As an organization that frequently uses the term revolutionary nonviolence to describe our vision and work, we wanted to hear organizers’ thoughts on nonviolence. We asked our interviewees what nonviolence means to them, and also how useful and relevant nonviolence—both the concept and the word itself—is to their work. The concept was important to many of our interviewees, but some of them suggested a need for fresh language to communicate it. Two different interpretations of the question emerged: one focusing more internally on tactics and strategies employed by movements, the other focusing more broadly on a critique of social, political and economic violence. In the tactical discussion, no one suggested anything other than nonviolent action as a viable option for U.S. social movements today. While nonviolence was non-negotiable to some, others talked about self-defense and armed struggle as necessary under certain circumstances. Some described nonviolence as a moral compass that should inform all our thinking. A few interviewees saw peace and nonviolence as growing values in communities struggling with violence, and a potential opening to advance a broader systemic critique of militarism and also capitalism. We also include in this section discussions navigating the tension between working to end a particular war and working to end all war.
I like the term nonviolent activist or nonviolent direct action. It is motivating, in helping people realize how powerful nonviolence can be—it’s not passive and it’s not like you’re just giving in or allowing yourself to be dominated. Nonviolence is a tool, a different way of fighting back. We need outreach and education along these lines, teaching people exactly what it is and how it can be revolutionary. More people should hear stories both from the distant and recent past about the power of this type of action.
—Katrina Plotz, Anti-War Committee
I think that nonviolence as a way of life is probably less relevant to young people than nonviolence as a means to an end in the political spectrum of movement tactics and tools. That it is expected of activists to be nonviolent as a way of life is not prudent, not appropriate, especially concerning young people. They have to come to that or not.
—Oskar Castro, American Friends Service Committee (War Resisters League National Committee Member)
Nonviolence is a very important concept. It’s interesting: you get a lot of white folks in the peace movement that run around fetishizing Gandhi and King. … What have people taken from them? You have these spiritual leaders who used nonviolence as a central tool in their toolbox. Yet a lot of key things have been dropped away. You have people for whom nonviolence has become such a spiritual activity that it has very little relationship with strategy and goals. Or you get people that have taken nonviolence so far out of the global context from which it emerged that it often gets misused. My sense is that nonviolence has become very racialized, ironically. In this country, it’s become very white.
Perhaps we’ll find the biggest danger is of nonviolence becoming a moral code rather than a philosophical approach. For me, working with communities of color in the movement around the political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, I recognized that nonviolence is incredibly important, but that there’s many reasons why people aren’t nonviolent. People who are advocating nonviolence, the last thing they should do is only work with people who share their view. Nonviolence is best expressed to other people for its value strategically rather than morally. That is the way for it to eventually become a deeper moral value in our culture. ’Cause right now, to judge people whose strategies extend beyond the realm of nonviolence, is to fall into lines of segregation in our culture. You can’t separate that from an understanding of privilege and power in our society.
—Patrick Reinsborough, smartMeme Strategy & Training Project
It would be worth doing a class and race analysis of those who are drawn to pacifism and those who aren’t. I think those who experience the right or privilege of peace in their lives will be more readily drawn to that type of core tenet, whereas those who have experienced violence (in different forms) realize how situations are more complicated. For instance if you lived under a dictatorship whose crimes others couldn’t imagine, you would be less receptive to the idea that war against that dictatorship is unethical and will not achieve positive ends, whereas those who have only known peace and see it as their birthright—and it is, it should be for everyone—will be more willing to accept that universally any type of conflict is unjust and immoral.
—Eric Tang, Activist, Professor
When you are dealing with people who come from a military background, I don’t know if the language of nonviolence is useful; I think it implies complete pacifism, and I think that serves as a barrier to connecting. There are challenging tensions between people from the military and civilian worlds which come out when you’re working with people who have a radically different perspective. I’m not sure how to navigate that.
I think the best way is to find some common ground and really honor where the other person is. You meet people where they’re at and understand that how people come to their ideas about society or change is their own process. We have to allow space for differences as we navigate through this process together. It means being okay with that and willing to dialogue about it. Actually being able to do that day to day is a huge part of personal growth, an evolving process for everybody. When I say “meeting people where they’re at,” it’s not just being accepting, but actively trying to understand the other perspective. How can you challenge somebody if you don’t understand their core beliefs? Why do they think the U.S. military is the greatest institution? Only then can you start to mutually dialogue and challenge.
—Lori Hurlebaus, Courage to Resist
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Lt. Ehren Watada for refusing to deploy to Iraq. His position has consistently been the illegality of the particular war in which he was ordered to participate, not against war in general. He had no problem with his military service, and he said that he would accept orders to go to Afghanistan. I really respect his capacity and intelligence to be able to make that distinction.
