burrowes, Kurtz, and many more nonviolent theorists can help the group advance. Watch James Lawson (photo)
and Bernard Lafayette in A Force More Powerful as a group and learn together. Don't wait until you've read all the theory to engage in action and don't engage in successive actions without integrating the theory and learnings from case histories.

Or, as my old friend Larry Dodge used to call it, "inching along on the broad front." We learn by doing, yes, and we learn from books, yes, and we learn from outside experts, yes, but none of those learnings is enough. Bring them all together and your group learns the most the fastest. Leave out the outside experts and you can still progress with great certainty.

You have the expertise you need if you are curious and humble, daring and reflective. The world needs your participation in advancing humanity's movement toward nonviolence and you can start without gurus. You and your friends can train yourselves, starting whenever you decide.

Rocks and reeds in the river of conflict

The Buddhists I know are nonviolent. Indeed, many are nonviolent actionists.

Some who cite Buddhism as an excuse not to be activists might learn from the activist Buddhists.

The rock in the river is eroded while the gentle reed bends and survives.

This is what some say to justify inaction.

But Buddhists who artfully practice compassion find themselves eminently human in self-determination by evolving from rock to reed as the times warrant that. Native Americans called this ability to morph shape shifting or skinwalking. Darwin called it evolution. Ecologists call it adaptive management. Educators call it iterative learning.

I am a rock some days and a reed some days. Both are nonviolent if we cast ourselves into those roles with a spirit and intention of nonviolence. Neither are nonviolent if we take up these identities as either hateful oppositional or pliant compromising with evil.

Choices are the core of humankind's unique mission on Earth. Choices about methods of conflict management where few species make choices that rise above instinct. Choices about consumption and methods of gaining access to resources that we can make in the limbic grasp for more or the cerebral evolution toward enlightened self-interest and compassion for all beings.



Today I am a reed who hopes more educated ones will move me with their flow of reason and enlightened thought.

I am planning my next morph into the rock in the river of militarism; the Pentagon is starting their annual abduction of elementary school children to military bases under the recruitment program masquerading as science education and called Starbase. Perhaps I'll be pulverized by the torrent of the war culture. Then may the grains of sand be carried to an ocean of love and compassion.

peaceëcesis (liken to life)

The Greek word ecesis is used by ecologists to describe the pioneering phase of recolonizing a traumatized zone with life. It could be post-volcanic eruption, post tsunami, post cliffside collapse or in the wake of glacier retreat, for example, when life has been scoured from some zone, large or small, and life begins to return.

Sometimes that needs to happen post conflict, when peace and human values have been scoured away with repeated violence and atrocity, with blood of the innocents, and with the terror and rampage of crimes against humanity.

Each piece of sterile mineral in nature must be slowly recrafted by a complex of forces during ecesis, forces such as the freezing and cracking, flaking and pulverizing of the mineral base so that some bits of nutrients are made available to pioneer species, usually microscopic, who can transform such bits into life when aided by sun and moisture. Perhaps some lichen can first affix themselves and begin to grow and, in another microscopic fashion, continue to granulate the monolith into usable flakes that feed the first life.

When that life passes on, it composts. When birds fly over, they deposit feces rich in nutrients. Then seeds on the wind or in the water may take tentative root and the first small shrub can grip the rock, roots probing cracks and feeding off the small collection of nutrients, made larger with every decomposing fallen needle that earned its way by extracting nutrients from the sun and even the fog in the atmosphere.

When a nation, a region, or even a city has been flattened and abused by war, and when the bloodshed included children and other innocents--as it always does--how may we help foster peaceëcesis (which I am coining and defining as a first set of steps back toward a peace system or an ecology of peace)?

Desmond Tutu asked that question following decades of brutality committed against his people in South Africa and he created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I believe his method is crucial, even though what he did was far from his ideal vision, as he had to bend to the will of many parties, many stakeholders, competing for advantage, vengeance, impunity and power immediately following the nonviolent end to apartheid. The core of what he started is how we begin to recover.





I think ultimately this will prove true in the Balkans, in the Great Lakes region of Africa, in the Middle East, in the Americas, in northern Ireland, in the Caucasus and in South, Central and East Asia. Research will show this, eventually, just as it has shown that our other elements of nonviolence are more adaptive than the adversarial, command and control methods of the military. We might call his peaceëcesis process a peace ecological production of liken through an erosion of hatred.

