Class of Nonviolence

The War Prayer

2011-04-02T08:08:00.000-05:00

Video of Mark Twain's War Prayer:

Civil Rights Music at the White House

2010-10-20T23:15:00.000-05:00

Watch the full episode. See more In Performance at The White House.

I don't know how I missed this when it premiered, but this is a FANTASTIC survey of the music of the civil rights movement. President Obama's introduction is top notch. Don't miss Natalie Cole quoting Diane Nash on the power of nonviolence (starting at minute 14:15.) Following a short clip of MLK citing "The Old Negro Spiritual" Free At Last, the Blind Boys of Alabama sing the song. All of the music is wonderful, but I was especially moved by Bernice Johnson Reagon and the Freedom Singer's feisty rendition of Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round and Smokey Robinson's heartfelt version of Abraham, Martin and John. The one misstep was ending with the whole ensemble singing Lift Every Voice And Sing (it was all too obvious that most of them didn't know the words. Oops.)

Punishment Park

2010-05-29T22:56:00.000-05:00

Rolling Stone called it "The best film about dissent in America." In Peter Watkins' 1970 film, as the war in Vietnam is escalating, there is massive public protest in the United States. President Nixon declares a state of national emergency and gives the Federal authorities the power to detain persons judged to be "a risk to national security." In a desert zone in southwest California, a civilian tribunal passes sentence on groups of dissidents and gives them the option, in lieu of hard time in the penitentiary, of participating in law enforcement training exercises in the Bear Mountain National "Punishment Park."

The film is frightening and realistic -- hard, at times, to remember it is (mostly) fiction. It is also strikingly contemporary -- the "game" in Punishment Park is very much like a reality TV show. It is violent, the language is raw. For it to make sense, the film has to be watched in its entirety (88 minutes.) As part of The Class of Nonviolence, I would show it as part of lesson 7, on civil disobedience. In addition to the expected conflict between the activists, the judges, and law enforcement, is an equally compelling tension among the activists -- between the pacifists and those who believe in the inevitability and / or efficacy of violence -- that could provoke interesting discussions.

There are useful "extras," including a talk by filmmaker Peter Watkins about how the film came to be made and how it was marginalized. I would show the four screens of text that give the historical background of 1968, when the film was conceived, then show the film, and end with Watkins' on screen essay. I rented the DVD from Blockbuster online; it is also available for purchase on Amazon as a standalone DVD or as part of a boxed set of five Watkins films.

A Biography of America

2010-05-28T11:20:00.000-05:00

A Biography of America is a video instructional series on American history for college and high school classrooms and adult learners -- 26 half-hour video programs, coordinated books, and Web site -- Produced by WGBH Boston in cooperation with the Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration.

Especially appropriate for The Class of Nonviolence are:

8. The Reform Impulse
The Industrial Revolution has its dark side, and the tumultuous events of the period touch off intense and often thrilling reform movements. Professor Masur presents the ideas and characters behind the Great Awakening, the abolitionist movement, the women's movement, and a powerful wave of religious fervor.

17. Capital and Labor
The making of money pits laborers against the forces of capital as the twentieth century opens. Professor Miller introduces the miner as the quintessential laborer of the period -- working under grinding conditions, organizing into unions, and making a stand against the reigning money man of the day, J. Pierpont Morgan.

19. A Vital Progressivism
Professor Martin offers a fresh perspective on Progressivism, arguing that its spirit can be best seen in the daily struggles of ordinary people. In a discussion with Professors Scharff and Miller, the struggles of Native Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans are placed in the context of the traditional white Progressive movement.

The textbooks and instructor guides are for sale; the videos themselves are small (barely adequate for classroom use) but these can be purchased as well.

A Ripple of Hope: RFK and MLK

2010-05-13T09:41:00.000-05:00

I rented A Ripple of Hope from Blockbuster online -- and you should do the same. This just-released 54-minute documentary is about Robert Kennedy's April 4, 1968 campaign speech in Indianapolis, the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. It is one of the most profound and important speeches in American history:

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need inthe United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is notviolence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion towardone another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer withinour country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

I wept during the film. I lent it to peaceCENTER director Ann Helmke: she watched it twice and wept too. Martin Sheen reports that he wept. Rep. John Lewis -- and the other commentators, including many regular citizens who were present at the speech -- were profoundly moving. In a few strokes, the event is put in historical context.

Generally, I recommend a 5-10 minute clip of a film to show in a classroom setting. With this film, show it all, every last minute. One way to approach this would be to show the first half of the film -- before it is clear that the speech is actually going to be delivered -- stop, and assign the students to outline their OWN short speeches. Start the second session by discussing the student's speeches and their rationale. Then, watch the second half of the film, discuss how it broke all the classic rules of speechmaking, and analyze why it worked.

A Ripple of Hope is available for purchase, through the PBS store or on Amazon. It's also available to PBS stations, but it appears that few have aired it.

I would show this during the session on Martin Luther King in the Class of Nonviolence. A good companion film would be Citizen King, also available via the PBS store (there is an excellent 10-minute section in the last part of the two-hour-long Citizen King that covers his anti-war activism, including an excerpt from his speech at Riverside Church and the (mostly) negative reaction of other civl rights leaders to his opposition to the war in Vietnam.)

The Struggle for Justice (National Portrait Gallery)

2010-04-09T11:12:00.000-05:00

The Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery exhibition "The Struggle for Justice," covering the struggle in the U.S. for equal rights for women, African-Americans, Native Americans, the disabled, and gays and lesbians is now online. It includes six video clips narrated by CNN's Soledad O'Brien, portraits of those people who were instrumental in fighting for justice (like the one of A. Phillip Randolph, right), a lesson plan , related web links and a reading list.We cover human rights in lesson six of The Class of Nonviolence.

Films To Help Us Rethink War

2010-04-07T23:01:00.000-05:00

The Voices Education Project has a marvelous list of films about war (and a great section on curriculum ideas for using anti-war films and documentaries.) Some are old favorites and some that are new to me. Last week I ordered a copy of the 1938 J'Accuse. The NYT said of the film:

"This 1938 sci-fi and horror-tinged war drama from writer/director Abel Gance is an updated remake of Gance's own 1919 silent feature of the same name. J'accuse stars Victor Francen as Jean Diaz, a scientist who, after witnessing the unspeakable horrors of the battlefield during the First World War, dedicated his life to ensuring that history doesn't repeat itself. Diaz eventually invents a device that promises to bring an end to war forever. However, with WWII on the horizon, the government instead opts to use the machine against its enemies rather than for peace. This drives Diaz to the brink of insanity and leads him to resort to more unexpected measures to get his point across."

In the Class of Nonviolence we talk about war films in session seven. In the Facilitator's Manual for the Class of Nonviolence there is a list of war films and a sample class exercise.

Violence: An American Tradition

2010-03-03T20:13:00.000-06:00

Violence: An American Tradition is a peaceCENTER favorite teaching video, no longer distributed. What a gift that it is now online! In six parts, an "exploration of the tradition of violence in America, drawing onthe history of invading settlers and native peoples, frontier outlawsand modern-day murderers, racist violence, the urban underclass, anddomestic abuse. Narrated by Julian Bond, with commentary by CornellWest. Caution: Contains scenes that may be disturbing to young orsensitive viewers."

Diderot: The Danger of Setting Oneself Against the Law

2010-02-22T14:29:00.000-06:00

At Half Price Books the other day I picked up a copy of five short pieces by Denis Diderot, the 18th Century French philosopher: This is Not a Story and other stories, a new translation by P.N. Furbank. (Oxford University Press, 1991) The last delightful little piece is "A Conversation of a Father With his Children, or The Danger of Setting Oneself Against the Law," (Entretien d'un père avec ses enfants) (1772).

Diderot's father gathers Denis, his brother and sister 'round and tells of the time he was an executor to an estate. Diderot père stumbles across a yellowed will, apparently forgotten, that disinherits the deceased's deserving and needy relatives and favors a rich family in far-off Paris. He was tempted to toss the will into the fire; who would know? Aren't compassion and justice more important than the law? A priest whom he consults advises him that it is indeed the compassionate course, but if he were to do so he has a moral obligation to reimburse the cheated heirs with his own funds. Diderot emphatically endorses burning the unjust will, but his brother, an abbé, defends the supremacy of the law, claiming that to evade or defy it in any given case is to open thedoor to the sophistries of "all the knaves in the universe." A lively discussion ensues about this and other cases.

