Dear Inner Judge: You're fired

Can we stop judging one another? Probably not; it seems to be fairly ingrained in our mental processes to judge other people. I believe I've witnessed other people who are not judgmental but it's certainly something I struggle with. Conflict is not only fueled by judgmental attitudes, it is further exacerbated by faulty, unfair judgment.

If my partner wants more affection than I'm giving her, she is 'needy and dependent.' But if I want more affection than she is giving me, then she is 'aloof and insensitive.'

 (Rosenberg, p. 16)

Setting aside our Inner Judge is, for most of us, a task that feels artificial, yet can help enormously in our conflict de-escalation. It removes us from the charge of hypocrisy or oppressor and slowly helps us build authentic relationships based on unconditional respect for the other's humanity.

Psychologists describe the fundamental negative attribution error, made by many of us when we contextualize and thus excuse our own actions or the actions of those we intend to defend; circumstances left me with no option except this behavior. He shot the man because he was afraid for his own safety. They rioted because they want justice.

However, when another engages in the same behavior we are more likely to attribute that negative behavior to the very nature of that person. He is white--just his nature. She is black--that behavior comes naturally to her. He is just a nasty guy; she is just an inconsiderate woman. The misattributions can be group-based or individually dispositionally oriented, but the effect is the same. I screw up and it's not my fault; you mess up and it's due to your flawed nature. It is not merely a heuristic --shortcut-- process; it makes us happier, says research findings.

This does not mean we use no judgment; we should be quite certain of our principles. But they should relate to behavior, not to the essence of another's humanity--love the sinner, hate the sin.

Dunbar, et alia (2014), found in their study that one way to mitigate this faulty but tempting logic is to train on a computer game named MacBeth. Education about this is great, but actual training creates those neural pathways that can change our options when we are faced with decisions we used to make almost without thinking about them. Training ourselves to recognize and reject the attribution error and other flawed thinking can professionalize our response to conflict to some degree.

Most of us need some of this training, whether via a computer game, or intentional reflection and education, or through group exercise. If we could fix this we might have a happier family, a more just and deliberative workplace, cops that didn't murder unarmed people, and even war. I'd say it's worth some effort.

References

Dunbar, Norah E., et al. "Implicit and explicit training in the mitigation of cognitive bias through the use of a serious game." Computers In Human Behavior 37, (August 2014): 307-318. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed December 4, 2014).

Rosenberg, M. B. (2003). Nonviolent communication: A language of life (2^nd ed.). Encinitas CA: PuddleDancer Press.

How to stop police murder

Police were just legally cleared of criminal conduct by a grand jury, of murdering yet another unarmed African American, Eric Garner, a New York city man who was choked to death by an illegal chokehold. Cops were encountering no physical resistance from this poor man, choked out on the sidewalk while he was being filmed saying plaintively, "I can't breathe." This was clearly murder to any objective person viewing the horrific nightmarish scene of 17 July 2014. Garner was unarmed and unresisting; his murderers are unindicted.

Unarmed, unresisting, pleading for a simple breath--Eric Garner murdered by NewYork city cop

The various groups demanding justice for this seemingly sickening unending number of outright murders of unarmed citizens (who have been mostly African American men, some African American women, and some people with mental health presenting problems) seem to be dividing amongst those who favor "working within the system" and holding legal vigils, or, those who favor rowdy demonstrations confronting cops, and starting to use some minor violence. The latter seem now to be working up many justifications for self-defense violence, signaling a possible escalation, since cops have been violent all along.

Those who are violent will lose. Those who only hold legal demonstrations will lose. Rather than these two proven losing strategies, what might actually gain some ground?