The new realism

We who hold that nonviolence is a better way to manage conflict than is violence are often labeled touchingly naive, dewy-eyed idealists who don't understand how power works. Get real, is the curt dismissal.

Exactly.

So, how's that violence workin' out for ya?

Our economy is in shambles after pouring such enormous amounts of money into that model. We seem unable to counter the power of the lobby we've both given in to and grown by increasing spending on war.

Our ecology is trashed daily by the war machine in multiple ways, not the least of which is global climate change. The single largest consumer of fossil fuel on Earth is the Pentagon. The single largest source of Superfund sites is the Pentagon and its contractors. The single largest consumer of many strategic metals and other valuable nonrenewable resources is the war machine.

Violence is literally and figuratively a dead-end. It wins few friends and produces millions of enemies.

Gandhi's method looks more and more like the new realism. Did he make mistakes? Lots of them. Did his method take a long while? Yes. Did it produce a virtual nirvana for the people of India once they were an independent nation? Not at all.

And yet, in balance, and by asking the counterfactual and comparing to other struggles, we can see his method offers humankind a practical alternative to violence.

One of Gandhi's greatest discoveries was hartal, the cessation of work. When this is done on a mass scale, with commitment, it is even more effective than a strike, since it actively courts the opponent toward friendship and good faith rather than making an effort to crush him. He gave it up just when it was working because some of his people were starting to use violence. This was an error. Gandhi was pure, yet expecting that purity from millions across a diverse land suffering under oppressive and exploitive occupation was his flirtation with dysfunctional unrealistic demands.

As a nonviolent leader, Gandhi should have condemned the violence and declared the perpetrators as independent actors and not as allies or fellow liberation fighters. Then he should have redoubled his call for hartal across the land, and he should have done that with an attitude of great optimism. Had he done that, India would likely have achieved independence more than 20 years before it actually did.

That was easy. Second-guessing 90 years later is exceedingly easy. But it's also helpful in several ways.

One, it suggests that Gandhi was so effective with hartal that it had more power than we now credit it.

Two, it follows Gandhi's call for a review of his experiments, much easier to do at our great remove.

Three, it says that Gandhi was realistic and almost succeeded. His method won many smaller and more local campaigns and would have likely won India's independence by the mid-1920s had he continued it and also developed other prongs to his campaign.

Four, it gives us a tool and some lessons about it now. We can use it to greater effect if we understand how it succeeded and failed in the past.



References
Wolpert, Stanley (2001). Gandhi’s passion: The life and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. New York: Oxford University Press.

Second-guessing Gandhi the flinty-eyed idealist

We who hold that nonviolence is a better way to manage conflict than is violence are often labeled touchingly naive, dewy-eyed idealists who don't understand how power works. Get real, is the curt dismissal.

Exactly.

So, how's that violence workin' out for ya?

Our economy is in shambles after pouring such enormous amounts of money into that model. We seem unable to counter the power of the lobby we've both given in to and grown by increasing spending on war.

Our ecology is trashed daily by the war machine in multiple ways, not the least of which is global climate change. The single largest consumer of fossil fuel on Earth is the Pentagon. The single largest source of Superfund sites is the Pentagon and its contractors. The single largest consumer of many strategic metals and other valuable nonrenewable resources is the war machine.

Violence is literally and figuratively a dead-end. It wins few friends and produces millions of enemies.

Chernus (2004) writes about the alternative in the US: "Since the 1960s, scarcely a day has gone by in which a nonviolence movement did not play a significant role" (p. x). Gandhi's method looks more and more like the new realism. Did he make mistakes? Lots of them. Did his method take a long while? Yes. Did it produce a virtual nirvana for the people of India once they were an independent nation? Not at all.

And yet, in balance, and by asking the counterfactual and comparing to other struggles, we can see his method offers humankind a practical alternative to violence.

One of Gandhi's greatest discoveries was hartal, the cessation of work. When this is done on a mass scale, with commitment, it is even more effective than a strike, since it actively courts the opponent toward friendship and good faith rather than making an effort to crush him. He gave it up just when it was working because some of his people were starting to use violence. This was an error. Gandhi was pure, yet expecting that purity from millions across a diverse land suffering under oppressive and exploitive occupation was his flirtation with dysfunctional unrealistic demands.