This piece, only 33 short pages, would make an interesting companion to Thoreau's essay, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," discussed in Lesson Seven of The Class of Nonviolence. Diderot is less polemic, more open-ended than Thoreau: he aims to provoke discussion rather than convert to his point of view. Diderot's ending is characteristically ambivalent. Denis whispers to his father, " . . the truth is, there are no laws for the wise man." His father replies, "I should not be sorry if there were one or two in the town like you; but I should not want to live there if they all thought the same."

Alas, there does not appear to be an English translation available online, but it is well worth finding, reading and sharing.

Images of War

2010-02-19T09:52:00.000-06:00

The New York Times had an intriguing "idea of the day," The Morality of Web War Footage. It leads us to an online magazine that is new to me: Guernica - a Magazine of Art & Politics and specifically to an article by Nicholas Sautin, The Pleasure of Flinching.

Sautin cites Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others (2002), her look at the representation of atrocity--from Goya's The Disasters ofWar to photographs of the American Civil War, lynchings of blacks inthe South, and the Nazi death camps, to contemporary horrific images ofBosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Israel and Palestine, and New York Cityon September 11, 2001.

Sautin writes:

For Sontag, there is always a moral need to question our right towitness atrocity: “Perhaps the only people with the right to look atimages of suffering of this extreme order are those who could dosomething to alleviate it… or those who could learn from it. The restof us are voyeurs, whether or not we mean to be.”

The problem with voyeurism and the Internet, though, is that theidea of “the right to look” may have become obsolete. Atrocity footagehas been taken out of the hands of those who would previously have heldsuch moral responsibility—governments, journalists, censors, teachers,etc. The images are simply there for anyone who wishes to look. Weimagine their existence, haunted by glimpses of what we have actuallyseen, and often choose not to look further.

We look at images of war in Lesson Seven of the Class of Nonviolence. In our Facilitator's Manual we include a selection of nine classic images, which can also be downloaded as a slideshow on our Web site. (note: this link will open Powerpoint.) Sautin article, which also includes links to the videos he discusses, is an important update.

Also recommended for those who wish to pursue this track is Virginia Woolf's first essay in her book Three Guineas (1938) which can be read online. Woolf writes:

This morning’s collection contains the photograph of whatmight be a man’s body, or a woman’s; it is so mutilated that it might, on the other hand, be the body of a pig. But thosecertainly are dead children, and that undoubtedly is the section of a house. A bomb has torn open the side; there is still abirdcage hanging in what was presumably the sitting-room, but the rest of the house looks like nothing so much as a bunch ofspillikins suspended in mid air.
.
Those photographs are not an argument; they are simply a crude statement of fact addressed to the eye. But the eye isconnected with the brain; the brain with the nervous system. That system sends its messages in a flash through every pastmemory and present feeling. When we look at those photographs some fusion takes place within us; however different theeducation, the traditions behind us, our sensations are the same; and they are violent.

What resources do you use to teach the art of war?

The Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People's History

2010-01-29T13:17:00.000-06:00

This just in from Rethinking Schools: We're pleased to announce our latest "publication," The Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People's History -- a new website with free downloadable teaching activities.

The Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People's History is a collaboration between Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change,supported by an anonymous donor (a former student of historian HowardZinn's) and the Caipirinha Foundation. The new site features over 75free, downloadable teaching activities for middle- and high- schoolstudents to bring a people's history to the classroom. These are thebest U.S. history-teaching articles from the Rethinking Schoolsarchives. The site also lists hundreds of recommended books,films, and websites. The teaching activities and resources areorganized by theme, time period, and grade level. This is the onlycollection of its kind for educators -- print or online -- in thecountry.

Howard Zinn: Three Holy Wars

2010-01-13T03:20:00.000-06:00

On the 100th anniversary of Progressive Magazine, Howard Zinn, author of The People's History of the United States, gave a talk about three holy wars. Not religious wars, he explained, but rather America's "sacred" wars that are considered to be just and beyond criticism. They are the American Revolution, the Civil War and World War II.

He said:

"Why do we assume that we had to fight a bloody revolutionary war to getrid of England? . . . In the first year before the first shots werefired, those famous shots. You know, the shot that was heard around theworld. You know, Lexington, Concord, April of 1775, the beginning ofthe Revolutionary War. The year before that farmers in westernMassachusetts had driven the British government out of most of westernMassachusetts without firing a shot. They had assembled thousands uponthousands around court houses, around official offices and they hadtaken over and they said good bye to the British officials. It was anonviolent revolution that took place."

One of the questions that Colman McCarthy poses in Lesson 6 of The Class of Nonviolence is "Many believe that Britain could have been removed from America nonviolently. Explain." If, because of time constraints, you want to focus in on just the part on the Revolution, watch from minute 9:50 through 22:24. There is a complete transcript of the talk on the Truthout Web site: thanks to them for drawing this to my attention.

Eyeless in Gaza

2010-01-11T09:04:00.002-06:00

I picked up a copy of Aldous Huxley's 1936 novel, Eyeless inGaza, soon after I returnedfrom a trip to Gaza. I knew that the book was not related to themodern Gaza – the title was taken from Milton's SamsonAgonistes:

... Promise was that I

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;

Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him

Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves ...

But still: the title called to me. It has sat on the shelf, unread,until this year's resolution to tackle all of the unread books, orgive them away. Gaza was Huxley's first novel after the more famousBrave New World. In those four years the world had changed:Hitler became chancellor of the Weimar Republic in 1933 and quicklytransformed it into the Third Reich and the British Union of Fascistsbegan it's rocky rise in Great Britain.

Huxleywas a pacifist, a supporter of the Peace Pledge Union and a followerof the visionary Gerald Heard.The central figure of this novel, Anthony Beavis, is Huxley'salter-ego; Miller is based on Heard.

Gazahas passages that I would call Gandhian, yet in a letter to hisbrother Julian Huxleyridiculed Gandhi as one “who plays the ascetic in his loin cloth.”By the time of Gandhi's funeral in 1948 Huxley's view was morecharitable and considered. He wrote: “Gandhi’s social andeconomic ideas are based upon a realistic appraisal of man’s natureand the nature of his position in the universe.” The opening of his “Note on Gandhi,”published in the May-June edition of the magazine Vendanta and theWest, is fascinating:

“Gandhi’s bodywas borne to the pyre on a weapons carrier. There were tanks andarmored cars in the funeral procession, and detachments of soldiersand police. Circling overhead were fighter planes of the Indian AirForce. All these instruments of violent coercion were paraded inhonor of the apostle of non-violence and soulforce. It is aninevitable irony; for, by definition, a nation is a sovereigncommunity possessing the means to make war other sovereigncommunities. Consequently, a national tribute to any individual—evenif that individual be a Gandhi—must always and necessarily take theform of a play of military and coercive might.”

Hereis an excerpt from Eyeless in Gaza, oneof many that speak directly to nonviolence. This would be anappropriate additional reading in Lesson six of TheClass of Nonviolence, wherewe discuss techniques of nonviolent action. At the time Huxley waswriting this novel, Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts were quitefamously treating hecklers with violence; contemporary readers ofthis chapter would have been reminded of Mosley's rally at Olympia inJune, 1934, when the forced ejection of hecklers resulted in mobviolence.

Eyeless in Gaza

Aldous Huxley

Chapter Thirty-three

January 29, 1934

With Helen today to hear Millerspeaking at Tower Hill, during the dinner hour. A big crowd. He spokewell – the right mixture of argument, jokes, emotional appeal. Thetheme, peace. Peace everywhere or no peace at all. Internationalpeace not achievable unless a translation into policy ofinter-individual relations. Militarists at home, in factory, inoffice, towards inferiors and rivals, cannot logically expectgovernments which represent them to behave as pacifists. Hypocrisyand stupidity of those who advocate peace between states, whileconducting private wars in business or the family. Meanwhile, therewas much heckling by communists in the crowd. How can anything beachieved without revolution? Without liquidating the the individualsand classes standing in the way of social progress? And so on. Answer(always with extraordinary good humor and wit): means determine ends.Violence and coercion produce a post-revolutionary society, notcommunistic but (like the Russians) hierarchical, ruled by anoligarchy using secret police methods. And all the rest.

