Nonviolence Radio: Recent Episodes
Nonviolence Radio
In this episode, we speak with Sudanese organizer and activist Mubarak Elamin about the unfolding crisis in Sudan. Mubarak offers a perspective on the nonviolent history of the country and how the current war is not a civil war but a proxy war, and what we can do as part of an international community of solidarity.
In this episode, Nonviolence Radio speaks with Sheila McCarthy of Meta Peace Team about her recent month in the West Bank providing unarmed civilian protection. She shares stories of courage and daily life under occupation—from olive harvests under threat to villages gated off by the Israeli military—and reflects on how standing nonviolently with others becomes an act of resistance and hope.
Transcript and archives available at MettaCenter.org/NonviolenceRadio and NonviolenceRadio.org
Sarah Van Gelder has spent decades asking a vital question: how do we build power rooted in love and community? As the founding editor of YES! Magazine (now on Truthout), and through her Substack, How We Rise, she explores ideas and stories that help us resist authoritarianism and create systems that work for everyone. Join us for an inspiring conversation about what it means to rise together in these challenging times.
Plus, don’t miss our popular segment—the Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler!
Transcript available at NonviolenceRadio.org
In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, hosts Stephanie Van Hook and Michael Nagler speak with Kathy Kelly, board president of World Beyond War, about the urgent need to move beyond militarism and the false promises of security through violence. Sparked by a recent speech from U.S. official Pete Hegseth glorifying lethality and dismissing pacifism, the conversation dives into the deeper truths about human nature, real security, and the power of nonviolent action. Kathy, a lifelong peace activist, contrasts militarism’s destructiveness with the courage and coordination of nonviolent efforts like the Global Sumud Flotilla, and Michael joins with insights from science and history affirming our innate capacity for cooperation.
Transcript available at NonviolenceRadio.Org
In this interview, we speak with Dr. Deb Roman, an integrative physician and advocate for compassionate health care. Together, they explore the current state of health care—what’s working, what’s not, and how we can move toward a more humane, whole-person approach to healing. Deb shares insights from her experience in medicine, as well as her vision for a system that better supports both patients and practitioners.
Learn more about her work:
Finding-Health.Com
And find more of Nonviolence Radio (including transcripts) at NonviolenceRadio.org
Journalist and author John Washington joins Nonviolence Radio to examine immigration, border enforcement, and the human costs of closed borders. From the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border to the deeper forces driving migration, Washington challenges common assumptions and explores how solidarity, awareness, and principled action can foster more humane and just policies.
What if staying curious — even when it feels risky — is an act of courage? In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, journalist and bridgebuilder Monica Guzmán joins us to talk about the power of curiosity in a polarized world. Together we explore how fear, pain, and technology amplify division, and how curiosity can become a nonviolent force that keeps bridges standing, even when crossing them feels impossible. Guzmán shares insights from her work with Braver Angels, stories of rehumanization across political divides, and why questioning — even our own side — takes courage. At a time when polarization tempts us to burn bridges, curiosity reminds us to keep them.
“Anything courageous requires risk. You’re not risking anything by attacking the other side. What’s really brave is calling out your own side for making the culture toxic.” ~Mónica Guzmán
Pastor Michael Neely, a survivor of domestic abuse, provides support to individuals grappling with the decision to remain in abusive relationships influenced by religious beliefs, and advocates for reforming church responses to better assist survivors.
On this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Michael and Stephanie begin with a discussion on Gandhian economics, highlighting its emphasis on simplicity, local self-reliance, and the moral dimensions of economic life. They then welcome Erin Axelrod from LIFT Economy, a worker-owned cooperative dedicated to accelerating the transition to a regenerative, just, and inclusive economy.
Together, they explore how economics is not just about policy or markets, but is deeply intertwined with philosophy, values, and daily practices. Erin shares insights into the “Next Economy” framework, the limitations of extractive capitalism, and the possibilities emerging through cooperative and regenerative models. The conversation underscores a powerful truth: that nonviolent movements cannot succeed without also transforming the economic structures that support violence and inequality. A truly nonviolent future, they argue, must include a reimagining of how we produce, exchange, and relate through our economies.
In this intimate conversation, Anne Symens-Bucher invites us into the sacred territory of being blessed and broken — the honest work of grief, forgiveness, and transformation. Guided by the wisdom of Joanna Macy, Anne reflects on what it means to stay open-hearted in a wounded world, to turn toward our pain for the world, and to find renewal through connection and courage.
In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Michael and Stephanie speak with nonviolence trainer and educator Kazu Haga about trauma healing and nonviolence — what he calls “fierce vulnerability” (also the title of his most recent book). Because, as he insists, all violence stems from trauma, Kazu reminds us that we cannot simply “shut down” injustice. At the same time, we need to bring trauma healing into our understanding and practice of nonviolence at every level.
He says, “But if we can really understand that these [injustices] are all manifestations of a collective trauma, can we respond to even state violence in a way that brings us closer together, in a way that brings us closer to healing?”
In this discussion, Kazu points us toward a paradigmatic shift from harm to healing, where interconnection is as constant as gravity — we really can’t get around it.
Following the conversation with Kazu, Michael and Stephanie speak with Hunter Dunn from the 50501 coalition to debrief on the impact of the “No Kings” rallies and explore, as Dr. King asked, “Where do we go from here?”
In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, we explore how nonviolence is showing up around the world—in the news, in movement strategy, and in community-based peacebuilding. We take a closer look at the recent Gaza flotilla and its use of dilemma action as a powerful tool of nonviolent action, and we speak with Nina Koevoets, a peacebuilding trainer about the practical and transformative work of building peace from the ground up. From global headlines to grassroots organizing, we reflect on how nonviolence continues to challenge power and open the door to justice.
This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes Priyanka Sharma – all the way from India! Priyanka is a lecturer, facilitator and coach and she joins Michael and Stephanie in a wide-reaching conversation about the nature and strengths of matriarchal societies, systems theory, her own path to nonviolence, Internal Family Systems and more. Priyanka speaks candidly about the profound challenge of practicing and living nonviolently; though nonviolence is natural to human beings, it is not always a way of being with others and in the world that is supported by our institutions. Given this, she emphasizes the power of trust in oneself. With deep and enduring trust, Priyanka suggests that we can fortify our strength as we work to embody and manifest nonviolent principles as effective means of responding to and overcoming violence in our world today:
"I think if we have trust in life and in our own creativity and intelligence, we can do beautiful things. But the problem is that we live in violent systems. So, these violent systems teach us first, don't trust yourself. Trust the authority figure. The first thing is to program us to stop trusting our only inner wisdom. So, a lot of the work that I'm doing in systems thinking is to encourage people to trust your own inner wisdom. Like even Mahatma Gandhi said, the change has to happen with yourself first."
This week on Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael speak with Joe Worthy, a nonviolence strategist who is currently developing the Strategic Nonviolence Academy, a place where those interested in being active and effective leaders can learn about the principles and methods of nonviolence. The Strategic Nonviolence Academy will empower those wanting to lead communities in the nonviolent resistance of oppression and exploitation. This comes by ensuring that incoming students acquire not only practical skills but a deeply felt commitment to the values that ground and continue to nurture nonviolent action.
"…it is a very powerful approach, process, way of life to, you know, change yourself in the world. And I think most important, in this time, is that it is a pathway towards the world that you want to build. And on your way to that world, you're going to transform yourself, your community, and the world while you're doing that."
This Academy aims to be a place where nonviolence is explored and enacted holistically, that is, involving the “head, hearts and feet” of those who join.
This week Stephanie and Michael welcome the renowned sociologist, Arlie Hochschild. They have a rich conversation exploring the stories we tell about ourselves and others that work to sever communities, communities which in fact hold much in common. Having written two books on America’s move towards the right, Arlie has real clarity about the ways in which our stories stop us from engaging respectfully with those whom we disagree with, breeding shame, eroding understanding and shutting down opportunities for connection.
There is a need therefore for story revision, and this comes first from recognizing the humanity of everyone, no matter what their political views. Identifying those core values that connect us all as human beings reveals moments of overlap even among groups who see themselves as wholly at odds. This ‘cross-over’ becomes the basis for building what Arlie calls “empathy bridges.” We must not, she insists, “confuse empathy with weakness” – indeed, it is that quality which has characterized some of the world’s greatest leaders and which may be the path out of polarization today.
This week, Nonviolence Radio hears from John Paul Lederach, an international peace-builder, mediator and scholar. Stephanie, Michael and John Paul have a rich and wide-ranging conversation, one prominent theme is the power of pockets. This plays on the title of John Paul’s latest book: The Pocket Guide for Facing Down a Civil War. In it, he encourages us to remember that we all exist within various communities – pockets of the world – and that each pocket represents a unique perspective which is valuable to every other one:
"…there is simultaneously this deep acknowledgment of the specificity of a context and this deep curiosity about what people have done or need to do.…people at a given location, at a given time, have a need to do something in response to what's happening. And in that innovation, their particular pocket, their particular place where they live, brings forward this kind of combination of resilience and resistance to the patterns that lead us toward violence"
Only by engaging honestly and kindly with these different views can we create – like a work of art – a better, more peaceful world. One wonderful aspect of this pocket metaphor is that it empowers each and every one of us to make a difference. Even the smallest act of love (in the broadest sense of the word) – wherever one is – is an act of creation. Such simple, accessible actions when woven together re-humanize those we might be inclined to dismiss or degrade. Right from within our pockets, we can build alternatives to the toxic polarization we see so much of today.
"It's about assuring the protection of the dignity of the people that I am most proximate with and live with, even if we are different. Then my responsibility is to help make sure that this neighborhood, this town, this area, is brought to a level of dignifying the humanity of the people who live here. And I think that's really a key driver to a lot of this. There's an element to this that I refer to as the principle of accessibility. I think one of the reasons that paralysis works, is a very powerful tool, is that people think they don't have access to the lever that will make a difference. But what if the principle of accessibility is that you have access to it?"
Initiating change from within our pockets directly and immediately reveals the power inherent in treating each other as worthy. When we listen closely thereby recognizing the dignity of everyone, we can construct together a world that has space for all.
In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, we talk with Sulaiman Khatib and Chen Alon from Combatants for Peace, along with filmmaker Stephen Apkon, director of There Is Another Way, a powerful new documentary about their movement currently touring the world to spark new conversations about a lasting peace in Israel-Palestine. Former fighters from opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Sulaiman and Chen share their personal transformations and the deep commitment to nonviolence that drives their work. They discuss the challenges of breaking cycles of violence, the power of storytelling, and how nonviolence is not just a strategy but a daily choice. This conversation will leave you thinking about what it truly means to choose peace, even when it seems impossible.
"We don’t choose to be violent. We are taught to be violent, and the choice is ours to break that cycle." — Sulaiman Khatib
On this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael welcome Leandro Uchoas, founder and director of Shanti Brazil, an organization dedicated to education in nonviolence and nonviolent action. Leandro spent time studying nonviolence in India at the university set up by Gandhi and was so inspired that he returned to Brazil to further Gandhian principles on the ground there. This episode explores the exciting work of Shanti Brazil, and more, it brings to light the way in which there is an existing and increasingly expanding global network of nonviolent organizations and institutions. Leandro, Stephanie and Michael discuss the ways in which a dedication to nonviolence can bring together local communities from far corners of the globe. Whether in Brazil or the US, India or Finland, nonviolence is a practice and its methods and strategies can – and should! – be shared.
"…we must, at this moment, reimagine how we build our democratic institutions, how they are built. And maybe this must come not from the top. This must come from us, from civil society. And we should be organized and discussing this, about these new institutions and how to reorganize society."
From Leandro we can see how nonviolent activity is thriving even amidst some of the distressing political turns the world is now taking. Sometimes we need to look harder to see nonviolence in action for it grows under a light distinct from the glaring spotlight of mainstream/social media. This is the light of truth and love.
"We should be thinking about our individual preparation. And if you are familiar with the Roadmap model, that we have on Metta Center’s website, it will kind of display this in a clear way. There's plenty of room and time for us to strengthen ourselves individually by learning, by spiritual practice, by bracing ourselves for self-sacrifice and suffering. That's one thing we should be doing, and I think it's the most important one."
Pat Humphries and Sandy O. from the band, Emma’s Revolution, come to Nonviolence Radio to talk to Michael and Stephanie about music and its central role in nonviolent activism – and to perform the radio debut of their song, “You Are Not God”. Recognizing that current politics are leading many into a paralyzing sense of powerlessness and despair, Pat and Sandy remind us that singing can infuse us with joy, can bring us into community with others and can remind us that hope is always available. The music of Emma’s Revolution reveals that hope does not necessarily come through words and persuasive argument. Pat and Sandy encourage us to come together to challenge injustice by engaging in creative action, through making art, through singing and dancing together.
"[Pete Seeger] would always call for harmony and if the audience didn't respond, he would toss out some lines of harmony to teach people how to do that. In doing so, he got us listening to one another and then making our unique contribution that was still harmonious with the larger whole and creating that beautiful metaphor.