As a nonviolent leader, Gandhi should have condemned the violence and declared the perpetrators as independent actors and not as allies or fellow liberation fighters. Then he should have redoubled his call for hartal across the land, and he should have done that with an attitude of great optimism. Had he done that, India would likely have achieved independence more than 20 years before it actually did.

That was easy. Second-guessing 90 years later is exceedingly easy. But it's also helpful in several ways.

One, it suggests that Gandhi was so effective with hartal that it had more power than we now credit it.

Two, it follows Gandhi's call for a review of his experiments, much easier to do at our great remove.

Three, it says that Gandhi was realistic and almost succeeded. His method won many smaller and more local campaigns and would have likely won India's independence by the mid-1920s had he continued it and also developed other prongs to his campaign.

Four, it gives us a tool and some lessons about it now. We can use it to greater effect if we understand how it succeeded and failed in the past.

Back in the day it was thought best by Quakers to be nice, to be nonviolent, and to not fight back. The Dukobars, the various other Anabaptists, some strains of Islam, some sects of Buddhism and some pockets of philosophical pacifists just took it, suffered for their ahimsa, and presumably prepared for heavenly reward later. Then Gandhi put teeth into pacifism and muscle into nonviolence. It has taken us 100 years or so, but we now begin to see that it is the force of the future. Reviewing Gandhi and others and trying to learn how to do it better in the days to come will make the method more and more effective. Second-guessing Gandhi is now a part of Security Studies almost as much as it is Peace Studies. Good. A dose of Gandhi realpolitik is what those dewy-eyed naive violent warriors need. Soon.

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

Using children as human shields

Aside from the deliberate targeting of a children-rich environment by terrorists--hitting the Murrah Building in Oklahoma (by a US Gulf War vet) with its daycare center, hitting a school, blowing up a pizza parlor or a wedding--there is no more despised practice in war than using children as a human shield. When Hamas or al Qa'ida does so, they are condemned roundly and loudly.

And yet here in the US we have Starbase, the Pentagon program that brings little children, as young as five, to military bases from their schools. Seriously, the military goes into the grade schools and abducts the children and takes them to military bases.

In Uganda, Joseph Kony abducted school children to serve in his Lord's Resistance Army. He's a war criminal and the world is aghast at his practices.

In Guatemala, during the civil war, the military bombed villages full of children and then came around on forced conscription drives, just taking boys and young men for the army. The world was horrified (of course much of it was funded by the US during Reagan's regime, so our connections grow).

Starbase is funded by the military recruitment budget and is plainly a path to indoctrinate children, to saturate their impressionable consciousnesses with a militarism so pervasive it's like fish looking for water--they don't see it because they live in it. We live in a militarized culture and we say we hope for peace. We live in a society that funds the largest global network of military bases in human history and we say we want to bring peace to the world. We teach our children to resolve problems with negotiation and conflict resolution and then we allow the military access to these children and we allow them to take the children to their bases.

Am I exaggerating? Do I ascribe diabolical intentions to those who have only good intentions toward our children?

In one sense, yes. We have no Joseph Kony-style operations in the US. I use his example as a hair-raising end-of-the-road fright, to illustrate the bottom of a slippery slope.

But I adamantly and correctly challenge us to stand up--for once--to the increasing militarization of our culture, of our society, of the very institutions we associate with peace, such as our elementary schools. When Osama bin Laden explained to the world how he could justify targeting US civilians in the World Trade Center he said all US civilians were targets because we all pay for the military that he perceives as attacking Islam. Hold that thought.

When the US military attacks terrorist training camps, do we include madrassas identified as jihadist indoctrination centers? Are there times when we've bombed schools that we have decided teach anti-American messages to young Muslims? If it comes to light that we've done that, is that defensible to Americans? What if those students turned out to be a mixed group with some quite young?

Starbase violates what should be a blood-brain barrier between children and the military. No matter how groovy their curricula, no matter how chipper their instructors, no matter how sensitive and gender-inclusive their website, it still is an unacceptable relationship. Get the military out of the schools, especially for heavens sake the elementary schools, and absolutely keep the children off the military bases, period.

