Can We Globalize Nonviolence?
The 24th Triennial Conference of War Resisters International started two weeks after Israel began the bombardment of Lebanon, highlighting the urgent need for a stronger, more coherent global movement of nonviolent resistance.
The new war cast its shadow over the entire conference: 200 people from across the globe gathered in Geseke, Germany, July 23 - 27, for strategizing, networking, and movement building on the topic of “globalizing nonviolence.” The overarching question was how WRI can weave more closely with the global justice - or “globalization from below” - movements.
An 85-year-old network of antimilitarists, pacifists, and nonviolence activists on every continent, WRI gave birth in 1923 to the War Resisters League and its mission to end war and its root causes. At this triennial, every continent but Antarctica was represented, though the bulk of participants were from Europe and the United States. This year saw an increased number of participants from Africa but only a handful from Asia, including six from South Korea and a couple of long-time WRI associates from India. As always, visas were denied to many who planned to attend, including one Somali activist, and barely granted to others, including the lone Palestinian participant.
WRL’s own Joanne Sheehan, WRI’s outgoing chair (who officially passed the seat to former WRI staffer Howard Clark at the triennial) declared in the opening plenary that, although WRI’s main work has traditionally been in supporting war resisters, it’s time for a new dimension of our work in encouraging the growth of nonviolent movements all over the world. Some directions explored at the conference included:
- WRI’s role in and relationship to the growing global “movement of movements.” Can we build a movement that puts the global South truly and effectively in the center? how do we relate to armed resistance elements?
- How do we work with tensions between global-local relationships, recognizing that tactics are not always transferable? (As Iyke Chiemeka from Nigeria pointed out, hunger strikes or lying on train tracks in Africa aren’t very useful.)
- Re/defining nonviolence: Building new constructive programs; seeing nonviolence vis-a-vis the violence of structural oppression, corporate globalization, patriarchy, caste, race, religious fundamentalism, and the state.
- The question of the state, both with its inherent violence and its uses by colonized peoples as a tool for liberation in the struggle against imperialism.
- Building nonviolent resistance where daily survival is the priority. Light Wilson Agwana from the Sudanese Organization for Nonviolence and Development asked, “How to you talk of nonviolence with someone who’s first looking for food?”
These tensions were explored over meals, prodigious amounts of coffee, tea and beer, and through the conference’s structure of multiple layers of discussion and relationship-building in plenaries, workshops, and theme groups that met consistently through the week. Plenary topics included: the privatization of war, Turkey’s CO movement and its international alliances, and Palestinian liberation and alliances wtih Israeli Jewish activists and international solidarity activists. A daily English-language newspaper previewed sessions and published articles and a statement, produced at the conference, condemning Israel’s attacks on Lebanon. Drafters included a Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. Jews, a Lebanese-American, and other European and U.S. activists. It was ultimately issued as an official statement of the WRI Council.
Participants I spoke with, first-timers and old hands alike, considered the conference valuable. Many saw room for improvements but agreed with the general sense given by Chesterfield Samba of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe, that it was useful both for networking and for the bigger-picture development of “helping me think about nonviolence strategizing.”
Swati Desai of India, attending her third triennial, spoke to the appeal of this year’s focus on globalization - and about Eurocentrism as a reason for more of her Gujarati comradds not attending triennials. “Our concerns are resisting war, but immediately, survival. We see parallels and connections: Globalization is war, it’s economic war.”
Darko Brkan from Sarajevo agreed that WRI can effectively support both specific nonviolence efforts and regional networking. But he had hoped for more discussion of concrete global actions, especially concerning Israel, adding “We needed better media attention; we have things to say to the public.”
The conference successfully incorporated elements of its ambitions to be a nexus for both alliance-building and strategy development. But the ongoing tensions that constantly challenge our work, were, of course, present. Many people chafed at the abstraction of the theoretical debates, asking for more concrete stories and strategies. Racism, patriarchy, and U.S./European dominance impacted group discussions, yet were rarely brought to the surface.
As triennial attendance (and hopefully WRI networks) from the global South increase, the next triennial can build on this year’s successes to continue structural shifts that centralize this important leadership. The Africa working group, which captured new energy at this year’s triennial, is involved in promising proposals and work. The possibility of the next triennial meeting in South Africa may also help redistribute the weight of attendance. WRI is moving forward to bring its near-century of critical work, vision and movement building into closer alignment with contemporary grassroots movements and the emerging “movement of movements.”
— Clare Bayard
NYC Seeks WRL Minutes
On September 15 the city of New York announced in court that it is seeking WRL New York City local minutes that dealt with the organizing of the mass civil disobedience during the Republican National Convention two years ago.
On August 31, 204, the NYC WRL local organized a three-mile procession from the World Trade Center site to Madison Square Garden, where the Republicans were holding their national convention. However, just a half-block from the start of the march, police inexplicably arrested 227 demonstrators at the front end of the procession - many of whom were not planning to risk arrest - on the pretext that they were blocking the sidewalk.
