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

by Nathan Schneider | November 13, 2011, 4:19 pm

  
by David Hartsough — November 7, 2011

The Occupation in Freedom Plaza in Washington DC (two blocks from the White House) and the occupations around the country and the world give me more hope than anything which I have experienced since the civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960’s.

Hundreds of thousands or millions of people from all walks of life and all ages, races and religious backgrounds– and especially young people- are waking up and saying with their bodies “We aren’t going to take it any more. We will not put up with a society where the government does not represent the people, but too often represents the corporations and the wealthy. We will not put up with a government which gives unlimited hundreds of billions of dollars to fight foreign wars, create more nuclear weapons and build military bases around the world while making drastic cuts across the board to programs for education and health and welfare of the American people.

People in this movement are willing to put their bodies on the line and commit themselves for the long haul to make sure their voices are heard. People have found that there are many others out there with the same concerns and hopes and believe strongly that together there is HOPE we can make systemic and real change in our society and world. We are not alone. We are the 99% and with courage and a commitment to nonviolence, WE SHALL OVERCOME. There is no stopping us short of victory.

I believe the large majority of the American people support the agenda this movement is promoting:

*Tax the rich and corporations

*End the war, bring the troops home, cut military spending

*Protect the social safety net, strengthen Social Security and improved Medicare for all

*End corporate welfare for oil companies and other big business interests

*Transition to a clean energy economy, reverse environmental degradation

*Protect workers rights including collective bargaining, create jobs and raise wages

*Get money out of politics

What made this gathering in D.C. different from many demonstrations in the past was that this was not just a one afternoon demonstration and then we all go home. People came prepared to stay until our voices were heard and we stop the madness of the wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and bring those hundreds of billions of dollars home to meet needs here in the U.S.

Indeed, according to a recent poll by Time magazine, if Occupy Wall Street were a national candidate for president, it would defeat every other candidate on the stage, including Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Fifty-four percent of Americans agree with the protesters whereas 44 percent think President Obama is doing a good job. Seventy-three percent of Americans want prosecutions of Wall Street executives for the crisis. Seventy-nine percent think the gap between rich and poor is too large. Eighty-six percent say Wall Street and its lobbyists have too much power in Washington. Sixty-eight percent think the rich should pay more in taxes. Twenty-five percent of the public considers itself upset, 45% is concerned about the country and 25% is downright angry.

The courageous people of Egypt who occupied Freedom Square in Cairo and forced their dictator to resign because he was not listening to and meeting the needs of the Egyptian people were our inspiration. So we came to Freedom Plaza to say with our bodies, Our government is not listening to us. We want to return to a Democracy of, by and for the people, NOT of, by and for the corporations and the wealthy.

My wife Jan and I went to Washington for the first ten days of the occupation of Freedom Plaza and were inspired that thousands of people from all over the country had come to help make history, save our Democracy and stop the horrendous wars which are not only killing thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq, but in the words of Martin Luther King, are “destroying the Soul of America.”

This campaign was organized by Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, young people of many races, homeless people and peace and justice activists from around the country.

There were a lot of creative signs and banners. Here’s a sampling: “We are the 99%.” Another said, “Tax the Greedy, Help the Needy.”, “There is enough for everyone’s needs, but not for everyone’s greed”. There is enough for everyone’s needs, but not for everyone’s greed”, “Support the Troops, End the wars”, “Affordable Housing is a human right”. “The military budget is killing us. Bring our Billions Home.” “W.A.R. = Wasted American Resources”, “I will believe corporations are people when Georgia executes one!” “Guided missiles, misguided men”, “US is not broke, just broken priorities”, “Windmills not oil spills”, “Separation of Corporations and State”

Here is a taste of some of the people I met at Freedom Plaza. One African American man in his late 20’s told me “This is the most exciting moment of my life. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this. I would have never dreamed it would be possible. Our government represents the rich and the corporations. We need a nonviolent revolution to take back this country for the people. We need a government of, by and for the people, not just the rich and the corporations. . I have found a community of people here who care and are ready to commit our lives to changing our society to one where there is justice and we are at peace with the world. I am ready to stay here the rest of my life if necessary. We shall overcome!”

A veteran said, “What we are producing in Iraq and Afghanistan in addition to thousands of civilian deaths are walking time bombs in our country, as PTSD damages loved ones and communities.” A young man on active duty stated, “The wars are based on lies, and our occupations are exposing the military and Wall Street.” A woman from Washington state said, “I’m fed up with the direction this country is taking. I’m here to rally for future generations.

We walked each day to a different manifestation of the military industrial Wall Street complex in Washington to Speak Truth to Power, voice our concerns and share our determination to change things. We marched to the offices of General Atomics which produces drones and we demanded an end to these long-distance death machines; we were chased out of the building. We marched to the Air and Space Museum exhibiting drones and were tear gassed; the museum was closed for the rest of the day. In front of the Chamber of Commerce we shouted “We want JOBS!”. We demonstrated in front of Washington’s Convention Center which was having a weaponry fair where corporations were showing off and selling their tanks and armored personnel carriers and every conceivable type of military equipment to the US Army. We called for an end to war profiteering and an end to the senseless wars. We filled the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building with banners from the balconies of all seven floors and chanting: “Stop the Wars! Tax the Rich!” Senate aids later told us they had heard our message. We occupied the National Security Agency and 12 of us were arrested. We marched to the White House where Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and Military Families asked for a “beer summit” with the President to share their personal experiences in the wars and the urgent need to end these wars and military occupations NOW.