After about a quarter of an hour, andangry young heckler climbed on to the little wall where Miller wasstanding, and threatened to knock him off if he didn't stop. “Comeon then, Archibald.” The crowd laughed: the young man grew stillangrier, advanced, clenched, squared up. “Get down, you oldbastard, or else . . “ Miller stood quite still, smiling, hands byhis side, saying, All right; he had no objections to being knockedoff. The attacker made sparring movements, brought a fist to within ainch of Miller's nose. The old man didn't budge, showed no sign offear or anger. The other drew back the hand, but instead of bringingit into Miller's face, hit him on the chest. Pretty hard. Millerstaggered, lost his balance and fell off the wall into the crowd.Apologized to the people he'd fallen on, got up again on the wall.Repetition of the performance. Again the young man threatened theface, but again, when Miller didn't lift his hands, or show eitherfear or anger, hit him on the chest. Miller went down and againclimbed up. Got another blow. Came up once more. This time the manscrewed himself up to hitting the face, but only with the flat of hishand. Miller straightened his head and went on smiling. “Threeshots a penny, Archibald.” The man let out at the body and knockedhim off the wall. Up again. Miller looked at his watch. “Anotherten minutes before you need to go back to work, Archibald. Come on.”But this time the man could only bring himself to shake his fist andcall Miller a bloodsucking old reactionary. Then turned and walkedoff along the wall, pursued by derisive laughter, jokes andwhistlings from the crowd. Miller went on with his speech.

Helen's reaction was curious. Distressat the young man's brutality towards the old. But at the same timeanger with Miller for allowing himself to be knocked about withoutresistance. The reason for this anger? Obscure; but I think sheresented Miller's success. Resented the fact that the young man hadbeen reduced, psychologically, to impotence. Resented thedemonstration that there was an alternative to terrorism and anonviolent means of combating it. “It's only a trick,” she said.Not a very easy trick, I insisted; and that I certainly couldn'tperform it. “Anyone could learn it, if he tried.” Possibly;wouldn't it be a good thing if we all tried? “No, I think it'sstupid.” Why? She found it hard to answer. “Because it'sunnatural,” was the reason she managed to formulate at last – andproceeded to develop it in terms of a kind of egalitarian philosophy.“I want to be like other people. To have the same feelings andinterests. I don't want to make myself different. Just an ordinaryperson; not somebody who's proud of having learnt a difficult trick.Like that old Miller of yours.” I pointed out that we'd all learnsuch difficult tricks as driving cars, working in offices, readingand writing, crossing the street. Why shouldn't we all learn thisother difficult trick? A trick, potentially, so much more useful. Ifall were to learn it, then one could afford to be like other people,one could share all their feelings in safety, with the certainty thatone would be sharing something good, not bad. But Helen wasn't to bepersuaded. And when I suggested that we should join the old man for alate lunch, she refused. She said she didn't want to know him. Thatthe young man had been quite right; Miller was a reactionary.Disguising himself in a shroud of talk about economic justice; butunderneath just a Tory agent. His insistence on changes in socialorganizations weren't enough, but that they must be accompanied by,must spring from a change in personal relations – what was that buta plea for conservatism? “I think he's pernicious,” she said.“And I think you're pernicious.” But she consented to have lunchwith me. Which showed how little stock she set on my powers to shakeher convictions! Arguments – I might have lots of good arguments;to those she was impervious. But Miller's action had gotten betweenthe joints of her armor. He acted his doctrine, didn't rest contentwith talking it. Her confidence that I couldn't get between thejoints, as he had done, was extremely insulting. The more so as Iknew it was justified.

Perseverance, courage, endurance. Allfruits of love. Love goodness enough, and indifference and slacknessare inconceivable. Courage comes as to the mother defending herchild; and at the same time there is no fear of the opponent, who isloved, whatever he may do, because of the potentialities of goodnessin him. As for pain, fatigue, disapproval – they are bornecheerfully, because they seem of no consequence by comparison withthe goodness loved and pursued. Enormous gulf separating me from thisstate! The fact that Helen was not afraid of my perniciousness (asbeing only theoretical), while dreading Miller's (because his lifewas the same as his argument) was a painful reminder of the existenceof this gulf.

Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too

2009-12-22T07:33:00.000-06:00

Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too

A fascinating science commentary in the New York Times by Natalie Angier about plants' will to survive:

The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — theirkeen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react tochanges in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks thatplants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar —the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we candismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlightcollectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. [read rest of article]

This issue is addressed directly in Lesson 8 of the Class of Nonviolence, where we talk about violence and animals.

Nonviolence: The History of an Idea

2009-11-28T09:43:00.000-06:00

Ira Chernus, Professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has written an introductory book on the history of the idea of nonviolence in the United States. American Nonviolence: The History of An Idea is now available from Orbis Books and is also available free online.

Chapters include: The Anabaptists; The Quakers; William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolitionists; Henry David Thoreau; The Anarchists; World War I: The Crucial Turning Point; Mahatma Gandhi; Reinhold Niebuhr; A. J. Muste; Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Barbara Deming; and Thich Nhat Hanh.

Harvard's very popular course on justice now available to you online

2009-11-27T16:31:00.000-06:00

From their Web site: Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history. Nowit’s your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that hascaptivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom tothe world.

In this twelve part series, [Michael] Sandel challenges us withdifficult moral dilemmas and asks our opinion about the right thing todo. He then asks us to examine our answers in the light of newscenarios. The results are often surprising, revealing that importantmoral questions are never black and white.

This course alsoaddresses the hot topics of our day—affirmative action, same-sexmarriage, patriotism and rights—and Sandel shows us that we can revisitfamiliar controversies with a fresh perspective.

What Bystanders Do When They Witness Violence

2009-11-16T15:17:00.000-06:00

What Bystanders Do When They Witness Violence

Facing History and Ourselves used a "Talk of the Nation" episode as the centerpiece for a lesson plan about bystanders to violence. We typically discuss this in the first session of the Class of Nonviolence and come around to it again towards the end.

Another good resource for this topic is the Phil Ochs song, "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends":

US Nobel Peace Prize Anagram Worksheet

2009-11-15T15:10:00.000-06:00

Got new software yesterday -- Anagram Genius is the program Dan Brown used to concoct the anagrams in Angels and Demons and now we have it as well. It's first workout was to conduct a learning activity about the Nobel Peace Prize. Barack Obama receives his on December 10, providing a great opening for discussion. Twenty-one US citizens have received the prize since its inception in 1921 and this worksheet challenges the student to unscramble anagrams of their names.

I didn't include the three US organizations who received the prize. Here they are:
Is ill-mannered top banana contaminating?
Poisoner terrifies connivently enchant wrathful paranoia.
I'm an infected, mesmeric eviscerator.

The first sheet of the handout just includes the anagrams. The second sheet has biographies of the 21 recipients, plus an answer key at the bottom. If this is done as a class exercise, you can chop off the answers, if you prefer, and hand them out later. Download the PDF of the Anagrams HERE.

If you are facilitating the Class of Nonviolence, this exercise would make a nice accompaniment to the session on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 (his Nobel lecture makes good reading!) It could also be used with the session on Gandhi, who did not receive the prize. The Nobel Prize Organization has a lively article about Gandhi on their Web site. A good class discussion could be: Should Mohandas Gandhi have received the Nobel Peace Prize? Why or why not?

And the answers to the anagrams above are:
International Campaign to Ban Landmines (1997)
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1985)
American Friends Service Committee (1947)

Brain Teasers

2009-11-14T09:25:00.003-06:00

Engaging, transforming and transcending conflict often involves creative thinking. We can train our brains to “think outside the box.” One way is by solving puzzles. Any puzzle will do— anagrams, suduku, crosswords— or brain teasers. We've come up with a one page handout that includes 27 brain teasers. Play with the letters & numbers to find a common word or phrase. Here's an example:

EEEEEEEEEEC

You can download a PDF file of the handout HERE. If you are facilitating the class of nonviolence, handouts like these can be given to the people who show up early. Or, they can be incorporated into the class itself. In the session on Gandhi, for example, we often hand out a sheet of optical illusions to illustrate that there can be more than one version of "truth."

The answer to the puzzler above, by the way, is Tennessee. Ten E - C. Get it?

Conflict Revolution

2009-11-12T09:31:00.002-06:00

View more presentations from Victoria Pynchon.

This slide show is from Victoria Pynchon's Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, and is based on a presentation by Dr. Ken Cloke, Conflict Revolution: Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism. (I recommend expanding the slide show to full screen to view it properly.)

In Lesson 5 of the Class of Nonviolence, on feminism, peace and power, we typically discuss power relationships; the diagram on slide 26, power, justice and decision making, is an interesting expansion on the "power wheels" that we typically use to launch our discussion of power. Good information here about social change, negotiation -- good info!

How to celebrate the fall of the wall | National Catholic Reporter

2009-11-11T12:37:00.000-06:00

How to celebrate the fall of the wall | National Catholic Reporter

Sr. Rose Pacatte wrote a great article for the National Catholic Reporter on how to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall through movies. Her blog is a great source for current films that can often be used to teach peace and Justice.

