Active Nonviolence: Heroes for an Unheroic Time

[Guest guest]

Active Nonviolence: Heroes for an Unheroic Time

by Carol Estes

 

A nonviolent army stands fast, watching over human rights in the midst

of conflict, a model of courageous peace.

 

A not-so funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century. We got

scared. We Americans used to believe we were a brave, big-hearted

people committed to freedom and justice for all.

 

When did we lose our nerve?

 

When did we start believing that the world is one big war zone peopled

by terrorists, gang bangers and drive-by shooters, serial killers,

sociopaths, sexual predators, and people who hate freedom? At what

point did we settle for living as though we were under siege, locked in

gated communities, holed up in front of the television? When did

America stop saying to the world, " Give me your tired, your poor, your

huddled masses yearning to be free " and start drawing up blueprints for

a 2000-mile-long wall between us and Mexico?

 

" These are unheroic times, " writes John Graham of the Giraffe Project

in his book Stick Your Neck Out. " After more than two centuries of

being free, this nation is far from brave. "

 

And that is a big problem, not just for Americans, but for the world.

Because scared people are dangerous people. So Graham's goal, and that

of his organization, is to help our nation get its nerve back. He

trains people to stick their necks out for what they believe in.

 

Fortunately, he's not alone.

 

He's working alongside the thousands of ordinary people across the

nation and around the world who have stopped waiting for their

political leaders to lead and taken the initiative themselves. These

people are finding new ways to work with enemies and listen with

compassion to the people they fear, to create peace in conflict zones.

They are inventing methods to interrupt the cycle of fear and

punishment that has left 2 million people imprisoned in the United

States. And they are teaching others how to do the same.

 

In small, individual acts of bravery these regular folks have left the

safety of the flickering, corporate-sponsored window on the world to

see for themselves what it's like to be " Them. "

 

A Brave New World?

Bravery is about overcoming fear. And you will be scared when you

venture out unarmed into the " Mean Streets " —into tent cities, homeless

shelters, prisons; to places where people are fighting or starving; to

places where you know you don't belong. In fact, you will be scared out

of all proportion to the dangers you face, because you have been

pre-scared, courtesy of both the media and Mother Nature.

 

If you grew up in a home where you watched several hours of TV each

day, you have probably been infected with what social scientists call

" Mean World Syndrome " —the more television you watch, the more likely

you are to believe that the world is a mean and dangerous place and

that you will become a victim of violence. If you watch a lot more TV

than your neighbor, you are more likely to have bought a gun and a

guard dog to protect yourself and installed new locks on your door, and

you are more afraid to walk in your own neighborhood.

 

We are particularly receptive to these messages about a dangerous world

because Mother Nature has provided us with an information-processing

system that magnifies our fears. Social psychologists call it social

categorization. It is a survival mechanism—a sort of mental filing

system designed to help us quickly sort through the flood of

information about other people that pours into our consciousness and

file it into usable categories.

 

The trouble is, we seem to have been issued a mental filing cabinet

with only two drawers—a tidy, attractive drawer with just a few files

in it labeled " Us, " and an overstuffed, nasty-looking drawer labeled

" Them. " So we categorize people as " those who are like us " and " those

who are not, " particularly when our vital interests are involved.

 

The social categorization process runs on fear. Like a home security

system it bleats, " Don't open that door! Those people can't be trusted!

They hate us. They want to hurt us. Stay here, where it's safe! "

 

Those who decide to ignore the alarm and open the door to the world are

not only flying in the face of their culture's teachings about danger,

they're bucking evolution's dire warnings about " Bad Them. " So theirs

is an act of bravery and imagination that can change the world. And

there have been many thousand such acts during the last decade.

When Gandhi wrote that nonviolent resistance must be " no less brave, no

less glorious than violent resistance, " he reminded us of an unpleasant

fact: peace work is not for cowards.

 

During the last decade, many people have risen to the challenge.

Working through peacekeeping organizations such as International

Fellowship of Reconciliation, Nonviolence International, Women Making

Peace, and the Michigan Peace Teams, thousands of ordinary folks

accompany activists in conflict zones, monitor elections, and stand by

the oppressed. Their bravery is usually unheralded; there are no

magnetic yellow ribbons for people like 23-year-old Rachel Corrie,

killed in the southern Gaza city of Rafa when she tried to prevent the

demolition of a friend's home by the Israeli army, or for the four

Christian peacemakers kidnapped in Iraq.

 

Thousands of people have been trained in conflict resolution and

entered zones of conflict. In Angola alone, Search for Common Ground

trained 10,000 internally displaced persons in conflict resolution, and

the learning ripples out as those people establish new organizations

and use the techniques they've learned. The Compassionate Listening

Project has taken more than 400 volunteers into the midst of bitter

conflict—Israelis and Palestinians, Germans and Jews—and taught them

how to listen to each others' stories with compassion and to imagine

walking in each other's shoes.

 

Another group of regular folks has become incensed at the fact that, in

the " Land of the Free, " we imprison a far higher percentage of our

population than any other country in the world. They've worked to find

alternatives. One of the most exciting and successful of these is

restorative justice. Instead of guilt and punishment, it focuses on the

healing of all parties to the conflict. Victims, offenders, and the

many others who are affected by a conflict meet and talk with each

other. Together they arrive at a solution that addresses everyone's

need to be heard and to be restored. According to Prison Fellowship

International, the outcomes of these meetings often include

victim-offender mediation, victim assistance, ex-offender assistance,

restitution, and community service.

 

On the international level, the last decade saw the culmination of 50

years of work by 100 nongovernmental organizations and nations to

establish the International Criminal Court. The court is flawed, a

product of compromise. But its opening in 2003 declared, for the first

time in history, that human rights trump national sovereignty.

 

Considering the power and dominance of the United States, perhaps the

most encouraging development is the grassroots efforts under way to

create a cabinet-level Department of Peace. Its function would be

researching, articulating, and facilitating nonviolent solutions to

domestic and international conflict. The idea's supporters—and there

are many, including 60 co-sponsors of a bill in the U.S. House of

Representatives and activist organizations in 48 states and 285

congressional districts­—want the United States to be more effective in

addressing sources of violence.

 

A Dream Renewed

Through imagination, bravery, and hard work, these ordinary folks are

renewing the dream of peace in a world where war is the norm. It's

difficult work—complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous. But the

hard part—and the best part—is that it can't be done from a distance.

You can't do it from behind a computer or by reading about the problem.

You have to go to " Their " world. Meet. Sit together. Listen. Talk.

 

You'll probably find that even with all its trouble and sorrow, the

world is a friendlier place than you thought. That " They " are not so

bad—and we're not so good. Soon you'll want to start moving big

armloads of files from the " Them " drawer into the " Us " drawer. And

that, Dear Reader, is the foundation of whatever good we will be able

to build together.

 

Carol Estes is a YES! contributing editor.

http://www.futurenet.org/article.asp?ID=1378

 

" The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of

private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State

itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism - ownership of government by an

individual, by a group or by any controlling private power. " -Franklin Delano

Roosevelt