First, the principles of strategic nonviolence, in general and some more specific:

• Commit to absolute nonviolence (you don't want to have to continually revisit this).
• Commit to victory.
• Initiate the campaign with a small group of strategic thinkers.
• Decide how to decide (again, you do not want to endlessly change how you make decisions).
• Begin inviting leaders and independent individuals into your strategic circle, refining your campaign to a goal you can all support and one you all believe you can win in three months or faster (after which you declare your next goal and repeat).
• Once your base coalition is large enough to impress the public, announce it and invite others to join.
• A victorious campaign will be a multipronged campaign, not just public demonstrations (e.g. civil court, criminal court, legislative, executive power, cultural events).
• A victorious campaign will seek to cause loyalty shifts amongst the police, not cause them to close ranks and ramp up violence out of fear. 
• A victorious campaign will ceaselessly train to be sure nonviolence is a tactical commitment that is constant and steady and cannot be thwarted by provocation from police (or their agents).
• A victorious campaign will work harder on media than on the actions themselves. Each action will get much more positive exposure by a major commitment to media work (mainstream, social, alternative, print, digital, radio, television). 

High risk actions taken by a handful of people with great numbers of supporters can boost recruitment.
Violence done by any party will backfire. Violence done by the movement will excuse the violence done by cops, even if the cops start it. Violence done by cops will backfire if it is met with complete and documented nonviolence. Is it fair that cops have a lower standard than do movements? Of course not. If it were all fair, no struggle would be necessary.

The idea behind refusing to use defensive violence has nothing to do with justification. By normal American values, it's fair, excused, and justified. It will never be portrayed as such and never accepted by the wider public as justified. Acceptance by the wider public is key, especially when it's time to activate another prong of the campaign.

High risk actions undertaken by those with outstanding nonviolent discipline will reveal the powerful contrast between violent police and nonviolent movement people. When you have determined that sympathy is high, launch the low risk elements. Perhaps a work slowdown, or a symbolic walkout, or a consumer boycott, or a sick day--some mass action that carries little or no risk as you have calculated it. Take advantage of the outrage felt by the general public when they first consider the shooting or choking or beating of your initial unarmed victim, then the additional outrage they feel when you are dignified in your civil resistance and still get arrested for occupying the mayor's office. That is the time to call for simple, doable, low/no risk mass participation.

It is at that crucial time you start to win. You cause a divide in the elite, which used to look like a monolith but now is divided, since your mass action is costing a portion of them increasingly. That is when they call you to the negotiating table and you can make serious gains.

This formula is not new. Gandhi used it. The Danes used it to withstand Nazi occupation, as did the Norwegians. The Gold Coast masses used it to evict the colonizers and rename their country Ghana. Southern Rhodesians used it to create Zambia and freedom for all. The Filipinas used it to evict the US, depose the US puppet Marcos, and stop a civil war that was about to launch. Rosa Parks and the bus riders won in Montgomery using this method and black South Africans won their freedom using this method. None of these struggles were identical in any way except they broadly followed this method. So when I hear, "It's not your grandmother's Civil Rights Movement, " I know they need to assess if they are stating the obvious--no two struggles are identical--or if they have chosen another losing strategy.

Please, let this movement win. Each time police murder another unarmed person it is just heartbreaking and feeds more pain, fear, hatred, and possible retaliatory violence. For this movement to win, it must grow. For it to grow, it needs to follow this general, proven path to victory. If anyone wants to lead us toward this, please sign me up and invite me.

Doing the work of the owner class

It is in the interest of the elite owner class to have police be highly intimidating, which can only happen if they use violence often enough to be a credible deterrent to those who seek a more equitable society. That violence needs to be justified. When protestors are 100 percent nonviolent and are assertive but not aggressive, police violence is not tolerable to the wider public and serious nonviolent activists know this.

I can almost picture the directives issued to the agents provocateurs:

• Riot
• Scream with rage
• Throw things
• Shut down mass transit 
• Break windows
• Accuse anyone who tries to keep it peaceful of being a sellout
• Shove media crews
• Threaten cops

 All these tactics alienate the average person and make them more grateful for cops, more likely to excuse police brutality, and far less likely to feel further sympathy for victims of police violence or for claims that police violence is systemic. All these tactics freeze the development of a movement and ultimately can even roll back advances made when the movement was strictly nonviolent.

