Talk by Randy Kehler at the Nipponzan Myohoji Peace Pagoda,  27^th Anniversary Celebration, Leverett, Massachusetts, September 29, 2012 (PDF version)

INTRODUCTION

Greetings, friends.  It’s wonderful, as always, to be here with all of you, and an honor to have been invited to share some thoughts with you.

The title of my talk (“Personal Reflections on the State of the World”) was meant to be general enough to give me plenty of leeway to talk about almost anything, because, frankly, when I was asked what the title would be, I hadn’t yet had much time to think about what I wanted to say.  At this point, having given it more thought, I think I would at least amend the title by adding this subtitle: “Randy’s Ongoing Meditation on Fear.”  I think you’ll see what I mean.

FIVE CRISES

But let me start with the state of the world and a brief recap of what appear to me to be 5 of the most serious, most threatening, most daunting crises we face – crises that many of us here have devoted significant portions of our lives attempting to address – and few, if any, with more faithfulness, perseverance, and equanimity than the monks and nuns of Nipponzan Myohoji. 

First, the crisis of nuclear power.

This is from The Economist, of March 10, 2012 (one year after Fukushima):  “The triple meltdown at Fukushima was the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.  The damage extends far beyond a lost power station, a stricken operator (the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO), and an intense debate about the future of the nation’s nuclear power plants.  It goes beyond the trillions of yen that will be needed for a decade-long effort to decommission the reactors and remove their wrecked cores, if indeed that proves possible, and the even greater sums that may be required for decontamination (which one [Tokyo University expert] thinks could cost as much as 50 trillion yen, or $623 billion).  It reaches into the lives of the displaced, and of those further afield who know they have been exposed to the fallout from the disaster….For parallels that do justice to the disaster, the Japanese find themselves reaching back to the second world war, otherwise seldom discussed….And, of course, to Hiroshima.”

There are roughly  [400-?] operating operating nuclear power plants in the world today.  104 of them are in the U.S., most of them old and approaching, or already having exceeded, their 40-year design life.  Many of them, including the Vermont Yankee nuke, on the Conn. River 20 miles north of here and the Pilgrim nuke in Plymouth, 40 miles south of Boston, have been given permission by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate for an additional 20 years, and at 120% of the power output they were designed to produce.  23 of the U.S. reactors, including both Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim, are of almost the identical make and flawed design (courtesy of General Electric) as the nukes still melting down in Fukushima.

Then there’s the problem of nuclear weapons, the alleged need for which gave birth to electricity-generating nuclear power plants as part of the so-called “peaceful atom” program.  Despite limited disarmament efforts, there are still at least 23,000 nuclear weapons in existence today, and in twice as many countries as before,  during the first years of the nuclear arms race.  And many of these weapons are on “high alert,” which means they could be launched at a moment’s notice.

Then there’s the matter of the mining, milling, enrichment, and fabrication of fuel and components for both nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants–processes which have been poisoning generations of people, many of them living in indigenous communities in the U.S. and around the world, people who have the misfortune to live in or close to where these toxic operations take place.  They, along with those who live near nuclear power plants, face ongoing exposure to radioactive contaminants that cause chronic and terminal conditions, such as cancer, thyroid and heart diseases, miscarriage, birth defects
and genetic damage.

And, of course, there’s the so-far totally unsolved problem of high-level radioactive waste, some of which must be safely stored for hundreds of thousands of years.

A great deal more could be said about this deadly problem, but in the interests of time I’ll stop here and try to summarize the other four crises even more briefly.

Second, the crisis of American militarism (which includes at least for us Americans, as well as millions of people around the world, the crisis of America’s global empire).

Here are just a few pertinent facts:

–Currently, 47 cents of every discretionary federal tax dollar (excluding trust funds such as Social Security, which aren’t paid for out of tax dollars) is used for military expenditures, including expenditures for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (the total for which will soon reach a trillion dollars).

–The current U.S. military budget is approximately equal to the military budgets of ever other country in the world combined.

–To help fight and prepare for its wars, the Pentagon hires more than 200,000 corporate contractors.  During the past 10 years, six of those corporations, working in support of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, have landed contracts, many of them awarded without competitive bidding, totaling from $5 billion to $41 billion apiece.

–According to a Congressional commission, at least $31 billion, and possibly as much as $60 billion has been lost to contract waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan alone.

–And according to Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul, the U.S. has 900 overseas military bases in 130 countries around the globe.

Third, the economic crisis (in no small part caused by our extravagant military spending)

–Approximately 50 million Americans are currently living in poverty.

–Despite the fact that the U.S. is supposed to be the richest country in the world, roughly 42% of our children live in or near poverty.