To learn much more about this, please join the Facebook group Communities for Alternatives to Starbase Education.

bipartisan warmongering

So many liberals were so excited to elect Barack Obama. Even if we don't get it all fixed, at least we'll be starting to clean up the mess and we'll be going in the right direction.

More than a year out, it's looking like Bush in blackface, Cheney only charismatic instead of Darth Vaderish, like the Al Jolson version of Rummy the demanding warmonger. No, Barack Obama is not making a personal fortune off the war machine, as did Cheney and Rumsfeld, two of the lowest public officials to ever disgrace the national scene. And no, he's not manufacturing lies to gin up more wars--so far. But in all important indices, Obama is failing.

Environmentally, he's cleaning up fewer Superfund sites (21 per year) than did George W-Is-For-Waste Bush (38 per year).

Afghanistan has gone from a mucked-up minor debacle into the hellhole that is consuming Americans and Afghans alike.

The military budget is on the rise instead of dropping--indeed, much higher than the Bush record levels, now up to $1.03 trillion.

The bankers were paid off first and Goldman Sachs got the last remaining riches with the astonishing $12.2 trillion aggregate stimulus and bailout.

Job creation has come last and the working class is hit harder than ever. There is nothing left.

Nuclear power--dead and gone--has just gotten CPR from Obama.

His health care plan isn't passed and it wouldn't cover all Americans.

How many other ways could he possibly anger his base?

What base? Who is left? African Americans? They are 12.4 percent of the population.

Obama's only hope for re-election is Sarah Palin or some other know nothing whose idiocy may be so profound that voting for Obama is purely defensive against something so putrid it cannot be thinkable.

Is this the country so worth defending it takes more money than any military ever has in history? It seems the less there is to defend, the more the Pentagon demands--and gets--to defend it, whatever it may be. Indeed, that is the correlative that ought to be telling us something.

Sy Hersh seemed to think last week that if Obama decides not to run for another term, we will see some actual political courage. Hope he makes his move soon. There is no more peace dividend. Jobs cannot be created with nothing but debt and thin air. He can look under every picnic table but he's not likely to find the clean up money needed to begin to address the stacked-up Superfund sites. We will not leave either Iraq or Afghanistan on terms favorable to the US. I doubt the decision about one or two terms is still Obama's to make. I think his policies and political spinelessness have made his choices for him.

One of the principles in the field in which I teach is that you prepare to compromise on everything--except principle. Give away material things. Give away prestige. But don't violate your tenets or you'll start to lose big. This is what has happened to Obama. He may still have a fun time as president, but I doubt it.

It's going to be a long way back and he is not the person for the job--I'd love to see Barbara Lee or Dennis Kucinich. With Obama's bailout for nuclear industries he's finished off that chapter. If he would understand that he's one term he might try to do a few things right.

Followership, fun, and the forces of evil

Stephanie Van Hook shared this video about leadership.

Thanks, Stephanie!

The basic lessons from this enjoyable video are:
1. Don't be afraid to do what you think is worth doing.

2. Don't be afraid to join someone doing something unpopular but worthy.

3. If someone joins you, embrace them.

4. Encourage others to join you.

5. Treat everyone as equals.

6. Don't glorify leadership.

7. Feel good about following.

When the Berrigan brothers burned draft cards, it came out of a new paradigm. They had a few followers--seven of them--and when they went into the Catonsville, Maryland draft board on 17 May 1968 they did an action so bold, so exciting, so new and so powerful, that they went from lone nuts to leadership.

Dozens of other individuals or groups across the US emulated them. Their model became known as the draft board raids. The Minnesota Seven, the Milwaukee Fourteen, the Camden 28, and many more groups piled on, helping to grind the Selective Service to a crawl.

Phil was the team captain, square-jawed and athletic, a nonviolent John Brown battling the forces of evil with uncompromising good, on the offensive and then standing resolute and ready to take the consequences. I just called him the Sargent Rock of the movement. No Fear. Never Back Down.

Daniel was the pixie literati, adroit and playfully prayerful, offering metaphor and perspective, the leader who transformed the model to poetry and used language like the nonviolent rapier. It was he who best told us why all of them took their actions.

Together they complemented each other and offered an invitation that so many could not resist.