In an effort to defend itself from dozens of lawsuites, the City hopes to find some discussion in minutes that proves that the NYC WRL local had intended to precipitatean arrest more than three miles from the convention.
The WRL local - through its pro bono lawyers - previously turned over heavily-censored minutes from three meetings, containing only the decisions the grouop made in its planning for that day, as well as press releases, street flyers, and other public documents.
However, the local has made it clear that it will not turn over names of those who attended meetings, the discussions leading up to the decisions, or anything else in the minutes aside from the decisions themselves. Lawyers for the local have argued in court that to be required to do so violates the First Amendment and would create a “chilling effect” on WRL’s organizing.
— Ed Hedemann
Organize with Screenpeace
Screenpeace: An Antiwar Film Festival is a handy planner and a welcome gift, but it can also be an effective organizing tool. Here are a few ideas to help you get the most out of your 2007 WRL peace calendar:
One of the easiest ways to set up a screening is to see if other groups in your community might want to help organize an event. I went to a meeting of People for Justice in Palestine in Iowa City to tell them about Fallujah, and they agreed that same evening to co-sponsor a screening. Our local, the War Resisters League of Iowa City, reserved a large meeting room at the public library, and PJP organized a discussion to follow the 30 minute program. Church groups and other peace or cultural organizations are often looking for films to show. Co-sponsoring screenings is a good way to re-energize local antiwar work and build new alliances.
At the end of each film description, there is contact information, making it easy for organizers to get the films. Most of the films listed are independent productions that can be purchased, rented or borrowed at little or no coast. An important note, however, is that while mainstream Hollywood films can be found at your local video store, copyright restrictions make public screenings a little tricky. (The beauty of independents is that most of the producers are more interested in getting the message out than in copyright concerns.) Therefore you might want to work with a local theater or make some popcorn and invite friends to your home.
Promote
One simple way to publicize your event is to put the word out on email listservs. Even if people can’t come to the screening, they will know that you have this particular film and may want to set up their own screenings. You can share and exchange tapes or DVDs and even share some of your promotional materials, such as press releases and fliers. Posters and quarter-sheet handouts are effective in reaching people you don’t already exchange information with. And don’t forget press releases. Journalists are generally happy to do a story about a film event. Also, most public access centers have newsletters and on-air bulletin boards that advertise upcoming shows.
Use Public Access TV
Another way to get these films seem is to program them on your local public access channel. If you have a public access television station in your community and you haven’t been using it, this is a good time to start. You’ll likely find them delighted to have videos that are as thoughtfully produced as the ones listed in Screenpeace.
Iowa City’s WRL local decided to put the Deep Dish TV series, Shocking and Awful: A Grass Roots Response to War and Occupation in Iraq, on public access. Additionally, the university newspaper published an article about the series and the calendar, and the university bus system agreed to post fliers in each of its buses for the entire 13 weeks that the series runs.
Talk Back
The most important thing is to use the films themselves as organizing tools. Leave time for discussion after each screening so people can discuss ways to respond and not just feel overwhelmed by the information.
We hope you enjoy the 2007 WRL peace calendar in more ways than one. Your purchase and use of the calendar not only helps the league continue its vital work it also helps build the movement for a more peaceful world.
— Gloria Walker
We Hate to Say Goodbye
WIN is sad to announce the imminent departure from the National Office staff of WRL’s gifted, erudite, and charismatic Anti-Militarism Coordinator, G. Simon Harak.
In his three-year tenure at WRL, Simon developed the Stop the Merchants of Death program from a fledgling entity to a nationally known campaign against war profiteers. A riveting public speaker, he crisscrossed the globe educating people about the increasing influence that arms manufacturers and others in the war business have on national policy in the United States and elsewhere.
Before he joined the WRL staff in 2003, Simon was wiht Voices in the Wilderness, the group he helped found in 1996 to flout - and try to end - the deadly U.S.-U.N. sanctions against the people of Iraq. But before all that, Simon was a scholar and ethicist in academia (and the author of Nonviolence for the Third Millenium: It’s Legacy and Its Future), a world to which he now returns.
Simon is so irreplacable that we’re not even going to try to replace him; as you may already know, we’re restructuring the staff instead, and creating a new Field Organizer’s position (more about that in our next issue). Meanwhile, we - and you - will miss his wealth of knowledge, his fiery speeches, and the varieties of candy he regularly doled out to his stressed-out fellow staffers. (Okay, most of you won’t miss that last item, but oh, how the staff will!!)
Simon, the office - and Stop the Merchants of Death - won’t be the same without you, but we wish you the best in the next phase of your career. (Is that a quiver in our collective voice?) We can only hope that your exit from the staff won’t take you too far from WRL.
— Judith Mahoney Pasternak
for WIN and the WRL National Committee