–Hunger is on the rise, affecting tens of millions of American families–to say nothing of the hundreds of millions of hungry children and adults worldwide.

–In the last 25 years, 82% of income growth in the U.S. has gone to the richest 1% of the population, and in the last 10 years, 100% has gone to the richest 1%.

–1% of the U.S. population now owns 41% of this country’s wealth, and receives 25% of all income each year.

–In 1975, the ratio of average income for corporate CEO’s to average income for workers was 24 to 1.  Now it’s 343 to 1.

Fourth, the “climate change” crisis

In his widely disseminated feature article, entitled “Reckoning,” in the August 2012 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Bill McKibben starts out by saying that for those who still aren’t convinced about the reality of climate change, “…here are some hard numbers….June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States.  That followed the warmest May on record in the Northern Hemisphere—the 327^th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20^th-century average….Meteorologists reported that this spring was the was the warmest ever recorded for our nation, [constituting] ‘the largest temperature departure from average of any season on record.’”

That same week, McKibben tells us, “Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet’s history.”

Yet despite this evidence, McKibben writes “…the leaders of the world’s nations, “meeting in Rio [de Janeiro] for the 20^th anniversary of the massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing” [with our own country, despite the fact that we lead the world in consumption of resources and production of pollutants, deserving much, though certainly not all, the blame for this deplorable failure].

And that brings me, finally, to the fifth crisis: the crisis of American democracy

In a very recent op-ed entitled “Money in Politics: Where Is the Outrage?”, Bill Moyers speaks of a “…death rattle of American democracy brought on by an overdose of campaign cash.”

Moyers goes on to say: “A radical minority of the super-rich has gained ascendency over politics, buying the policies, laws, tax breaks, subsidies, and rules that consolidate a permanent state of vast inequality by which they can further help themselves to America’s wealth and resources.”

“We are nearing the culmination,” he concludes, “of a cunning and fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that were slowly and painstakingly built over decades to protect everyday citizens from the excesses of private power. The ‘city on the hill’ has become a fortress of privilege, guarded by a hired political class and safely separated from the economic pressures that are upending the household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, and civic life of everyday Americans.”

FEAR

So where does all this self-destructive behavior come from—behavior that gives rise to these (and other) crises?

Asking this question always takes me back to something a man from India named Sunderlal Bahugana said to me sometime in the early to mid-‘80’s when I arranged for him to speak at UMass as a part of his American speaking tour.

Sunderlal, who, I gather, is still going strong at the age of 85, was, back then, already a well-known and much-revered disciple of Mahatma Gandhi who was leading a huge – it was said “the world’s largest”—grassroots, nonviolent, environmental movement, called the “Chipko” movement whose aim was to prevent the deforestation of large areas of the Himalayas and the destruction of the villages and people whose lives depended on the forest.

I found myself sitting next to Sunderlal at supper in the UMass campus center after his presentation.  Tall, with a long white beard (even then) and dressed, as I recall, in a long white-ish robe (probably hand-spun, hand–woven “khadi), he was an imposing, awe-inspiring person.  At one point during the meal, I asked him what he thought was the cause of the rampant deforestation that the Chipko movement was trying to stop.  Sunderlal looked at me for a moment without saying a word, and then said, slowly and carefully, “Fear and greed.”

That was it.  Nothing more.  Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly the kind of answer I was expecting.  After a pregnant pause during which I tried to think of a follow-up question, I finally said to him, putting on my organizer’s “hat,” “If fear and greed are the cause, what can we do about it?”  This is what his answer was: “We must start by learning to live without fear and greed ourselves.”   I could think of nothing more to say.  Yet I’ve never forgotten what he said.

In recent times, I’ve found myself thinking about the “fear” part of Sunderlal’s reply, more than the “greed” part—for two reasons:  First, I suspect that greed is largely a function of fear; that is, it seems to me that our desire to accumulate more and more money, possessions, fame, power, or whatever, is because we feel we need it to be more secure, our insecurity being, of course, a form a fear.

(Not that greed is a minor problem, of course.  I can’t help but recall the famous words of Sitting Bull, the legendary Lakota Sioux Chief, who, reflecting on white people’s greed, our addiction to material things, is said to have remarked: “The love of possessions is a disease with them.”  And indeed it is.)

The second reason I’ve spent considerable time of late musing about fear is due to an inspiring “wisdom teaching” passed on to us (and to the world) a few years ago by Penny Gill, a wonderful friend and neighbor to many here today.  (Thank you, Penny.)