It's a big lesson, because that sense of togetherness and that sense of unity, it's part of what drives the hope. And the hope is what drives our ability to move forward."
When we expand our sense of the ways we might try to bring about change, we see that the effort required, however urgent and demanding, can still be infused with beauty and fun.
Given the inexplicable and distressing rise of authoritarianism happening around the world today, including conspicuously here in these United States, I thought it would be a good idea to look at some of the movements of resistance that took place against the rise of the iconic authoritarian movement of our era, which was, of course, the rise of the Nazis.
During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, we hear from Mike Tinoco, public school teacher, author and committed nonviolence educator. Stephanie, Michael and Mike discuss some of the key themes of Mike’s new book, Heart at the Center: An Educator's Guide to Sustaining Love, Hope, and Community Through Nonviolence Pedagogy. Mike explores a radically holistic approach to education, one that not only teaches nonviolence content but embodies it in method as well. Mike tries to level some of the hierarchy often found in traditional classrooms which establish teachers firmly as the authorities over students. To develop an alternative way to organize a classroom, he shifts the aim of education: instead of an instrumental means of getting a good job and ensuring financial success, he sees the goal of education, in part at least, as oriented towards ‘becoming more fully human’:
I think the role of teachers and administrators is to just reflect on how we can create cultures that are really humanizing our students and ourselves and allowing us to use our power in service of the kids so that we're not having power over them…my interest is not to have any sort of control over [students], but is really to be in community with them and to use my privilege and power in service of creating conditions that maximize learning and maximize like our community strength. They respond really well to that.
This model of teaching – where learning is as much a part of the teacher’s job as the students’, where service and community are as important as individual success – allows for education to become an effective form of nonviolent resistance within a culture sometimes lost in selfishness and struggling to find meaning and purpose.
When we want to restore peace and nonviolence and sanity, we're talking about re-humanization.
This week, Stephanie and Michael talk with Dr. John Kirk, professor at Dalhousie University and expert on Cuba’s innovative and inspirational approach to public health and its dedication to ‘medical internationalism’. Medical internationalism – the practice of offering healthcare to those in need, wherever they might be – embodies Cuba’s commitment to healthcare as a human right, an idea that is enshrined in its constitution: “the preamble to [the Cuban constitution] says we have an obligation to share what we have. Not to give our leftovers, but to share what we have.”
This policy of what might seem like radical generosity to those entrenched in healthcare systems fueled by the capitalist prioritization of profit, in fact works:
"Cuba’s also got a surplus of doctors. The ratio of patients to doctors in Cuba is three times that of what is found in the US. So, Cuba has a tremendous human potential. And Castro saw that and that's why he was the person who sort of directed medical personnel to work in the developing world."
Since 1960, Cuba has played a significant and effective role in emergencies worldwide, from Chernobyl to Haiti. In addition to collaborating with countries who have acute needs due to natural disaster, war or other misfortune, Cuba educates aspiring doctors from all over the world – and medical school in Cuba is free. Additionally, doctors in Cuba are trained to understand patients as “bio-psycho-social beings,” that is, holistically, with lives and contexts that dramatically impact their health.
This interview does more than highlight an isolated and particular case study, a close look at public health in Cuba, which has a 65 year history of success, offers a possible alternative to the broken healthcare systems in the US and elsewhere.
"One of my favorite authors from the ancient world – that I used to be a classic scholar – is Saint Augustine, who had a sentence, a very portentous, what we used to call in the field a gnomic sentence in his great work, “The City of God.” Two different loves, as he calls them, result in two different world orders. He calls the city of man, which is a city of selfishness and greed and, of course, violence, and the city of God, which hasn't yet been realized on Earth except, in sprinklings here and there. Which would mean peace and nonviolence and mutual support for all. So, those are the two struggles which today I think bear the most convenient and most effective labels are violence and nonviolence."
During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Michael and Stephanie welcome Reverend John Dear: activist, author, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and passionate advocate for nonviolence for over 45 years. This rich conversation covers a lot of ground, with a focus on one of the most significant roots of active nonviolence: The Sermon on the Mount. Noting the way this profound text influenced both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., this interview dives below the surface of its inspiring words and reveals it to be profoundly practical, a “how to be a human being manual.”
Jesus, for the first time in history, I think you could argue, presents Gandhian-Kingian methodology of nonviolent resistance, saying, “You stand your ground, but you don't use the means of your opponent, but you deal with your opponent head on with love and truth and say, ‘I'm a human being. Why are you hurting me?’ Even to the point that you accept violence without retaliating until you wear them down, and you reconcile, and he repents.”
Thus we see how Jesus – and through him later leaders in nonviolence – empowers all of us who “are merciful and pure in heart and peacemakers and persecuted for justice” to “get up and get moving” With its base in universal love, nonviolence can be harnessed into effective action in the world.
During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Michael and Stephanie welcome Reverend John Dear: activist, author, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and passionate advocate for nonviolence for over 45 years. This rich conversation covers a lot of ground, with a focus on one of the most significant roots of active nonviolence: The Sermon on the Mount. Noting the way this profound text influenced both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., this interview dives below the surface of its inspiring words and reveals it to be profoundly practical, a “how to be a human being manual."
"Jesus, for the first time in history, I think you could argue, presents Gandhian-Kingian methodology of nonviolent resistance, saying, “You stand your ground, but you don't use the means of your opponent, but you deal with your opponent head on with love and truth and say, ‘I'm a human being. Why are you hurting me?’ Even to the point that you accept violence without retaliating until you wear them down, and you reconcile, and he repents.”
Thus we see how Jesus – and through him later leaders in nonviolence – empowers all of us who “are merciful and pure in heart and peacemakers and persecuted for justice” to “get up and get moving” With its base in universal love, nonviolence can be harnessed into effective action in the world.
“We, as to our own particulars, do utterly deny with all outward wars and strife, and fightings, with outward weapons for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world.”
-George Fox
How Co-Op Cincy is shining a light on the humanizing power of worker-owned cooperatives and building the Beloved Community.
Challenging capitalism requires constructive, workable alternatives. Are worker-owned co-ops a viable solution? In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael speak with Kristen Barker, co-founder of Co-Op Cincy, an organization that nurtures and supports a network of worker-owned co-ops in the Greater Cincinnati area. Applying principles from the Mondragon cooperative in Spain, Co-Op Cincy’s network reinforces that cooperatives are not just good for people and the planet, they are good for business. And nonviolence is at its heart: being together in constructive solution-building requires both the vision and skills of nonviolence.
"A lot of positive constructive things can be done, a lot of collaboration can happen."
During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael discuss a new resource offered by the Metta Center called, Seven Challenges: nonviolence, new story, third harmony, compassion, constructive program, unity in diversity and from chaos to creativity. Their conversation offers some advice as to how to incorporate them into our daily lives so that over time, they become rooted in us, an active part of who we are. Nonviolence, for instance, can be strengthened in each of us by the simple (yet not always easy) practice of cultivating the habit to pause before we react to a perceived aggression, remembering that a “person's anger is not the core inflexible being of that person. That is what makes nonviolence possible.”
All of the challenges encourage us to recognize that we can choose – again and again – to exercise nonviolence in our lives. We can choose to see the world not as a fixed external entity that often seems out to harm us, but rather as an ongoing dynamic process which we actively co-create. Though these seven terms are aptly called challenges, ultimately they can be a tremendous source of inspiration and empowerment. And they are available to each and every one of us right now.
"In a nonviolent struggle, it's not a, ‘me against you’. It's how do we join forces together to make things better, to back away from unnecessary suffering? And if there's going to be any suffering in this situation, we're going to embrace it ourselves."
"If your movement has a long-term goal of complete replacement of regime, then you can strategically graduate from issues which are the easiest to succeed at, to issues which are the hardest, gathering strength as you go along."
On this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Dr. Afra Jalabi draws a parallel between the ongoing conflict in Syria, where more than half a million people have been killed, and the ongoing crisis in Israel-Palestine. She warns against media propaganda around the conflicts, encouraging listeners to do better research about the powers at play in the Middle East and warning us to be wary of the willingness of any side to spill blood for their goals. Drawing from the spiritual and political legacy of her late uncle, Syrian nonviolence scholar Jawdat Saïd, she doubles down on the necessity of nonviolence as the way forward.
There's no question that art plays a role. It can affect our imagination and our way of seeing the world.
Jodie Evans, activist and co-founder of CODEPINK, talks with Stephanie and Michael about possibility of creating and sustaining the ‘peace economy’. More specifically, they explore concrete ways to reorient our distorted ‘war economy’ perspectives, to wean ourselves from destructive ‘addictions’ and provide concrete ways in which we can all – even recognizing the current political and environmental horrors – bring about real change and lasting peace.
"I want to go back to saying we are alive because of the peace economy. We are not alive because of the war economy. It is killing us, our community, and the planet. But in our minds, somehow, we think it's giving us life because it has convinced us of that. But really, the thing that is rich about life is the things we give each other, is the way we care for each other, is the way we create space of trust and care. That's where life thrives."
We forget that this peace economy is available to us by simply being present, by consciously being where we are right now, and responding with genuine attention to those around us. This moment we are in can be exactly where we can all start to build the peace economy – it is here where our true ‘potency arises from’ and it is where we can make a difference, together.
"Because Gandhi, after all, called nonviolence not only a force, but the greatest power mankind has been endowed with. And I think that this is true. And I think it's true because nonviolence is in some way the core of our nature. It's a core of what makes us human.
It's what the philosopher Aristotle would have called our built-in telos. That a telos means an end goal, but it's an end goal which is embedded within us and needs to be unpacked and understood and developed. So, you can, in this sense, look at evolution and, of course, our human evolution, as a drive towards manifesting that telos, that nonviolent capacity within us. And that, I believe, is why nonviolence is so powerful."
A Conversation with Cassie King from the Coalition to End Factory Farms
During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael welcome Cassie King, from Direct Action Everywhere, to talk about our relationship with animals, and more specifically about proposed legislation in California that aims to end factory farming. Together they explore the way our treatment of animals reflects and in fact is an expression of how we treat each other and ourselves. The depths of the cruelty with which animals are treated is revealed when we look inside ‘factory farms’ or CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). In this kind of a profit driven environment, everyone suffers: workers, owners and animals:
"When you have over 700 cows [in a CAFO], I mean, can you imagine having 700 dogs and trying to care for them with a handful of people who, you know, are running a business and don't have all day to provide that care? And there's also a profit incentive not to provide whatever medical care they need if it's going to exceed the costs of what you can get in return from that animal. That's just how business works."
Through this new Sonoma County legislation, Measure J, activists like Cassie are hoping to make people aware of the brutality of factory farming and offer some clear steps and support on the way to ending it. In doing so, Cassie suggests we can transform our relationship to those with whom we share this planet from one of violence and domination to one of harmony and deep respect.
“I failed to realize that the vast majority of people, even in a progressive environment, such as what Berkeley claimed itself to be – I sometimes wonder – there was a tremendous fear of disruption without constructive program. And that took me years, really, after the movement to learn. That you have to not only incorporate but lead with constructive program. Meaning, what are you going to build and not just what you are going to tear down?”
Victoria Wolcott joins Stephanie and Michael on this episode of Nonviolence Radio to talk about her recent book, Living the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement. Victoria, a history professor at the University of Buffalo, explores the long history of utopianism in the US and its relation to nonviolence, specifically nonviolence as manifested in constructive program, that is, the active building of a nurturing and supportive community as an alternative to a discriminatory and oppressive one. Much of traditional history doesn’t shed light on this ‘constructive’ aspect of the Civil Rights Movement. In this, most histories of the movement have failed to reveal its much longer past and extensive roots, connecting it to early labor unions, to Gandhi, to experimental utopian communities, in both the north and south of the US.
"One of the things that's really interesting is that once you start looking, you start finding these [radical interracial] communities all over the place – including in places like the rural South, where you wouldn't necessarily expect them to be. So that kind of communal experimentation, the interest in prefigurative politics, the constructive program…Usually, historians of the long civil rights movement really talk about it as dating to the 1930s. The relationship between the labor movement and the Civil Rights Movement is really important to understand coming out of the radicalism of the 1930s. … some of the experimentations in radical nonviolence, radical pacifism, really emerged in the late 1930s. And then it goes through the 1970s."
Our capacity to see nonviolence as a viable choice to challenge injustice in the world grows in part from seeing its many facets (active resistance and constructive program) as well as the many times dedicated men and women have proven it to be a powerful and effective force. Victoria’s book, and this conversation, illuminate just that.
In these examples, you see how the conversion of a person from a state of anger and fear to a state of what Marshall Frady called a forgiving love, actually does seem to have an impact on the entire emotional-spiritual consciousness environment and affects the outcome of a situation and changes the minds of others.
Amira Musallam is a peace activist from Beit Jala, Palestine. She joins Nonviolence Radio to share her experiences living in the West Bank. Her family is currently facing eviction from their land by nearby Israeli settlers who are backed by the Israeli military. She is part of an exploratory team for Unarmed Civilian (UCP) Protection in the West Bank and Gaza. She was introduced to the power of UCP when she was 12 years old, and her house was bombed by Israel (with American manufactured bombs) and a group of UCP women came to live with her family to prevent further violence and destruction. Since then, she has been actively engaged in nonviolence and UCP.
