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Nonviolent Action Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
Nonviolent Action Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
By David Swanson
Michael Nagler tells this story:
“One of my close friends, David Hartsough, who is white, was sitting in with a small group of civil rights activists at a segregated lunch counter in Virginia in the early sixties. They had been sitting there without getting service for close to two days, harassed almost without letup by an increasingly angry crowd. As neither the sitters nor the proprietors backed down, tension increased. Suddenly David was jerked back off his stool and spun around by a man who hissed at him, ‘You got one minute to get out of here, n——- lover, or I’m running this through your heart.’ David, a birthright Quaker, stopped staring at the huge Bowie knife held at his chest and slowly looked up into the man’s face, to meet ‘the worst look of hate I have ever seen in my life.’ The thought that came to him was, ‘Well, at least I’ve got a minute,’ and he heard himself saying to the man, ‘Well, brother, you do what you feel you have to, and I’m going to try to love you all the same.’ For a few frozen seconds there seemed to be no reaction; then the hand on the knife started shaking. After a few more long seconds it dropped. The man turned and walked out of the lunchroom, surreptitiously wiping a tear from his cheek.”
Whatever Hartsough did in the days and weeks and years following this incident, it was not to bemoan life’s supposed lack of meaning. Nor did he do that in the months leading up to the incident, during which he clearly prepared himself to respond to the “wind of hate” (as soldiers describe it in war) in his chosen way without having to stop and think about it. He heard himself saying the words that saved his life and improved the lives around him, just as a properly conditioned soldier watches himself fire a weapon in the heat of battle. But there is a drastic difference: the soldier who fires the weapon is usually himself traumatized by having done so. He has to recover afterwards. Veterans’ suicide rates suggest that many never do. The “meaning” violent actors have found in war is fleeting. A nonviolent activist is empowered by his or her action, and need not recover from it. In fact, those confronted by nonviolent activism can be empowered by it as well. Many more Egyptian young people and Egyptian soldiers will tell you life has meaning right now than would have said so last year, and that meaning will leave no hangover. Instead it will fade slowly or last as long as the nonviolent activism continues. When young Palestinians took up nonviolent resistance, their usage of drugs and alcohol plummeted. Does anyone doubt that same effect could be found right now in Madison, Wisconsin?
When I speak about peace and justice, people always ask what they can do and often ask for an easy solution. When I tell them that our entire system is deeply corrupt, that we need a cultural revolution and a massive movement for change, that until Freedom Plaza in DC looks like Tahrir Square in Cairo all changes are going to be cosmetic or for the worse, people often look disappointed or discouraged. They don’t understand (and I have failed to communicate) that I am offering them what people have longed for since the beginning of time and desperately craved and lacked since the beginning of television: I’m offering a life with meaning. Why do people pick up harmful addictions, risk life and limb for no purpose but the risk, try their hardest to believe in theology and astrology and all variety of nonsense? Why all the quiet — and sometimes not so quiet — desperation? It is because people do not believe their lives can have a larger purpose, do not believe they can struggle and sacrifice in solidarity with friends and strangers to improve everything for everyone for centuries to come. And yet, of course, they can and must or all will be lost.
Nagler’s book “The Search for a Nonviolent Future” makes the case that nonviolence and only nonviolence can work, not only work as a fulfilling career for those who practice it, but work in halting wars and injustices. When violence seems to accomplish such ends, the blowback can be swift or slow but is always lingering. When nonviolence seems to fail, it always makes progress, and most failures of nonviolent activism are failures of actions taken with no training whatsoever or of sheer inaction (which our worse-than-useless educational system leaves people confusing with nonviolent action). Yet, the victories won through spontaneous actions by untrained and undisciplined nonviolent actors suggest the incredible potential still largely untapped. The Kapp Putch was stopped in Germany. The Soviet occupation in the Prague Spring was frustrated for months and the groundwork laid for its overthrow. The Rosenstrasse Prison Demonstration overpowered the Nazis, won its participants’ demands, and then disbanded. What if these movements that won victories through nonviolent action had continued and broadened and advanced strategically toward larger goals, as we are all now hoping the people’s movements in Egypt and around the Middle East, Puerto Rico, and the United States are able to do? What if Wall Street had spent the thirties and forties investing in nonviolence training in Germany rather than in weapons and eugenics?
What if people were trained to travel as rapid response teams to use nonviolence in areas of crisis around the globe? They have been for decades now, with stunning success. They have put their lives on the line without weapons or the threat of weapons, accomplished more, and yet been killed and injured far, far less than soldiers who shoot to kill or U.N. peace keepers who threaten to shoot to kill if “needed.” In the early eighties, the minister of war (“defense”) of Nicaragua, Ernesto Cardenal, learned that peace activists protecting villages by their nonviolent presence provided far greater protection than he could. He told Nagler and a group of people, speaking through a translator that wherever these small groups of international activists were, there was no violence. His translator “corrected” his comment and said “nearly no violence.” Cardenal “caught that at once and slammed his fist on the table: ‘I said, absolutely no violence!’”