In thinking about the five crises I’ve just mentioned, it isn’t hard to see that fear is a major driver of countries’ quest for the illusory safety and security – and, for some, the feeling of power and prestige – that possession of nuclear weapons can provide.  And our fear, or insecurity, also stokes our thirst, or greed, for more and more of the “things” that the allegedly abundant, “cheap” electricity from nuclear power plants can provide.

Similarly, isn’t it fear and it’s malignant offshoot, greed, …

• that drives this country’s militarism, our addiction to war-making, weapons-building, and military spending?…
• that drives Wall Street moguls to manipulate the market for their own self gain, thus causing the recent economic collapse? and that drives some of us to knowingly participate in that fraud because we think we can gain from it?…
• that drives our rapacious exhaustion of the earth’s finite resources, and the pollution of the air, water, earth, forests and other creatures whose health we depend on?…
• and that corrupts our would-be democracy with the insidious notions that spending money on elections equals “free speech” and that corporations should have the same basis rights and protections as individual human beings?

We know that much of this fear is generated, or at least greatly exaggerated, by governments, institutions (often religious ones), corporate advertisers, and individual demagogues that deliberately try to frighten us (and often with considerable success!) in order to get us to do something they want us to do (like buy a product, support a war, or just keep silent about things we know are wrong).

Taking a step back, I ask myself, “Why are we such fearful creatures, or at least so susceptible to fear propagated by others?”  Could it be due to a basic misunderstanding of who we are?  Here’s what Albert Einstein once said about who, in fact, we are:

“A human being,” he said, “is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space.  We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—an optical illusion of our consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us….”

Is the “prison” Einstein refers to…is it in some way a prison of fear?  Is it our sense of separateness as individual human beings, unconnected to the whole, that causes us to fear that when push comes to shove, we’re really on our own, to fear that, despite all the pious platitudes, life is an inherently competitive, zero-sum game, and that others’ gain may be our loss, and that if we don’t look out for ourselves no one else will?  I can’t help but feel that that is the case.  If so, no wonder our world is in crisis.

So, what’s the nature of the fear we’re talking about, and what are its effects?  As the “wisdom teaching” I referred to points out, there are two kinds of fear.  The first is the kind that’s helpful, that’s necessary for our well-being, our self-preservation.  This is the fear that instinctively and automatically kicks in when we we’re tempted to touch a hot stove, or when the river keeps rising and threatens to wash away our homes.  I.e., a very realistic fear.

The second kind of fear is the fear we feel in response to a largely illusory, imagined situation or scenario that we’ve conjured up, one that has little or no basis in immediate reality.  It seems to me that most of our fears are of this second kind, and they are definitely not helpful.  On the contrary, they tend to be self-destructive, forourselves, our culture, our society, our world.  In speaking about “fear,” it’s this second kind of fear that I’m referring to.

So, what about the effects of fear – on our bodies, our minds, and our hearts?  This layperson’s understanding is that fear automatically tightens us, constricts us, armors us, and to some extent shuts us down – all of which can be useful with regard to the first kind of fear—that is, reality-based fear, when the danger we face is immediate and real.

But in the case of the second kind of fears, our non-immediate, not-reality-based fears – which count, I believe, for most of our fears – this tightening, constricting process makes it hard, if not impossible, for us think clearly and feel deeply.  It tends to shut down our hearts as well as our minds, thus blocking or diminishing our innate capacity for empathy and compassion, our ability to be fully human, our ability to, as the monks of the Weston Priory put it, “to see with the eyes of compassion, to hear with the ear of our hearts.”

Loss or diminution of our innate capacity for compassion, for empathy, is probably the greatest toll fear takes.  In a truly compassionate world, none of these crises I’ve mentioned would exist, because all of us would be immediately conscious of, and actually feel, the pain and suffering, or the threat of pain and suffering, that our fellow creatures, human and non-human are feeling.  And we would immediately respond in order to prevent or alleviate that pain and suffering—in the same way a mother immediately responds to pain and suffering on the part of her child.

I love what Eudora Welty, the famous Southern novelist, once said in this regard.  She said “My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people, the veil of indifference to each other’s presence, each other’s wonder, each other’s human plight.”

And there’s Mother Teresa’s succinct way of putting it: “The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.”

This same fear-induced process of constriction also takes a toll on our ability to see.  It causes a kind of blindness, a loss of vision (both literally and metaphorically). And to quote the Book of Proverbs, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  (By implication, might it also be true to say, “Where is too much fear, the people perish”? or, to put it in the affirmative, “Where there is no fear, the people flourish”?)