To hear Amira’s story is to hear the story of so many Palestinians who are struggling for equality and peace through nonviolence in the most heartbreaking and horrific of circumstances. Her story is an urgent call-to-action for all of us to be courageous and work in solidarity with activists on the front lines of the world’s more critical struggles for justice.
A bonus segment for Nonviolence Radio, the Nonviolent Moment is a 30- minute exploration of nonviolence out of KPCA Petaluma’s Free Range Studio.
Hosted by Michael Nagler
Nonviolence, to be practiced with effect, requires training and preparation and strategy. It requires astuteness in understanding your situation. And underneath, giving life to all of that, an understanding that every one of us, as he says, has an instinct towards the feeling that what happens to our fellow human beings in some way also happens to us.
This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes David Hartsough, long time nonviolent activist, former executive director of PeaceWorkers and co-founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce. Stephanie and Michael talk with David about his early exposure to the power of nonviolence through his parents and early upbringing, his later activism in the Civil Rights Movement in the US and abroad in Sarajevo and Gaza – to name just a few places he’s worked bravely and lovingly for peace. Throughout their conversation, one sees David’s fundamental commitment to the principles and practice of nonviolence, from resistance to oppression through boycotts and sit-ins to the creative work of constructive program in which people actively build an alternative to the existing power structure. By the end of the interview, David makes it clear how natural and accessible nonviolence is to everyone:
"Well, I think every person has the potential to respond to nonviolence. The problem is most of us never try. And that's certainly not what people get taught in the schools. It's not what our newspapers tell us. It's not what our president and vice president or congress people tell us. But I think the people that were in the civil rights and the freedom movement in the 60s realized that."
Nonviolence doesn’t ask us to be anything but our most human and humane selves – and while not difficult, it does call on us to find models and examples of behavior outside of what much of our current media reports.
This episode of Nonviolence Radio features Dr. Amit Goswani, founder of the Center for Quantum Activism and former professor at the University of Oregon. Amit talks to Stephanie and Michael about the relationship between quantum physics and nonviolence. One of the basic ideas he puts forth as essential to quantum physics is the notion that the universe, at its core and most fundamental, is immaterial consciousness. This challenges the basic tenets of materialism (the theory underlying much contemporary science), which posits that ultimately, the universe is made up of physical stuff and is governed by universal natural laws. If we accept (or at least consider) the principles of quantum physics, genuine choice and agency become possibilities, We are not reduced to being human machines, compelled by external forces (the laws of nature) to react – often violently – to those around us. Instead we can act creatively, spontaneously and nonviolently.
…in quantum physics, forces, which is the way that we change people, subjugate people to our way of thinking, by applying a force, that's Newtonian. But in quantum physics, forces can only give you possibilities to choose from, and you don't have to choose that one [the violent one]. You can choose also persuasion.
So, in quantum physics, force is a place by choice. The other is choosing the violent way. So, you can change your choice by being humble, by being persuasive, by being straightforward, by being authentic, by exemplifying what you are saying, not using violence.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb is one of the first women to become a rabbi in Jewish history. She’s a storyteller, artist, and community educator. Listen in as she takes us on an inner pilgrimage of revolutionary nonviolence. Rabbi Lynn’s experiences paint a picture of a world where diverse identities intersect, find, and strengthen one another. Her vision and experiences call toward a world of unity-in-diversity, a shared World House, as Dr King called it, where we all need one another to be who we are; a house of creativity, of love, compassion, and peace that we actively build across our divides, and is one where our hearts rejoice in healing. Her chapbook, Shomeret Shalom: Replanting the Seeds of Jewish Revolutionary Nonviolence – after October 7th is for anyone who wants to help live into this more realistic and necessary vision of the world as it can be.
This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes Mel Duncan, the founding director of Nonviolent Peaceforce and longtime peace activist. Mel talks to Michael and Stephanie about a proposal to bring unarmed civilian protectors to Gaza. Unarmed civilian protection (UCP) – the practice of protecting vulnerable groups by having well trained unarmed people accompany them in areas of danger – has been shown to be extremely effective, even in places entrenched in violent conflict. Too often we are told by conventional history and mainstream media that the appropriate, and indeed, only ‘realistic’ response to violence is yet more violence. Mel encourages us to question this assumption:
When we're presented with these kinds of situations [of violent conflict], we have been fed, so often, that the only way to deal with that is by bringing in the drones and the jets and the 2,000-pound bombs, that we see what is counterintuitive. When we see entire neighborhoods blown up, and blown up, and blown up and the response by policymakers is, let's do it more, that's counterintuitive. And so, what we're doing is rational and intuitive and speaks to the core of the human spirit.
UCP, already practiced (though rarely reported) by organizations and individuals all over the world, has been successful in Sudan, in the Philippines, in Colombia – even in parts of Palestine – to name only a few places. UCP meets violence with the courage to create a different path, and in this reminds us of our core decency, kindness and the incredible strength we show when we choose to act from love.
Tim Chapman, restorative justice practitioner, trainer and former chairperson and board member of the European Forum for Restorative Justice, comes to talk with Stephanie on this episode of Nonviolence Radio. Together, they explore the practice of and principles behind restorative justice, the ways in which it is able to offer a kind of lasting resolution to all parties involved in a conflict – including the larger community in which it happened. Restorative justice is a way to ‘to move out of that sense of antagonism’, often cultivated in traditional legal systems, and instead into a place where everyone listens, everyone is acknowledged and everyone tries hard to understand the stories of others.
"I think in listening to somebody who you believe was your enemy and listening to his story, not necessarily saying it's all true, I don’t agree with everything, but really trying to understand how they've come to that position that made them – is the beginning of a transformation away from that sort of simple label of ‘you are my enemy’, towards you are a human being."
It is only with a renewed sense that we are all human – albeit, with very different backgrounds and experiences – that we can act decently, hold ourselves and others accountable and truly forgive.
Topic Scans and Links:
Mel Duncan has written an excellent article on the possibilities of inserting peace teams into the West Bank in Israel-Palestine.
Educational institutions have agreed to divest from investments that go to Israel.
In Central India, 90 villages have formed Maha Gramsabha.
Gandhi Research Foundation is offering a postgraduate diploma in Sustainable Rural Reconstruction from a Gandhian perspective.
Operazione Colomba, active in Colombia, Albania, and Gaza to guarantee unarmed civilian protection to war victims.
World BEYOND War, is offering a six-week online course on unarmed civilian defense.
International Peace Training Institute is doing projects in 33 countries, training hundreds of women in civilian-based defense.
Unarmed Civilian Defense course by Eli McCarthy.
International Institute for Strategic Studies has documented the highest number of armed conflict that they've been able to document in three decades. “This all makes this one of the most perilous moments for global geopolitics.”
The IDF has made allowance for 100 civilian deaths in Gaza for every Hamas official that they are targeting by an error-prone AI system.
The International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice have issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister and military chief of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.
Residents in a Tibetan threatened mountain community are showing the world through videos their resistance to the building of a Chinese dam.
Time to Let Youth Lead
Nonviolence News
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.
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.
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.
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
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.”
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes @hellaJinsella from the UK peace organization, DeMilitarize 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. DeMilitarize 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.
In this episode --
SchoolofNonviolence.org
Nonviolent Peaceforce in Sudan
Article 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
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.
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.
Music -*Hate is Too HeavyMake Good Trouble by Gary Nicholson*
Quaker Pastor Parfaite Ntahuba joins Stephanie and Michael on this episode of Nonviolent Radio to discuss her wide-ranging and inspiring work cultivating and spreading nonviolence, both within her community in Burundi and across the globe. From an early age, Pastor Ntahuba had firsthand experience with both domestic and political violence and has spent her life trying to ensure that the terror and violence she endured will not be the fate of others. She identifies the insidious power of patriarchy as a root cause of violence, showing through concrete examples the way it can destroy families, distort local justice systems and become a justification for gender-based violence. Despite the hardships Pastor Ntahuba has witnessed and undergone herself, she remains hopeful and active, convinced that the practice of nonviolence can lead to real change. Just as her childhood experience in a Quaker household – a home grounded in nonviolent principles and practice – showed her a new way to live, so too can others, even ostensible ‘enemies’, once exposed to the ever-available power of nonviolence, see our world in a new light. And with this clear vision comes a sense of unity, of our shared humanity and our common goal of peace:
In this special episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael return to an interview from 2017 with Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, who died at the age of 89 earlier this year. In what follows, we get to revisit some special moments from that program. We hear Arun speak about how his grandfather taught him about the broad and inclusive nature of nonviolence, about the power of anger (properly used) and about Gandhi’s promotion of the charkha (spinning wheel) as a key tool for achieving Indian independence: what might be our charkha today? Arun speaks clearly and tenderly about lessons from his grandfather and these clips from that interview help to bring to light not just Gandhi’s principles, but a sense of his personality.
[From my grandfather] I realized that nonviolence was not just about not fighting, it was about not exploiting, and not wasting, and not harming people in different ways. Actually, it’s passive violence, non-physical or passive violence that fuels the fire of physical violence. So logical, if we want to put out that fire of physical violence, we have to cut off the fuel supply. And since the fuel supply comes from each one of us, we have to become the change we wish to see in the world.
These selections from Arun Gandhi’s interview are followed by lots of good news in the Nonviolence Report.
In this fascinating interview with distinguished anthropologist, Brian Ferguson, who has made a deep study of this critical question we learn much about how anthropology is done, about how easy it is to think we're seeing signs of warfare when we're not, and most importantly how we're justified in concluding that war is NOT inevitable and we can learn to avoid it.
On today’s episode we speak with Gwendolyn Olton from the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Rochester New York. Gwen has recently published a book, the title being From Conflict to Community: transforming conflicts without authorities which is really a guidebook and a training manual for supporting each other while in conflict.
In this episode --
Traute Lafrenze and the White Rose
Traute Lafrenz who passed away at her home in South Carolina. She was 103 and the last surviving member of the White Rose.
Zan, Zindagi Azadi – Woman, Life, Freedom
Alliance for Democracy and Freedom in Iran
Alliance for Democracy and Freedom in Iran
Charter of Solidarity and Alliance for Freedom
USPS Upgrading to Electric Fleet
Conscientious Objectors in Israel
Comment from Shimri Zameret
Global Gandhian Movement for Swaraj
Earth4All
Earth4All has been praised because it’s very clear-eyed on the impending destruction of the environment, the economy, as it lays out five paths to a systematic rescue.
Mediation Response Units
Mediation Response Unit are having a series of online breakfasts
This week, Nonviolence Radio welcomes Sarah Eskandari, Iranian activist and PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. Sarah speaks with Stephanie and Michael about the ongoing nonviolent protests in Iran and the brutal actions taken by the current regime in response to them. The interview goes on to explore the possibility of nurturing a strong, foundational commitment to nonviolence amongst the Iranian people. Sarah speaks about the long history of nonviolent resistance in Iran. “Historically speaking,” she explains, “we haven’t had violent protests or movements after the Islamic revolution of 1979. Almost all protests, all movements were peaceful…Iranians have been able to shake the pillars of the Islamic regime with a peaceful demonstration. Looking at the history of the resistance, it is very encouraging to appreciate what they have been doing.”
This realistic and hopeful discussion is followed by the Nonviolence Report where Michael reviews expressions of nonviolence at play today, including a candid conversation with Amos Oluwatoye – speaker, philosopher and nonviolent activist – on the promising activities of Nigeria’s Obi-dient movement and its attempt to ensure fair and just elections.
In this news segment –
Rage Against War
Positive Peace - International Holocaust Remembrance Association -
Compassionomics
Le Chambon - Lest Innocent Blood be Shed
Indigenous Communities Gaining Titles to Territories
Chipko to EQAT
Composting in San Francisco
Peru and the Paradox of Repression
Constructive Programs
This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes journalist and author, Thomas Ricks. Thomas talks to Michael and Stephanie about his new book, Waging a Good War. A military history of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968. Together the three explore the ways in which the American Civil Rights Movement framed nonviolence within a military context to advance its goals. Through a deep and practical understanding of the language and methods of violence, leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were able to use nonviolent action as a powerful, strategic and even aggressive agent for change. The interview makes clear that effective nonviolence is not embodied in spontaneous, impromptu performances, but in deliberate, intentional and meticulously planned actions. Such efforts required dedication and sacrifice, a commitment to and a faith in a greater good along with a willingness to learn, to practice, to collaborate and cooperate:
"One of my favorite moments in one of the Nashville demonstrations is a guy spit in a demonstrator’s face. And the demonstrator had been trained – when somebody spits in your face, ask the guy for a handkerchief. And the mob – this guy assaulting the kid, reached in his pocket for a handkerchief and then said, “Hell no.” But for that one moment, there had been human connection."
