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.
Mirrored from Tom Atlee’s transformational thinkpad
By Tom Atlee — November 24, 2011
Something remarkable has been going on out there – especially at UC Davis. I have a hard time figuring out how to articulate it. I haven’t yet seen anyone talk about quite what I’m seeing, so I’ll give it a try.
Here’s what it looks like to me: Nonviolent activism is evolving rapidly right before our eyes. The level of spot-on – and often spontaneous – nonviolent creativity that’s showing up exceeds what I’ve seen before, to an extent that I wonder if a fundamentally new and more powerful form of nonviolent action is emerging.
by Nathan Schneider | November 13, 2011, 4:19 pm
I’ve noted before that Occupy Wall Street has had trouble coming to consensus on a statement of nonviolence (as opposed to, say, the October 2011 movement in DC, which publicized one at the outset). This was an issue both in the planning process and in the early days of the occupation. In my essay on the notion of “diversity of tactics” for Occupy Wall Street, I wrote:
Since the early stages of the movement, it is true, those taking part have been in a deadlock on the question of making a commitment to nonviolence. At a planning meeting in Tompkins Square Park prior to September 17, I recall one young man in dark sunglasses saying, knowingly, “There is a danger of fetishizing nonviolence to the point that it becomes a dogma.” In response, a woman added a “point of information,” despite being in contradiction to what Gandhi or King might say: “Nonviolence just means not initiating violence.” The question of nonviolence was ultimately tabled that night and thereafter. “This discussion is a complete waste of time,” someone concluded.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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?
As we approach the tenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, it is well to remember that the road we took over the past decade was not inevitable.
I recall an email that John Paul Lederach circulated just days after the Twin Towers fell. Based on his decades of the study and practice of international conflict transformation, Lederach (currently a professor of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame who also teachers at Eastern Mennonite University) counseled us not to seek accountability through war but by thinking and acting differently than expected.
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.