Pigs Prove to Be Smart, if Not Vain

2009-11-10T09:59:00.000-06:00

Pigs Prove to Be Smart, if Not Vain

The 8th and final session of the Class of Nonviolence is about violence and animals. This article from the New York Times covers the new scientific field of "pig cognition." It says in part:

"Even in domesticity, pigs have retained much of their foreboar’ssmarts. Dr. Byrne attributes pig intelligence to the same evolutionarypressures that prompted cleverness in primates: social life and food.Wild pigs live in long-term social groups, keeping track of one anotheras individuals, the better to protect against predation. They also rootaround for difficult food sources, requiring a dexterity of the snoutnot unlike the handiness of a monkey." [whole article]

Looking for more about animals? Some good stuff in the New Yorker:

Hear Them Roar: A brief about Spain granting some apes human rights and a roundup of current books about animal rights.
Swingers: Bonobos are celebrated as peace-loving, matriarchal, and sexually liberated. Are they?
Birdbrain: The woman behind the world’s chattiest parrots.

Here's one from Wired Science: Clever Crows Prove Aesop’s Fable Is More Than Fiction
If the crow story interests you, here is a TED video about "The Amazing Intelligence of Crows" with Joshua Klein:

Understanding and Combating War

2009-11-05T12:57:00.002-06:00

Understanding and Combating War

This is a resource provided by the Voices Education Project. It is a complilation of writings, music, drama and art inspired by the work of Lucy Dougall in her book War and Peace in Literature: Prose, Drama and Poetry which Illuminate the Problem of War. Here's what you'll find (click on the word "contents" in the menu):

Rina Abbasi Iranian); Anna Akmatova (Russian); Maya Angelou (American); Margaret Atwood (Canadian); W.H. Auden (British/American); Wendell Berry (American); Berthold Brecht (German); Marc Chagall (Russian/French); Stephen Crane (American); Maria Deyana (Croatian); Ralph Waldo Emerson (American); Diana Ferrus (South African); Kahlil Gibran (Lebanese); Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (American); Garrison Keillor (American); Mary Kimani (Kenyan); Krishnamurti (Indian); Denise Levertov (British/American); Vachel Lindsay (American); Holly Near (American); Pablo Neruda (Chilean); Phil Ochs (American); Robert Phillips (American); Playing for Change; Major Michael Davis O’Donnell (American); Violeta Parra Chilean); Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche (Tibetan); Tom Paxton (American); Leroy V. Quintana (American); Carl Sandburg (American); Ben Shahn (Lithuanian/American); Edwin Starr; Richard Stine (American); Simonides (Greek); Sting (British); Wislawa Szmborska (Polish)

3 new books about the death penalty

2009-10-16T13:16:00.000-05:00

On October 24, Austin, Texas will host the 10th annual march to abolish the death penalty (2-5 pm on the southside steps of the Texas State Capitol, 11th & Congress, Austin.) It's a good time to explore this issue, covered in the 7th class of the University Essays for the Class of Nonviolence with 5 excellent readings.

Over the past few months that peaceCENTER has published three new anthologies about the death penalty:

Capital Ideas: 150 Classic Writers on the Death Penalty, from The Code of Hammurabi to Clarence Darrow, Susan Ives, editor, with a foreword by Joan Cheever Learn More & Buy

End of the Line: Five Short Novels About the Death Penalty, Susan Ives, editor. Includes: The Last Day of a Condemned Man, by Victor Hugo; Lois The Witch, by Elizabeth Gaskell; The Dead Alive, by Wilkie Collins; Billy Budd, by Herman Melville and The Seven Who Were Hanged, by Leonid Andreyev Learn More & Buy

Death Sentences: 34 Classic ShortStories About the Death Penalty. Susan Ives, editor, with a foreword byJay Brandon and an afterword by Roger C. Barnes, Ph.D. Learn more & buy.

These three books are more about public philosophy than public policy. They explore who governments decide to kill, how they justify these decisions and the effect of state-sanctioned killing on society.

What are Human Rights?

2009-10-13T17:27:00.000-05:00

A really nice short video that defines Human Rights, which we typically discuss during lesson six of the Class of Nonviolence.

Reconsider Columbus Day

2009-10-12T09:57:00.000-05:00

There's really not an ideal place to discuss Columbus Day in the Class of Nonviolence, although it fits best in lesson 7, where we generally talk about war. Instead, take advantage of the day itself to discuss alternative views of Columbus. Several good books that can be added to a library or curriculum are:

Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus: What Your History Books Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen. This colorful 32" x 21" poster includes artwork and writings from primary sources on the early history of theAmericas, perspectives of people who were here first, and analysisof historical myths.

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, also by James W. Loewen, covers both the arrival of Columbus and the first Thanksgiving.

Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, Edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson. More than 90 essays, poems, interviews, historical vignettes, and lesson plans reevaluate the myth of Columbus and issues of indigenous rights. Rethinking Columbus is packed with useful teaching ideas for kindergarten through college.

Who gets what and why

2009-10-09T09:25:00.001-05:00

"Distributive justice is not only a central issue of moral and political philosophy, but also an object of common-sense moral reasoning. Everyone is sensitive to the question of his/her share of the common good. Even those who get the best piece of the social pie are in need to justify the actual model of distribution. It has become a truism that most people (especially in the transition countries) experience their own social position as "unjust", relying on certain intuitive principles of distributive justice." from the Distributive Justice Web site

This is an incredible site, online since 2001, that engages you in the theory of distributive justice, via a game (depicted below), forum, newsletter, mailing list, interviews and a solid discussion of the various theories of the field. The site hasn't been updated in a while but it is an excellent introduction to an important topic. Be sure to read about the theory and play the game.

We would use this in lesson 3 of the Class of Nonviolence, when we discuss Dorothy Day and poverty, especially with the essay "Poverty and Precarity."

Dancing to the beat of a different rumba

2009-10-07T14:43:00.000-05:00

My peaceCENTER colleague Rosalyn Collier roped me into dinner and a movie, the movie being "Strictly Ballroom," a 1993 Australian film about ballroom dancing. "Not at all my cup of tea," I complained. "You love it. Trust me," she countered. She was right.

Scott, a young competitive ballroom dancer, is inspired to improvise in a rumba competition. His elders are incensed: "There are no new steps," grimly admonishes the head of the dance federation. His teachers lament that if everyone could make up steps they wouldn't need teachers and where would that leave them? The theme? A life lived in fear is a life half-lived. The film is funny, beautiful, sad, uplifting and thought-provoking.

Strictly Ballroom would be an eccentric yet appropriate film to show along with lesson 7 of the Class of Nonviolence, where we discuss civil disobedience. Although the disobedience isn't exactly of the civil variety, the message is the same: conscience has precedence over the rules.

Walden: a Game

2009-10-06T23:00:00.000-05:00

The Interactive Media Lab at USCis developing Walden, a game that simulates the experiment in living made by Thoreau atWalden Pond in 1845-47, allowing players to walk in his virtualfootsteps, attend to the tasks of living a self-reliant existence,discover in the beauty of a virtual landscape the ideas and writings ofthis unique philosopher, and cultivate through the gameplay their ownthoughts and responses to the concepts discovered there. [read rest of article]

In the Class of Nonviolence we read Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" in lesson 7, and such a game would, of course, fit in well there. It would also complement lesson 8, where we discuss nonviolence and animals, but also usually talk about caring for the earth. His message of living simple and close to nature fits in well here. Can't wait until it's released!

Active U.S. Hate Groups

2009-10-04T18:10:00.000-05:00

Active U.S. Hate Groups

The Southern Poverty Law Center counted 926 active hate groups in theUnited States in 2008. Only organizations and their chapters known tobe active during 2008 are included. All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack ormalign an entire class of people, typically for their immutablecharacteristics.

This is a very cool and useful interactive map that tracks not only hate groups but also reported incidents.

One New Book, Three New Covers

2009-10-02T11:16:00.000-05:00

The 16-week University Essays for the Class of Nonviolence is available as a free download at the peaceCENTER's Website. (It's a PDF file) If you prefer it in trade paperback format, that is also now available, directly from our printer for $7 + shipping. You can also download a free PDF of The 8-week Class of Nonviolence or order the trade paperback directly from the printer for $5 + shipping. And the Facilitator's Manual for the Class of Nonviolence is available for purchase from our printer and on Amazon.com; learn more about it and read a free sample chapter on our Web site.

We've also updated the covers so they match -- same books, just new packaging!

