Avsnitt
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In this episode, we delve into the heart of campus activism sweeping across the United States, spotlighting the recent student protests in support of Gaza and calls to end violence. We connect with a faculty member from Yale to discuss the nuances of the current movement, and journey back to the spirited 1960s with a professor from Berkeley who once walked in similar protests. Join us as we explore how today's demonstrations resonate with the past, uncovering the threads that link generations of students in their pursuit of justice and peace.
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Part of the fun of nonviolence is showing where alternative practices and systems already exist and to lift them up to inspire more of us to explore and adapt them to our own time, cultures and needs. Take mediation: We know that when practiced with the intent of healing divides, de-escalting violence, and restoring relationships, it works (and “works” if you know Michael Nagler’s “work” vs. work concept), and we don’t hear enough about it in the news. Everyday mediators across the world are building peace in families, communities, and working to heal even our political divides. That’s something hopeful to remember! And the skills of mediation are also something each one of us can learn and adapt for our own needs as they are life skills and benefit those who use them as well as those who are on the receiving end. Sounds a lot like nonviolence to us.
In this episode of Nonviolence Radio we speak with Mike Fraidenburg who is a mediator and co-author of The Art of Mediation about how this work has changed him, and how it can change the world if we do more of it.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes Dr. Craig Atwood, professor of theology at Moravian Theological Seminary and director of the Center for Moravian Studies. Together with Stephanie and Michael, Craig discusses his research and teaching on the history of Moravian thought and faith with special attention to medieval thinker, Peter Chelčický.
Identifying the central role of nonviolence in Moravian theology at that time illuminates its long historical roots, extending the community of those committed to nonviolence far into the past and in this, strengthening and legitimizing a tradition which – as seen in the Nonviolence Report at the end of the show – continues to grow today.
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As a Palestinian, Sami and his family have suffered directly under the long Israeli occupation and more acutely now, from the current war. Sami speaks candidly about the ways in which politicians and media harness fear and exploit unhealed traumas so that violence seems to be the only response to conflict. This, he insists, is a distortion – and one that must be actively resisted. Instead of accepting the simplistic binary categories of victim and victimizer, Palestinians can envision and then work collectively through nonviolent means to realize a just future, one which they themselves have chosen. Such a path calls for broad education in nonviolence, it calls for deliberate organization, it calls for genuine leadership and crucially, it calls for love to be our primary motivation. The situation in Palestine is horrific, there is no quick fix, but when we reject fear as our driver and turn to love instead, possibilities for real change emerge
"I think part of loving is to deeply understand who the other is and where they're coming from and what motivates them to behave the way they behave and do the things they do. And in that love and care and compassion, creates space for transformation and healing. And I think that is definitely much more powerful than fear, and is key. But it's a journey." - Sami Awad
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On this episode of Nonviolence Radio philosophy professor, Jen Kling (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs), talks with Michael and Stephanie about refugees and the complex issue of resettling and caring for those who have had to leave their homes. Ensuring that people fleeing hardship at home can find a safe place to live, genuine opportunities to engage in school and meaningful work, to integrate and flourish in a new place is fraught with tensions, tensions which are often overlooked, avoided or simply ignored. Jen encourages us all to look closely at the problem and to deal with it, however imperfectly, head on:
… it’s insufficient to just say, “Okay, we're just going to resettle folks,” right? And there are a number of different ways to resettle folks. Once folks are resettled or in the process, you also then have to be making sure that they have access to justice. That’s such a philosopher thing to say, but I think it’s true. And having access to justice is having somebody check up. Ii is understanding your rights, responsibilities, obligations, and opportunities; that there’s someone you can go to, that this is the kind of thing that shouldn’t be happening to you. And I think that’s why it’s so important to work through the details, to say, What does justice demand of us in this case? Because I think it actually demands a lot more than we would like to believe. I think it does. We owe it to folks, not as a matter of compassion or as a matter of mercy, but as a matter of justice because they're people too, you know, and we owe it to them.
All of us in the global community have a responsibility to step up to the big work of taking care of each other, especially those who, like refugees, are vulnerable and without recourse to the rights and support they deserve. This is not a small endeavor, but it is an important one and a necessary one. In Jen’s words, “Sometimes we are responsible for fixing things we did not break.”