Most days some of us would be arrested at these demonstrations. On Sunday evening, Oct 9th hundreds prepared to be arrested rather than be evicted from Freedom Plaza. The next morning the Park Service offered to extend our permit for four months so we could continue our occupation of Freedom Plaza – and keep the tents set up to offer food, legal support, medical, and media.

Each night we had a General Assembly where all major decisions were made by consensus of the hundreds of people present. We also had visits and heard inspirational talks by people like Ralph Nader, Dick Gregory and Patch Adams. Dick Gregory said “We need to be like a turtle – hard on the outside, soft on the inside and willing to stick our neck out…We have already won. We have given people hope.”

Dennis Trainer, Jr said “American Democracy is broken. We are here to fix it. We are here and we are in revolt. We are the 99% and we can and must do this without violence.”

Ralph Nader called for Liberty and Justice for all, not just the few. He suggested that all around this country we surround the Congressional offices (or occupy them) until they agree to represent the people, not corporate interests.” Patch Adams reminded us that our revolution needs to be a “revolution of love” – for one another and for everything on the planet. “The revolution can be fun.”

The Occupy movement is VERY IMPORTANT and is a beacon of hope for not only the 99% of American people who want a return to Democracy and a government of, by and for all the people, but for all the people of the world who have suffered so much from American government acting like the world is our empire. If we can keep the tone and spirit of our movement nonviolent, even in the face of provocation and violence by the police or infiltrators, there is no stopping this movement short of victory. WE SHALL OVERCOME!
 

 
David Hartsough is a co-founder of the Nonviolent Peaceforce and Director of PEACEWORKERS, and a member of San Francisco Friends Meeting

For more information on the Ocupation at Freedom Plaza and the other occupations around the country and the world see www.october2011.org and www.occupytogether.org

by Paul K. Chappell
October 31, 2011

Mirrored from Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

I graduated from West Point in 2002, served in the army for seven years, and was deployed to Baghdad in 2006. I left active duty in 2009 as a captain, and I am currently serving as the Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, where I work to empower people with the skills and ideals that allow us to effectively wage peace.

If we compare how much the average twenty-two-year-old army officer knows about waging war and how much the average twenty-two-year-old activist knows about waging peace, there is a big difference. Although I admire their deep commitment to waging peace, many activists have not had enough training in the nonviolent methods that lead to positive change. Many activists have not thoroughly studied the brilliant techniques of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, and other peace warriors.

Good intentions are simply not enough. If they were enough, then war, injustice, and oppression would have ended many years ago. To solve our national and global problems, we need more than just good intentions. We must also be disciplined, strategic, and well trained. Civil Rights leader James Lawson, whom Martin Luther King Jr. called “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world,” said, “The difficulty with nonviolent people and efforts is that they don’t recognize the necessity of fierce discipline and training, and strategizing, and planning, and recruiting.”

If we truly want to promote peace and justice, we must be as well trained in the art of waging peace as soldiers are in the art of war. In the next several pages I will discuss the Occupy Movement from a strategic perspective, and I will also explain some easy ways for the opponents of change to destroy it. Only then can we protect the Occupy Movement, which is a living monument to Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy and vision.

If King had not been assassinated, he would have begun the Occupy Movement many decades ago. King had a vision called the Poor People’s Campaign, which was a plan to occupy Washington D.C. and pressure the U.S. government to create an Economic Bill of Rights. Samuel Kyles, a minister who worked closely with King and was with him during the last hour before his assassination, said: “With the Poor People’s Campaign, Martin is talking about taking these poor people to Washington, build tents, and live on the [Washington] mall until this country did something about poverty… Can you imagine what would happen if all these black and white and brown people go to Washington and build tents and live in tents in Washington?”

King’s vision to increase fairness and justice in our economic system was not fulfilled, but his vision to end segregation gave me opportunities my father never had. When I was growing up, my father always told me: “The only place in America where black men are treated fairly is in the military. People will be nice to you, but when they find out you’re part black they’ll turn on you. The military is the only place that gives black men a chance. You’ll never be able to get a decent job unless you’re in the army.”

Half white and half black, my father was born in 1925 and grew up in Virginia during segregation and the Great Depression. The U.S. Army was desegregated in the early 1950s, many years before segregation ended in the South. This made a strong impression on my father. During the 1940s and 1950s, his belief that he only had opportunity in the military was largely true. A hard worker who began picking fruit when he was six years old to earn extra income for his family, he fought in the Korean and Vietnam wars and retired as the highest enlisted rank, a command sergeant major.

My mother is Korean, and growing up in Alabama I also experienced some racism. This reinforced the fears that my father instilled in me. When I told my mother two years ago that I was leaving active duty, she said: “Are you out of your mind? Nobody is going to hire you. It’s bad enough you look Asian, but you’re also part black. Nobody is going to give a job to a black man who looks Asian.” My parents did not tell me lies. On the contrary, they told me their truth. They were describing life as they had experienced it and trying to protect me from the suffering they endured. But as an adult I had begun to realize that my racial background was no longer the hindrance my parents believed it to be, and I owe my very existence to the power of social movements.

America’s Founding Fathers rebelled against Great Britain because they felt unfairly treated. They believed it was unjust to be taxed or controlled without the opportunity to participate in the political process. The motto “No taxation without representation” echoed their outrage and became a call to arms, leading to the American Revolution. But until the 1820s, fifty years later, less than 10 percent of the American population could vote. Women could not vote. African Americans could not vote. And most white people could not vote unless they owned land. During the early nineteenth century, “No taxation without representation” only seemed to apply to the rich.