Ferguson. Was this done by rioters or agents provocateurs to alienate protesters from general public?

The movement seeking justice for Michael Brown and seeking reform in policing in the US is mostly nonviolent, which is making some advances possible. To the extent the movement features the behaviors listed above, it stays relatively small. Yes, it's national, but it's generally far smaller in each locale than it could be. The movement needs to succeed for the good of us all.

In honor of the innocent ones

On 25 November 2014, the Albina Ministerial Alliance--the association of African American ministers in Portland, Oregon--held a rally to stand with the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri who are protesting both the shooting of unarmed young black man Michael Brown and the failure of the Ferguson grand jury to indict the cop who shot him. I went because it was called by the AMA and I have respect for them.

I have no idea if the event is a one-off or if the AMA intends to build a movement to achieve a particular goal, since no goal outside of end the killing of citizens by cops was mentioned as a goal by the main AMA speaker. That is a great goal. It is calling for the deepest systemic change possible because no differentiation was made between armed and shooting victims who were then killed by police, knife or toy gun-wielding victims, and unarmed people who were killed by police.

It is legitimate to have that overarching goal, but in terms of recruiting sympathizers and activating the public, it is far more strategic to draw that clear line. Killing a gun-wielding suspect is a Bad Thing that will be seen as a shoulder-shrugging "tough luck" problem by much of the public. Killing an unarmed person is radically different. Lumping them all together is what the "radicals" want and it's what the police hope happens, since then the public will default back to the "too bad so sad" moment just before they go on about their lives.

Kendra James, 21-year-old mother of two

So this is my special honor of Jose Mejia Poot, Kendra James, James Jahar Perez, Aaron Campbell, and James Chasse. None of them were armed AT ALL (several others were shot dead carrying knives or toy guns). All of them were in some way afoul of the police and, amongst all of them, the reason for being afoul of the police involved exceedingly minor glitches, the most serious of which was the only white person, James Chasse, who was seen--gasp!--peeing in public into some bushes. Yet they all suffered what amounted to summary execution by cop. Were they all innocents? What kind of question is that? Of course not, none of us are. But they were all innocent of anything that approaches a capital offense in the US legal system. In that sense, they were all innocents.

There are thousands of facts, some relevant, some irrelevant, associated with each victim. I only want here to make that note. All have been murdered by police since I moved here in 2000. The first three--Poot, James, Perez--were killed because the officers claimed to be afraid, though none were armed. Really? No human Portland Police Bureau member has been shot this millennium (one poor dog was), but they have killed five unarmed people. Even the feds have noticed.

This is flat wrong. How can we stop this? Some ideas and I hope others come up with more and smarter possibilities:

• cameras for all officers that they cannot turn off and that instantly send recorded footage to both the police and civilian oversight for archives
• insist on ongoing de-escalation training (which includes mental health issues, basic nonviolent communication, "verbal jiu jitsu," and intercultural communication and conflict management)  for police, by initiative and referendum if necessary
• develop new contracts for police that make them legally culpable for any misbehavior
• a new law that requires a detailed paperwork for each time a gun is drawn

Each of these goals might require a campaign and each is achievable. If these are all completed and the problem doesn't stop, more measures would be needed. Do we want to face this again? Or is it long past time to fix this?

A novel approach to nonviolence: The Dandelion Insurrection

review: Sun, Rivera (2013). The Dandelion Insurrection: Love and revolution. El Prado, NM: Rising Sun Pressworks.

There are three types of novels about nonviolent power.

One, the sort that is essentially magickal, wherein nonviolence works because the author dreams it so, in a world that we all know would be so so nice but which is fantasy, a bit of "wet panties peace fancy." Walker.

Two, the kind that seems to claim real strategic power for nonviolence, but which uses violent threat as a sort of dark deus ex machina, a kind of "better agree with Martin or you're stuck with Malcolm" story, showing great imagination right up to the line of scrimmage and then bringing in the "realism" of violent insinuation. Callenbach. Starhawk.

