Jim Rice, Editor of Sojourners magazine is giving this talk. He was raised Jesuit but is now married to a Mennonite and attending a Mennonite church. He came initially as a peace organizer. He grew up in a town in Washington where the first nuclear weapons were first produced. The mascot of the school was the Bombers, and the logo was a mushroom cloud. This has influenced his commitment to peacemaking.
What is our sense of identity - is it from the nation-state? Or is it from the greater body of the church. The most important thing to be a peacemaker is your spiritual grounding.
Paradoxes for peacemaking: MLK: “The arc of the universe bends toward justice…” MLK again: “Justice never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability.”
Opening questions (I’ll answer them here): What’s your experience with nonviolent action? I was involved in some on-campus protests against the first Iraq war. What kind of intentional training do you have for nonviolence? None.
It looks like this session will be a little more “unconference” like with Jim Rice just serving as the facilitator and lots of comments in the room.
Most people in the room had no formal training, but Rice is emphasizing that we should have more. Education is very important so that we can learn the lessons of the past so we don’t repeat the mistakes. 9/11 is the 100th anniversary of Gandhi’s first nonviolent campaign - the first time nonviolence was at the part of an intentional campaign.
We need to make a commitment to up our intentionality about nonviolence and learn from our predecessors.
It’s easy for us to look at the history of nonviolence action and miss the behind the scenes things. None of us are legislators, so we will be doing more of the behind the scenes things which plant the seeds for nonviolent social change. The people who marched in the civil rights movement were intentionally trained in nonviolence.
How do we approach the question of nonviolence? Church’s 3 major approaches: just war, pacficism, and holy war. Rice thinks the just war theory has a lot of merits. The church has approached the just war theory with integrity, but the state has never used it in that way - it has used it to justify war. He thinks we need a fourth category, since pacifism has been connected with nonaction. Fourth category is non-violent action, not passive-ism.
What are some of the techniques of nonviolence?
Boycott to apply economic pressure, sit-ins, marches, student sit-ins at admin offices, fasts (there are ethical questions around coercion), vigils, refrain from something besides food (TV, etc), voting/voter registration, letter writing, blocking traffic (especially when what is being blocked is connected to what you are opposing), symbolic actions - crosses for soldiers killed, film making/art, prophetic witness, civil disobedience (trespassing, resisting the law publicly), consciencious objection, language - do not judge people when we talk about issues, teaching, strike
Sanctions can hurt the people they are meant to help many times. Could a boycott do the same? But targetted sanctions might be better.
What has been done historically?
If we were the campaign to end the Iraq war, what specific things could be done?
Declaration of Peace campaign (www.declarationofpeace.org), resolution of remorse asking forgiveness from Iraqis, use electronic technologies, www.voicesinwartime.org
We cannot do this alone, need to join together.
Only if we believe we can change the world will we do the work required to change the world.