How did so many Americans increase their liberties during the past two hundred years? Did non-landowners fight a war to obtain the right to vote? Did women fight a war to get the right to vote? Did African Americans fight a war to attain their civil rights? Did American workers fight a war to gain their rights? Was a war fought for child labor laws? These victories for liberty and justice were achieved because people waged peace, but this is a part of our history that many people do not remember.

One of the most undemocratic things I have ever heard – which I hear often – is that the American president is the leader of the free world. If we understand what the ideal of democracy truly means, we realize that the people are supposed to lead, and the president is supposed to be the administrator of the people’s will. Although we live in a representative democracy instead of a direct democracy, we still have methods to pressure our politicians to do what we want. The evidence from American history shows that nothing will change for the better unless Americans tell the president what to do. American history also shows that ordinary citizens, not presidents, are the brightest visionaries and the true engine of progress.

For example, Lyndon Johnson was not a strong advocate for civil rights when he became president, but he later supported racial equality because Martin Luther King Jr. and other members of the civil rights movement pressured him to do so. Franklin Roosevelt was not a strong advocate for worker’s rights, which included child labor laws and a five-day workweek, when he became president, but the worker’s rights movement changed his viewpoint. Woodrow Wilson opposed women’s equality when he became president, but he later supported the constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote because Alice Paul and other members of the women’s rights movement pressured him to do so. Abraham Lincoln was not a visionary who believed slavery was wrong when he began his political career, but his views changed due to the influence of Frederick Douglass and other members of the abolitionist movement.

As a child I was taught that voting was the be-all and end-all of citizenship, and if I showed up to the polls to vote I was fulfilling my civic duty. But the women’s and civil rights movements created dramatic change, even though many of its participants had little to no voting rights. Voting is just one tool in the democratic toolbox, and we can’t build a house with just a hammer. Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. used many democratic methods such as protests, petitions, boycotts, pressuring the legal system, and changing people’s attitudes for the better. Historian Howard Zinn said: “Democracy doesn’t come from the top. It comes from the bottom. Democracy is not what governments do. It’s what people do.”

My ancestors were slaves, my grandfather in Virginia was a racially mixed African American barber, and his wife was a racially mixed African American maid. Neither of my parents graduated from college, but now I am living in a position of extreme privilege. I am not referring to money, because I have a modest income and live in a one-bedroom apartment. To me, extreme privilege refers primarily to four things.

First, I am literate. It was illegal to teach slaves to read, and for most of human history the majority of people simply could not read. Second, I am living in a remarkable era where I have greater access to information than anyone living before me. Philosopher Francis Bacon said “Knowledge is power,” and Socrates showed that in order to improve our society we must transform people’s beliefs and ways of thinking. In my apartment I have Internet access and many books and documentaries, and in the battle to change minds this is a vast source of power. Third, I can express my viewpoints without being suppressed. Freedom of expression did not exist for much of human history, and it still does not exist in some parts of the world today. Fourth, as an American citizen I have the ability to make a difference, and I intend to make the most of my citizenship.

Although my income is modest and I live in a one-bedroom apartment, from a historical and global perspective I am extremely privileged, and taking action allows me to ensure that I do not take my freedom for granted. We certainly have a long way to go before peace and justice are truly a reality around the world, but we have also come a long way. My existence is proof that progress is possible, and if we have come so far, why can’t we keep moving in a positive direction?

If politicians today said, “We should bring back slavery and segregation, and women should not be allowed to vote or own property,” people would look at them like they were insane. But two hundred years ago the majority of Americans supported those viewpoints. How did we get here, and how can we change attitudes toward the other problems that threaten humanity?

Waging peace was the weapon used by Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr., and we must arm ourselves with this weapon today. King said: “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a unique weapon in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.” If people in the past had not used the power of waging peace, I and countless others would have little to no rights today. The American Civil War kept the country together, but it took a peaceful movement during the 1950s and 1960s before African Americans truly got their human rights. And not a single European country had a war to free the slaves. The first strategic nonviolent movements in history were the abolitionist movements in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

By understanding how my bloodline went from slavery to extreme privilege, we will better understand how to strengthen the social movements occurring today and how the opponents of change will seek to destroy them.

In The Art of War, written during the sixth-century BC, Sun Tzu said: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Knowing our enemy and knowing ourselves is a timeless strategic principle. It means being able to see the world from our enemy’s point of view, and knowing not only our strengths, but also our weaknesses. When waging peace is concerned, our enemies are ignorance, hatred, misunderstanding, and greed. King never demonized the white racists who wanted to kill him. Instead, he called them his “sick white brothers.” King believed that their minds had been imprisoned by ignorance and hatred, and he sought to use the power of truth and love to break their chains.

Not everyone who perpetuates injustice will be won over to the cause of justice, but nonviolent tactician Gene Sharp teaches that in any oppressive system there are always people in that system who will empathize with the oppressed. Nelson Mandela was able to win hearts and minds among some of his prison guards, and Wikileaks exists because people in the American government and military are leaking documents they believe the American public needs to know about. Waging peace requires us to not demonize the other side, and to do more than just preach to the choir. If we use effective techniques for persuading those who disagree with us, then we can recruit more people in oppressive systems to directly or indirectly support the change our world needs.

Governments control people by dividing them, and if I wanted to destroy the Occupy Movement the first thing I would do is encourage people in the movement to have an “us versus them” mentality. The government is notorious for planting undercover agents in social movements who intend to destroy the movement from within, and anyone who wants to destroy the Occupy Movement should use agents to increase the “us versus them” rhetoric.