A lot of people don’t distinguish one from the other; I think it’s a very important thing to acknowledge and to reach across, to respect and embrace all those trying to stop this war. We have to work together, while clearly understanding that when we’re successful stopping this particular war, some may choose to keep doing what they’re doing and some won’t. People can always change their minds after they’ve had a chance to have some education and exposure about the cost of war; at least for now, we have to respect everyone for opposing this war.
—Wes Hamilton, Port Militarization Resistance
It is very clear to me that antiwar and peace are two different things. Antiwar means being opposed to this war—but once this war is over, what are you going to be doing? A peace movement asks, “How do you create a culture of peace?” Which is a bigger challenge, especially since we live in the most violent country in the world. For the larger movement of those identified as peace groups that have focused primarily on national or international policy, the challenge is: How do we bring it home to our communities and assure that we are being more than antiwar—that we have to create a culture of peace. And what does that look like?
—Jody Dodd, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Creating a vision of nonviolence is important because so much of our society—especially what our young people get from music, movies, slang, just about everything out there—is fed by violence. They are bombarded by it all the time. Through our campaign Silence the Violence, we are trying to create a culture where we can make music that is nonviolent, hold events that are nonviolent, etc. It is something we are building on all the time, trying to move towards building a culture of nonviolence.
—Xiomara Castro, Ella Baker Center
I think it’s important to understand violence as a tool of imperialism and how violence in the world is impacting violence in our communities. How do we build a sustainable world without violence? That’s something I’ve been trying to research or flesh out in a real way in preventing violence in Oakland. It’s a cycle. The ease with which violence is used to get resources is an obvious model for how we treat people in our communities; it also drives greed, when people are acting out of crisis.
—Claire Tran, Asian Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy & Leadership
In many ways, the concept of nonviolence as an elaborate framework is alien to me. Even while writing my conscientious objector application, I didn’t feel like it was a statement of nonviolence. It was a statement about egregious mass violence. I haven’t come to terms yet with how exactly I feel about it. I need to write a CO application about nonviolence to explore that. … My gut instinct is that I’m not a pacifist. It seems an extreme philosophy. I don’t know if I fit into it. I’m totally interested in reading all this abstract philosophical stuff and looking at the arguments, but I’m so not into making esoteric ideals my starting point.
Militarism, incarceration—all the different issues I’d like to work on—are forms of violence, and I’m certainly opposed to them. I want to deal with meat and potatoes. I don’t feel like just having the right terminology is an end in itself. There’s a big difference between trying to put ideals into practical terms and trying to preach philosophy. When you use language that’s detached from the practical world of your intended audience, you lose people. They’re not interested. It doesn’t relate to or affect their reality. It starts to slip into propaganda, which I don’t ever want to peddle. To the extent that frameworks like nonviolence are relevant, important, and useful, they will arise organically without reading five books on the concept. Maybe that’s idealistic, but it keeps me grounded.
—Pablo Paredes, GI Rights Hotline
Nonviolence is the central motivator for most of my work, that and anti-authoritarianism. I love the concept. I love the word. But I’m not sure I’ve ever even used it in organizing and high school presentations. When you’re discussing non-cooperation with a system of massive violence, it relates to nonviolence on every level. But most of the counter-recruitment opportunities are in 55-minute chunks, so there’s a hell of a lot you’re never going to get to.
So it’s just sort of what guides me. It’s an ideal that I personally will never reach. It’s out there, like anarchy. Living in the world, you can have these principles that you need to stay in touch with. Whatever beliefs you have, you can work together with others and not come from the same ideology. For me, it’s really important to come back and check in. Am I doing things that conflict with nonviolence? Is there any way in which I am encouraging violence or authoritarianism? Or racism, sexism … so you don’t end up working counter to your personal beliefs.
—Susan Quinlan, BAY-Peace: Better Alternatives for Youth
We need to be more than just a broken record calling for nonviolent action. Yes, nonviolent action is good—and here’s how we create smart, exciting, fun, strategically effective nonviolent actions. So that we’re not only saying, “Let’s be nonviolent about it”—we’re not just going to play our role, the police play their role, we get arrested and try to get a small article in the paper, and that’s the end of it. People get tired of that, particularly younger people I talk to don’t want to do that. They’re itching to do things that really make a difference, and I am too.
We should try asking people to use nonviolence as a lens through which to see everything. A while ago I spent some time looking at everything through the lens of gender and got a lot more sensitive about that, I hope. I think we can ask people to do that, just for a month or two: look at everything in terms of what’s violent and what’s not violent and what’s nonviolent. Hopefully they will be excited about it and build a sensitivity about violence and see nonviolence as an overriding way of seeing the world.
—Larry Dansinger, Resources for Organizing and Social Change (War Resisters League local)
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