Ultimately, nonviolence is founded on precisely this human connection, our innate and enduring kinship with one another. This conversation reveals the way that nonviolence can become a powerful force, sometimes fueled by anger at senseless suffering, cruelty, racism and discrimination. But nonviolence does not merely unleash a torrent of rage, instead it carefully and consciously channels anger towards a justice that belongs to everyone.
In addition to the Nonviolence Report (covering nonviolence in the world which is often overlooked by mainstream media), Stephanie and Michael welcome two inspiring guests on this episode of Nonviolence Radio: director of the Regional Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolent and Strategic Action in the Americas, Maria Belén Garrido, and the executive director at the Center for Mediation, Peace, and the Resolution of Conflicts based in the US and Ecuador, Jeff Pugh. Together they explore effective ways to expand the scope of nonviolent action through local, grassroots education initiatives. This means courses that are geared towards – and often taught by – by people on the ground, members of the communities in conflict. This model has been extremely effective throughout Latin America where trainings and courses are bringing people together to learn strategies and exchange stories. This more decentralized kind of education is better able to address particular, situation specific issues; it uses local languages and presents its ideas free from academic jargon.This has led to a growing network of nonviolent activists and movements, from Peru and Venezuela to Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua.
"To supplement courses and blogs, there is now a database dedicated to collecting examples of nonviolent action in Latin America. This powerful resource highlights not only the wide range of nonviolent actions that are at play in this part of the world, providing activists with concrete examples of practices that work, but also reveals its long history:
we decided to create this database, to promote the research for other scholars, but also for the activists to see new tactics, different tactics, as Jeff mentioned, not just protest. Because strategic nonviolent action is not just protest in the streets, but all the different actions that people, in their own country, that speak their own language, are doing – or they have been doing in the last 20 years."
The work done by Maria and Jeff and their organizations helps to show how communities in conflict already have a tremendous amount of strength and knowledge which can be channeled towards peace.
This week, Nonviolence Radio brings together four voices, each one exploring a different aspect of nonviolence. We hear from religious scholar, activist and writer, Francesca Po; advisor to the Secretary General of Pax Christi International, Marie Dennis; pastor at Clackamas United Church of Christ, Adam Erickson; and senior lecturer in the Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies Program at DePaul University, Ken Butigan.
Their varied interests help us to trace the deep roots of nonviolence in our history; to understand how contemporary, post-New Age ‘Self Religion’ breeds curiosity and tolerance; to see the ways the Catholic Church is becoming (again) a source of and support for nonviolence education and finally, to recognize that the ‘scapegoat mechanism’ rests on a misunderstanding of scripture and can be fruitfully replaced with an empowering model of nonviolent action.
These four speakers, given their distinct perspectives, enlarge and enrich our understanding of nonviolence and reveal it to be a dynamic and powerful force, one with a long past and an increasingly mighty present.
This week, we have two interviews from Nonviolence Radio, the first with peace activist, religion scholar and author, Francesca Po; the second with Jared Spears and David Fix from the E.F. Schumacher Center for New Economics.
Francesca and Stephanie explore the concept of ‘self-religion’, the subject of Francesca’s chapter in the upcoming book, Religion and Peace. Self-religion, as Francesca describes it, is a deliberately chosen religious outlook drawn from diverse religious sources. This kind of ‘pick and mix’ religion reveals in individuals an ‘ability to hold multiple religious authorities or multiple worldviews in their ideology’. And this, Francesca suggests, plays a key role in conflict resolution as the ability to acknowledge a range of different authorities allows people to recognize divergent beliefs as legitimate and valuable.
Stephanie and Michael’s second interview takes a deep dive into various aspects of an economics of peace. David and Jared explain some of the activities carried out at the Schumacher Center for New Economics, from local currencies to community land trusts. Together they discuss and start to illuminate a different vision of economics, one which is grounded in smaller, local communities where people are empowered to make choices as to how they want their societies to be structured and which values will serve as their foundations. The Schumacher Center offers resources, information and support as we endeavor to create communities ‘where people can develop their own economy that isn’t reliant on degrading anybody or degrading the natural resources, and is really meant to uplift everybody’.
On this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Ela Gandhi, Tom Eddington and Michael Nagler come together for a lively, insightful and uplifting discussion about various aspects of nonviolence, both in theory and in practice. These three experts in the field explore (among other topics) the relationship between morality and nonviolence, the core spiritual element of nonviolence, how a life dedicated to nonviolence is fertile ground for lasting personal happiness, and the crucial difference between strategic and principled nonviolence. The conversation is far reaching and welcoming, itself a kind of manifestation of another key element of nonviolence, an open and curious mindset:
We have to cultivate a nonjudgmental attitude in order to accept that there are many truths that, you know, listen to other people, not to come to the table with the idea that you have all the answers. But rather to come to the table to be able to listen, and with humility, with compassion, to understand and grow that understanding.
-Ela Gandhi
With special thanks to HumanityRising.org
In Part 2 of this two-part episode, we continue our discussion around the protest movement currently underway in Iran by speaking with Iranian-born Leila Zand, who now lives in the US and focuses on Track 2 Diplomacy in Iran/U.S. relations, as well as Citizen Diplomacy with CodePink.
Having been raised in the throes of both the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq War which followed shortly after, Leila uses her personal experience to illuminate the radical socio-economic, cultural, and religious shifts that the Iranian people have experienced in such a short time period, and how this impacts what is being expressed by women and young people on the streets today. Together, Stephanie and Leila discuss the possibilities in this context for creative, nonviolent solutions, when there are also active and destabilizing risks like widespread anger, devastating sanctions, and threats of armament. In spite of this, at Nonviolence Radio we know that one thing is for certain– wherever there is conflict and violence, we will find nonviolence in action, even if it's small. There’s always something we can do.
For more on nonviolence in Iran visit the Metta Center.
“Every individual should be deliberately and consciously living their life in a peaceful and nonviolent way. And that is the basic self-transformation which is important for the Culture of Peace. And that is the thing that we have been telling again and again, that peace is something very individual to all of us. Yes, we create the communities. We create the nations. But individuals do it. Nations do not stand and communities do not stand without the individuals. So, that is the point. If we change – it is a painstaking, long-time effort, but we do that. We have to do one person at a time, and that is very important. ... So, that is a big, big challenge that we face all the time. But we cannot give up. Civil society cannot give up. We are the conscience of humanity, and we try our best to bring it out.” – Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury
In this week's episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael speak with Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury about the UN Culture of Peace and Nonviolence, its history, and the challenges that it faces within the UN system. He rejects the framing of nonviolence as idealism, and instead embraces it as a practical plan of action that, over the long term, leads to the self-transformation of individuals and societies, and is thus fundamental to the realization of the UN's broader goals. At the same time, he warns that a UN consumed by bureaucracy, internal politics and putting out daily fires, is one which loses its capacity for this long-term vision. As the conscience of humanity, civil society must therefore continue pushing for peace and nonviolence as fundamental not only to preserving the UN’s relevance, but also to bringing about peace for future generations.
In this week's episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie speaks with interdisciplinary sociologist Ruba al-Hussani to bring context and understanding to the current protests in Iraq, and how they differ from the nonviolent Tishreen/October movement of 2019. To provide context to each of these movements, she first gives a deep explainer of the ethno-based consociational and power-sharing model of government that was imposed by the United States following the 2003 invasion, and why Iraqi citizens consider it a failure. Secondly, she explains how armed groups managed to gain seats in parliament after the fight against ISIS, and the obstacles this is creating for the formation of a functionable and representative government.
To draw it all together, Ruba describes why the 2019 Tishreen movement insists upon a governance model that is democratic and representative on the basis of merit, as opposed to sectarianism, and what the current protests led by Muqtada al-Sadr might mean for Iraqi people as they conflict with these goals. Despite the deeply unpredictable future of the country, she draws hopefully on the nonviolent and feminist means utilized by the Tishreen activists and considers how the movement elevated public consciousness, while also challenging the status quo and legitimacy of violence as a political tool.
"But this is another phase, another stage in this revolution. And I think it’s still continuing, in a way. Many people claim that the protest movement has been crushed. But just because there are no street protests, it doesn’t mean that the momentum has been lost. .... There’s greater thirst for knowledge about the constitution, about their rights. ... And now we're seeing more dialogue amongst the people. Politicians are not necessarily engaging in dialogue, but the people are, both online and offline. They’re thinking. And the protest movement has caused a shift in the public consciousness, in the collective consciousness. And this shift will be there for a long time to come. Iraq is not the same after the 2019 October Movement, and I don’t think it ever will be."
Music by: Farida
When Paul Cox was called by his draft board to serve in the U.S. war on the people of Vietnam, he did not feel he could, or should object. Once he arrived, however, he began questioning the motives and purpose of the war and felt it was a duty to do something about it, finding a community of other GIs and veterans who were also opposed. In this interview, Paul describes his experiences as part of a resistance movement within the military to the Vietnam War, and helps us to understand the larger implications of this largely untold history, including the power of overcoming political polarities in the work of peace, and the role of military personnel in ending war.
In this week's episode of Nonviolence Radio, Michael and Stephanie speak with members of the Nonviolent Global Liberation community (NGL) about their collective and individual experiments in nonviolence, including the process of building and working within the NGL community.
Their commitment and resolve to explore and address all areas of life, from market economies to home life, to the event greater question of what it means to be human and deeply experience our shared humanity, reminds us that to paraphrase NGL's co-founder, Miki Kashtan, that freeing ourselves from our habits and conditioning of violence, to truly build a nonviolent world, requires both "systemic analysis and individual tenderness."
This week, Nonviolence Radio hosts three exceptional guests: Tim Pluta and Adrienne Kinne, two former veterans now working for peace, and writer and activist, Lawrence Cox. Tim and Adrienne talk to Stephanie and Michael about their recent work in Western Sahara with three women from the Khaya family who have been forcibly detained in their home for well over a year. The suffering they have endured is horrifying and Tim and Adrienne are drawing on the strategy of nonviolent civilian accompaniment as a means to support them. But their aim extends further: they hope to raise awareness about the plight of Western Sahara, the last colony in Africa, and far too often unseen by the world.
Lawrence Cox continues the discussion about colonization, but through the lens of Burma. His interview ends with some hopeful conclusions about the end of empire. Despite the ongoing and profound injustice we see in Burma and in the world, Lawrence speaks optimistically about the future. He encourages us to acknowledge that there may be no single path out of our present difficulties, perhaps though, a single, clear route is not the right way to conceive of the way forward:
…there’s something really quite liberating about stepping slightly back from that and going, “Some of the time, it may be okay not to have an exact plan. Either a vision of what the future world we want will be, or of the exact steps that will get it there.” And then even, you know, as in Asia, to find out that there wasn’t one path out of empire. There were lots of different ones. And some of them, in retrospect, we might think that was a better way out. Others, we might think that was not a great way out. But actually, there were lots of different routes out of empire.
The possibility of many roads out of current difficulties creates space for creative and surprising approaches, ones which arise in response to particular circumstances, empowering local actors to establish genuine and lasting change.
In this episode, we hear from Kazu Haga from the East Point Peace Academy and Robin Wildman from Nonviolent Schools RI, exploring different aspects of nonviolent trainings to diminish the violence in our cultures.
In the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler begins with the importance of “Thou Shall Not Kill” in the cultures of the world, and how that message is critical to counter America’s rising violent gun culture.
Nigerian writer and activist Amos Oluwatoye joins Stephanie and Michael on Nonviolence Radio this week to talk about his path to nonviolent activism. He traces his path through radical Marxism and student activism to religious activism to a kind of synthesis and expansion of them all. At university, acting as a leader of his community, Amos was pushed to make difficult choices, choices in which legitimate anger had to be channeled patiently and constructively – nonviolently. He explains how he has learned to have faith in the power of nonviolence, how he has worked for it consistently, even in the face of violent oppression by police and government.
We also hear Amos reflect on the history and tradition of nonviolence within his ethnic group, the Yoruba. He talks about the Yoruba practice of respecting elders and describes one beautiful method of conflict resolution:
"If there is a conflict in a community, to set time, the first set of people should go and meet the traditional rulers. We still have elders that resolve conflicts. They have various strategies and tactics. We start with storytelling. If there is a conflict between one family and another, concerning who possesses a particular land, an elder can start with a story of how the forefathers of the conflicting partners – how they were friends in the olden days, what they did together."
Listening to our elders (and more broadly, listening to each other), learning through stories – these are simple yet powerful practices that Amos brings to life, revealing them to be accessible and effective nonviolent strategies for all of us.
This week, Nonviolence Radio broadcasts a talk by peace researcher and award-winning author, Maria Stephan. Maria is chief organizer and co-lead at the Horizons Project and collaborated with Erica Chenoweth on the book, Why Civil Resistance Works. In this episode, she explores how nonviolence might be effectively used in Ukraine – and the ways it already is:
… right now, inside Ukraine, in towns, villages, cities that have been invaded and occupied by Russian forces, you are seeing actions by ordinary unarmed civilians to stop, thwart, and slow the invasion of Russian troops, tanks, convoys, including these scenes in Kherson and Melitopol, where you've had literally people putting their bodies in front of tanks and convoys. In some cases, forcing them to turn around and leave the cities or towns.