When fear causes us to focus obsessively and myopically on that which scares us, we don’t see, or we quickly lose sight of much else, including really important things that have the capacity to enrich and sustain us, especially during hard times.  Two of the things I myself tend to lose sight of are beauty and goodness.  How often I fail to really take notice of the wondrous beauty all around me (for example, the flock of sparrows that suddenly appeared on the grass outside my window as I was composing this talk, or the milky, gauzy, ¾-moon that appeared over the tree-tops as I was heading off on a walk before bed).

And often I don’t see, or soon forget, the goodness of others, whether it’s all the positive, decent, caring, loving, constructive things that people all around me are doing for each other every day (comforting a sick friend, helping take care of a child, volunteering to clean up a local river), or the amazing, inspiring, and genuinely hopeful actions and initiatives that people and communities are taking, both locally and all around the world, in response to the crises we face.

Author, philosopher and Buddhist activist Joanna Macy has referred to this rapidly increasing activity as “The Great Turning.”  Here’s what she has said about it:

“In the face of all the bad news, the challenge of creating a sustainable civilization can seem absurdly unrealistic.  Yet it is germinating now, that sustainable society on which the future depends.  Its seeds are sprouting in countless actions in defense of life, and in fresh perceptions of our mutual belonging in the living body of Earth—bold, new perceptions deriving from both science and spirituality.  Although it doesn’t feature in the day’s headlines or evening news, a silent revolution is occurring, bringing unparalleled changes in the ways we see and think and relate.”

Author, “green” entrepreneur, and environmental activist Paul Hawken describes this phenomenon as a rapidly growing “movement,” that he says may be a kind of human “immune system.”  …“Picture,” he says, “the collective presence of all human beings as an organism” [which, I would add, in relation to Planet Earth as a whole, many scientists believe it is].  “Pervading that organism are intelligent activities, humanity’s immune response to resist and heal the effects of political corruption, economic disease and ecological degradation….”

Hawken goes on to say that “The incongruity of anarchists, wealthy philanthropists, street clowns, scientists, youthful activists, indigenous and native people, diplomats, computer geeks, writers, strategists, peasants and students all working toward common goals is a testament to human impulses that are unstoppable and eternal.”

The importance of keeping all this in our minds and hearts while we, at same time, try our best to address the seemingly overwhelming odds against successfully rescuing ourselves and our planet from the crises we face reminds me of something poet Jack Gilbert once wrote:  “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.  To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT OUR FEARS?

So, what can we do to eliminate or at least reduce our fears, starting, as Sunderlal Bahuguna counseled me almost 30 years ago, with ourselves?  Actually, I’m not sure it’s possible for most of us – or at least for me — to totally eliminate all our fears (though that’s probably a worthy goal).  For me, it’s more a question of how I can overcome them – that is, lessen their potency, their hold on me — so that I can act in spite of my fears.

All of us, I think – no matter how courageous we may seem at times — carry inside us fears of some sort.  Our wonderful departed friend and local legend, Wally Nelson — who, with his partner Juanita, modeled for us, in so many ways, how to live principled lives –was one of the most courageous people I’ve ever known.  Yet I can hear him saying, as he often did, “I have LOTS of fear, all KINDS of fear.”

And I, too, have lots of fears – and have had, ever since I was a small boy and woke up night after night with terrifying nightmares.  And I’ve continued to have fears…for example, when I faced the prospect of prison because of my refusal to cooperate with the Vietnam war…and, later, the prospect of losing our family’s home to the federal government due to Betsy’s and my war tax resistance.  Both instances put a great deal of fear in me…though, fortunately, not enough to prevent me from doing what my conscience was telling me I had to do.

I also have all sorts of more mundane fears, just like most people – fear of failure, fear of losing the affection and respect of others, fear of inciting, by my actions, others’ dislike, enmity, or even violence, and, increasingly as I get older, fear of destitution, of not being able to take care of my family, of serious illness, incapacitation, and, at times, I suppose, of death.

Sound familiar?  So how can we constructively deal with our fears so that they don’t prevent us from exercising our capacities for empathy, and compassion, and courageous action?

I think the first step, certainly for me, is simply to recognize that I have fears, to get in touch with them, to allow myself to experience the feeling of them – rather than cover them over or repress them as soon as they crop up and thus pretend to myself that I’m fear-less.  As Alice Walker put it in a recent interview, “You have to go to the places that scare you so you can see: what do really believe?  Who are you really?”  Sitting quietly, as in meditation, is one way that helps me do that.  Constant busyness and distraction make it impossible for me to do it.

In addition, I often remember something Gandhi once said that helps me put my fears in perspective.  He said (and this is only a rough paraphrase) that we should never give up something until we reach a point where we want something else more.  Which I translate to mean that I will only be able to overcome my fear of, let’s say, losing something (my reputation, my health, my physical safety, my possessions) when I can open up to, get in touch with, something else that I want, or value, much more than what I risk losing.