This can be done with signs and slogans that portray all wealthy people, corporate employees, and police officers as evil. Occupy Movement protests in many cities have had signs with the words, “Eat the rich” (which is a message that endorses violence), and during the Occupy Oakland protest a picture was taken of an activist holding a sign, “All my heroes kill cops.” If a government agent wasn’t behind that sign, then a protestor was doing the government’s work for free.

The truth is that police officers are part of the 99 percent, and in many areas they are losing their jobs due to government cutbacks. Aqeela Sherrills, who grew up in gangs and later negotiated a peace treaty between the rival gangs the Bloods and the Crips, dealt with many bad police officers. But he said, “When the police would come and jump out of the car and everybody would run, we would just stand there. We knew our rights. We questioned and would argue the police down about violating our civil rights and run down the codes to them and everything. People thought we were crazy in the neighborhood. But there are always good cops. There were the good cops who recognized what we were doing was a benefit to the neighborhood, and who would basically tell us how to deal with those racist and renegade cops in the neighborhood by filing complaints and filing reports.”

Activist Blase Bonpane says, “If anyone in your movement advocates violence, always assume they are an undercover government agent.” If you are part of a social movement, the government wants you to use violence. Why? A basic principle of military strategy is to never confront your opponent where they are strongest, and always confront them where they are weakest. Where is the U.S. government strongest? Its greatest strength is the use of violence. The U.S. government has the most powerful military in human history and controls the army, navy, air force, marines, special forces, national guard, FBI, CIA, and police. If you fight the U.S. government with violence on its own soil – where it has home field advantage – it will crush you.

All governments work hard to maintain a monopoly on the use of violence, and the U.S. government has spent the past ten years building a massive anti-terrorism industry. The easiest way to destroy the Occupy Movement would be for people within the movement to commit violence. The U.S. government could then label the movement as a terrorist organization and crush it with force it in the name of self-defense and national security.

For years I have studied jiu-jitsu, which taught me that a skilled boxer is like a lion. Just as a lion is called the “king of the jungle,” a skilled boxer usually reigns supreme in a fistfight. But when a jiu-jitsu practitioner takes a boxer to the ground and applies a submission hold, it is like pulling a lion into a shark tank. A boxer on the ground, like a lion in the water, is out of his element.

When we wage peace, we are taking an oppressive system out of its element and dragging it into deep water, because when we are violent it is best prepared to smash us. King taught us to confront an oppressive system not violently where it is strongest, but in the realm of moral authority where it is weakest. When we wage peace and those in power use violence against us, it can actually make us stronger. When peaceful civil rights protestors were blasted with fire hoses and attacked with police dogs, public support for the civil rights movement increased. When the U.S. government attacked the Bonus Marchers – World War I veterans protesting for the wages they had been promised while serving overseas – it increased the moral authority of their movement and public opinion shifted in their favor.

Star Wars expresses this metaphorically. Right before Darth Vader kills him, Obi-Wan Kenobi says, “You can’t win Darth. If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” This metaphor applies to real life, because when the Athenians killed Socrates he became more powerful. After his execution the Athenians later regretted this injustice; they created a statue to honor him and he became a symbol that has inspired countless people around the world. When the Romans killed Jesus he also became more powerful, and when Gandhi and King were assassinated they became symbols that will never go away.

This is one reason why the apartheid government in South Africa kept Nelson Mandela in prison instead of killing him, and the dictatorship in Burma has held democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi on house arrest rather than executing her. However, unjust imprisonment can still create public outrage and shift national and global consensus. This is why when dealing with nonviolent activists, it is better to imprison than to kill, but it is far better to slander someone’s reputation than be perceived as holding an innocent person in jail.

Although there are many ways to discredit and damage a social movement, in the modern world the greatest danger to any movement is from within. The more frustrated people in the Occupy Movement become, the more likely they will be to use violence. This is cause for concern, because some protestors in the movement may not realize what they are getting into. This is not going to be like Egypt, where a ruthless dictator was toppled in a few weeks. In many ways the struggle in Egypt is just beginning, because much of its oppressive infrastructure is still in place.

To better understand the challenges ahead, we should study and draw inspiration from the struggles for civil and women’s rights, and every other social movement in history. It may take some years before significant progress is made on the issues we are confronting today. Rosa Parks was a committed activist for twelve years prior to her famous arrest incident, and King believed that the dangerous forces we are up against now are going to make the supporters of segregation look like amateurs in comparison.

If protestors aren’t mentally prepared for the challenges ahead and are expecting immediate results, their frustration will swell and the cries for violence will become more potent. Someone in the movement will say, “We’ve been doing this nonviolence thing for eight months and no significant change has happened. I am starting to get impatient. If we want change, we must resort to violence.” There are certainly people in the Occupy Movement who have this mindset now, but as frustration and impatience increase within the movement their violent rhetoric will gain more traction.

Social movements are long-distance marathons, not sprints, and they all involve a series of victories and setbacks. The better we understand this, the less frustrated we will become, the less likely we will be to lose hope due to disappointment, and the less prone we will be to becoming violent and destroying the movement from within. To be effective in any struggle for peace and justice we must balance urgency with patience, and we must be disciplined, strategic, and well trained.