Given past work on Syria, Maria understands the nuances of nonviolent tactics such as sanctions and is able to explain how they might be used constructively, as a way gradually to dismantle ‘key pillars’ of power within Putin’s regime. Her sense of hope, her conviction that nonviolence truly works, rests on concrete evidence that is too often overlooked by mainstream media.
Michael’s Nonviolence Report following Maria’s talk is also firmly grounded in evidence, the evidence of hard science. Instead of the usual round-up of nonviolent action taking place across the globe, Michael offers us a cogent and compelling account of how contemporary physics dovetails with the ancient Vedanta tradition, revealing our individual consciousness – here and now – to be a vital force in shaping the world we inhabit.
Qamar Jafri visits Nonviolence Radio this week to talk with Stephanie and Michael about the Pashtun Protection Movement, committed to bringing about justice through nonviolent means, even in Pakistan, a place which has suffered from entrenched violent conflict. This interview explores not only the ways the Pashtun Protection Movement effectively uses nonviolent resistance to end oppression and injustice – for instance, marches, sit-ins, direct calls for government reform, but also highlighting the constructive aspect of nonviolence.
Building off the legacy of Bacha Khan’s interpretation of the Pashtunwali, the Pashtun Protection Movement reflects a sense of justice that does not devolve into an endless cycle of retribution and revenge but one which continues to grow through concrete practices, through “deradicalizing, countering violent extremism, through literature, through education, and through contact – like making study circles, groups, seminars, conferences, workshops.” Because of this ongoing formative education in nonviolence, youth today see that “the response to this violence should be nonviolence.”
Qamar explains some key elements of effective nonviolence in the Pashtun Protection Movement today: inclusion of women, of victims, of children’s voices; use of local knowledge recognizing and relying on the expertise of indigenous people; establishing both practical networks on the ground as well as formal legal support, and turning to modern social media to bypass distorted reports from state run media outlets. After all, it is through contact with one another that we see our common humanity and the very real possibilities we have to make peace.
This week’s Nonviolence Radio show shares the stories and wisdom of two guests: Osama Elewat, an activist from Combatants for Peace (a volunteer organization that brings together ex-combatants from Israel and Palestine to find peaceful solutions to the cycle of violence in the region) and Michael Beer, the director of Nonviolence International (an organization that advocates for active nonviolence and supports creative constructive nonviolent campaigns worldwide). Both guests speak about the power of nonviolence in practical terms, revealing how its strategies can be effective even in the face of terrible conflict, specifically in Palestine and Western Sahara.
Real change in Palestine-Israel relations, Osama suggests, calls for a dramatic shift in perspective: we must see the process itself as the end and we must realize that the foundation of the conflict resolution process is the rehumanization of our perceived enemies:
"…we are honored to plant this seed of different ideas for resistance. If it doesn’t work now, it will work in the future. We are sure the situation will change in the future. And we want to tell our grandchildren in the future, if they ask us about what we have done to end this conflict, we want to say that yes, we saw each other as human beings. "
This profound yet simple idea can take many forms and Michael talks about how it can be expressed in a range of nonviolent tactics. He encourages us to see that these tactics are already at work all around us, they are simply often overlooked. By becoming more conscious of the many creative forms nonviolent action now takes, we can choose take part ourselves, to strengthen existing expressions of nonviolence and enlarge its scope:
"We want people to realize that nonviolent action is used in every country in the world, almost every single day. It’s used on a vast scale. And we want people around the world to realize that there’s an enormous toolbox of actions and tactics that people can consider to use. "
Osama and Michael ask that we open our eyes to the reality of persistent violence in the world, that we become aware of suffering, whether or not it is on the front pages. But most important, they show us the ways in which nonviolent action is simultaneously powerful and accessible – by taking small steps, we can all work nonviolently to bring about change.
Joanne Sheehan of War Resisters League and War Resisters International joins Nonviolence Radio to share insights and strategies for resisting militarization and ending war through nonviolence, with a focus on current events of the war in Ukraine.
Dr. Vandana Shiva joins us on Nonviolence Radio this week to discuss her latest book from Synergetic Press, Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy: A Global Citizens' Report on the Corporate Control of Technology, Health, and Agriculture.
This week, Michael and Stephanie talk about reparations (and more) with UC Berkeley professor emeritus, Charles Henry, who is also the former president of the National Council for Black Studies and former chair of Amnesty International USA. In 2007, years ahead of his time, Professor Henry wrote a book on the issue of reparations, Long Overdue. The Politics of Racial Reparations. Reparation, Professor Henry reminds us, is about repairing and thus is far more than a financial transaction; it cannot be tidily achieved with a one-off check intended to close definitively the chapter on hundreds of years of slavery and discrimination. Rather, reparation is intimately linked to restorative justice -- the need to recognize a wrong done, to listen to voices expressing pain and anger and suffering, to atone and finally to find a sense of closure that all parties can feel. Ultimately, Professor Henry says, reparations can lead to rebuilding of community in such a way that the desire for vengeance is diminished and fear can be replaced by hope for a more just and loving community, one where people know they belong:
Instead of retribution what we want is restorative justice. It’s the kind of thing that Martin Luther King talked about when he was asked about violence, and when you’d have discussions of KAMU and others. Vengeance or retribution only leads to more violence. King, when he talked about colonialism, he would say, the objective of African Americans is not to separate in a separate colony or to kick whites out of the country as in colonial Africa, but to live in the same country. To reconcile with white Americans -- and to have that, you need restorative justice not retribution.
If we think, as Professor Henry suggests, of reparations as a process instead of a payment, it can become the basis for an ongoing, dynamic, harmonious relationship with our history and with each other.
On today's show we honor the life and teachings of Buddhist monk and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh, or Thay as he is lovingly referred to by his students.
Thich Nhat Hanh passed away at the age of 95 on Friday, January 22, and leaves a legacy that goes beyond Buddhism and into the heart of what it means to be human, and how to put compassion and nonviolence into practice.
His teachings have shaped many lives and will continue to do so.
We are pleased to be able to share with you, thanks to receiving permission from his monastery, Plum Village, this dharma talk by Thay, entitled The Art of Being Peace from May 13, 2008 at the 5th International Buddhist Conference. The talk includes chanting and a meditation at the end.
Journalists Sher Kashimov and Colleen Wood join Stephanie and Michael this week on Nonviolence Radio to give background about the current situation in Kazakhstan. After the government shut down the internet, very little information was known about the protests or the government’s increasingly violent response with an invitation to the Russian military, “Shoot to kill.”
Sher and Colleen manage to shed light on this worrisome situation due to their long relationships with the country and their steadfast commitment to uncovering the truth about the events now taking place.
This week, Stephanie and Michael are joined by community leader, Natasha Juliana, who is currently hard at work on “Cool Petaluma,” a project that aims to heal the climate from the ground up. Aware at how easy it is to become overwhelmed by the climate crisis, paralyzed by its magnitude, Cool Petaluma starts with concrete, inclusive and non-political actions taken at a grassroots level. This allows people to see that there are in fact ways each one of us can help the earth right now – and part of that comes through building conscious and caring communities wherever we are:
“I’ve always believed that individual actions are the on-ramp to larger collective action and participation. It’s the way we get introduced to a new way of thinking and ideas…the first actions that [those involved in the project] take are around emergency preparedness. Because as we move into this climate disruption, we are going to see more – as we have already over the last four or five years, more fires, more floods, you know, depending on where you are in the country. All kinds of reasons that it’s helpful to be prepared. And why it’s so helpful to have those relationships with your neighbors so that you can take care of each other. You can know who to look out for on the block and how to share resources.And that’s such an easy in-road for people. It’s not political. It’s – everybody understands that everybody has been experiencing it. So, it’s just a really great place to start”
Natasha also encourages us to be deliberate in the language we use as we talk about making change. Words like “combat” or “make war” – even in relation to the real problems we hope to overcome – seep into our psyches and can lead us away from our true aims, which involve not fighting but “growing,” “coordinating,” “creating” and “enjoying.”
Stephanie and Michael welcome three guests this week on Nonviolence Radio. First, they talk to Katherine Hughes-Fraitekh and Steve Chase about their work together in Solidarity 2020 and Beyond. Responding to the isolation and suffering caused by COVID, Solidarity 2020 and Beyond offers hope and support to grassroots activists and organizations, providing them opportunities to network, to learn from each other and to collaborate through webinars and trainings. Solidarity 2020 and Beyond draws on the power inherent in sharing experiences and using them to educate and increase solidarity amongst all those who are striving -- nonviolently -- to bring about change for good, wherever in the world they may be.
"...what we're trying to do is to be driven by the grassroots activists, extremely flexible to respond to their needs, and not create an organization but realize there are amazing groups out there – Beautiful Trouble, ICNC, the Einstein Institute, Nonviolent Peaceforce, Metta Center, Waging Nonviolence, all the groups that are working on these issues. And African Youth Movement, Africans Rising – we're very closely connected with them. And just trying to help bring groups together and find ways to do critical learning, research, and really spread the knowledge both to people that are doing the work on the ground as people learn from each other.
...for the vast majority of people in the world that are not directly involved, but may be very hopeless right now, letting them know these amazing things are happening, and these amazing courageous people are out there changing the world for the better. It’s not time to give up hope, but really to have a vision for a better future. And that is possible."
The inspiring conversation with Katherine and Steve is followed by an equally powerful discussion with Mubarak Elamin, a Sudanese activist supporting the movement in Sudan. Mubarak talks about the astounding strength and courage of the Sudanes people, their determination to stand up for what they need, often risking their lives, working for peace and change:
"We're actually learning from the streets of Sudan. It’s amazing, the creativity and how people are committed to – first, they’re committed to nonviolence and peaceful protest – peaceful actions. And the second thing they are doing also, organizing. And the third thing they are doing is also being really media savvy..."
And they just demonstrate that day in and day out. They’re speaking about, “We're not out for bread. We’re not out for lower prices of gas. We're out for our own freedom and to bring about some other high-level values to our life and to our people.” And they’re so determined to do that. So, it’s just really like when you see these, read these stories, it’s just heartfelt. The stories that all of these kids – I will call them heroes and warriors in a way or the other.
From all three guests this week, we see the power that comes when we actively listen to and connect with others. Every community, every person has its experience, and when diverse experiences are brought together, when they are heard and shared, they become a resource, an exhilarating force for change.
Robert Levering comes to Nonviolence Radio this week to talk to Stephanie Van Hook and Michael Nagler about the film “The Boys Who Said No!” and the powerful draft resistance movement that helped to end the Vietnam War. Robert is an executive producer of the film, a position he is well suited to as he himself was a draft resister in the 1960s. In the interview, we hear how Robert worked collectively to refuse the draft, and more, to stand up actively and nonviolently to an unjust and oppressive system:
"...the draft sort of makes it us vs. the government. It’s very frightening just individually to face the government and all the power it has. But the communities that we developed helped to give us the kind of strength that we really needed in order to do that confrontation.
I know that I never would have – I don't know what I would have done. I mean, you never can tell. But it made it really much, much easier to do something as part of a community rather than just simply doing it individually."
Robert’s discussion of his work in the 60s reveals how groups like those opposing the war in Vietnam came together with the Civil Rights Movement to create a power that finally ‘overwhelmed’ the US government, pushing it to end the war and change some of its racist policies. We are seeing strong echoes of this kind of collaboration today, as shown in Michael’s nonviolence report at the end of the show: diverse groups dedicated to nonviolence in many different forms, directed at many causes are coming together, joining hands and actively building a better world.
This week, Michael and Stephanie talk to Kathy Kelly, life-long nonviolence activist, co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and co-coordinator of the Ban Killer Drones Campaign. This week she discusses her extensive experience in and thoughts about Afghanistan. American intervention, she believes, was -- and indeed, continues to be -- entirely misoriented, escalating rather than resolving the violent conflicts there. She offers some practical and clear advice on what good and productive involvement might entail, and provides concrete ways we might engage. She also pushes us to reconsider our preconceived ideas, both about the Taliban and ourselves; in doing so we can start to empathize, re-humanize and be less afraid:
"First of all, I think we need to do what you and Michael have advocated in the Metta Center for a long time. We have to find the courage to control our fears. We have to become a public that isn’t so whipped-up into being afraid of this group, afraid of that group, that we will continue to bankroll efforts to kind of eliminate that group so that we don’t have to be afraid of them anymore. That’s one thing.I think it’s really important to keep on building up our sense of controlling our fears.
"A second thing, very practically, is to get to know the people who are bearing the consequences of our wars and our displacement...My young friends in Afghanistan were emblematic of people who wanted to reach out to people on the other side of the divide. They talked about a border-free world. They wanted to have interethnic projects."