Three, a tale that could well be quite real, based on the sort of Atwoodian extrapolative fiction and then the application of proven strategic nonviolent elements parachuted into a dystopian world ripe for either fatalistic surrender or go-for-broke unarmed revolution.

I've been waiting for that third category for decades, repeatedly disappointed, wondering if anyone would grow the chops for the task. Now, happily, Rivera Sun (who grew up during my waiting years) gives us this novel in this new genre. It is a masterpeace.

A young writer, Sun nevertheless rivals Kingsolver in her command over poetic use of figures of speech, action verbs, storyline coherence, and surpasses so many in her distinctive trilingual use of French, Spanish, and English--but which is eminently understandable to the essential American readers (monolingual American being a redundancy).

When corporations own government, when speech is no longer free, when work camps succeed the prisons, and when we have a real security state (in other words, about a half-step logically downward along our current slippery slope), we will have a fertile ground for uprising. Will it be a Tea Party Revolution in league with a Sagebrush Rebellion--an armed insurgency? Sun has other ideas and hers are the new domestic realpolitik. She foresees nonviolent force, building from a combination of experiential knowledge gained from our many cases with all their lessons learned and fed by an American sensibility of freedom and innovation.

The Man from the North produces his writings that touch people. He is nearly myth, but Sun lets us meet him. He's just a guy with a gift.

Zadie is his beautiful former sex worker romantic dream girl whose idealism matches his. Where he is at a loss, she is most effective. Where she cannot make progress, his talents move it forward.

Along the way, the people who have so many special talents enable the growing influence of their Dandelion Insurrection to waft on the breezes of rebellious communication and collaboration across the country, taking root in some fashion wherever they alight.

Can nonviolence save the US? Can we ever imagine that brown, black, white, red Americans could band together and end the slide into a corporatacracy of violence and destructive extraction?

Hint: Yes, and this story is the first realistic version. Sun uses the knowledge generated by the Civil Rights Movement, Gandhian actions, the Serb revolution, Cesar Chavez, Arab Spring, Serpaj, the colored revolutions, Gene Sharp, Stephen Zunes, Hardy Merriman, Jack DuVall, Maria Stephan, and Erica Chenoweth without every once straying into pedantic hortatory. The novel retains its imaginative storyline with an andragogical style so hidden it never gets in the way.

Get it. Give it. Lift it, hold it, blow its seeds to the winds of your social surroundings and allow the knowledge to ride wherever, to sprout all around us. Secret: you can get a signed copy by skipping the giant corporate bookstores and dealing directly: http://www.riverasun.com

ISIS crisis and j-frames

Why is it that our US citizenry has such different views of the ISIS crisis? Some want to bomb, some blame former [OK, technically Vice-] President Dick "Never Miss a War Profiteering Dollar" Cheney. Some note the inhuman nature of ISIS beasts who behead journalists, and others say that none of this would be happening if the US would not have invaded, occupied, and fake-democratized Iraq. Some news sources correctly note that ISIS is a terrorist organization, and is quite organized in both military and financial matters, and that they are not, in fact, a return to a Saddam Hussein-style secular strongman governance of a territory, but are a far worse option than Saddam ever was (even though they fail to state the obvious, that attacking and overthrowing Saddam by western forces was exactly what made ISIS possible, possibly inevitable).

ISIS fighters, 30 June 2014, Syria, Raqqa province (Reuters/Stringer)

Of course there is no single factor differentiating our opinions, but one factor is the practice of war journalism versus peace journalism. When war journalism frames are used, we look at current acts of violence, we learn that we are the victims and they are the perpetrators, and we look very little at the historical context that brought us to this terrible point.

Peace journalism frames give us all agency, seek to identify parties to the conflict who might have nonviolent alternatives that meet everyone's needs, and do not seem to build the case for vengeance.The history of the idea of peace journalism goes back to the 1960s and Norwegian innovative peace and conflict scholar Johan Galtung, although he didn't propose the names for the practices until the 1970s and didn't seriously begin looking at it in some detail until the mid-1980s. Now there is a growing body of actual research on his concepts, and increasing debates about the validity of pieces of his analysis. 