What I have discussed here is just the beginning of a much longer conversation. But before we can move forward, I first had to explain why the easiest way to destroy the Occupy Movement is by getting its members to advocate and commit violence, and the best way to prevent the movement from failing is by instilling a deep loyalty to nonviolence and providing effective training in the art of waging peace. If the majority of protestors do not encourage each other to learn skills and ideals that allow us to be effective, the opponents of change may not have to do much in order to destroy the movement. It will simply collapse from within.

But I have hope, because although protestors are being told they are part of the 99 percent, I realize they are really part of the 1 percent. I am not referring to the “wealthiest 1 percent,” but the “active 1 percent” who truly practice democracy and defend its principles. Henry David Thoreau said: “There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and war who yet do nothing to put an end to them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to every virtuous man.”

According to Thoreau, for every thousand people who think something is a good idea, only one person actually does something about it. This is not just Thoreau’s viewpoint. It is also a fact of history. Less than 1 percent of Americans were actively involved in the women’s rights movement, or in the civil rights movement. When opinion polls tell us a large percentage of Americans oppose a war, we must keep in mind that only a small fraction are actively involved in solving the problem.

Today, everyone who wages peace is part of the “active 1 percent.” Their greatest wealth is conscience, compassion, courage, and commitment. Throughout history the “active 1 percent” has worked to give me and so many others the freedoms we enjoy today. Now we must use those freedoms to create the change our world so desperately needs. 

***********

Paul K. Chappell graduated from West Point in 2002.  He served in the army for seven years, was deployed to Baghdad in 2006, and left active duty in November 2009 as a Captain. He is the author ofWill War Ever End?: A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the 21st Century, The End of War: How Waging Peace Can Save Humanity, Our Planet, and Our Future, and Peaceful Revolution: How We Can Create the Future Needed for Humanity’s Survival (publication date: March 2012). He lives in Santa Barbara, California, where he is serving as the Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is working on his fourth book, The Art of Waging Peace: A Strategic Approach to Improving Our Lives and the World, and he speaks throughout the country to colleges, high schools, veterans groups, churches, and activist organizations. His website is www.willwareverend.com.

In Westlake Park, Seattle, shortly before police removed the tent and
arrested occupiers. Sign reads: 250,000 Homeless Vets Is
Unacceptable. (Photo by Sarah van Gelder.)

The OccupyWallStreet movement continues to spread with more than 1,500 sites. More and more people are speaking up for a society that works for the 99 percent, not just the 1 percent.

Here are 10 recommendations from the YES! Magazine staff for ways to build the power and momentum of this movement. Only two of them involve sleeping outside:

1. Show up at the occupied space near you.

Use this link to find the Facebook page of an occupation near you. If you can, bring a tent or tarp and sleeping bag, and stay. Or just come for a few hours. Talk to people, participate in a General Assembly, hold a sign, help serve food. Learn about the new world being created in the occupied spaces.

2. Start your own occupation.

Use this Meetup site. Or call together friends, members of your faith group, school, or community group. Reach out to people from parts of your community you don’t normally work with. Unexpected alliances keep the movement from getting labeled as partisan or representing only some people.

3. Support those who are occupying.

Most sites need food, warm clothes, blankets, tarps, sleeping bags, communications gear, and money. Many need people to do loads of laundry, to help with medical care, to provide legal support, to serve food, and to spread the word. Some people call in pizza orders from nearby vendors. Support the folks at Liberty Square in New York here, or check in with your local occupiers to see what they need.

4. Speak out. Get into the debates and the teach-ins.

Many occupation sites have workshops and discussions on critical issues of our time. Get into the discussion. Bring your expertise and reading materials to share. YES! Magazine is offering free copies of the current New Livelihood issue to occupied sites (request them by emailing JobsIssue@yesmagazine.org). Bring the discussions to other groups you are part of. Listen to perspectives you haven’t heard before. This process represents a critical, but under-reported side of the movement: People are shifting from being passive, frustrated observers of politics to  active, powerful players. Instead of waiting for our leaders to do the right thing, people from all walks of life are becoming leaders. It makes us unstoppable.

5. Share your story.

Post how you’re part of the 99 percent on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or in print. Through this movement, people are discovering others who are also losing jobs and homes, who are overwhelmed by debt or working a dead-end job. Through this sharing, humiliation turns into compassion and self-respect. And it builds understanding of the sources and the impacts of our crisis: A Wall Street system that funnels wealth to the top 1 percent is leaving the rest of us behind. Community plus insight makes us powerful.

Photo by Sarah van Gelder.

6. Be the media.

Show up with your video recorder, camera phone, or laptop and share the stories of the occupation. You can download a selection of posters donated by graphic designers and spread them around. Highlight the human dimension of the protests. It is harder for critics to disparage a movement when people see the faces of those involved.

7. Name the meaning of this moment.

What will make the world better for the 99 percent? How has the power of the 1 percent gotten in the way of your hopes and dreams? Make a sign, write a blog, update your Facebook page, or speak out on the issue that means the most to you. Include the phrase, “I am the 99 percent.”

8. Insist that public officials treat the occupations with respect.

The eviction of the Liberty Square occupation on Wall Street was averted by massive public resistance from those in the square and from others. Other occupations also need support. The 99 percent don’t have the money, political access, and media empires of the 1 percent; the occupations are one of the few ways we are building power. Ask your local officials to respect people's right to assembly.

What Can Stop the One Percent?
Naomi Klein: There’s only one thing that can block
the wish list of the one percent, and it’s a very big thing:
the rest of us.

9. Study and teach nonviolent techniques.

There are many examples of outside provocateurs who spark violent incidents that can discredit nonviolent movements such as this. The corporate media is hungry for violent images. (There’s already been an example of an admitted provocateur from the right-wing "American Spectator" who provoked pepper spraying at the National Air & Space Museum). Learn how to lovingly and firmly interrupt and contain violence, and teach what you know. Here are some resources.