Only when we truly look at Afghanistan, when we see it and its people in all their rich complexity can we come to a better understanding of what they want and need. Only by actively listening to individuals and groups on the ground will we learn how we might be able to join them in finding ways to resolve conflicts and rebuild. And all this depends on a firm commitment to nonviolence, genuine humility and honest self-reflection:
"...nononviolence is truth force. We have to tell the truth and look at ourselves in the mirror. And what I’ve just said is really, really hard to look at. But I think that it’s required to better understand who we are and how we can actually say, “We're sorry. We're so very sorry,” and make reparations that say we are not going to continue this."
[Music from DAF Records]
This week Nonviolence Radio hosts Ela Gandhi, granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi, herself a peace activist and committed supporter of nonviolence. Ela was raised in The Phoenix Settlement, an ashram established by Gandhi in 1904 dedicated to the value of self-sufficiency, grounded in a profound concern for the natural world and dedicated to promoting human dignity for all. In this episode, Stephanie and Michael talk to Ela about her life, about the corrosive power of consumerism in our world today, about importance of actively modeling compassion, decency and kindness, and the crucial Gandhian idea of constructive program:
"...at Phoenix Settlement, we encouraged people to do their own growing of vegetables and so on. That was one way in which people became self-sufficient. Also, in little skills to make them less dependent on the mainline economy. This is building up your own economic activity so that you become self-sufficient, so that you're not dependent on the people who are actually exploiting you. That’s the one thing.
The second thing is that you are not supporting the exploitative mechanism. By becoming independent or dependent on yourself rather than on these economic giants, you’re making a statement and you’re also showing that, at the end of the day, they depend on us as consumers. And if we stop consuming what they produce, then it makes them think, it makes them reassess what they are doing. That’s one of the ways in which one indicates to people that we are unhappy about the way you are doing things."
“Constructive program” emerges as one of the most empowering and effective tools nonviolent activists can use to push back against oppressive forces and set up a more just and peaceful world.
“Share the Day” — this is a translation of a greeting from the ocean world of Shora, which was a world created by Joan Slonczewski. She’s a science fiction writer and professor at Kenyon College. This is from her 1986 novel “A Door into Ocean.” The book describes a society of people who are committed to nonviolence at a very, very deep level — and not just an emotional, sentimental kind of “do no harm” nonviolence, but one that is a really deeply transformed view of what it means to be human. And with that, what’s really at stake when we turn to or away from the nonviolent path.
Nonviolence and utopian thinking go hand in hand, or so argues Safoora Arbab on the second half of this episode. Utopian thinking is about what is possible, not what is impossible, she posits, and when coupled with nonviolence, we have both a roadmap and a means for achieving a more balanced and inclusive political identity. The goal may be “ever receding” as Gandhi said, and yet, without the clarity that utopian thinking can provide, nonviolence cannot fulfill its higher capacity to engage with long-term systems’ transformation.
On this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael are joined by Kelly Denton-Borhaug. Kelly teaches in the Global Religious Department at Moravian University and has written extensively on issues of war culture, moral injury and the ways that sacrifice can be used as a means to dehumanize and oppress marginalized people. Kelly traces the celebration of sacrifice -- so pervasive in America today -- back to the Bible, back to Ancient Greece and Rome, revealing the deep roots of this powerful and destructive rhetoric. Her work encourages us to think seriously about the damaging consequences of this kind of thinking and to be aware of how religious language can be misused to support, sustain and normalize a culture of war.
We need, Kelly insists, to listen to the voices of those who have been unjustly pushed into lives of violence and battle. More broadly, we need to push back against this worldview and reckon with the impact it has, not only on soldiers but on all of us, collectively, as human beings.
What I would like to call for is for members of the nonviolence community to really become much more sophisticated in terms of seeing these kinds of dynamics and calling them out, calling out the exploitation of the use of sacrificial verses in the Bible and the way that they are used in war culture; calling out the language and the logic of sacrifice, and actually lifting up the destructive consequences of actual sacrificial dynamics that are endemic to war culture.
I think that as people who care about nonviolence and who are, frankly, so often characterized as naïve about the world and about the dangers of the world -- nonviolent actors -- I would love to see them become much more sophisticated about calling out the naivety of those who claim that violence works, and those who unashamedly resort to these kinds of references to religion, to sacralize, undergird, and frankly, conceal the real process and the real consequences of the use of violence.
[End music by Nimo Patel - https://soundcloud.com/emptyhandsmusicnimo/ode-to-women]
As we move into the days commemorating the horrific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we join with activists and scholars around the world who say “no” to nuclear proliferation. What kind of wealth system, what kind of thinking about human life and our shared ecology would pose a fundamental challenge to the nuclear mindset?
We invited Dr. Michael Allen to Nonviolence Radio to offer a short but meaningful “teach-in” about the foundations of Western economic thought in Thomas Hobbes and its revolutionary contrast in the economics of Mahatma Gandhi.
This week, Michael and Stephanie welcome Dr. Wim Laven, professor, author, board member of the International Peace Research Association and the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and Editor in Chief of Peace Chronicle magazine. Wim’s work looks at the immense power of forgiveness as well as the very real difficulties involved in the act of forgiving. How does forgiving release us and allow us to move forward? What are the conditions needed for meaningful forgiveness? How can we forgive the unforgivable?
People are figuring out, you know, and being coached by their friends and their family and their spiritual advisors and so forth, that in order to live their best lives, they’re going to have to release some of these injustices, despite the fact that it’s completely unfair, right? Like police departments pulling over people just because of the color of their skin or just because they’ve profiled them to match descriptions of whatever prejudicial bias they would like to monitor. But being angry about it, staying angry about it, is having harmful consequences.
In that capacity, the police officer is just following orders and we know that just following orders has been used as a defence about some of the most heinous crimes in history. But it really is. It’s the system or the structure that’s creating those outcomes. I don't know how much the student is aware that what they're doing is forgiving the racism in America, but I do know that they are aware that if they stay angry, then they’ll be unemployed. And they’re finding ways to get over that – at least to the degree that they're able to function, you know?
It’s challenging stuff. I think that there are some people that would say that that’s not really forgiveness. I would. I do. I think that I’ve learned a lot from my students sharing their experiences and their practices for how they get through the critical injustices in the world.
Wim’s work with students in prison and all over the world illuminates the way in which forgiving plays an essential role in helping individuals to release anger so that they can live more freely and fully. At the level of society, Wim shows how forgiving can work to dismantle power structures that allow for, even encourage cruel, unjust and violent actions. Forgiving is not easy, but it is a powerful force which, when harnessed, allows for deep and lasting transformation.
Nonviolence and utopian thinking go hand in hand, or so argues Safoora Arbab on this week’s episode of Nonviolence Radio. Utopian thinking is about what is possible, not what is impossible, she posits, and when coupled with nonviolence, we have both a roadmap and a means for achieving a more balanced and inclusive political identity. The goal may be “ever receding” as Gandhi said, and yet, without the clarity that utopian thinking can provide, nonviolence cannot fulfill its higher capacity to engage with long-term systems’ transformation.
Michael Nagler begins the show with his Nonviolence Report for the week.
How does the way that we live contribute to a nonviolent society? As the pace of society speeds up, fewer and fewer people are finding fulfillment in the promise a world that is based on advancing technology, consumerism, and depersonalization. Yet there are pockets around the world who are experimenting with community life as a solution to our society’s ills. While this does not mean that there will not be any conflicts (remember, conflict is natural--violence is not), or that the experiment is perfect (for Gandhi, all was an experiment, a learning opportunity), it is precisely in community living infused high ideals like those of the nonviolent path, that we can see ourselves and our human potential more clearly.
In this episode of Nonviolence Radio we speak with Timothy Anderson, a full-time resident of a nonviolence-oriented community in the South of France, founded by Lanza del Vasto, an Italian follower of the Gandhian path.
In the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler makes the radical case for restorative justice because of the impact of retribution on the human psyche and our societal development; and Stephanie shares an article from Waging Nonviolence by Robert Levering about Daniel Ellsberg’s conversion to nonviolence, and a press release from the Shanti Sena Network on their upcoming gathering, to which all are invited!
Renowned Palestinian activist and humanitarian Mubarak Awad on nonviolence, his activism, and insights for action as the conflict in Israel-Palestine continues to smoulder.
The legacy of Mahatma Gandhi goes well beyond the Indian Freedom Struggle. He has influenced countless movements and struggles for freedom and democracy around the world, decolonization struggles, including the Civil Rights Movement within the United States.
On today’s show, we speak with P. Anand Rao who is a professor of Communications and Digital Studies at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
00:35 | Master of Sustainable Peacebuilding Course
01:17 | Third Harmony Screening in Jalgaon
01:46 | Meta Peace Team Trainings
| Nonviolence Skills Practice Hour
02:59 | Campaign Nonviolence workshops
03:19 | Stephen Zunes Sudan's 2019 Revolution
04:22 | Digital Nonviolence
05:09 | Strategies and Inspirations for Addressing the Crisis in Housing
05:53 | Votercade for John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Day
06:27 | The repeal of the Berlin “Rent Cap”
07:24 | Constructive Program & People's Choice Communications & Spectrum Strikers Launch ISP For (And By) The People Of NYC
| Spectrum Strikers Launch ISP For (And By) The People Of NYC
| People's Choice Communications
| Constructive Program
08:50 | Scientist Rebellion
09:46 | Retired Shrimper's Hunger Strike
11:24 | Coal Miners Union Says It Would Accept Transition to Renewables With Green Jobs
13:12 | Civilians Protecting Civilians: Women’s Protection Teams in Bentiu
In this episode --
Chauvin Verdict
Healing Our City
April 21 Healing Our City Reflection Darnell L Moore
Ma'Khia Bryant
"Madman with a Sword” analogy
Restorative Justice Animation & Resources
Resources
Free Bystander Intervention & De-escalation Trainings
For Goodness Sake: Music for the Nonviolent Future
Planned Actions for Campaign Nonviolence Action Week
Rivera Sun's Upcoming Events
Sustaining Peace Project
Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony
Indigenous Youth Arrive in DC to Tell Biden: Stop Dakota Access and Line 3 Pipelines
Defend the Sacred Alliance
“Share the Day” – this is a translation of a greeting from the ocean world of Shora which was a world created by Joan Slonczewski. She’s a science fiction writer and professor at Kenyon College. This is from her 1986 novel, A Door Into Ocean. The book describes a society of people who are committed to nonviolence at a very, very deep level – and not just an emotional, sentimental kind of ‘do no harm’ nonviolence, but one that is a really deeply transformed view of what it means to be human. And with that, what’s really at stake when we turn to or away from the nonviolent path.
In the two weeks immediately following the Georgia attack that killed 8 people, 6 of them Asian women, over 40,000 people signed up for trainings in bystander intervention with an incredible organization called Hollaback! They’re really leaders in the world of bystander intervention as a tool to end harassment, teaching a framework known as the “Five Ds” (Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, and Direct) which many groups who do similar work borrow from them.
According to Emily May, Hollaback!’s Co-Founder and Executive Director,
“It’s something that all of us can do to take care of each other when harassment happens that slowly but surely chips away at the institutions that underlie it – the institutions of racism and sexism and homophobia that allow it to proliferate to the extent to which it has.” She adds, however, that bystander intervention is only one piece of the solution, noting that we have to also turn to restorative and transformative justice, and “solutions we haven’t even imagined yet.”
I had the opportunity to speak with May from her Brooklyn office for Nonviolence Radio about showing up for community, the 5 Ds, why they don’t recommend calling the police, the power of sharing our stories (they have an App for that!), and the importance of ‘resourcing’ **organizations like Hollaback!
Following the interview, Michael Nagler gives the Nonviolence Report for the first week of April, 2021.**
How Hollaback! is Creating a Culture of Communty Accountability and Mutual RespectIn the two weeks immediately following the Georgia attack that killed 8 people, 6 of them Asian women, over 40,000 people signed up for trainings in bystander intervention with an incredible organization called Hollaback! They’re really leaders in the world of bystander intervention as a tool to end harassment, teaching a framework known as the “Five Ds” (Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, and Direct) which many groups who do similar work borrow from them.
According to Emily May, Hollaback!’s Co-Founder and Executive Director,
“It’s something that all of us can do to take care of each other when harassment happens that slowly but surely chips away at the institutions that underlie it – the institutions of racism and sexism and homophobia that allow it to proliferate to the extent to which it has.” She adds, however, that bystander intervention is only one piece of the solution, noting that we have to also turn to restorative and transformative justice, and “solutions we haven’t even imagined yet.”
I had the opportunity to speak with May from her Brooklyn office for Nonviolence Radio about showing up for community, the 5 Ds, why they don’t recommend calling the police, the power sharing our stories (they have an App for that!), and the importance of ‘resourcing’ organizations like Hollaback!