Some say peace journalism is just classically good journalism while others label it as advocacy journalism. In my view, the more correct view is to examine both his variables and his overarching ideas separately and then to modify how we think about these frames in a way that in fact meets the needs of human beings.

Good journalism as practiced by those identified in the advocacy media will certainly be justified in gatekeeping in favor of their goals. When I write a story that I hope will further the goal of peace with justice, I choose who I interview and choose which questions to ask them and which of their answers to feature. Is there any other way? The only alternative is to ask perhaps one open-ended question and then include the entire transcripted answer, which is how almost no one practices journalism. Media mediates. We deliver usable copy, digestible and addressing a limited number of reader/viewer needs. We will all gatekeep.

Good journalism as practiced by free press journalists is utterly objective and is open to all facts, reports on everyone's foibles and corruption and coverups, and seeks to offer the widest palette of possible options.

Most peace journalists would regard the reasoning of an ISIS member as driven by the history of the conflict, the imposition of structural violence by various forces, the cultural context, and would seek to establish a platform for empathy for that ISIS member, if not his actual practice. There is value in this, but it needs to be reconsidered, I think, by those who claim to see the utility of peace journalism. A far stronger frame, featured far more deeply and frequently, would bring in the voices of those who pursue nonviolent paths toward win-win solutions, both indigenous to the conflict region and from the expertise examining the conflict from around the world. This is much more in line with the field of Peace and Conflict Studies and with the aspirations and efforts of global peace movements.

We need more journalists who investigate from these two frame constructions. They need to seek out two bodies of knowledge and give them to us in readable, usable formats.

One, who are the people and organizations working for win-win nonviolent solutions on the ground in the conflict areas?

Two, what do peace scholars and high-level peace think tank and high-level peace activists recommend?

When our mainstream press begins to include more of this sort of journalism, we will see an increase in peace, a decrease in bloody mayhem, a transition from a war economy to a peace economy, a shift from a political war dynamic to a political peace dynamic, and a general elevation of the human spirit, environmental protection, and much more egalitarian prosperity. Journalism is important.

Reference List


Fahmy, Shahira, and Britain Eakin. 2014. "High drama on the high seas: Peace versus war journalism framing of an Israeli/Palestinian-related incident." International Communication Gazette 76, no. 1: 86-105. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed September 13, 2014).

Flipping social norms from violence to nonviolence

How ironic is it that the more violence is considered "a part of life" the more it is regarded as just a private matter when it happens between family members (Hsu, Huang & Tu, 2014)? In a deeply inquiring study of 13 familial dyads (parent-adult child) that experience diagnosed mental illness in the adult child and violence perpetrated on the aging parent, such violence is normalized and, at the same time, so shameful that parents who are victims rarely seek help.

Suggested de-escalation techniques point toward negotiation with intent for win-win outcomes. They also point away from giving in and granting a sense of victory to the violent. 

Indeed, are there subcultures in our society in which violence between loved ones is just "a part of life"? Is it so private that when it spills out of an elevator ride it takes several minutes and several witnesses to even assist the battered victim? No man will 'interfere' with Ray Rice as he stands around waiting for his fiance to regain consciousness following his brutal knockout punch. They all stand around, seemingly regarding her misery as a private thing between the mighty man and his property, his woman.  

There was no one around to de-escalate the two before the violence and it took months (from February to September) to seriously sanction Rice. He should be incarcerated and in rehabilitation treatment, kept separate from potential victims until he is not regarded as a danger. 

A deep degree of opprobrium, coupled with a clear societal intent to ultimately achieve a better method of conflict management, is needed and so difficult to achieve when controlled violence is what we expect from our football players, our cops, and our military. Rice probably thought that, since he rendered his girlfriend unconscious with one punch and didn't beat her much after that, it would be regarded as within the bounds of proper behavior for someone as big and tough and important as he is. Certainly that is what we forgive all the time with our police and we honor it when military attacks kill. Only the pesky peaceniks spoil the unanimity by pointing out the immorality of accepting "collateral damage" (murdered children and other noncombatants). 