10. Be resilient.

This movement is here for the long term. Some efforts may fade because of cold weather or harsh police responses. Others may self-destruct through faulty process or violent outbreaks. The movement may be idealistic, but it won’t be ideal. Don’t get disillusioned; the demand for a society that serves the 99 percent won’t go away. The movement may morph, but it has become unstoppable. Help it evolve.

The genie is out of the bottle. People will no longer accept the systematic transfer of wealth and power from we the people to the 1 percent. In this remarkable, leaderless movement, each one of the 99 percent who gets involved helps shape history.

Sarah van Gelder is co-founder and executive editor of YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.

By Starhawk  OCT 20, 2011

“We are the 99 percent!” The chant thunders through the streets, from Wall Street in New York City, where the Occupy movement began, to K Street in Washington, where high-paid lobbyists influence government, to streets in cities and small towns all across the nation. In hundreds of Occupations, ordinary people have been moved to fill parks and streets and squares with signs, tents, impromptu soup kitchens, intense conversations and lengthy meetings.

What’s going on? Pundits splutter about the movement’s lack of ‘demands’ and coherent messaging, but sound bites and 10-point programs arise from central committees and top-down hierarchies. The Occupy movement demonstrates a very different model of organizing: emergent, decentralized, without a command and control structure.

While I have not had the chance to go to Wall Street, I’ve been to four different Occupy sites in the last two weeks, two in Washington DC, one in San Francisco where I live, and one across the Bay in Oakland. There are at least five others within a two-hour drive from my home, and more springing up each day. Oakland was inspiring-like a small village with a food tent, a medical tent, a library, a free school, and a built-in ampitheater in front of City Hall. Some others have looked more like homeless encampments. But all share a common heart, a revulsion against an economy and a politics that increasingly say, “You don’t count, except as something to exploit. Your voice is drowned out by money, your labor is expendable, your needs must be sacrificed to the gods of profit.”

At its essence, the message of the Occupations is simply this:

“Here in the face of power we will sit and create a new society, in which you do count. Your voice carries weight, your contributions have value, whoever you may be. We care for one another, and we say that love and care are the true foundations for the society we want to live in. We’ll stand with the poor and sleep with the homeless if that’s what it takes to get justice. We’ll build a new world.”

The Occupy movement is not overtly religious, like the Tea Party. The 99 percent includes people of all religious faiths, and people who have none. But I believe its core message and ethic is profoundly spiritual, even prophetic.

Religion at its core calls us to charity, community, and witness. In part, our disgust with the system as it is stems from its violation of some of our most basic values. We are taught that a good person does good to others and offers service to the community. Yet we see the system rewarding the rapacious while dismissing the claims of those who devote their lives to nursing the sick, teaching the young, growing our food, building our homes, fighting our fires, or producing those things we truly need.

People come to the Occupations because they cannot rest silent in the face of so much that is just plain wrong. The Occupations give a framework for the protests that call the greedy and powerful to account. And they challeng us to create an alternative.

Disgusted with the corruption and ineffectiveness of government, we go back to the most basic roots of democracy-people sitting together in the public square, talking and making decisions. Of course, democracy is messy and frustrating. When people express their opinions, they don’t all agree. The movement confronts the basic questions of how people can act together. How does direct democracy scale up? We want to hear everyone’s voice, but when we gather in large numbers, how long will that take, and how do we do it without a sound system? Maybe we use the “people’s mike”-where the nearby crowd repeats the words of each speaker, and waves of echoers carry the message back. That creates a great sense of unity, but it takes even longer!

What do we do when needs clash-do we favor the smokers or the non-smokers, the drummers or the sleepers? How do we make alliance with people so broken by life that they are not very capable of listening to others or taking into account other peoples’ needs? Within the broad range of the 99 percent, there are people with whom I agree and others whose beliefs and opinions I find frankly appalling. How do we come together on common ground?

None of these are easy problems to solve. I’ve sat through interminable and frustrating meetings. But I’ve also had moments of profound inspiration and grace. I hug the smiling man at Occupy Oakland who tells me, “There’s a whole lot of healing going on here.” I tear up as a young woman with a beautiful voice sings, “We shall not be moved” to honor an earlier struggle for Civil Rights. I beam at the calm, shy drifter who steps up to facilitate a big meeting and lets his innate intelligence shine.

What a magnificent experiment! How amazing, how exciting that in this world of increasing cynicism and alienation, thousand of people are moved to call to account the greedy and powerful and reinvent democracy in the public square!

The Occupy movement renews my faith in the human spirit, in our creativity, our craving for justice, our determination to root our world in love. So come on down! You are important. Your voice counts. You have a unique contribution to make. We are all the 99 percent.

Find your nearest occupation at:

http://www.occupytogether.org/

Follow Starhawk’s continuing adventures at:

http://starhawksblog.org/

STARHAWK  | OCT 20, 2011 3:18 PM

WHAT IF activists around the world who want to be more effective could turn to a database of actual campaigns, to get ideas for creative nonviolent strategies and tactics?
 
WHAT IF scholars and writers who are researching alternatives to violence could turn to a global database with hundreds of cases where people used nonviolent action to struggle for human rights, eco-justice, democracy?