In Wally’s case, what he frequently talked about and seemed to value most of all was “freedom,” being able to feel like a free man, unconstrained by any kind of threat, risk, or danger—a person who’s able to follow his conscience and maintain his integrity under the most trying circumstances, without being held back by his fear of the consequences.  I have no doubt that that’s what was most important to him.  And that’s how he lived.

NONVIOLENT ACTION

The purpose of reducing or overcoming our fears is, of course, to be able to act, to avoid being frozen into passivity because of what we’re afraid of.  As His Holiness the Dalai Lama has emphatically pointed out, compassion serves little or no purpose if not followed by action, nonviolent action, on behalf of others.

For me, nonviolent action (or “active nonviolence,” as I prefer to call it) means at least two things: to put it in the words of the biblical injunction, it means that we must

“Do good and resist evil.”  Gandhi, in describing his program of “Satyagraha,” elaborated on this formulation by speaking of “doing good” in terms of creating, or offering, positive, living alternatives to all that we oppose, including social, political, and, especially, economic alternatives.  And he spoke of “resisting evil” as not just protesting what we know is wrong, but actively refusing to cooperate with it, regardless of the risk to ourselves.

COMMUNITY

As we all know, this is no easy prescription to follow (or, in the words of that great Civil Rights song, there’s “no easy road to freedom”)—if only because it’s so easy for our fears to get in the way: our fears of losing all sorts of things that we’ve come to feel are important to us, that we’ve become attached to (our jobs, our social status, our possessions, our financial nest-eggs, etc.)  For this reason, there’s no better source of mutual inspiration and support than community—not to mention no better way to accomplish something significant than by working cooperatively with others, in community.

Last March, in commemoration of the one-year anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, our Japanese friend Chiho Kaneko, a resident of Vermont who’d just returned from visiting the Fukushima area, spoke passionately and very movingly to a packed Brattleboro audience about what she’d just witnessed and heard of the agonizing fear, anxiety, and suffering on the part of the people living in the Fukushima area – the mothers, the fathers, the children…the workers, the farmers, the school teachers, and many others.

In closing her talk, Chiho looked out at all of us and said: “I would like to believe that the soundness of our community is our collective priority, because being part of a healthy and intact community is crucial for our survival in this ever-changing world…. It is our only hope.”

CLOSING QUESTION

I’d like to end this talk by inviting you to join me in pondering the following question:

Could there be such a thing as a  “Fear Liberation Campaign” – that is, a campaign whose principal purpose would be to enable us to begin liberating ourselves and each other from our fears – those fears that hold us back from taking bold steps to do whatever it is our hearts call us to do in the service of  “the Great Turning” ?

And if so, what would such a campaign look like?  What would it do?

And, might such a campaign begin here, in our community, here in this rich and beautiful Valley we call home?….

Thank you.

By Nicholas Sismil, Peaceworkers Intern – PeaceWorkersUS.org

Palestine, West Bank
In recent news, Palestinian actions in the West Bank have moved more towards
constructive programme in the last month or two. Palestinians and international activists
have built a total of three protest villages thus far. Two have been destroyed but the
recent village is still standing.
The first camp was constructed on Friday, January 11th. By noon, the Palestinians
announced to the world that the village of Bab-al Shams (Gateway to the Sun) had been
established. A day later, there were approximately 250 residents, a village council, a
health clinic, a media center, a communal kitchen, and the beginnings of a library. The
majority of the residents were students, activists, and popular committee leaders.
However, residents of various locations in Palestine and even those from 1948 were
living there as well.

Click here to read the entire report in pdf format.  which will take you to:

http://www.peaceworkers.us/peaceworkers-report-january-2013.pdf

A protest outside of the arraignment of the Beale 5 on January 8, 2013. (WNV/Guarionex Delgado)

On Monday President Obama nominated his counterterrorism chief, John O. Brennan, to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Though some civil liberties groups and other critics have raised questions about Brennan’s involvement in the CIA’s practice of torture during the Bush administration, relatively less has been said about his primarily responsibility during President Obama’s first term: accelerating and institutionalizing the U.S. drones program and its  “disposition matrix”  — as the government’s sanitizing parlance puts it — which has included setting weekly drone kill lists.
Click here to read more.

David Hartsough has been a peace activist since the 1950s, a conscientious objector, a civil disobedient, arrested over 100 times.  In 2002 he cofounded the Nonviolent Peace Force ( nonviolentpeaceforce.org ).  Hartsough is the executive director of Peace Workers ( peaceworkersus.org ).  He discusses the current status of war and peace in our culture.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Engineer: Christiane Brown.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download or get embed code from  Archive  or   AudioPort  or  LetsTryDemocracy .