Nature Makes Us More Caring, Study Says

2009-10-02T10:54:00.000-05:00

Want to be a better person? Commune with nature. Payingattention to the natural world not only makes you feel better, it makesyou behave better, finds a new study to be published October 1 in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. [read article]

We'd probably use this material in the first session of the Class of Nonviolence, where we discuss the nature of violence and nonviolence. It would also slot nicely into the 8th and final session; although the main topic in noviolence and animals, we usually expand the discussion to include the relationship between nonviolence and the environment. Here's a video summarizing the study results:

The People Speak - Coming to History Channel

2009-09-19T10:03:00.000-05:00

Democracy is not a spectator sport. Using dramatic and musicalperformances of the letters, diaries and speeches of everydayAmericans, THE PEOPLE SPEAK gives voice to those who spoke upfor social change throughout U.S. history, forging a nation from thebottom up with their insistence on equality and justice. Narrated byHoward Zinn and based on his best-selling books, A People's History of the United States and Voices of a People's History, THE PEOPLE SPEAKillustrates the relevance of these passionate historical moments to oursociety today and reminds us never to take liberty for granted. Their Web site includes a video trailer and a classroom study guide.

Two new books!

2009-09-18T14:02:00.001-05:00

The peaceCENTER has recently published two more book, "End of the Line: five short classic novels about the death penalty" and "Death Sentences: 34 Classic short stories about the death penalty." Both are available from Amazon.com.

Bartleby & Benito: 2 Melvilles

2009-07-20T23:03:00.002-05:00

It would benefit and uplift every student of nonviolence to read Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener (1853) and Benito Cereno (1855.)

Bartleby, a law clerk, answers every unwelcome request with a calm “I would prefer not to.” This resistance disconcerts his boss, who frets, “Had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises.[. . .] This is very strange, thought I. What had one best do?"

As Cesar Chavez said, “Nonviolence is saying no to everything that is humiliating.” Bartleby practiced nonviolent resistance before it even had a name.

In Benito Cereno, an American ship captain is unable to see what to him is unthinkable and impossible: that the slaves are in charge of a troubled Spanish ship. He misinterprets every action, every gesture, every word that is spoken to conform to his ingrained understanding of how the world works, and he is wrong. It is a disturbing and enlightening short novel.

We're working on a new peaceCENTER book, End of the Line: Five short novels about the death penalty, which includes Herman Melville's Billy Budd, another excellent book that helps us think in new ways about that ambiguous place between law and justice. It should be ready for publication sometime next month. What classic literature do you find illuminating in terms of peace and justice?

Visualize Whirled Peas

2009-07-17T21:33:00.005-05:00

Yikes! It's been a long time since this blog was updated. We've been busy working on editing new peaceCENTER books. Visualize Whirled Peas: vegan cooking from the San Antonio peaceCENTER is now available on Amazon.com. It includes 116 recipes that will help you create peace, salad, compassion, potatoes, community, and soup. We discuss the relationship between food and nonviolence in Session 8 of the Class of Nonviolence.

Fasts and Hunger Strikes: is there a difference?

2009-04-28T21:27:00.002-05:00

Mia Farrow has embarked on a 21-day fast to “show solidarity” with the people of Darfur. "I'm just an actress. I'm not presuming anybody will care whether I starve to death or whether I go on a long hunger strike or what. But it's a personal matter. I can't be among those that watch - and I honestly couldn't think of anything else to do," she said. Both Farrow herself and the media sometimes call her action a fast and at other times a hunger strike. Is there a difference?

The type of fast that Farrow has embarked upon is often called a “political fast” to distinguish it from medical fasts (to cleanse the body of toxins, prepare for a medical procedure, lose weight) and religious fasts (Ramadan, Yom Kippur, Lent. . . .) Both fasts and hunger strikes involve abstaining from food. Insofar as its purpose is to draw attention to a cause and to rally the support of the faithful by jeopardizing the health and perhaps life of a beloved public figure, a fast has much in common with a hunger strike.

The difference, I think is subtle but important and perhaps best examined by looking at Gandhi’s fasts (he went on 17) and the fasts of Cesar Chavez.

Gandhi described four reasons for fasting: (1) To express his own deep sense of sorrow at the way those he loved had disappointed him; (2) To atone for the misdeeds of the people he lead; (3) A last-ditch attempt to stir deep spiritual feelings in others and to appeal to their moral sense and (4) to bring quarreling parties together.

He also defined when fasting was appropriate: (1) Fasts could only be undertaken against those people he loved; (2) fasts must have a concrete and specific goal, not abstract aims; (3) The fast must be morally defensible in the eyes of the target; (4) the fast must in no way serve his own interests and (5) the fast must not ask people to do something they were incapable of, or to cause great hardship.

Gandhi said about fasting:

“Fasting is an institution as old as Adam. It has been resorted to for self-purification or for some ends, noble as well as ignoble.”

“A complete fast is a complete and literal denial of self. It is the truest prayer.”

“A genuine fast cleanses the body, mind, and soul. It crucifies the flesh and to that extent sets the soul free.”

“What the eyes are for the outer world, fasts are for the inner.”

“My religion teaches me that whenever there is distress which one cannot remove, one must fast and pray.”

Like Gandhi, Cesar Chavez was willing to sacrifice his own life so that his work would continue and to ensure that violence would not be used. In 1968 Chavez went on a water-only, 25-day fast. When asked about his motivation for fasting, he said, “A fast is first and foremost personal. It is a fast for the purification of my own body, mind, and soul. The fast is also a heartfelt prayer for purification and strengthening for all those who work beside me in the farm worker movement. The fast is also an act of penance for those in positions of moral authority and for all men and women activists who know what is right and just, who know that they could and should do more. The fast is finally a declaration of non- cooperation with supermarkets who promote and sell and profit from California table grapes.”

Chavez fasted again in 1972 for 24 days, and in 1988 for 36 days. Speaking again about his motivations for fasting, Chavez said that farm workers everywhere were angry and worried that would not be a victory without violence. He fasted to prove that is was possible to win without violence. He said, “We have proved it before through persistence, hard work, faith and willingness to sacrifice. We can win and keep our self- respect and build a great union that will secure the spirit of all people if we do it through a rededication and recommitment to the struggle for justice through nonviolence.”

Turning specifically to the problem of pesticides, he continued "The evil is far greater than even I had thought it to be, it threatens to choke out the life of our people and also the life system that supports us all. This solution to this deadly crisis will not be found in the arrogance of the powerful, but in solidarity with the weak and helpless. I pray to God that this fast will be a preparation for a multitude of simple deeds for justice. Carried out by men and women whose hearts are focused on the suffering of the poor and who yearn, with us, for a better world. Together, all things are possible."

We would discuss fasting in lesson six of the Class of Nonviolence when we discusses Gene Sharp's list of 198 methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion. Sharp identified three types of fasts. The fast of moral pressure is undertaken to persuade a third party (St. Patrick fasted to urge the Irish king to deal fairly with the slaves, for example.) The hunger strike is considered coersive, especially when it is threatened to the death, which could cause civil unrest. The third type of fast Sharp calls the Satyagrahic fast, which requires spiritual preparation and is intended to convert an opponent.

Here is a video about Mia farrow's fast. What do YOU think?

Guernica

2009-04-26T09:30:00.004-05:00

Seventy-two years ago today, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, on April 26th, 1937, the Basque town of Guernica was carpet bombed by Fascist Italian and Nazi German forces. Three-quarters of Guernica was destroyed, and as many as 1,600 civilians were killed. The Spanish Republican government had commissioned Pablo Picasso to create a large mural for the Spanish display at Paris International Exposition in the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. Guernica, an 11 ft tall and 7.8 25.6 ft wide canvas, was installed in June. Picasso’s Guernica can be a springboard to a larger discussion about the tragedy of war, which we usually cover in lesson seven of the Class of Nonviolence.

The peaceCENTER has two videos that go into immense detail about Picasso’s painting. “Pablo Picasso’s Guernica” (Kultur, 1999, 45 minutes) is only available on VHS. It is part of the “Discovery of Art” series and although dry, is thorough and informative. Easier to find – and much livelier – is the Picasso episode in Simon Schama's “Power of Art” (BBC, 2007, 1 hour.) We’ve just ordered a third film – “Treasures of the World- Guernica: Testimony of War,” (PBS Home Video, 1999) that we have been eager to review.

This 9-minute video is an excerpt from “The Bombing of Gernika: The Mark of Man.” It includes a strange and compelling animation at the beginning, plus interviews with three survivors of the bombing.

Death penalty videos

2009-04-25T07:21:00.002-05:00

The death penalty has been added as lesson seven in the new 16-week “university” Class of Nonviolence. There are many good documentaries on capital punishment, but these two online videos would work well with this lesson. The first is an hour-long TV program hosted by the Harris County, Texas Green Party. In a classroom situation it would be useful to show the 9-minute documentary produced by Irish television that is embedded starting at minute 3:50. It tells about the European Union’s efforts to put pressure on countries, including the US, to abolish the death penalty. The second video is a lecture given by Sr. Helen Prejean, author of “Dead Man Walking” speaking at Utah Valley State College.