Rather than being victims of history, David Hartsough believes we should make it – he's raising a ‘peace force’ to do just that
By Kate Rope  –  Bangkok Post  –  2002

George W. Bush is dividing the world and waging war. Osama Bin Laden is skillfully eluding capture and giving hope to the thousands he has trained to kill.  Betwixt the two, hot spots in Israel and the occupied territories are descending into ever more gruesome violence, other countries are being forced to choose which side of the “war” they support, and nobody is talking about peace.

Except, perhaps, David Hartsough, who is quietly building an army in the midst of  the fury. A veteran of the civil rights struggle in the US and a peace activist who's been on the front lines of some of the most destructive clashes of the last half century, Hartsough is travelling the globe to rally a force that will march into the danger zones of the world armed with only a commitment to peace. Born from the work left unfinished by Mahatma Gandhi some 70 years ago, it's a hard-sell in times like these, but Hartsough is an experienced and persuasive salesman.

David Hartsough in 2002

Sitting in the Thammasat office of Chaiwat Satha-anand, Thailand's most prominent peace academic, Hartsough comes across first as a friendly, traveller type. His greying hair, well-worn trousers and forest-green rucksack look like the accoutrements you'd expect a peace-loving wanderer to sport. But when he sits down to tell his story and how and why his approach will work, it is with the resolve and no-nonsense confidence of a battle-seasoned general.  Hartsough knows nonviolence can work because he has spent his life in the field. 

When Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948, he was building a shanti sena, a “peace troop.” From that idea, Hartsough and of ‘Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.’–Mahatama Gandhi

 others have created the Global Nonviolent Peace Force – a corps of civilians trained in active nonviolent techniques that will be sent to areas of conflict around the world to protect human rights and create the space for peaceful resolution of differences.

At the invitation of NGOs or other parties, the corps will enter combat areas to provide unarmed escorts for peaceworkers and training in active nonviolence, as well as summon the attention of the world. Hartsough hopes to have the force “non-combat-ready” by 2003, with an initial contingent of 200 active members, 400 reservists and 500 supporters around the globe who will send email, make phone calls, alert the press and turn the international spotlight on particular conflicts. He already has 10 informal invitations from places including Sri Lanka, Burma, Korea, Mindanao in the Philippines, Columbia, Ecuador, Zimbabwe and Nigeria.

At a conference due to be held in New Delhi in November, an international steering committee, which includes Acharn Chaiwat, will choose the location for a pilot project. If it is successful, Hartsough hopes it will set a precedent for solving conflicts peacefully.

Hartsough's early teachers were Gandhi, whom he read as a child, Martin Luther King, whom he met as a teenager, and his father, who risked his life in the early years of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

A Congregationalist minister who later became a Quaker, Hartsough's father went to the Middle East when David was eight years old to bring tents and medicine to refugees displaced by the first Israel-Palestine war. “My father gave sermons in church on the Good Samaritan story, and it really impressed me that he was not just preaching it but was willing to risk his life on the belief that ‘everyone is my neighbor’,” he recalls.

Hartsough's father also took his teenage son to see the work Martin Luther King was doing in Montgomery, Alabama, to secure equal rights for black citizens of the United States. King was the leader not only of the struggle for civil rights in the US, but also of the first nonviolent movement in that country.

“I was very deeply moved that these people, who were facing such oppression, were determined to get justice, but they were determined to do that nonviolently, even against people who were bombing their churches and their homes. That put me on the road to a much deeper understanding of nonviolence,” says Hartsough.

After a year spent at an elite, almost entirely white college on the East Coast of the United States, where he was helping the admissions office recruit black students, Hartsough heard that Howard University, a black college in Washington, DC, needed white students. Deciding to practise what he was preaching, he transferred to Howard in 1959, and there he received a lesson more valuable than anything else he could have learned: the power of peaceful resistance.

In 1960, all across the southern states of the US, people began protesting the segregation of lunch counters. So, every Saturday, Hartsough and his black friends would leave DC, which had already been desegregated, and cross into Maryland. They would sit at a lunch counter there until they were arrested. After spending the weekend in jail singing freedom songs, they'd be released in time for classes on Monday, only to be back in action the following Saturday.

Hartsough stayed clear of nearby Virginia, which was home not only to the American Nazi Party but also to a law that handed down a year's prison sentence and a thousand-dollar fine to anyone who protested at a lunch counter.

“We didn't have a thousand dollars and we didn't want to spend a year in prison,” says Hartsough laughing. But when months passed and no one challenged the racist law there, he and his friends mustered their courage, did some extra training in nonviolence, and crossed the state line.

“Twelve of us went in and sat down at this lunch counter at the People's Drugstore in Arlington, Virginia, and within minutes there were six cars and sirens coming from all directions. They didn't arrest us, but neither were they going to serve us any food. We stayed there for two days, and it was the most difficult two days of my life.”

Hartsough and his friends endured vicious name-calling, lit cigarettes being dropped down their shirts, punches so hard they were knocked off their stools to the floor, where they were kicked, and members of the American Nazi Party sporting swastikas and brandishing photos of apes, asking them malevolently, “Is we or is we ain't equal?”

At the end of the second day, as Hartsough sat in meditation trying to think about loving his enemies, a man approached him from behind. “He said to me, ‘you nigger-lover’, and he had this horrible look of hatred on his face; ‘if you don't get out of this store in two seconds, I'm going to stab this through your heart’.” In the man's hand was a switchblade. “I had two seconds to decide if I really believed in nonviolence, and I looked this man right in the eye, and I said, ‘Friend, do what you believe is right, and I'll still try and love you’, and it was quite amazing, because his jaw began to fall and his hand began to drop and he left the store.”