Eric Garner, unarmed and never attacking anyone, murdered by New York cops

When violence is never ever heroic we will be a long way toward a nonviolent world. Our champions, our defenders, should all be nonviolent and never violent. This is a long struggle for far better norms, social mores that will lead to a world that works for all. 

References
Hsu, M., Huang, C., & Tu, C. (2014). Violence and Mood Disorder: Views and Experiences of Adult Patients With Mood Disorders Using Violence Toward Their Parents. Perspectives In Psychiatric Care, 50(2), 111-121. doi:10.1111/ppc.12028

Peace teams and EI

In our high-tech lives with phones distracting us and algorithms reading us, we realize that we are being manipulated by AI, by artificial intelligence. But what of the role of EI, our emotional intelligence? AI can help us organize a social movement; can EI give us the tools to build that movement and bring it across the goal line to success?

EI is the variable in research on mediation and outcomes that can mark the difference between success and failure. Learning to appraise our own and others' emotions, say researchers Michael Boland and William Ross (2010), gives us the edge.

Certainly persuasion is vastly improved when we channel and resonate with others while remaining self-aware. Guiding others back to what we commonly call rational behavior is made vastly more possible when we anticipate and recognize what will escalate and de-escalate others, and use both proactive and responsive methods to help them stay in their strongest cognitive zones.

In the field, when we are demonstrating our numbers and opinions, emotions can run high. If they spill over into dysfunctional expressions--dehumanizing, labeling, foaming rage and even violence--our movements can appear irrational, dangerous, and in need of control. If we can control our own movement and instead evince emotions that evoke empathy and resonance, we gain in public acceptance and participation. We make police look irrelevant at best, or positively unwelcome if they misbehave--rather than excused for misbehavior if our movement seems out of control.

Hence the need for peace teams with high EI, able to help the movement maintain control of the narrative by de-escalating or redirecting those who cannot manage to get a grip on their emotions in any adaptive manner.

Can EI be learned?

Speaking personally, EI is not my natural gift. I'm just an old hockey player from Minnesota who was trained in young to react with an adversarial, zero-sum approach to life in general. What my teachers made me realize, as I slowly entered the world of nonviolent social struggle, is that I can overcome my deficits by focus, by centering, by calmative self-talk. Sadly, for someone as pre-loaded as I am, I have to start afresh every time. Happily, I know I can get there. This is what makes me confident in the power of EI and nonviolence. My profound flaws can be overcome and so I am convinced anyone's can. We can reduce defensiveness, promote and provide empathy, and decrease hostility, all products of EI and all good for neutralizing threats to our movements.

I love working with folks who seem centered pretty much all the time, with an extremely high EIQ, so to speak, like being influenced by Gandhis and Kings. They are rare and we pretty much all love them. What I realize is that I can get there with preparation and for limited periods before backsliding to my natural low-EI condition. This is why I see so much hope in our ability to defuse hot rising conflict that imperils our campaigns.

Reference List
Boland, Michael J., and William H. Ross. 2010. "Emotional Intelligence and Dispute Mediation in Escalating and De-Escalating Situations." Journal of Applied Social Psychology 40, no. 12: 3059-3105. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed September 8, 2014).

Peace Team values

We are building our team slowly, persuaded by a stubborn belief that where you stand determines what you see.
--Kathy Kelly, founder, Iraq Peace Team

(WNV/Iraq Peace Team). U.S. Marines occupy Baghdad in front of the Al Fanar hotel that housed Voices activists throughout the Shock and Awe bombing.