Twelve years later, they did it again, on a different expression (nuclear weapons) of the same evil (war and militarism), when they went into a bomb factory in Pennsylvania and hammered on the nosecone of a warhead, hammering that nuclear sword into a plowshare. It was real and it was symbolic and it was a metaphor, once again, we could all understand.

The Plowshares Eight

There have now been more than 100 Plowshares actions around the world, but more importantly, those actions have themselves often started or enhanced mass movements that really have made progress in fighting war and the weapons of war. One of my favorites was Stephen Hancock's at Molesworth AFB in England, when he wore Micky Mouse ears "to present a friendly silhouette."

"If I can't dance," said Emma Goldman, "I don't want to be part of your revolution."

The dance for peace and justice continues...


Phil kept up the beat until his 2002 death at 79.

Nonviolent competencies: Eliciting co-leadership

My friend Carie Fox is one of the top transportation/environmental public policy mediators in the country. She came to my class one evening and brought along one of the top Oregon Department of Transportation officials. Carie put a set of sticky notes all across the front wall of the class, and each one was one piece of the process by which decisions were made at ODOT. She and the official explained the process, which was based in part on the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act.

Then Carie explained how that command-and-control process generated resentment, opposition, lawsuits and a contentious process.

Then as she talked she started rearranging the sticky notes, taking the public input elements and putting them into the line much earlier, telling us why at each stage.

When she was finished, the ODOT official said that now ODOT decisions seem to start slower, but actually finish faster, and with good results, since the public is involved meaningfully much earlier. "The best move I ever made was to hire Carie Fox to consult," said the official. "I hired her for one problem, but she immediately said the real problem was our order of decisionmaking, and she redid it for us. That fixed many of our problems, not just the one I hired her to troubleshoot."

Building consensus by a facilitative and elicitive model is hard, but worth it in so many cases. It is one of the nonviolent skills that can help prevent conflict in the first place, and better resolve it with a transformational model once it does break out.

Sheroes for peace

Men have fought wars for thousands of years, acting as if it were legitimate. There have always been women questioning and opposing such a destructive method of managing human conflict.

Men who make war have been valorized and held up as our heroes--history books are skewed heavily toward them. Women who make peace or stand in opposition to war have been brushed aside, or, if they couldn't be dismissed immediately, were ignored by history books written by men.

This is to offer some small note of appreciation for just a few of these sheroes for peace.

Jane Addams, founder, Hull House, president of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, pacifist, Nobel Peace Laureate

Joan Baez, singer for peace and justice, promoter of nonviolence

Elise Boulding, co-founder International Peace Research Association, peace activist, led Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, created Inventing a World Without Weapons

Helen Caldicott, founder, Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament

Dorothy Day, pacifist, founder of Catholic Worker movement, jailed many times for peace

Carrie Dann, Shoshone nonviolent Native rights activist

Barbara Deming, peace writer and activist

Mary Dyer, Quaker martyr for nonviolent assertion of freedom of religion

Randall Forsberg, Mother of the Nuclear Freeze

Emma Goldman, anarchist and convert to nonviolence

Jean Gump, Plowshare resister

Julia Butterfly Hill, treesitter and the largest war tax resistance ever

Dolores Huerta, co-founder, United Farmworkers Union, co-leader of immigrant and farmworker's rights nonviolent movement

Kathy Kelly, founder, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, pacifist prisoner for peace

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese leader for nonviolent liberation, Nobel Peace Laureate

Barbara Lee, Congresswoman who alone voted for peace after 9.11.01

Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Laureate synthesized environmentalism, women's rights, peace

Elizabeth McAlister, co-founder, Jonah House and Atlantic Life Community

Margaret Mead, anthropologist, challenged notion that war is our only natural option

Sr. Anne Montgomery, Plowshare resister many times, accompaniment activist for children in hot conflict regions

Lucretia Mott, abolitionist advocate for nonviolence and women's rights

Alva Myrdal, disarmament proponent, Nobel Peace Laureate

Michele Naar-Boertje Obed, Plowshares resister, Christian Peacemaker Teams

Diane Nash, co-founder, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Civil Rights leader

Alice Paul, nonviolent resister for women's suffrage

Rosa Parks, Civil Rights nonviolent resister, inspired the 1955-1965 nonviolent Civil Rights movement

Jeannette Rankin, only Congressperson to vote against entering WWI and WWII

Jodi Williams, Nobel Peace Laureate for her leadership banning landmines

Helen Woodson, Plowshare resister

This list is a barebones beginning and could go on for a good long while. Please add your own.