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Gaza- Israeli forces fired live ammunition and tear gas at unarmed farmers and international solidarity activists working in Khuza’a, a small village outside of Khan Younis located near the Israeli border. At 10:30 AM, the farmers arrived and began to plough approximately 100 meters from the separation fence while internationals lined up in between the border and the farmers. They were quickly met by an Israeli military jeep and transport vehicle. An Israeli soldier issued a warning in Arabic to leave the area and then fired two rounds into the air. The farmers and internationals remained calm and continued their work and the Israeli soldiers left the area.

Israeli soldier aiming

At around 11 AM, approximately 20 Palestinians and farmers gathered around 300 meters back from the fence. Two military jeeps returned to the area. One soldier exited his vehicle and fired four shots in the direction of the farmers and activists. The fourth shot crossed the line of the activists and landed in the field being ploughed. Again, the Palestinians and internationals were not deterred. The Israeli jeeps left and the farmers finished working on this section of land and moved on to an adjacent plot.  Read more

 Dalu home in Gaza obliterated 

On November 18, 2012, the Dalu family, huddled at home, waited for the war that surrounded them to end. Like everyone else in Gaza, they had nowhere to run. At 2:30PM, without warning, an Israeli missile flattened the entire building, killing all ten occupants and two from the building adjacent. Not only was the building destroyed, but the bomb carved out a deep crater where the home had been. It took four days of searching through the rubble for rescuers to find the bodies of the ten family members and two neighbors.

Palestinian citizens are all theoretically eligible for a Palestinian passport. However, Israel determines whether the applicant will receive the passport. Because of this, thousands of civilians have been denied the right to exit the prison most of them were born into and will likely die in, the prison of Gaza. The Dalu family did not have the option to flee to Israel or Egypt for safety as the borders were only open intermittently during this most recent conflict, and passage was restricted to medical emergencies and humanitarian supplies.

read more

David Hartsough

David Hartsough is a lifelong nonviolent activist, having participated in the lunch-counter sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement, and is STILL a committed activist, participating in demonstrations and risking arrest in the name of peace and justice. He has also been a major supporter of our work at PPWN. PPWN honors all of our elders, but gives special appreciation to elders like David, who not only celebrates the work he did decades ago, but is still engaged in the struggle today. We have much to learn from the commitment of people like him.

On October 30th of this year, David was arrested again (he has over 125 arrests on his rap sheet!), this time protesting the use of Drones by the US Military at Beale Air Force Base. He is now facing federal charges.

Please see below the statement from David about why he decided to take this particular action. Find out more about his work by visiting www.peaceworkersus.org, and look out for his book of stories on nonviolent struggles in the coming months!

David Hartsough’s Statement:

We are one human family. All people in the world are our brothers and sisters. If someone attacks our blood brother or sister, we would do everything in our power to stop them.

This is the way we feel about innocent civilians being killed by drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Drones are totally immoral and illegal under international law and are against everything we have been taught in our religious Faiths: Love one another, Love your enemy and Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

How would we feel if Russians or Chinese or Afghanis or Pakstanis were flying drones over the US and killing innocent people?

It is illegal under international law to go into another country and drop bombs on people our government doesn’t like.

The United States is making decisions to kill people without them ever coming before a court or found guilty. The US government is playing Judge, Jury and Executioner.

Using drones and killing many innocent people is creating more and more enemies of the US. Every person we kill has at least 50 family members and friends who will mourn the loss of their loved ones and seek revenge on the people and nation that has killed their loved one or friend.

Instead of drones and dropping bombs on people we need to send peace corps people
to build schools and medical clinics and help people in these countries recover from the wounds of war. We could be the most loved country on earth rather than the most hated.

By our silence we condone this senseless killing. We must speak out and act to stop this madness. We call on our fellow Americans, people in churches and synagogues and mosques, students, all people of conscience to join us in stopping Drones before they kill more innocent people and recruit more people into Al Qaeda. Unfortunately, this is a recipe for perpetual wars and endless suffering and death for people around the world.

David Hartsough

David was arrested along with eight others blocking two entrances at Beale Air Force
Base where they closed the main entrance for over three hours.

Mirrored from www.mettacenter.org — July, 2012

I want to make an offer to my fellow Americans who are, like myself, reeling from the worst “random” shooting the country has ever seen.  My question: Have you had enough?  Because if you have, I can tell you how to stop this kind of madness.  I know that’s a bold claim, but this is not a time for small measures.