Nonviolence Report, a segment of Nonviolence Radio
In this episode --
00:38 Jain Studies -- Teaching Peace
01:20 https://worldbeyondwar.org/video-greta-zarro-on-organizing-101/
01:53 https://kingandbreakingsilence.org/
02:29 https://www.eastpointpeace.org/ytbn101
03:23 https://www.eastpointpeace.org/
03:48 https://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/michaels_book_is_here
04:59 https://www.forbes.com/sites/morgansimon/2021/02/01/regions-bank-of-alabama-turns-its-back-on-corecivic-announces-plan-to-end-relationship/?sh=372f7209d15b
06:35 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-annova-lng-texas-brownsville/annova-stops-development-of-texas-brownsville-lng-export-project-idUSKBN2BE2QB
07:24 https://www.kcaw.org/2021/03/19/herring-protectors-gather-at-sitkas-courthouse-as-commercial-fishery-gears-up/
08:24 https://worldbeyondwar.org/public-fast-meant-to-give-langley-food-for-thought-on-jet-fighter-purchase/
09:58 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/03/myanmar-five-year-old-killed-among-hundred/
10:45 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/27/more-than-100-killed-as-myanmar-junta-unleashes-worst-day-of-terror
11:42 https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/forever-impact-their-hearts-and-minds-greenwood-district-history-to-be-experienced-through-mobile-app/article_10068ada-5a92-11eb-a966-f351aaf1be82.html
13:43 https://wagingnonviolence.org/2021/03/mynamar-protesters-victories-double-down-nonviolent-resistance/
Bystander Intervention is a way to get the skills and the training that we need to feel comfortable in community situations to be able to de-escalate violence that’s in word from other people or in deeds. On the show today, is Mary Hanna a core team member of the Meta Peace Team.
This week Nonviolence Radio revisits a 2018 interview with Yasmin Maydhane and Carmen Lauzon from Nonviolent Peaceforce, an organization dedicated to effective nonviolent conflict resolution. Yasmin and Carmen talk about their work doing unarmed civilian protection in South Sudan and the Philippines, respectively. They share inspiring stories about the power of entering into dangerous conflict areas unarmed, but committed to helping communities entrenched in violence to uncover their own solutions, based on their own wisdom and traditions. Nonviolent Peaceforce sees unarmed civilian protection as a way to allow conflict ridden communities to regain the knowledge and power that they’ve always had, and to use it to bring about and sustain peace.
The entire UCP principle is about resiliency. It’s about enhancing community or in-house protection strategies, monitoring strategies, general life stock. Like how have you always taken care of your community? And how do we use that and make it better? We are not the ones who suggest how to improve these things. We let the community tell us how they want to improve things. And we do that with them because we live with them. I mean we live in the same places that they do. We eat the same food that they do.
We are with them 24/7 which means we get to see if they don’t like something or they want something changed, we also at times can see why they want that. If we agree or don’t agree, either way, that decision is not ours. The decision is the community’s. The whole point of UCP is to engage with the community so that we, as humanitarian workers, U.N. agencies, you know, are no longer needed. The community is self-sufficient so as to be able to take care of themselves. And they are.
The Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler for March 5th, 2021.
In this Episode --
Digital savviness
DC Peace Team Capitol Report
Meta Peace Team going to Israel-Palestine
Basic Training for UCP
Peace and Justice Studies Association
Nonviolence International webinar
Myanmar protestors killed.
Principled Nonviolence
Obstructive program
Constructive program
Abdul Ghaffar Khan -- My Life and Struggle
Pace e Bene workshop
Glossary of Civil Resistance
Ecuador’s Green Movement Victory
Peace Alliance
Restorative Justice Workshop
Stories From the Front Line
Protests in Myanmar
A dilemma action
Line 3 Pipeline
Institute for Local Self Reliance
Life Affirming Economies
This week, after the Nonviolence Report. Nonviolence Radio broadcasts a recording of a speech by Dr. Fania Davis, founder of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, a legal scholar, and a decades-long activist in the civil rights anti-racial violence, anti-apartheid, Black liberation, women’s, prisoner’s, peace, socialist and anti-imperialist movements. Dr Davis talks about the power of restorative justice -- as opposed to retributive justice -- to heal and bring together communities fractured by violence, racism, fear and rage.
What is restorative justice? It is a worldview, rooted in indigenous principles, and a theory of justice that emphasizes bringing together everyone affected by wrongdoing to address their needs and responsibilities and to heal the harm as much as possible. To heal the harm as much as possible. It is a worldview rooted in indigenous principles and a theory of justice.
Our prevailing justice system is based on a Roman notion of just desserts. If I do harm, the scales of justice become imbalanced and the only way to rebalance is to do harm to me.
Restorative justice invites a paradigm shift.
The three questions retributive justice asks are, “What rule was broken? Who broke it? And what punishment is deserved?”
The three questions restorative justice asks are, “Who was harmed? What are the needs and responsibilities of everyone impacted? And how do all impacted come together to address needs and responsibilities and heal the harm?
By drawing on her strengths as both a (wisdom, spiritual) warrior and a healer, Dr. Davis has helped bring about massive changes in the Oakland public schools. The use of restorative justice practices has raised graduation rates, drastically decreased the numbers of suspensions and absences and is starting to loosen the tight grip of racism on the education system and our society. The possibility of genuine healing depends on making space -- creating a circle -- where every voice matters and every voice is heard.
Michael Nagler gives the Nonviolence Report for February 5, 2021.
In this episode -
00:31 President Biden ending support for the war in Yemen.
01:17 10-point Plan for peace president.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/02/02/ten-point-plan-make-joe-biden-peace-time-president
1:56 The end of private prisons by the U.S. Justice Department
2:23 Overturning the Muslim ban. Rejection of KXL pipeline. Rejoining of the Paris Agreement.
3:54 Stephen Zunes article -- https://www.yesmagazine.org/democracy/2021/01/20/trump-coup-nonviolent-activists/
5:07 Truth and Healing Council - https://tribalaffairs.ca.gov/cthc/
6:18 Virginia abolishes the death penalty
6:41 Farmers Struggle in India
8:51 Gene Sharp's 198 methods for nonviolent resistance -- https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/
9:38 Coup in Myanmar
10:41 Peruvian doctors go on hunger strike to protest pandemic stress
Resources:
14:02 ICNC -- Civil Resistance Struggles course -- https://courses.nonviolent-conflict.org/courses/course-v1:ICNC+Participant_Led_Course2019+Spring2019/about
15:06 Occupy Sonoma County - https://ocsoco.org/content/daniel-solnit-teach-video-effective-strategies-climate-activism
15:28 Course on Restorative Justice - https://peopleshub.org/
15:53 Indigenous Peacemaking Initiative -https://peacemaking.narf.org/2020/10/news-spiritual-healing-a-more-hawaiian-way-to-deal-with-delinquent-kids/
16:34 Ecoleaks - https://www.facebook.com/EcoLeaksGlobal/
17:22 Campaign Nonviolence Pledge - https://paceebene.org/nonviolence-pledge
17:49 Rivera Sun - https://wagingnonviolence.org/cnv/2021/01/what-the-anti-coup-campaign-taught-us/
18:08 Is this principled nonviolence? http://www.huntsabs.org.uk.
Learn more at www.mettacenter.org/explore
Stephen Zunes, professor of Politics and International Studies at University of San Francisco, joins Michael and Stephanie on this episode of Nonviolence Radio to talk about how the coup attempt on January 6 reveals some remarkable and genuinely hopeful forces growing inside our democracy. Rather than fear and outrage, Professor Zunes encourages us to take heart in the effective and well-planned nonviolent response by many activists to the angry protesters. This response was not spontaneous, indeed for months various groups and organizations offered targeted trainings on a range of nonviolent methods -- and activists clearly learned some key strategies necessary for effective nonviolent action:
You have this combination of people who have shown a willingness to hit the streets and a willingness to be willing to face arrest and to engage in massive noncooperation. There was one thing that was really important about these trainings: it emphasized the importance of noncooperation that underscores what Gene Sharp and a lot of other people – Gandhi and so many other people that I’ve talked about before – governments are only as strong as people’s willingness to cooperate.
The nonviolent response on January 6 to the violent challenge to the American democracy could only have happened given a growing commitment to nonviolence, one that we have every right to expect will continue should greater threats emerge in the future. And it is precisely this commitment that, with effort and dedication, will allow us to listen better and come together as citizens who may disagree on this or that policy, but ultimately care deeply about each other as human beings.
This week’s episode of Nonviolence Radio pays special tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. on the 92nd anniversary of his birth. Michael begins by going over some nonviolence news, covering events in the US and abroad. He highlights the urgent need to listen, to see each other -- whatever our different beliefs -- as fellow humans, all of us in need of a sense of belonging to a meaningful world. This is followed by a recording of a speech given by Dr. Clayborne Carson of the MLK Institute at Stanford University in 2017. Dr. Carson turns to the life of Martin Luther. King Jr., recognizing not only the ‘mountaintop moments’ but the valleys he faced and courageously strode through. Dr. Carson calls upon us to remember King’s bigger vision which embraced not only civil rights in the US, but human rights across the globe.
“So what I would suggest is that when we go back and look at Martin Luther King's question, “Where do we go from here?”, that it's very possible that gaining citizenship rights has made us very complacent about human rights. We are secure and very happy in our rights as Americans in terms of citizenship because those are the rights that we expect our government to protect.
But there's a realm of rights which is constantly being evolved in the world. A realm of rights that belongs to people as people. And it's those rights that serve as a standard for citizenship rights. As we expand -- what is our ideal for what rights should be?-- that comes when we look at Martin Luther King. It's very clear that his ideal for what rights should be is not grounded on a piece of paper, it’s not grounded on a constitution, it’s not grounded on law itself. It's grounded on Christianity, the Judeo-Christian tradition, the prophetic tradition, the notion of justice.”
This week’s episode of Nonviolence Radio is a recording of a talk given by Vandana Shiva, environmentalist, activist, author, and scholar. For decades, Shiva has been advocating -- nonviolently -- for sustainable agriculture, for the rights of small farmers, for biodiversity, for women. She calls for a shift not only in the way we grow and distribute food, but a radical change in the way we understand our relationship with the earth. While the environmental crisis we face today has led many to seek to escape (for instance, through space travel) or become pessimistic, convinced of our species' imminent extinction, Shiva sees a third possibility: ecofeminism.
Dr. Jude Currivan -- cosmologist, futurist, planetary healer and author of the new book, The Cosmic Hologram -- is this week’s guest on Nonviolence Radio, and she ‘illuminates’ for listeners (and readers) a new perspective from which to understand the cosmos. This perspective captures the essential unity that permeates every level of existence, from the atomic, to the personal, to the galactic. With Michael, she traces the idea of cosmic unity back to ancient spiritual traditions and then returns to modern science, which is now (re)discovering the same wisdom. The meaning and unity that is the foundation of all being impacts not only scientists and scholars, but each of us in our everyday lives, “We are waking up,” Dr Currivan says, “to literally remembering that we are inseparable. One of the things with that though is the emphasis on unity-in-diversity -- because unity is not about uniformity. It’s this incredible gorgeous, wonderful radical diversity of expression.” Understanding that each of us is a unique expression of a bigger oneness or whole can explain the grounded and joyous feeling of loving and being loved, it can help to motivate our meditation practice, and perhaps most importantly, it can fuel our desire to work -- nonviolently -- to improve and transform the world.
In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Michael Nagler interviews Mel Duncan, the co-founder and Director of Advocacy and Outreach for Nonviolent Peaceforce, a world leader in unarmed civilian protection. Mel represents Nonviolent Peaceforce at the United Nations where the group has been granted consultative status. Nonviolent Peaceforce provides direct protection to civilians caught in violent conflict and works with local groups on violence deterrence in a variety of conflict areas around the world.
Mel speaks of the powerful work the Nonviolent Peaceforce has accomplished in conflict areas around the globe by identifying 77 best practices to prevent violence, protect civilians, saving lives, and promoting peace through the unique tool of Unarmed Civilian Protection.
This week, Michael Nagler moves out of his seat as co-host on Nonviolence Radio to take the place of interviewee. Stephanie asks Michael about the course of his life -- which could well be three or four lives! Michael was a professor of Comparative Literature and Classics at UC Berkeley and co-founded its Peace and Conflict Studies Program, he also co-founded and continues to act as president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence, and just this last year, he directed a film, The Third Harmony.
In this interview, Michael speaks about his deep belief in the power of nonviolence and the way that principled nonviolence can help us to emerge from the spiritual crisis we’re facing now: “I feel that in the present age, the way we have to come to grips with the perennial struggle between good and evil is around the lens of nonviolence. That’s the way that it becomes most meaningful to us. That’s the way that the rubber hits the road in terms of our policies and our behaviors. And that’s the way that we can most efficiently orient ourselves to decision-making. We can ask ourselves, Is this decision violent? In other words, Is there a selfish element which will benefit one party at the expense of another?”
In all his work, whether as an educator, an author, a director, Michael has been a passionate advocate for nonviolence and his efforts to reveal and celebrate its power has been a source of inspiration for many.
Let the Pain Not Spread
Let the pain not spread
Build a porous wall around it
Lest it seep into the soil
Harvest it
Plant flowers in it
Lest it rise in a tightened fist, gritty scowl, hardened stare
Or fall,
driving a buoyant angel
from the sky
How can we defend and support our democracy, which feels so vulnerable as we head into this election? What are some concrete actions that we -- even those of us who are non-experts and non-activists -- can take to strengthen ourselves and empower each other to choose the next president fairly? This week, Nonviolence Radio explores these questions and others with Hardy Merriman, president and CEO of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) and coauthor of Hold the Line: A guide to defending democracy.