References

Green, Monica. Women in the antinuclear movement. 2007. In Stassen, Glen Harold & Wittner, Lawrence S. (Eds.) Peace action: Past, present, and future. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. 89-100.

On civil disobedience

"Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. It is one of the primary methods of nonviolent resistance."
--Wikipedia

The following (without corrections) are from the Quote Garden:
Dare to do things worthy of imprisonment if you mean to be of consequence. ~Juvenal


Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one. ~Chinese Proverb


Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it. ~Albert Einstein


No radical change on the plane of history is possible without crime. ~Hermann Keyserling


When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders. ~Veterans Fast for Life


It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. ~Voltaire


If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. ~Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849


You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it. ~Malcolm X


Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason. ~Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion


Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. ~Mark Twain


Integrity has no need of rules. ~Albert Camus


If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable. ~Louis D. Brandeis


Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool. ~John J. Miller, And Hope to Die


Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices. ~George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists


Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." ~Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Why We Can't Wait, 1963


We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong.... There are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them. ~Alexander Bickel


It is necessary to distinguish between the virtue and the vice of obedience. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911


I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. ~Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849 (photo below)














As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever. ~Clarence Darrow


It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. ~Edmund Burke, Second Speech on Conciliation, 1775


I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. ~Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress


Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime. ~Martin Luther King, Jr., March 22, 1956


If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. ~Bishop Desmond Tutu


It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. ~Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And a few others I believe should be learned:

Upon leaving court, just convicted for the act of burning Selective Service files taken outside from the Catonsville, Maryland draft office on 17 May 1968:

"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise."
--Daniel Berrigan, SJ (photo of Dan and his brother Phil burning files of young men going to be drafted to fight in Vietnam)







Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
--Mohandas Gandhi (1938 photo)

We are all targets now

The news analysis these days is filled with embedded war reporters from Afghanistan whining incessantly on behalf of the soldiers there who are laboring under rules of engagement so strictly designed to protect civilians that 'our' warriors are hampered. The effects of being embedded are so clear. The reluctance with which any value is placed on the bodies that house the hearts and minds that we claim to be winning is telling. The Pentagon's propaganda machine is switched On 24-7.

What? Propaganda emanating from our own armed forces? Isn't their business to defend the country?

Actually, as many have noted, we've had a military takeover occurring in slow-mo for a long time. The funds spent on military propaganda in 2009 alone ranged about $4.7 billion repeat Billion, according to the Washington Post, 5 February 2009. This is more money than the Pentagon sends to our perennial major military aid recipient, Israel. We should expect mainstream media to be increasingly warped by this pressure, and we see that.





One exception is Seymour Hersh, mainstream media writer for The New Yorker, with breaking stories to his credit that go back to exposing the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam, first telling us about the torture at Abu Ghraib prison, and much more.



We heard him speak in Portland the other night and, sure enough, a military PR flak burst out at the end of his talk with whatever version of Tourette syndrome they are trained to have. He started with laying out his fighting man cred--tours in Iraq and Afghanistan--so that we were all in awe of his willingness to serve freedom. Then he needled Hersh for not reporting on the "good" being done by the military who have invaded, slaughtered, occupied and installed puppet governments in the Middle East and Central Asia. Hersh defended himself a bit but never mentioned that this Pentagon propaganda mill is Out There, infecting and affecting public discourse.

Your heart and your mind are targets of this background blitz that blogs, embeds, writes op-eds, fetes and profiles and manipulates reporters, leans on editors, steers experts and advertises long and hard in movie theaters and on billboards. Your children are prime targets, high value hearts and minds, and everyone on Earth is now in their propaganda crosshairs.

Do not let them invade, occupy and colonize our hearts and minds. Defend us. We are all targets and thus we are all on this battlefield. We can all be warriors for nonviolence, putting the light of hope on the harsh glare of violent attack.

I refuse to use violence, but I do not cede any words or phrases to the military. This is my language, words are my only weapons, and they do not own the concept of "warrior," nor "battle," nor least of all "defend." Indeed, I offer a synthesis of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., as a slogan that we might consider:

By any nonviolent means necessary.