We cannot fix this tomorrow, because we didn’t cause it yesterday.  We have been building up to this domestic holocaust since – to take one milestone – television was made available to the general public at the conclusion of World War Two.

If you are still with me, you are prepared to believe that it was not a coincidence that this massacre took place at the scene of an extremely violent, “long-awaited” movie.  Psychologists have proved over and over again that – guess what – exposure to violent imagery produces disturbances in the mind that must, in course of time, take form in outward behavior.  The imagery can be in anymedium, nor does it matter whether on the surface of our minds we think what we’re seeing is real or made up.  This is a natural, scientific law.  Exactly who will crack next and in what setting is nearly impossible to predict, and in any case it’s ridiculous to try to run around stopping the resulting violence from being acted out after the mental damage has been done.  The only sane approach is not to do it in the first place.

As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman pointed out in his book, Let’s Stop Killing Our Kids, the video games that the Army uses to prepare ordinary men and women for combat, in other words to wipe out the normal empathy and inhibitions against hurting others that we’ve built up over millennia – a process known as civilization – are the very same games our young people buy across the counter throughout the country.

Of course, there are other factors.  At some point we will have to talk about readily available weapons; at some point we’ll have to realize that a nation that engages in heartless drone warfare, torture, and extrajudicial killings cannot expect to live in peace.  But until we liberate our minds from the endless pounding of violent imagery I fear we won’t be able to think clearly about those factors (or for that matter anything else).
With rare exceptions, film and video game producers will not stop turning out these dehumanizing products as long as there is profit to be made from them – and not enough sophistication about culture or the human mind to warn us about their dangers.  But there is a way, one that has worked well on the small scales on which it has so far been tried: don’t watch them.  Captain Boycott had the right approach.

Right now police have been posted at theaters where this same movie is being shown – still.  But ask yourself, what are they protecting?  Is it perhaps the belief that violence is just entertaining?  People, tell me when you’ve had enough.

If you are moved by this article, please pass it along. If you are a member of the press and would like to interview the Metta Center for our perspective on this tragedy, you can contact us at 707.774.6299 or by email: info@mettacenter.org. 

December 15, 2011, 9:41 am  –  Mirrored from wagingnonviolence.org 

“Building a Rainbow” is the title of an old poster I picked up somewhere along the way. The rainbow’s swath of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet layers is dazzling—and only half finished. In the picture, this symbol of peace is not an idealistic dream but something real. It is under construction, with a troupe of cranes carefully maneuvering sections into place, countless trucks and overworked paint wagons, scaffolding everywhere, and a flotilla of helicopters lumbering across the sky, each with its own precarious splotch of color dangling below.

We live in a violent world. But we also live in a world where a growing number of people everywhere are determined to confound the assumption that there is nothing we can do about this. They gamble that violence need not have the final word. They wager that there are options. They assert that we needn’t be victims of a cycle of violent history; rather, we can dare to be active subjects of a more nonviolent history that engages and transforms the violence around us. For them, violent history isn’t a given, it is made. So, too, is a nonviolent one.

The poster reminds us that this is not an easy task. We are building a rainbow, not simply hoping for one. It requires the kind of gumption and creativity only barely hinted at in the poster’s fanciful construction site. It means a profusion of projects, organizations, and movements offering plausible and effective options for the well-being of all. And it means slowly discovering that these innumerable initiatives do not exist in isolation but are part of a mysterious and self-organizing design: a rainbow in the making.

We only have to look around us to see this growing profusion. Countless campaigns and movements (for equality, democracy, peace, social justice and sustainability). New techniques (in nonviolent communication, restorative justice, trauma healing and anti-racism training). Research and education (on empathy, forgiveness, cooperation and conflict transformation). And all reinforced by an emerging worldview stressing the interconnectedness of the planet and its inhabitants.

Nonviolent Peaceforce is part of this creative profusion.

Ten years ago this week Nonviolent Peaceforce came into being. David Hartsough, a peacemaker who first got active with the Civil Rights movement as a teenager in the 1950s and has been at it ever since, had been thinking of something like this for many years: an unarmed civilian peacekeeping force able to respond in a timely and effective manner to crises that might lead to devastating armed conflicts and brutal violence.

Gandhi envisioned a Shanti Sena or “peace army,” which has inspired a number of “third party nonviolent intervention” projects and organizations, including Peace Brigades International, Witness for Peace, and Christian Peacemaker Teams. Moved by the work of these groups, Hartsough envisioned the emergence of an even larger and more comprehensive initiative.