Peace studies should be required in every college and every high school and every elementary and pre-school. All those years and decades of blankness in between the wars should be filled in in our history books, and we should invest in nonviolence training instead of war. I like to fantasize about bills that could be introduced in Congress. I’d like to see a bill forbidding the United States to spend more on its military than three times the nearest nation behind it. This would require massive cuts to the Pentagon immediately. But what about a bill requiring that the military receive no more than 1,000 times the funding appropriated for nonviolence training and peace? Of course, the trend is in the other direction. The military gets more money and a larger share of the money every year, and Congress is working to defund the US Institute of Peace, Americorps, and the United Nations. But those were not what we really needed. And we don’t really need the government to do what is needed. We need to do it ourselves.
We need to build peace teams for domestic and international work, teams that include independent journalism as part of their activities. We need to invest everything we can in such work. Here’s one example of a place to get started. Here’s something happening all over the United States next week. Here’s that chance to bring Cairo and peace to DC. Here are more activities planned in the near future that you can get involved in.
About the Author: David Swanson is the author of “War Is A Lie”
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Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=82492
Posted by David Swanson on Feb 21 2011, With 0 Reads, Filed under Causes, Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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It would seem that so many of my fellow americans have a hard time with this non-violent thing, including many of my brother war veterans. We see it by the gun ownership in this country, and not for hunting. The fear of being killed, enslaved, dictated to, victimized by others, helpless, unempowered is prevalent. During my “involuntary enslavement” in the Army Infantry in Vietnam in 1968 I had an awakening and started to disobey orders and organize a strike, a rebellion, a work stopage, a refusal to go on another combat air assult. These actions were attempted at much risk of court martial, injury or death from my fellow american soldiers. It was done to try and stop the insane organized killing of fellow human beings, with a new found knowledge that all of us, from both sides, had been brainwashed with fear, and a deference to authority and a naive trust of leaders. These actions became a bit more common in the later years of the war as more soldiers awoke from the Lie of War. I survived and have worked with this ever since. Those of us doing these kinds of actions in 1968 in Vietnam were rare in the Infantry. There has to be the holders of the Moral Compass in the fight for Mutual Compassion toward the ones who have been taught to hate us. Many in Wisconsin, Egypt, and other places are awakening. Many may die before the militaries and police of these countries join in the non-violent cultural revolutions that some of us helped start in the 60′s. These seeds have been germinating all this time from the civil rights movement, the anti-war peace movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the womens rights movement etc. The Corporate/Political/Military players are slow to join since they are so busy trying to convince us otherwise. Keep up the good work.
Failure to perfrom your duty as a solider is dispicable. You have no honor.
Dale R. Suiter
Globally we seem to have the same manufactured monetary problems and the same political issues and agenda behind it. It seems logical to conclude that the actors behind this have the same rotten godless common purpose and must be frustrated in their sinister endevours.
The financial terrorists are acting and thinking globally so it seems logical that we must all stand together and do what we can globally to assist our brothers and sisters wherever they may be and make a better world for ourselves.
On that basis I bring you an appeal and indeed a possible way forward from the people of Ireland who like the rest of us only wish to be free from debt slavery and left to get on with their lives free from interference and molestation by the corporate pirates of this world.
PLEASE HELP TO SPREAD THE WORD ! Find an Irishman pass it on.
http://www.sovereignindependent.com/?p=14443
URGENT! Please Spread this Info Far and Wide to Save Ireland.
Dear Fellow Info-warriors
We respectfully request your URGENT support for our attempt to exploit this election as an opportunity to get our information out to a wider audience.
We are under no illusions that the Dáil possesses the will or backbone to stand up for the liberty and interests of the Irish Nation; but It will do no harm to remind candidates of this duty and attempt to extract clear statements of their intentions.
Your immediate action is required!
Please edit and enhance this text as you see fit.
Please forward this to all sympathetic, trustworthy contacts.
Please cut and paste the following Press Release and Demands to papers, radio and TV, boards and forums. Include your contact details to mainstream media or they will not publish.
Please cut and paste the following Demands and email them to every candidate and campaign organiser in your area.
Thank you.
Amanda and Dave – Co. Leitrim.
Contact: – geopolitics.alliance.ie@gmail.com
Press Release (To be emailed to all and any local and national media) : –
##BEGIN##
WILL NEW TDs MAKE A STAND FOR IRELAND?
Ireland’s Alliance Of Geo-politics Organisations, issues a challenge to prospective TDs to make a stand on policies that will dictate Ireland’s future. In return for the support of thousands of geo-politics activists, they are invited to pledge allegiance to a number of key issues.
The Proclamation of 1916 requires that: – “No one who serves… the cause of the Irish Republic… will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity or rapine.” http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rapine
In an attempt to ensure that our new government is composed of honourable representatives, committed to our republic and the Irish people, electoral candidates across Ireland are being asked to give clear assurances of their intentions in return for votes. Their replies, or lack thereof will be published and otherwise disseminated. They must pledge to restore our status as an independent, neutral, sovereign republic, in accordance with the spirit of the Proclamation in which all laws and policies are directly derived from our Constitution, which in turn is authorised by we, the people of Ireland.