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Topic Scans and Links:
Tariq Habash, from the US Department of Education resigns over the war in Gaza.
Good Shepherd Collective campaign called No Ceasefire, No Votes.
800 government employees from the US and other 12 nations published a letter protesting Israeli policies and stating that the leaders of their countries could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza.
USAID, a thousand of their employees have released an open letter with the same concern.
Hundreds of thousands of Germans rallied in a hundred cities against the plan that the AfD developed to deport people.
Marlene Engelhorn has recently drawn attention to herself by giving away or preparing to give away 90% of her wealth. She said, “I’m creating the tax I would want to pay.”
But there’s a bill before the Senate and the House which would make nonviolent protests a federal crime called the “Safe and Open Streets Act.”
Mexico has brought seven US gun manufacturers to court.
Truthforce.works
Solutionary climate fiction
Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping and Accompaniment — worldwide meeting, 61 organizations representing 24 countries in Geneva who called themselves the Community of Practice.
Nonviolent Peaceforce are offering a trip to the Philippines.
Pace e Bene — $1000 grant for innovative projects that address community violence. Apply soon!
This month is the 40th anniversary of the MST - Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, Movement of Landless Workers. -
This episode of NV Radio offers insight into the ways AI might be used to support peace and nonviolence. Stephanie and Michael welcome Dr. Heather Ashby of the US Institute of Peace, an expert on technology and its intersection with government and politics. Their discussion explores the ways AI might be used for both ill and for good in the public sphere. This dual possibility gives rise to the urgent need to understand how to orient it towards peace. Though aware of the dangers inherent in AI, Dr. Ashby reminds listeners that:
The original idea when social media started was to increase the commons so that you're meeting people in different parts of the world, or even in your country, your state, who you normally wouldn’t have encountered. [At this point, the aim of AI must be] to hold on to that and to try to leverage these tools to be able to do that. And to make connections and to build grassroots support.
We need not fear the potential damage AI could cause so long as we work deliberately to build its capacity to bring people together, to gather and spread reliable information as a way to promote peace, increase understanding and sustain communities throughout the world.
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THE SEARCH FOR a better way to live will go on as long as unsatisfactory ways like ours are the norm, aka mainstream. Therefore all experiments in alternative communities, economies, even cultures are interesting, especially those that succeed. Like the Mondragón communes in the Basque region of northern Spain. In a well-defined geography with a language all their own 𑁋 Basque is one of only five languages in present-day Europe not related to any other; what we call a ‘language isolate.’ However much the size and distinctness of the region are responsible for or at least facilitate its cooperative spirit, the people and their culture have much to teach us.
Our friend Georgia Kelly has been an ardent student and friend of this fascinating place for many years, taking tour groups there almost annually (Their next Mondragon seminar is scheduled for May 11 - 18, 2025.) She is, like us here at Metta, interested in all aspects of the ‘experiment’ of Father José Maria Arizmendiarrieta, remarkable because of its size, longevity (how many communes have lasted more than a few decades?), and thorough reorganization, or rather alternative organization of economy, politics, and 𑁋 yes 𑁋 conflict management. And, as mentioned, its success. All in all, a fascinating human experiment.
- Michael Nagler -
While many people encounter nonviolence as forms of protest and resistance, the constructive side of it, the part that aims to re-establish a sense of self-knowing and trust in one’s community that has been harmed through violence can be overlooked. But it is this kind of work that uplifts a community’s sense of self through a reclaiming of inner power (what we call at the Metta Center, Person Power) that offers a strong foundation for other forms of action. Constructive work on the human image is not a distraction from action, it’s a necessity.
As part of a constructive effort to challenge and offer redress for the ongoing harms of identity suppression through language erasure within indigenous communities around the world, Bay Area educator and somatic coach Margarita Acosta’s Tierra Indigena Montessori is a shining light. Their work “facilitates reparations to Indigenous Peoples by supporting them in establishing educational spaces that maintain, strengthen, and revitalize their ancestral languages and cultures through the Montessori Method.”
She makes the case that language revitalization ought to be a front-and-center topic for our collective concern, no matter which language we speak and know ourselves through. All languages enrich our understanding of our world, and concepts embedded within our various linguistic homes can help us resolve personal and global crises and challenges. Losing language is a loss of our collective potential, and its revitalization becomes an expression of our creative and collective power as well as of reparations and healing.