While David Hartsough began ruminating on this idea in the early 1990s (we have know each other for years, and we would often talk about it together) it was only when he met long-time organizer Mel Duncan at The Hague Appeal for Peace conference in the Netherlands in 1999 that this idea got the traction it deserved. Almost immediately, the two began to build their piece of the rainbow. They crisscrossed the planet spreading this vision, finding collaborators and laying the groundwork.

In December 2001, they opened shop with the early task being to organize a strategic planning conference in Surajkund, India the following November, where Nonviolent Peaceforce would officially be launched. One hundred and fifty peacemakers from 49 countries showed up. I attended this powerful gathering with my Pace e Bene colleague Veronica Pelicaric, and led the opening ritual with Ouyporn Khuankaew, a long-time Buddhist feminist peace trainer and activist from Thailand. It was a dazzling experience spending this time with nonviolent practitioners from five continents hammering out this new project. One year later, in fall 2003, Nonviolent Peaceforce had its first team in Sri Lanka.

Nonviolent Peaceforce’s mission is:

To transform the world’s response to conflict by promoting, developing and implementing unarmed civilian peacekeeping as a tool for reducing violence and protecting civilians in situations of armed conflict.

We envision a world in which large-scale unarmed civilian peacekeeping using proven nonviolent strategies is recognized as a viable alternative in preventing, addressing, and mitigating violent conflicts worldwide. Our primary strategy for achieving this vision is the creation of space to foster dialogue.

Non-faith-based and nonpolitical, Nonviolent Peaceforce adheres to the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence as it has worked in Sri Lanka, Guatamala, South Sudan, and the Philippines. Concretely, Nonviolent Peaceforce:

protects vulnerable civilians from harm and reduces violence in conflict-affected areas through the innovative methodology of unarmed civilian peacekeeping. We work with local groups committed to peace and partner with them to strengthen community security. We provide safe spaces for parties in conflict to meet each other and address their grievances. We hold the conflict parties accountable to the laws and agreements they have signed and help them live up to these.

Simply by being present and being visible, unarmed civilians can reduce the likelihood of violence or other serious human rights abuses. They do this by ensuring such actions do not happen in secret and with impunity. A more proactive presence involves analyzing the sources and causes of the violence and using international pressure to influence the behavior of armed actors. This can prevent violence even more effectively. By living and working alongside conflict-affected communities, building relationships of trust with all the key stakeholders, and engaging with those stakeholders directly and in confidence, experienced and well-trained unarmed civilian peacekeepers are able to help them see that it is often in their own best interests to take the moral high ground, to avoid abuses of and attacks on civilians, and to abide by the agreements they have signed and the accepted norms of international humanitarian law. This provides the maximum protection to civilians in conflict-affected areas and helps to prevent and reduce escalation of violent conflict.

Our activities have ranged from entering active conflict zones to remove civilians in the crossfire to providing opposing factions a safe space to negotiate. Other activities include serving as a communication link between warring factions, securing safe temporary housing for civilians displaced by war, providing violence prevention measures during elections and negotiating the return of kidnapped family members.

Two concrete examples illuminate Nonviolent Peaceforce’s work. In 2010, NP’s longest-serving peacekeeper Oloo Otieno, from Kenya, reported concretely on the power of unarmed peacekeeping in Sri Lanka, which had experienced decades of war. Twenty-six children had been abducted to serve as child soldiers by rebel forces. Otieno accompanied their unarmed mothers, who were intent on getting their children released, to the rebel encampment. As he wrote later:

With no threat of violence leveled against his forces, the senior-most rebel commander arrived to meet with the mothers and their nonviolent entourage. Our lack of arms earned the commander’s trust, respect and cooperation. He yielded with grace, apologized to the families, and ordered the immediate release of all 26 children.

This outcome was echoed some time later in his next posting in Mindanao in the Philippines, where he and his NP partners accompanied a woman to a military detachment where her husband had been detained after being arrested from a paddy field while at work. She had been afraid to take action, but emboldened by the presence of the NP peacekeepers, she made her case to the local battalion commander:

Within three hours, an impromptu community dialogue was convened by the barangay (village) captain and the battalion commander, who were on opposing sides of the hostilities. The commander explained the husband was suspected of belonging to a criminal gang recently spotted in the area. He apologized for the arrest and implored the community to report any suspicious people to the nearest military detachment. The terrified husband, just 22 years old, was released after six hours in custody.

In its first ten years, Nonviolent Peaceforce has been slowly developing a professional “peace service” in various parts of the world. We look forward to the next ten as it increases its infrastructure, reach and impact—and contributes yet one more important piece to the ongoing rainbow construction project.

Mirrored from Tom Atlee’s transformational thinkpad

By Tom Atlee  — November 24, 2011