When a peace team is trained in nonviolence, what can it accomplish? Peace teams have done all of these things listed below, and more. Peace teams have: 

• stood in witness against war.
• monitored and defused violence between hostile whites and Native Americans trying to practice their treaty rights.
• kept street demonstrations from erupting into riot.
• stopped physical violence by police and demonstrators.
• brought an international presence into ethnic conflict zones.
• stopped violence between KKK, police, and angry public.
• helped keep public demonstrations and controversial events more civil, even in disagreement.
• helped movements and campaigns create and defend their images of nonviolence.
• drawn attention to killer sanctions imposed on civilians.

The experiences of members of peace teams are widely varied, of course. Some have simply trained for an hour, worn an armband, and walked along with a peaceful demonstration without incident. Others have been kidnapped in war zones and a couple have been killed. Many have experienced some form of de-escalation of violence, either in-progress or highly likely. 

Those most at risk are those who operate internationally, in hot conflict zones, requiring translators. They are often misunderstood at first and only gain trust of the local people over time, which is natural. They are almost never supported by any government. 

Why do it? My answer is to refer to the button points above. What if we train and train and only stop one act of police brutality? What if we act as peace team members at six demonstrations and only de-escalate one person who would otherwise have beaten someone? What if our peace team actions only really help one campaign achieve its goal because their goal was highly desirable and we kept them from alienating the public? Perhaps for some these possibilities don't measure up to our preferred use of time. For others, the chance to help in these ways is worth some time and effort. We see the values of a peace team.

Reference List
Kelly, Kathy. 2003. "A Witness to War." Progressive 67, no. 1: 23. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed September 7, 2014).

What is it? Thinking about definitions

What is it, this nonviolence? Who gets to define it? A kindergarten teacher is nonviolent when she puts a vase of fresh flowers on her desk and smiles at her little students, right? A young man who publicly refuses to be drafted during an invasion of another country is nonviolent, certainly. How about an old man who writes a letter to the editor arguing for peace on Earth? And really, how about a rich man who makes money entirely by playing the stock market from his home computer? That's nonviolent, eh? How about the police who pulls over the black motorist to check him out solely because he feels like it, and never pulls his gun nor does he even touch the motorist, only detains him for some questions and a computer check? Hey, the cop might have been armed but he never used violence, so that was nonviolent, right? Hmmm...

What about the little girl who is grabbed by the man and she kicks him in the groin to escape? Certainly we can't fault that, and who is going to accuse her of violence? For that matter, how about a nonviolent protester who is grabbed and smacked by the cops? Can't that protester defend himself without being called violent?

Perhaps our concept needs modification. There are several ways to do that. One, include a modifier--best way to modify, eh? So, for example, religious nonviolence, or philosophical nonviolence, or technical nonviolence, or strategic nonviolence, or structural nonviolence. All of these modifiers might need further explanation, but at least we are starting down the path toward meaningful definition.

To agree to learn more about nonviolence, check out this Pace e Bene campaign pledge. And read about strategic nonviolence at the ICNC or Einstein Institution websites. Strategic nonviolence is the sort that has--what? let's see hands--a strategy. Yes. So if I am a pacifist and I sit in blockade of a military convoy one day by myself in a fairly spontaneous act, that is not strategic nonviolence, it is nonviolent civil resistance. So nonviolent civil resistance can include strategic nonviolence but it can also include more ad hoc actions that are not part of a strategy to achieve any named goal. This is not to say that a strategy cannot follow an inspired first action of nonviolent resistance--there are certainly historical cases of that.

While some seem to modify pacifism into subsets of nonviolent positions--e.g., offensive pacifism, political pacifism, absolute pacifism, nuclear pacifism--it is most helpful to remember that pacifism at its roots is about nonparticipation, a religious or philosophical decision to not directly participate in some sort of violence.