##END##
Demands (To be emailed to Candidates and Campaigners) : –
Dear ######
Only candidates who pledge their support for the critical issues outlined below will be assured the votes of supporters of the following organisations: -
Infowars Ireland http://info-wars.org/
We Are Change Ireland- http://www.wearechange.ie/
Sovereign Independent- http://www.sovereignindependent.com/
We the people http://wethepeopleireland.ning.com/
Direct Democracy http://www.directdemocracyireland.org/
Tír Na Saor http://tirnasaor.com/
One World Scam http://oneworldscam.com/
It has become clear that members of our recent government were agents of the international banking cartel, who executed a financial coup d’etat, plunging Ireland into the same debt slavery, which cripples the third world. We will only give our votes of consent to candidates who recognise this reality and the fact that our “debt” cannot be repaid and therefore, should not be serviced. We require TDs to refuse to allow the IMF and ECB to dominate the Dáil, pillage our resources and effectively become our ruthless new landlords.
Our money is a shared tool. A small minority have abused this tool and seriously damaged it. We want TDs who support the repair or replacement of our currency and who will refuse to accept the international cashless SDR currency being promoted by the same extortionists who engineered this crisis. http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/reviews/it-takes-crisisDespite years of record revenue; the government apparently has no money put by. We do not want to hear promises to spend money we do not have which only reveals an intent to mortgage Ireland’s future. We will favour only those candidates who recognise that more borrowing cannot be a solution to debt.
Before our remaining industry is burdened with more restrictions and we are forced to pay carbon taxes to offshore banks; Ireland must conduct an independent study of Global Warming. Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth” was found to be fraudulent by the UK high court. http://www.newparty.co.uk/articles/inaccuracies-gore.htmlThe UN’s IPCC report has been exposed as being inaccurate and grossly misleading. We insist that before Ireland commits to basing policies on anthropogenic global warming, this hypothesis must be satisfactorily proven. http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2009/03/_internal_modeling_mistakes_by.html
It never makes sense to import what you can make for yourselves. The destruction of our sugar industry was an act of wanton treachery. Sugar futures are now shooting up and whereas we would have been in a position to profit from exports, we are obliged to import at a premium. We will only support candidates who promise to restore native agriculture and fisheries. As the world food shortage worsens, the EU must not be allowed to make farmers keep good land idle, or favour foreign fleets that catch our fish. Food producers must be given the support and recognition they deserve as providers of the nation’s nutrition and health.
Cancer has reached epidemic levels across Ireland. We insist that any new government proactively supports the prevention of this dreadful disease. Water fluoridation has been found to cause a sevenfold increase in certain cancers. We demand that the practise of adding hexafluorosilicic acidor any other toxic industrial waste to our water supply is immediately ceased and the apparatus for compulsory, mass medication is removed. The funds misappropriated for fluoridation, must then be redirected to secure reliable, clean water supplies.
Ireland must take back control of her fossil fuel resources. Billions of Euros worth of oil and gas have been gifted to Royal Dutch Shell. To justify backing you as a TD, we need assurances that you will put a stop to this nonsense, and allow us to profit from our offshore fuels as Norway does.
Fine Gael promise to replace the health service with “a universal health insurance system, based on the renowned Dutch model.” But any Dutch person will tell you that their system is a disaster. The average Dutch family must pay over €500 a month to private insurance companies and if anyone needs treatment they must pay an additional €150 annual excess. The 30% of Dutch citizens, who cannot pay, receive no health care whatsoever and are subjected to heavy fines. We refuse to vote for such a disastrous plan. We demand that the domination of our “health” service by pharmaceutical corporations be curtailed. It must be transformed from a drug dispensary sickness service, into a support for holistic promotion of our good health.
We demand that as a candidate you intelligently examine the wisdom of vaccination programmes such as Gardasil. This is a very expensive new generation of vaccine; its effectiveness against cervical cancer cannot be proven for thirty years or more. However, it is known to have killed over fifty girls and debilitated many thousands more. http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=2645 We require your assurance that you will insist on the publication of the health warnings given by the manufacturers instead of assuring people that it is completely safe. http://www.gardasil.com/what-is-gardasil/gardasil-side-effects/ Autism is reaching epidemic proportions and has been shown to be linked to vaccination. TDs must earnestly address this problem. http://www.talkaboutcuringautism.org/autism/latest_autism_statistics.htm A proper system to record adverse reactions to vaccinations must be instituted, so these no-longer remain grossly underreported.
We insist that our representatives support the restoration of Ireland’s self-reliance, and facilitate the people’s efforts to secure our basic needs, rather than continuing to spend our taxes on surveillance and other preparations for a police state and/or martial law. http://www.thejournal.ie/ned-okeeffe-says-army-coup-a-real-possibility-in-ireland-2011-2/
The placement of our votes depends upon your response to this letter.
Thank you.
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