True Education

2009-04-24T11:13:00.003-05:00

True Education
by Voltaire

A widow, having a young son, and being possessed of a handsome fortune, had given a promise of marriage to two magi, who were both desirous of marrying her.
"I will take for my husband," said she, "the man who can give the best education to my beloved son."
The two magi contended who should bring him up, and the cause was carried before Zadig. Zadig summoned the two magi to attend him.
"What will you teach your pupil?" he said to the first.
"I will teach him," said the doctor, "the eight parts of speech, logic, astrology, pneumatics, what is meant by substance and accident, abstract and concrete, the doctrine of the monads, and the pre-established harmony."
"For my part," said the second, "I will endeavor to give him a sense of justice, and to make him worthy the friendship of good men."
Zadig then cried: "Whether thou art the child's favorite or not, thou shalt have his mother."

This is an excerpt from Zadig, a comic novel by the French philosopher and poet Voltaire (1694-1778), one of the major Enlightenment intellectuals who prepared the way for the French Revolution. Zadig, ou La Destinée, ("Zadig, or The Book of Fate") (1747) tells the story of Zadig, a philosopher in ancient Babylonia. Most of the problems Zadig faces are thinly disguised references to social and political problems of Voltaire's own day.

The Class of Nonviolence is not, I think, a class about learning facts and memorizing lists but rather one of developing a sense of justice. Voltaire and his clever little alter-ego, Zadig, got it right.

Happy Earth Day, Edward Abbey!

2009-04-23T09:53:00.003-05:00

The Class of Nonviolence, alas, does not address the environment directly – we typically stuff environmental issues into lesson eight, which is about animals. Another approach could be to look at the life and works of Edward Abbey, an author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues. He fits in well with lesson seven, on civil disobedience. Abbey’s Desert Solitaire has been called “The Walden of the Southwest"; we read Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” in this session. Abbey's most famous novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, centers on a small group of eco-warriors who travel the American West attempting stop uncontrolled human expansion by committing acts of sabotage against industrial development. To this day, eco-sabotage is called "monkeywrenching.” and the practice can be used to begin a discussion about whether destruction of property can be nonviolent and morally acceptable. According to IMDB, a film of this book is scheduled for release in 2010 – about time! The first of these two videos is a short intro to a 2007 documentary about Edward Abbey, A Voice in the Wilderness, available for purchase from Canyonlands Natural History Association; you can watch the entire film for free online at Green Treks.

Edward Abbey
A Voice in the Wilderness

Edward Abbey
Glen Canyon Dam

Peace Media Clearinghouse Launched Today

2009-04-20T09:40:00.003-05:00

A Peace Media Clearinghouse launched this morning, a joint project of the US Institute of Peace Center of Innovation for Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding and the Georgetown University Conflict Resolution Program. You can find documentaries, films, shows, podcasts, songs, video games, and other multimedia about peace and conflict management; use them in your work as educators, trainers, practitioners, policy makers, or students; explore a wide range of topics, such as conflict prevention, nonviolence, post-conflict reconstruction, refugees, child soldiers, rule of law, religion, climate change and terrorism and search for multimedia by region, country, media type, and issue area. It looks like they have about 400 resources — many of them free — cataloged to date. This promises to be an incredible resource for those who teach peace.

The REAL Boston Tea Party

2009-04-18T10:45:00.005-05:00

With all the coverage of tea parties it is an excellent teaching moment to talk about the revolutionary roots of the real Boston Tea Party and initiate a discussion about whether Britain could have been removed from the American colonies nonviolently. (This is one of Colman McCarthy’s discussion questions in lesson 6 of the Class of Nonviolence.)

There are several (relatively) new resources that discuss this very question. “The Real Revolution: The Global Story of American Independence” by Marc Aronson (2005: Clarion) makes a brilliant connection between the tea grown in India and taxed in Boston, a foreshadowing of the military-industrial complex described by Eisenhower almost 200 years later.

Mark Kurlansky’s “Nonviolence: 25 lessons from the history of a dangerous idea” (2007: Modern Library) .covers the nonviolent prelude to the American Revolution in chapter IV. It’s also available as an audio book, and this chapter is on disk 3, tracks 11-19 (or 3k-3s, depending on how your CD player reads the disk.) It’s 11 pages, just over a ½ hour of audio.

Ray Raphael wrote “A People’s History of the American Revolution" (2001: Perennial) tells the story from the view of the common people. The Boston Tea Party is covered in Chapter 4. Raphael’s web site has middle-high school lesson plans for each chapter.

To bring this right up to date, Thom Hartmann's essay, "The Real Boston Tea Party was an Anti-Corporate Revolt" can be read on Common Dreams.org.

This 3-minute Schoolhouse Rock video about the causes of the Boston Tea Party is fun and accurate.

Free Documentaries

2009-04-05T15:37:00.002-05:00

Snag Films has hundreds of free documentaries, including the series "Women on the Frontline," from the TV news program. Each in this series is 12 minutes: the one shown here is about women in the Congo, where rape is a weapon of war. It would be a good supplement to lesson five of the Class of Nonviolence, where we discuss feminism, peace and power. Full length documentaries are also available: the selection is awesome.

The Hidden and Human Cost of War

2009-04-03T11:43:00.002-05:00

On the American RadioWorks website you can listen online, download, or read the transcript of a story about a young American soldier, Sergeant Gray, who served in the Iraq war for a year, but died a strange death once he got back from Iraq. The story details his mother's search for the cause of death of her son, and learns that Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which he developed from abusing Iraqi prisoners, was the likely culprit that caused his death. There are also photos and stories of other U.S. soldiers who were involved in the treatment of Iraqi detainees. We typically discuss war in lesson seven of the Class of Nonviolence, and this insight into the hidden and human cost of war is important to address. I learned of this site from the Internet Scout Report, a wonderful weekly mailing list out of the University of Wisconsin that has scoured the Internet for the best (mostly) educational sites since 1994.

Clarence Darrow

2009-04-01T15:04:00.004-05:00

The 16-week “University” Class of Nonviolence contains a Darrow essay, “Resist Not Evil,” an early argument for restorative justice rather than the more typical vengeful justice. A temptation would be to augment this essay by showing a video clip from “Inherit the Wind,” the excellent play based on the Scopes Monkey Trial, but this does not get to the heart of Darrow’s philosophy about justice. The perfect video is of Henry Fonda’s one-man show, “Clarence Darrow,” which was filmed for TV in 1974 and is available from Kultur Films for less than $20. It is a brilliant production (I saw him perform it in London) that covers the Haymarket trial, Big Bill Haywood, the Pullman strike, the Pennsylvania coal miners, the bombing of the LA Times and defense of the McNamara brothers, the Scopes trial, Leopold and Loeb and the Ossian Sweet trial, a landmark in the civil rights movement. The chapter called “Chicago Justice” includes Darrow's views on the death penalty: it would also go well with lesson seven of the Class of Nonviolence. The 81 minute video is neatly divided into segments of less than 10 minutes each and any one of them would work well in a class.

The Toys of Peace

2009-03-29T09:07:00.004-05:00

On Public Radio’s “Selected Shorts” yesterday Diana Ivey read Saki's short story “The Toys of Peace":

"Harvey," said Eleanor Bope, handing her brother a cutting from a London morning paper of the 19th of March, "just read this about children's toys, please; it exactly carries out some of our ideas about influence and upbringing."
"In the view of the National Peace Council," ran the extract, "there are grave objections to presenting our boys with regiments of fighting men, batteries of guns, and squadrons of 'Dreadnoughts.' Boys, the Council admits, naturally love fighting and all the panoply of war . . . but that is no reason for encouraging, and perhaps giving permanent form to, their primitive instincts. At the Children's Welfare Exhibition, which opens at Olympia in three weeks' time, the Peace Council will make an alternative suggestion to parents in the shape of an exhibition of 'peace toys.' In front of a specially-painted representation of the Peace Palace at The Hague will be grouped, not miniature soldiers but miniature civilians, not guns but ploughs and the tools of industry . . . It is hoped that manufacturers may take a hint from the exhibit, which will bear fruit in the toy shops."
"The idea is certainly an interesting and very well-meaning one," said Harvey; "whether it would succeed well in practice --"
"We must try," interrupted his sister; "you are coming down to us at Easter, and you always bring the boys some toys, so that will be an excellent opportunity for you to inaugurate the new experiment. . . (read the rest of the story online)

Saki (real name: H.H. Munro) was a British writer who died in battle during World War I. This story would be a good conversation starter in the first lesson of the Class of Nonviolence, where we read Alfie Kohn’s essay, “Human Nature is Inherently Nonviolent.