The most difficult part was to come. The protest had been on newspaper front pages and an angry crowd of 500 had gathered outside the drugstore, armed with rocks and firecrackers and threatening to kill the 12.

For their part, Hartsough and his friends decided to write to Arlington's religious and political leaders asking them to use their moral and political leadership to open the eating establishments to everyone. “We said that if nothing changed in a week, we'd come back. Some friendly newspaper reporters had their cars outside and got us out of there alive, and we went back to Washington and for six days we were shaking and wondering, ‘Do we have the courage to go back and do it again’.”

But they didn't have to make that choice. On the sixth day, the call came that the lunch counters in Arlington were now open to all.

“That taught me a very powerful lesson,” says Hartsough, “That by acting on our conscience we got those people to act on their conscience, and those people got the society to act on its conscience. That you don't need millions of people … even a few can make change.”

Since that time, Hartsough has been working beside the few and sometimes the many, to make change all over the world. He has been jailed well over 100 times, but his most high-profile arrest was at the hands of Slobodan Milosevic.

Before violence erupted in Kosovo in the late 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Albanians marched to secure basic freedoms – the right to attend school, secure jobs, speak their own language, get access to medical care – that had been taken from them by the Serb regime. They enlisted the help of Hartsough and others to awaken the international community to what was happening and bring moral, political and economic pressure to bear on the Serbs, like that which had succeeded against apartheid.

So Hartsough travelled the US and Europe to rally support, but met with none. He finally returned to Kosovo with a small crew of four Americans to conduct nonviolence training sessions. Though there was no international media attention, coverage on Albanian TV got Milosevic's attention and Hartsough and the five were locked up. “It became front-page news around the world,” says Hartsough, “which was stupid, because 100,000 people marching for justice had not been news, but five Americans in jail was.”

Unwilling to take the international heat, Milosevic soon released the activists and turned them out of the country.

Not long after, the world woke up to the situation in Kosovo and Nato began dropping bombs, a response Hartsough believes could have been avoided and is at the heart of why he is now devoting all of his time to building the peace force.

“I travelled all around the US saying, ‘Kosovo is an explosion waiting to happen, we need people to come’. Nobody responded, and then it exploded and after it exploded, NATO said our only choices were to do nothing or to start bombing. But many of us there felt that with 200 trained and courageous peace troops we might have made an important contribution to a peaceful resolution.”

Hartsough wants his peace force to march right down the middle path between doing nothing and bombing, so that places like Sri Lanka, now possibly on the precipice of peace, can be delivered there rather than disintegrate into further acts of death and destruction.

To charges that this is naive and unrealistic in the world's present landscape of violence, Hartsough marshals evidence that forces like the one he is building have been successful around the globe.

Peace Brigades International, a smaller corps than the one Hartsough plans, was instrumental in giving courage to the civil society in Guatemala which challenged a repressive government that was killing hundreds of thousands of citizens, says Hartsough.

At the invitation of a group called “The Families of the Detained and Disapeared”, the Brigades came in to escort protesters, providing a buffer between military death squads that carried out the government's orders and the civilians who were challenging the government's power.

During a four-year period, only two peace-workers were stabbed in Guatemala and no one was killed. In the increasingly safe environment, more members of the civil society emerged to oppose government oppression. Hartsough, who was there at the time, attributes Guatemala's transition to democracy in large part to the work of the Brigades.

To prepare a training module for his force, the Nonviolent Peaceforce has studied the work of Peace Brigades International and others and has compiled a 300-page document on what has worked, what hasn't, and what has never been tried.

“We're not going to take on the whole world in the first year,” says Hartsough. “Ideally we'd like something that in two years' time we could see some real success. We're convinced that if we do this well, the world will discover that here is a method that costs one millionth of what a military response to a conflict costs, is much more effective, and you don't have the terrible death and destruction and hatred that can continue for generations.”

Despite being a less expensive alternative to armed conflict, peace doesn't come cheap and Hartsough and his colleagues need to raise a pretty penny by peace-movement standards – $8 million (352 million baht) a year – a sum that may be even harder to gather in the wake of September 11. Hartsough is quick to point out, however, that this amount is equal to what the world spends on the military every four minutes. If they can secure the funding, they hope to have the force fully operational – with 2,000 active members, 4,000 reservists and 5,000 supporters – by 2010.

Though September 11 has engendered more violence, Hartsough sees this moment in history as an opportunity to advance his cause. He points to an article in the International Herald Tribune exposing the deaths inflicted on one Afghan village by the American bombing campaign.

“As more and more facts like this come out, I think people are going to be revolted by this militaristic response to something terrible. The United States has spent trillions of dollars on military security, bombers, planes, nuclear weapons, the CIA, FBI … and that got us zero security. It didn't protect one person on September 11. Isn't it time to look at an alternative way to get security?

“After [Martin Luther] King was killed, I was devastated, because he gave so much hope for a new kind of America with him as a leader. But I finally came out of that depression feeling that the only thing we've got is for many of us to become like King,” argues Hartsough. “Today we have a whole lot of local leaders like him that most of the world doesn't even know about. They're in Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Latin America, Africa and Thailand.”

And, like King, they are all saying unpopular things to a few people in the hopes of changing the minds of the many. This is a legacy which Hartsough is happy to carry on.

“I have felt ever since that time [in Arlington, Virginia] that we don't have to be just subjects of history. We can help make it.”

– For more information on the Global Non-violent Peace Force, visit www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org or email info@nonviolentpeaceforce.org