Based on almost two decades in the field, Hardy uses his experience to offer us concrete, practical advice about just what we can do now to stand up for our Constitution and protect the principles it rests upon. “What I’m telling people” Hardy says, “is that, when we think about what might Trump do or what might his allies do, that’s speculation.
The real question in the next 20 days is: what can we do?” And in fact, there is quite a lot. We need not be overwhelmed, we can bring about change if we learn some basic tools of nonviolence that have been proven to be effective, time and again, both here and abroad. Working together, we can ‘hold the line’ and ensure that the upcoming election reflects true democracy.
This week, in addition to Michael Nagler’s Nonviolence Report, Stephanie shares an interview with Josef Woldense, assistant professor in the Department of Africa Studies and African American Studies at the University of Minnesota, also affiliated with the Political Science Department. Professor Woldense analyzes the lack of trust that characterizes authoritarian regimes and the way it makes a leader vulnerable to a coup: the authoritarian may hold the power, but in exchange, he/she can trust no one, thus mutiny is a constant threat. A strategy used by authoritarian rulers to protect themselves from mutinous coups he calls “shuffling.”
Shuffling, Professor Woldense explains, is best thought of as “a technology. What it does is it recognizes that the fuel for cliques to form is people being in close proximity to each other, having an opportunity to get to know each other. Shuffling disrupts that process: as people are getting to know each other, but before that relationship matures, what you do is you divorce people from one another by essentially having them move into different parts of the regime. They're still part of the government, but they never get a chance to get too close to each other.”
While this may help to solve the clique/coup problem, it also seems inevitably to preclude the possibility of experts -- no one has time to acquire the experience needed to be competent in any government role! Thus shuffling tends to undermine the aim of a well-run regime.
Professor Woldense explores these issues in their own right and also shares the way he explains this complex dynamic to his students through a role-playing game that places each one in a position where action must be taken despite the fact that information is limited.
Poem by Ira Batra Garde.
Ira (pronounced “Eera”) is a physician, poet, wife, and
mother. She lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area and is
currently at work on a novel exploring themes of history, culture, and
psychological truth.
Author Sumbul Ali-Karamali comes to Nonviolence Radio this week to talk about her latest book, Demystifying Shariah: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It's Not Taking Over Our Country. Together she, Stephanie and Michael discuss the true meaning and rich history of Shariah, a term which is often profoundly misunderstood and misportrayed in mainstream media. Far from being a rigid set of religious rules which violently challenge our most basic human rights, Sumbul Ali-Karamali reveals Shariah to be a source of compassionate guidelines to be continually interpreted and reinterpreted, an evolving understanding of Islam itself, which is “meant to be flexible and adaptable according to culture and time.”
Professor Ron Hirschbein, founder of the War and Peace Studies Program and the Peace Institute at Cal State Chico and Professor Amin Asfari from Wake Tech College join Michael to talk about the motives and drives that generate conspiracy theories. What are some of the deeper causes that lie behind recent attacks on Jewish and Muslim communities? How might the internet galvanize individuals to commit violence against “others” in a way that traditional media did not? Together, Amin, Ron and Michael consider the powerful (and often destructive) desire for fame and recognition, the parallels between COVID and conspiracy theories, the search for life’s meaning and the insidious objects of addiction.
Renowned activist Winona LaDuke reflects on the power of an earth-based economics in a moment on our planet that is known in indigenous circles as 'the time of the seventh fire.' She asks the question, what are YOU going to do right now to heal our relationships with life, and are you going to choose the path of regeneration or destruction. Her talk comes to us from the organization, Slow Money. In part 2 of the show, we hear about how kids defy their parents by wearing masks, how basketball players show up in solidarity for Black lives, and how a leader clinging to power and position for 25-years in Belarus is on his way out, all in the Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler.
In this episode of Nonviolence News --
- The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence.
- Gandhi Research Foundation.
- Single mothers in Philadelphia are taking over abandoned public buildings.
- Indigenous Women’s Divestment Delegation Pushes Deutsche Bank for Fossil Fuel Divestment Amidst Pipeline Shutdowns, a Global Pandemic and the Climate Crisis
- Reparations Procession
- Mary King's tribute to John Lewis
“If racism is a way of life for some; activism has to be the way of life for the rest of us.” ~Amisha Harding.
We talk with Atlanta-based activist Amisha Harding about transforming grief and trauma with connection and nonviolent action and her organization, Courageous Conversations for the Collective. Then we hear from two participants of the Reparations Procession taking place in the East Bay, Oakland, California with information about what and who it is for, and how you can get involved in reparations work.
If someone offered you a free trip to Egypt, would you go? Would you be afraid? Tarek Mounib made this offer to Americans struggling with deep cultural biases, and documented their transformation experiences in Free Trip to Egypt. He joined Nonviolence Radio to talk about the work of healing divides. Then we turn to a talk from the Metta Center archives from Michael Nagler on the basics of nonviolence...a great refresher and reminder of the deeper dynamics at play when we engage with nonviolent energy.
On this episode of Nonviolence Radio we share a timely talk on building bridges from john a. powell, director of UC Berkeley's Otherness and Belonging Institute (formerly: Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society) from the 2019 Otherness and Belonging conference. Introducing him is Tony Iton from the California Endowment.
Michael Nagler, UC Berkeley emeritus professor and President of the Metta Center for Nonviolence, responds to powell and offers his regular Nonviolence Report.
The Poor People's Campaign is a "national call for a moral revival." Learn more about their work, their co-founder, Reverend William Barber, and the upcoming digital March on Washington on this show. Included in this show is the Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler.
If there was ever a time for nonviolence, it's now. This show has two talks about the power of nonviolence. The first from Erica Chenoweth, co-author of Why Civil Resistance Works, and the second is from Ken Butigan about mainstreaming nonviolence. At the top of the show we include a segment on nonviolence in the news.
Often when we think about nonviolence, we think of practical strategies and techniques: How does one organize an effective sit-in or march? What is the appropriate language to use when addressing someone with whom we are in conflict? And indeed, understanding -- and practicing! -- these tactics are essential. However, nonviolence goes much deeper than this, it is, according to Kazu Haga, “a principled way of life and how we view the world.”
This week on Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael talk to Kazu Haga, author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm, to learn about his life, his own path to nonviolence, and his current work of creating Beloved Community with the East Point Peace Academy. Kazu Haga reminds us that we all have the potential to do harm, to act cruelly -- we all get lost. But this is not cause for despair. Rather, recognizing this part of our common humanity unites us, provides us with the very foundation that allows us to choose nonviolence as a way of life.
This week’s episode of Nonviolence Radio brings Paul K. Chappell in conversation with Michael and Stephanie. Paul is now the Peace Literacy Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the author of the “Road to Peace” book series, but as a West Point graduate and a veteran of the war in Iraq, he is in a unique position to explain how the power of nonviolence exceeds that of traditional forms of military power.
The work for peace begins when we are ready to try another way of resolving our problems. Matthew Legge, Peace Program Coordinator for the Canadian Friends Service Committee talks about his findings in his new book, ‘Are We Done Fighting?: Building Understanding in a World of Hate and Division’.
Author Carol Flinders talks with Nonviolence Radio about feminist activist Barbara Deming and why we need her wisdom today.
"The Green New Deal is a good idea," people say, but "how are we going to pay for it?" There are many ways. As Executive Director of Nuclear Ban US, Tim Wallis has offered a special report, From Warheads to Windmills, on how to pay for a Green New Deal through an ambitious plan to de-nuclearize our world. It's a practical approach that should be on the table given the dire urgency presented to us by our climate crisis. Followed by the Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler.
What happens when a government decides to protect only some of its people? We talk with Sana Alam and Prashant Nema about the Citizen Amendment Act (CAA), the National Register of Citizens, and the nascent protest movement in India it gave rise to; and what the true nature of this deep national controversy is. People around the world are rising up together in protest of this bill to protect the rights of Muslims and non-caste Hindus, and to get involved we all need to help spread the word. Interview followed by the Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler.
A show on winning! Why does triumphalism impede and decrease the power of a nonviolent action? Why have politics become like a sports match and how can we overcome this dynamic? This and more, including the Nonviolence Report, on this episode of Nonviolence Radio!
We go back to nonviolence basics in this show, reviewing some key highlights and analyses of nonviolence across the news, and then we explore some key principles and strategies of nonviolence in action.
Yoga is more than poses we do with our bodies to stretch. It’s more than expensive studio memberships and yoga gear. It is, as described in the classical Hindu text, The Bhagavad Gita, “skill in action,” a path to recognizing our deep interconnectedness and healing our divides. Listen to insights from Michelle C. Johnson on the power of radicalizing yoga practice in order to invite the hard work of social justice onto our mats, and into the rest of our lives. (Even if you don’t do yoga, this show is for you.) Followed by Michael Nagler’s Nonviolence Report.
Daniel Hunter is an organizer and strategist who worked widely across the globe supporting organizing and direct action for social movements and is currently the Global Trainings Coordinator for 350.org, an organization fighting climate change. He talks to us about nonviolence, organizing, and his latest, The Climate Resistance Handbook.
Transcript available here.
Do nuclear weapons make us safe, and should we care about them? We hear from Anna Ikeda from the Office for UN Affairs of Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist organization dedicated to peace, culture and education. Anna's work focuses on disarmament, peace and security, and she is a campaigner for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
We all have unconscious bias and we all have work to do to become aware of, and unlearn it. It’s a life-long effort, and like any effort in nonviolence, it can be done with strategy and an open-heart toward the people involved.
For over 21 years, feminist activist and scholar Sally Eck has been leading workshops on “interruptions,” and “calling-in.” She offers empowerment, tools, and strategy for interrupting oppressive attitudes and language. Listen in here for her interview and the Nonviolence Report, news from the world of nonviolence with Michael Nagler.
Coercion is not an “either-or” issue in nonviolence. On this episode, we discuss what coercion means, how it relates to power and persuasion, its risks when drawn upon as a “first resort,” and where it fits in a strategic escalation of nonviolent action. Followed by the Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler.
Professionally trained as a green architect, Pete Gang “aspires to be a good ancestor,” and believes that the root of our climate woes is how we think about life itself. He talks to us about how his passion for climate justice is informed by a deep commitment to nonviolence and our interrelation to the world around us, and how “being a good ancestor” can be expressed in our daily actions and practices of community resilience. Plus the Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler.
While on a visit to New Delhi, India, Michael Nagler, founder of the Metta Center and Co-host of Nonviolence Radio, met up with Gandhian activist Rajiv Vora and Niyati Bhat to discuss the principles and trials of nonviolence in Kashmir.
In the full interview, you will hear Rajiv describe some of the hard-won lessons nonviolence he has learned experientially while working in a high-intensity conflict zone. Niyati will describe her own experience as someone who had to leave Kashmir because of the violence and how she became interested in nonviolence.
Hardy Merriman, President of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, joins Nonviolence Radio to share a special report from the ICNC on “Preventing Mass Atrocities” and nonviolent conflict. Followed by the Nonviolence Report, news and analysis from Metta’s own Michael Nagler.
Jamila Raqib, Executive Director of the Albert Einstein Institution, joins Nonviolence Radio to discuss the relationship between democracy and nonviolent action. On part two of the show, Michael Nagler addresses the lastest gun massacres in the United States, and offers insights for taking action.
Oren Jay Sofer, author of Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication joins Nonviolence Radio to offer tips and insights into the potentially transformative power of communication for healing divides and de-escalating tensions, vitriolic tweets, and aggressive texts! Followed by the Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler.
Ever felt out of place in a so-called nonviolent action? You’re not alone. This week we’re joined by Morgan Curtis and Chris Moore-Backman, who are working on a nationwide “yet-to-be-named network” for nonviolent direct action at the intersection of racial healing and climate justice with an integral approach to nonviolence (where the inner and the outer both matter). You can be in touch with them to get involved by calling the East Point Peace Academy or emailing them (have to listen to the show to get the email :-))
We've all heard about "doing what's right," but there's not much talk about how we discern what "right" actually is. Could it be different for different people? On this episode, we're joined in circle by author/activist Rivera Sun and healer/bridge-builder Shoshi Morginn to explore this very important question!
In this episode, we start with the Nonviolence Report (News and Analysis). We’re joined by artists and conflict resolution specialists, Zann and Craig Jacobrown. They’ve brought along their workbook, “The Ancient Art of Conflict Resolution,” which draws inspiration from activities/practices/belief systems of the indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest’s conflict resolution teachings.
The post Nonviolence Radio: March 15, 2019 appeared first on Metta Center.
“We have to repair harm between individuals as well as repair harm in community.” We’re joined by Michael Gilbert, Executive Director of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice as we explore the dynamics and meaning of community justice. Followed by your fresh take of Nonviolence in the News with Michael Nagler.
The post Community Justice AND Restorative Justice appeared first on Metta Center.