It may be helpful to shift from attempting to narrow a definition of nonviolence and instead use nonviolent as a modifier for another noun, resistance. Nonviolent resistance begins to help us narrow the concept from a generally rosy disposition to interfering directly with violence and doing so by nonviolent means. Therefore nonviolent resistance would rule out committing or threatening to commit acts of violence, even in self-defense or defense of others. Nonviolent resistance means something more and more specific and can take in some forms of pacifism, especially, when that pacifism might involve either breaking the law (such as refusing to comply with conscription laws) or when the acts of a pacifist coincide with an element of a strategic nonviolent resistance campaign, such as refusing to purchase any product made or sold by a corporation involved in producing weapons (e.g. the GE boycott that had us all purchasing other brands of consumer goods until they no longer produced nuclear weapons).

Perception is reality in many cases. Officer Friendly may have a sidearm because it's part of his uniform and is regarded as a tool of his profession. Only pacifists would object. But a SWAT team in milspec gear, lined up with faceless shields and even balaclavas in padded kevlar toting automatic weapons--that is a violent image that transmits a stench of unfeeling brutality to all who are either in targeted populations or who fear for the nonviolent victims of those militarized regimented anonymous attackers. Similarly, a rural granddad with a gun rack may look violent only to a pacifist but is otherwise unremarkable, yet a Tea Party gathering featuring scowling open carry white males, or a line of armed militant African American community defenders all look quite violent to a large number of us. Both are going to be widely judged to be engaged in a show of violence and would never be classified by many as engaged in nonviolent resistance, even when no one fires a shot.

Filters are helpful. Can the act of nonviolent resistance also achieve reconciliation? Arguably, the more it can do so, the more it approaches pure nonviolence. This can involve focus on universally highly valued victims (join us in protecting the children) or, as peace scholar Janjira Sombutpoonsiri finds, it may involve fraternization or humor.

Definitions are tricky. Thinking about them and seeking consensus on their meanings in real life is helpful but complex. Asking ourselves to think critically instead of ideologically is a tough challenge but in our pluralistic low context culture it is a good step to take on the journey of common understanding.

Fixing our national epidemic of police violence

We do have a serious epidemic of murder-by-police in our land. A very conservative estimate compiled by the FBI puts our annual rate at more than 400, with about one-quarter of the victims African-American. Twice a week, somewhere in the US, cops shoot an African American to death. 

 

Militarized police confront protesters in Ferguson, St Louis, after the shooting by police of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

This doesn't count the times police beat people. And according to the reportage, this data is radically lowballing numbers because it relies on police departments self-reporting and only about 750 of the estimated 17,000 police bureaus bother to report to the Department of Justice on these matters, with entire states simply choosing to fail to report (e.g. Florida). 

Seriously. This violence is well known in African American neighborhoods. In my town, Portland Oregon, one of the premier African American newspapers, The Skanner, editorially advised their readers to not call police in case of emergency because the Portland police worsened the situation more than they helped and the likelihood of someone getting hurt or killed rose when police got involved. 

This is so wrong. What can be done?

There are many steps to take to start to turn this around, including, but not limited to: 

•   Halt all military materials, equipment, and training of any local police anywhere in the US.

•   Bring in de-escalation trainers who will teach and train nonviolent methods of conflict de-escalation.

•   Divert $50 million from the massive Homeland Security budget to GAO to begin proper data collection and evaluation of local police trainings, protocols, and best practices.

•   Divert $1 billion from the obese Pentagon budget and redirect to creation of many more Restorative Justice courses in Criminology and Conflict Resolution programs in public colleges and universities.

•   Direct US attorneys to aggressively investigate and prosecute police who shoot anyone who is unarmed.

•   Launch a massive public education campaign by a coalition of civil society groups to inform them of the problem, the injustices, and potential solutions.

•   Make all these problems and potential solutions important issues for elected officials at all levels.

•   Befriend a cop. Talk about this. Understand their fears. Help them understand that they will lose more and more public support if they are aggressive.

•   Write about this.

•   Demonstrate about this. Do it effectively, in ways that build a movement. Do not ironically engage in the sorts of behavior that make the average citizen more grateful for the thin blue line that protects them from you, the demonstrator. Those who protest the police using violence or threatened violence are either police agents or they may as well be, because they do the work of agents provocateurs.

I know you can image another series of fixes. We can turn this around if we engage.