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Over 5,000 actions listed for nonviolence during Campaign Nonviolence’s Action Days
Nonviolence is happening all over, even if we don’t often or always read about it in the mass media. Rivera Sun joins Nonviolence Radio to share a recap of hope and energy from Campaign Nonviolence’s Action Days which ran from the International Day of Peace to the International Day of Nonviolence.
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“Everyone knows someone who was at the big party down south. Everyone knows someone who lives in one of the places that was destroyed. Every family has people who were called up. Earlier this week I built up the store of coffins for our cemetery.”
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Knesset Member Ofer Cassif on Ending Violence as the Only Mutual Security for Israelis and Palestinians.
In this episode we turn to the conflict in Israel-Palestine and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We're joined by Dr. Ofer Cassif, a member of the Israeli Knesset with the Hadash-Ta’al coalition. He calls for an end to the occupation through peaceful means because he believes that the security of Israelis and Palestinians is interconnected and mutually dependent.One day after our interview, Dr. Cassif was punished by the Knesset with a 45 day ban from participating in Knesset sessions due to his critical interviews with international media and comments condemning the State of Israel for the crisis in Gaza.
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Zeiad Shamrouch, Executive Director of MECA, discusses the assault on Gaza and shares stories from friends on the ground.
In this episode, we speak with Zeiad Shamrouch. He’s the Executive Director of the Middle East Children’s Alliance and he speaks to us about the work out they’re doing in Gaza, about the humanitarian and conflict crisis taking place within Gaza, as well as within Israel-Palestine and how people can get involved and support their work in Gaza.
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Neuroanatomist and author, Jill Bolte Taylor, comes to Nonviolence Radio to talk about her understanding of the brain, consciousness and what we are as humans. She explores the nature of experience, both a kind of transcendent oneness revealing the interconnectedness of all things and the more familiar everyday sense of being in this particular body, at this spot in the world, as an individual. Jill insists that we all have the potential to cultivate our capacity to feel the kind of beautiful unity she herself experienced after a stroke, there are simple ways to direct and orient our brains so that we can gain a broader sense of what, where and who we are:
…what does the practice of meditation give you? It quiets that linearity across time. It quiets the cells giving you language. It quiets all those wonderful things that the left brain does so that you can have this expansive experience and peaceful moment of the instant of being at one with all that is.
This fundamental experience of oneness, of being fully in the present and in loving relationship with all other beings, reflects what part of our brains – our neurons and cells – do naturally; it is just a matter of learning to get out of the way to let them do it.
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Jasper Van Assche, a professor at the University of Gantt in Belgium, comes to Nonviolence Radio to talk to Michael and Stephanie about his research on the power of contact – direct and indirect – to decrease prejudice and cultivate tolerance and social cohesion within diverse and potentially antagonized groups. ‘Contact theory’ has been shown to lead to harmony and an enlarged sense of a common good, even when there are limited resources and competing interests. In short, genuine and meaningful contact with different kinds of people tends to humanize the dehumanized ‘other’. This kind of contact can be difficult to realize, especially where there is long entrenched prejudice and little or no institutional support to bring it about. However, contact itself is simple and readily available to all of us and Jasper's research will perhaps inspire us to start to build that support within our own communities.
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On this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael welcome Cary Donham, the first and to date, only student to leave West Point as a conscientious objector. Cory speaks about his experience in his memoir,A Wrinkle in the Long Grey Line: When Conscience and Convention Collided, and here shares more about why he came to this decision, how it led him to diverge from a path that initially seemed right, and what some of the repercussions have been.
"… in the Old Testament, there’s a commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Then Jesus says, ‘Turn the other cheek if someone strikes you.’ And the Beatitudes say, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ And it just struck me as, ‘Wait a minute? How can I go to church and believe these things and then come out on this field and tell people to kill?’ It just didn’t seem right."
Cary’s courage to stand up and say no to war, to the military, to force and violence – to a way of life that for so many around him commanded respect and conferred honor is remarkable. The fact that he did so while fully entrenched in – and excelling within – that world is more remarkable still. Equally inspiring is his continued commitment to nonviolence and his deliberate and public effort, not only to show another path forward but to take active part in clearing the way so that more people can walk on it.