Tolstoy Redux: Short Stories

2009-03-28T12:07:00.003-05:00

PDF File (1.3 MB, 40 pages): Eleven Tolstoy Short Stories

Yesterday I noted that I find the two “War and Peace” extracts in the 16-week “University” Class of Nonviolence uninspiring: neither useful for the study of nonviolence nor interesting when divorced from the magnificent novel. Yet, it would be absurd to assign Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” at 1,300 pages (give or take a few), as a class reading. In search of an alternative, I started reading his short stories and found them delightful, relevant and SHORT.

All of them are didactic—containing little life lessons—and many start with an introductory Bible verse. Two are about the death penalty, one about interfaith dialog, a few about greed and several about forgiveness. The story that Tolstoy called “Where Love Is, God Is” was made into a 27-minute claymation video in 1977 and is popular for children in Christian Sunday schools, “Martin the Cobbler.” I’ve put together a little booklet of eleven of Tolstoy’s stories. The collection includes: Three Questions; How Much Land Does a Man Need; The Candle; God Sees the Truth, but Waits; The Coffee House of Surat; The Grain as Big as a Hen’s Egg; Little Girls Wiser Than Men; Esarhaddon, King of Assyria; Where Love is, God Is; Too Dear! and A Spark Neglected.

I Watch Bad Movies So You Don’t Have To - War & Peace

2009-03-27T08:39:00.002-05:00

There is one Tolstoy essay in the 8-week Class of Nonviolence, the intriguing “Patriotism or Peace,” in which Tolstoy proposes that the two are inherently incompatible. In the 16-week “University” Class, there are five more. At the San Antonio peaceCENTER, we have always scheduled two hours for each session and, to be frank, I’d be hard-pressed to discuss Tolstoy for two hours based solely on these readings. Two of the Tolstoy extracts—“Napoleon” and the two-page extract from “War and Peace”—are dense unless you are really, really into 19th Century military history.

I’ve started the search for the perfect film clip to show to add some bling to this lesson. Yesterday I watched the King Vidor / Dino DeLaurentis 1956 interpretation of “War and Peace,” starring Audrey Hepburn as Natasha, Henry Fonda as Pierre and Mel Ferrer as Prince Andrei. The first half of the more than three-hour-long film is a stinker: a clunky period piece. This was the “peace” part of the film, covering the time roughly from the Battle of Austerlitz (1805) until Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. It got better in the second, “War” half of the film. I would reluctantly recommend scenes 23 (Napoleon’s Army Decay) and 24 (The Animal Runs) as the most meaningful – it’s about 15 minutes of film.

Prior to these scenes, the Russian commander, Field Marshal Kurtuzov, decides to allow the French to take Moscow unopposed. His generals argue that honor demands defense of their sacred city; Kurtzov counters that if they try they would lose their army, Moscow and, ultimately, Russia. As the Russians strategically retreat into the interior, they set fire to everything left behind. The scene opens with Napoleon realizing that he cannot sustain his Army without food or forage in the ruins of Moscow: he decides to return to Poland and begins his 550-mile trek on 19 October, in bitter wind and heavy snow. The Russians celebrate. By the time he crosses the border on 14 December, Napoleon’s Grand Army of 450,000 is depleted to a rabble of fewer than 40,000 starving, frostbitten survivors.

One other clip is interesting. At the very beginning of Scene 16 (Eve of War) there is a fleeting minute or so of a church service where the priest prays for God’s support in defeating the French. We can imagine Napoleon attending a similar service where his priest utters similar prayers to the same god for the defeat of the Russians.

As students assemble, set the scene by playing Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, written in honor the Battle of Borodino (7 September, 1812.) This version is by The Berliner Philharmonic, under the direction of Seiji Ozawa.

Tomorrow I start watching all 7 ½ hours of Sergei Bondarchuk’s 1967 “Voyna i Mir,” which promises to be better (it won the Oscar for best foreign film.) I’ll let you know.

They Laid Their Necks Bare

2009-03-26T07:48:00.003-05:00

Many years ago the peaceCENTER developed a teaching tool called “The Great Peace March,” an illustrated timeline of peace and justice history, that we can hang on the wall, project on a screen or play as a bingo-type game. It begins with the first recorded practitioners of civil disobedience, Shiprah and Puah, the midwives who refused to kill the newborn male babies of the Hebrew women. (Exodus: 1-2, c. 1350 B.C.E.) Another instance of early Jewish resistance was not recorded in the Bible but rather recounted by the historian Josephus (pictured). We would invoke this example when we study Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience in the Class of Nonviolence.

Sedition of The Jews Against Pontius Pilate
by Flavius Josephus
The Antiquities of the Jews

But now Pilate, the procurator of Judea, removed the army from Cesarea to Jerusalem, to take their winter quarters there, in order to abolish the Jewish laws. So he introduced Caesar's effigies, which were upon the ensigns, and brought them into the city; whereas our law forbids us the very making of images; on which account the former procurators were wont to make their entry into the city with such ensigns as had not those ornaments. Pilate was the first who brought those images to Jerusalem, and set them up there; which was done without the knowledge of the people, because it was done in the night time; but as soon as they knew it, they came in multitudes to Cesarea, and interceded with Pilate many days that he would remove the images; and when he would not grant their requests, because it would tend to the injury of Caesar, while yet they persevered in their request, on the sixth day he ordered his soldiers to have their weapons privately, while he came and sat upon his judgment-seat, which seat was so prepared in the open place of the city, that it concealed the army that lay ready to oppress them; and when the Jews petitioned him again, he gave a signal to the soldiers to encompass them routed, and threatened that their punishment should be no less than immediate death, unless they would leave off disturbing him, and go their ways home. But they threw themselves upon the ground, and laid their necks bare, and said they would take their death very willingly, rather than the wisdom of their laws should be transgressed; upon which Pilate was deeply affected with their firm resolution to keep their laws inviolable, and presently commanded the images to be carried back from Jerusalem to Cesarea.

Civil Rights in the North

2009-03-25T10:21:00.002-05:00

Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North
By Thomas J. Sugrue
(Random House, 2008)

The Civil Rights Movement is often taught as if it was a purely southern phenomena and the Class of Nonviolence, by looking at civil rights through the lens of the life and works of Martin Luther King, Jr., does little to dispel this. I heard Thomas Sugrue, a University of Pennsylvania history professor, interviewed on C-Span’s Book-TV. (You can watch the 47-minute interview at the Harvard Bookstore online.)

He caught my attention when he started talking about Levittown, PA, a city just seven miles from my hometown of Trevose. When built in a rural beet field in the 1950s, Levittown had restrictive covenants, forbidding owners to sell their homes to African-Americans. (“In metropolitan Philadelphia,” he writes, “between 1946 and 1953, only 347 of 120,000 new homes built were open to blacks.”) The story of how the first Black family moved in – and was harassed until they moved out – was ugly and fascinating.

Then he started writing about Trevose. The Linconia and Concord Park subdivisions were just around the corner from my house. Linconia was built as an all-black community in the 1920s, when Trevose was still a rural retreat where city folks built summer homes along Poquessing Creek. Concord Park was a deliberate social experiment, the first planned integrated suburban community in the country. I never set foot in it, although it was less than a half mile from my front door. As Sugrue points out, these connected neighborhoods were isolated by geography, wedged between the Reading railroad tracks, the Pennsylvania Turnpike and a cemetery. He didn’t mention that they were also politically separated from “my” part of Trevose: in a different township and a different school district. We used different libraries, played on different sports teams, went to different schools. I didn’t know this history of my own hometown; neither did my brother, who still works in Trevose. (I scanned these four pages of the book for him – and you.)

“Sweet Land of Liberty” opened my eyes and knocked some of the Yankee arrogance out of me. At almost 700 pages, Sugrue’s book is too big and dense to be assigned as a class reading but it is essential background for anyone who teaches the civil rights movement.

Civil Rights Sing-A-Long

2009-03-24T10:52:00.002-05:00

Last night’s César Chávez Interfaith Service at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church ended, as always, with a rousing sing-a-long of “De Colores,” the anthem of the United Farm Workers of America. The first time someone attends a César Chávez (or Hispanic History Month) event can be awkward, as everyone but YOU seems to know the tune and the words. The same happens at Martin Luther King (or Black History Month) celebrations, when hundreds of voices join confidently in “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” Everyone but YOU. . . or at least it seems that way.