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This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes @hellaJinsella from the UK peace organization, DeMilitarise Education (dED/ ). Jinsella has been actively working to raise awareness about the ties between higher education and the military. As these relationships have not generally been made public, military funding, and the accompanying environmental degradation the arms industry entails, has been able to thrive within universities without sustained challenge. DeMilitarise Education seeks to bring these connections to light. To this end, it has set up a database which tracks schools’ ties with the military and arms companies to be used as a tool to pressure the universities to break these damaging ties.
Despite the size of this problem (to date, dED has uncovered over £1.3 billion worth of UK university partnerships with the military and defense sector), Jinsella remains motivated and optimistic. She sees dED as a “part of a much larger mission for the reevaluation of education…it’s a part of the decolonization movement. It’s the part of the fossil free movement. All these things that we want to see shift in our economics are represented within the higher education spaces.”
And Jinsella pushes beyond even the realm of higher education, her hope and conviction that a better, more peaceful and just world is possible has led her to set aside a time each week in which anyone anywhere can join her to:
simply hold the space for us to imagine peace together. Imagine world peace. Imagine what that means for our economies and care-based systems. And we meditate and actually make space for our minds to start prioritizing peace as the universal principle that we can all stand behind.
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In this episode --
SchoolofNonviolence.org
Nonviolent Peaceforce in SudanArticle by Miki Kashtan
Mother Pelican Blog
Break Through
Popular Resistance – School
Israeli Reservists Protest
Bronx Anti-War Coalition
Cop City
Illegal Pipeline in Yaqui Community
Line 5 Pipeline Trespass
Campaign Nonviolence Action Week
Black Prisoners Caucus
Code Pink
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It seems there is a cultural myth that union organizing is inherently nonviolent. On the one hand, any demonstration of the power of “people” versus greed and corruption in the workplace seems to tick the box in our cultural imagination about what nonviolence looks like. Images of warehouse workers from Amazon or coffee baristas advocating for better work conditions and better pay are poignant and tell a story of The People fighting against exploitation. Cultural memories of the Farm Workers Grape Boycott are iconic in nonviolence imagery. It all seems so cut and dry. But for those on the inside, who participate in or are considering participating in unions, they find themselves in a more nuanced situation, where the structures of organizing have embedded inequalities that are hard to overlook, or the methods of bargaining and protest tell an ‘old story’ of us versus them, creating enemy images and perpetuating a cultural story of good-guy/bad-guy victimization, instead of using strategies of conflict escalation, de-escalation, and transformation rooted in an ethic of bridge building and belonging. This has led to many, especially in younger generations, feeling discontent with unions, and seeking out new ways of building Social Justice methods into labor organizing if they will join one at all.
Erik Olson Fernández is proud that while he has had many years of experience organizing for nonviolent social change as a community organizer and in the labor movement with healthcare and public education unions, he began his training like Gandhi, as an attorney. Committed to bringing out the true sense of “union” in his union organizing work, he is currently working with the California Teachers’ Association and educators in Sonoma County, California, emphasizing systemic change within unions and the social structures that target the most vulnerable.
I originally got into labor organizing when I was doing community organizing work. I had gone to law school, but I had always focused more on organizing people, having grown up poor in the United States with a single mother from Mexico who struggled economically.
I was looking for a way in which to change the social structure that created the poverty that I grew up in and that others were forced to live with. So, I began studying previous social movements and looked to Gandhi and King as models and studied how they did the organizing. You know, what Gandhi did in South Africa, what King, and particularly the young leaders in the 1960s Freedom Movement, did to organize their communities in the South.
On this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Erik discusses the power of Unions when they are woven through and through with the principles and strategies of nonviolence.
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This week, journalist and biographer, Jonathan Eig, joins Stephanie and Michael on Nonviolence Radio to talk about his new book, King: A Life. His new biography of Martin Luther King Jr. draws on sources that have only now been recovered (perhaps most notably, transcriptions of conversations recorded by the FBI). Jonathan speaks candidly about how important it is to remember King all his human complexity: his personal doubts and struggles, his admiration for figures he’s often remembered in contrast to (like Malcom X and Stokely Carmichael), and perhaps most importantly, for the depth and force of his moral vision, which, in some real sense, was revolutionary.
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Hate is Too Heavy
Make Good Trouble
by Gary Nicholson - Visa fler