Here are YouTube videos of both songs. Practice in the privacy of your home or classroom. “De Colores” is sung by Raffi and is a little sappy, but the music and lyrics are clear and easy to follow. A more authentic version is available as a RealAudio file from Labor Notes, with glorious music by Los Lobos. If you need the words to either song, download the San Antonio peaceCENTER's PDF-format song sheet.

¡Sí Se Puede!

2009-03-23T10:02:00.003-05:00

This is the week in San Antonio when we celebrate the life of César Chávez, the labor activist and civil rights leader, born on March 31, 1927. The events here started last Thursday with a mayoral proclamation and ends next Saturday with the 13th annual César Chávez March for Justice. Tonight I am one of the people offering a reading at the César Chávez Interfaith Service at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church at 6:30 pm (yesterday there was a mass at the San Fernando Cathedral) and Thursday José Antonio Orosco, author of “César Chávez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence” and director of Peace Studies Program at Oregon State University, will be speaking at Our Lady of The Lake University at 7 pm (I’ll be there!)

There aren’t any essays by or about César Chávez in the Class of Nonviolence. His speech to the Commonwealth Club of California in 1984 would be a good remedy for this lack, and also adds significant insight about economic justice. A short excerpt:

"All my life, I have been driven by one dream, one goal, one vision: to overthrow a farm labor system in this nation that treats farm workers as if they were not important human beings. Farm workers are not agricultural implements; they are not beasts of burden to be used and discarded. That dream was born in my youth, it was nurtured in my early days of organizing. It has flourished. It has been attacked."

And here are a couple of short videos about Chavez and the United Farm Workers of America. The first video includes Lila Downs' most beautiful interpretation ever of Woody Guthrie's song "Pastures of Plenty" and the second is a 7:34 minute mini documentary from the DVD "A History of Hispanic Achievement in America."

Another Wicked Tyrant and the Howl for Justice

2009-03-22T09:38:00.003-05:00

The Parable of the Hungry Dog
Buddhist, 600 B.C.

There was a wicked tyrant; and the god Indra, assuming the shape of a hunter, came down upon earth with the demon Matali, the latter appearing as a dog of enormous size. Hunter and dog entered the palace, and the dog howled so woefully that the royal buildings shook with the sound to their very foundations. The tyrant had the awe-inspiring hunter brought before his throne and inquired after the cause of the terrible bark. The hunter said, "The dog is hungry," whereupon the frightened king ordered food for him. All the food prepared at the royal banquet disappeared rapidly in the dog's jaws, and still he howled with portentous significance. More food was sent for, and the royal storehouses were emptied, but in vain. Then the tyrant grew desperate and asked: "Will nothing satisfy the cravings of that woeful beast?" "Nothing," replied the hunter, "nothing except perhaps the flesh of all his enemies." "And who are his enemies?" anxiously asked the tyrant. The hunter replied: "The dog will howl as long as there are people hungry in the kingdom, and his enemies are those that practice injustice and oppress the poor." The oppressor of the people, remembering his evil deeds, was seized with remorse, and for the first time in his life he began to listen to the teachings of righteousness.

This is another story about a tyrannical ruler, this time from the Buddhist tradition, again gleaned from Upton Sinclair’s “The Cry for Justice.” This morning’s Parade Magazine included its annual assessment of the world’s worst dictators: Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe; Omar al-Bashir, Sudan; Kim Jong-Il, North Korea; Than Shwe, Burma; King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia; Hu Jintao, China; Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Iran; Isayas Afewerki, Eritrea; G. Berdymuhammedov, Turkmenistan and Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya. I wonder: where is the ravenous dog that will not stop howling until the oppressed are given justice? Of course: It is my fate to be that "woeful beast," hungry for justice, who howls without respite, shaking the very foundations of power.

Wisdom of a Persian Poet

2009-03-21T07:34:00.003-05:00

This is another page from Upton Sinclair’s “The Cry for Justice.” We would use it near the beginning of the Class of Nonviolence, probably in the sessions on Gandhi, King or Day, as it adds a Muslim perspective to the discussion of justice, power and empathy.

Rebuking a Tyrant
By Sa’adi

In a certain year I was sitting retired in the great mosque at Damascus, at the head of the tomb of Yahiya the prophet (on whom be peace!). One of the kings of Arabia, who was notorious for his injustice, happened to come on a pilgrimage, and having performed his devotions, he uttered the following words: "The poor and the rich are servants of this earth, and those who are richest have the greatest wants." He then looked towards me, and said, "Because dervishes are strenuous and sincere in their commerce with heaven, unite your prayers with mine, for I am in dread of a powerful enemy."

I replied, "Show mercy to the weak peasant, that you may not experience difficulty from a strong enemy. It is criminal to crush the poor and defenseless subjects with the arm of power. He liveth in dread who befriendeth not the poor; for should his foot slip, no one layeth hold of his hand. Whosoever soweth bad seed, and looketh for good fruit, tortureth his imagination in vain, making a false judgment of things. Take the cotton out of thine ear, and distribute justice to mankind; for if thou refusest justice, there will be a day of retribution.

"The children of Adam are limbs of one another, and are all produced from the same substance; when the world gives pain to one member, the others also suffer uneasiness. Thou who are indifferent to the sufferings of others deservest not to be called a man."

Abū Muṣliḥ bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, known by the pen name Sa’adi, was a Persian poet, c. 1184-1291. In the unsettled conditions following the Mongol invasion of Iran, he wandered through Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, India and Central Asia. For thirty years he sat in remote teahouses late into the night and exchanged views with merchants, farmers, preachers, wayfarers, thieves, and Sufi mendicants, preaching, advising, learning, honing his sermons, and polishing them into gems illuminating the wisdom and foibles of his people. He had many western admirers: Pushkin, Goethe and Emerson quoted him. A poem by Sa’adi is carved into the entrance of the Hall of Nations in the UN building in New York:

Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.

Joan Baez

2009-03-20T10:06:00.003-05:00

I enjoy Joan Baez’s essay, “What Would You Do If?” in lesson seven of the Class of Nonviolence. Written as a dialog between Joan and "Fred," it starts off, “What would you do if someone were, say, attacking your grandmother?,” modeling with humor and clarity the give-and-take we have with people baffled by our commitment to nonviolence. (The 16-week “University” Class has an entire session on Baez.) Many young people are not familiar with her music, so here are a couple of videos. The first (1966) is of Joan singing "With God on Our Side" and the second is Joan and Bob Dylan singing "Blowin' in the Wind."

We Have Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself

2009-03-19T09:42:00.003-05:00

Upton Sinclair published an updated version of his 1915 anthology of social protest literature, “The Cry for Justice,” in 1963. I’m glad he did, because it gave him the opportunity to include Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 Inaugural address, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” I was struck by how fresh and current it is. If President Obama had delivered this speech two months ago at his own inauguration, he would have had to change only a few words. Here is how Roosevelt addressed the financial crisis of his time:

“And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.

“Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

“True, they have tried. But their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.”

The entire speech is online on the American Rhetoric Web site, where you can also download an audio file and watch this 5-minute-long video of the address:

Mencius: The Just Ruler

2009-03-18T08:55:00.002-05:00

I found this little parable in “The Cry for Justice,” Upton Sinclair’s 1915 anthology of social protest literature. Mencius was a 4th Century BCE Chinese moral philosopher, a follower of Confucius and contemporary of Plato. Because of his concern with human nature—are people inherently good or evil?—a study of Mencius would be a good fit with the first lesson of the Class of Nonviolence, where we discuss this very topic.

Murder by Statute
From "The Sayings of Mencius"

King Hui of Liang said, "I wish quietly to receive your instructions." Mencius replied, "Is there any difference between killing a man with a stick, and with a sword?" "There is not," was the answer. Mencius continued, "Is there any difference between doing it with a sword and with government measures?" "There is not," was the answer again.

Mencius then said, "In your stalls there are fat beasts; in your stables there are fat horses. But your people have the look of hunger, and in the fields are those who have died of famine. This is leading on beasts to devour men. Beasts devour one another, and men hate them for doing so. When he who is called the parent of the people conducts his government so as to be chargeable with leading on beasts to devour men, where is that parental relation to the people?"

Like Plato in “The Republic,” Mencius advocated the right of the people to overthrow an unjust ruler. What makes us human, he wrote, are our feelings of commiseration for others' suffering. What makes us virtuous is our development of this inner potential. If our “sprouts” are left untended, we can be no more than merely human — feeling sorrow at the suffering of another, but unable or unwilling to do anything about it. If we tend our sprouts assiduously, we can not only avert suffering but also bring about peace and justice in the entire world. This is the basis of another of Mencius' appeal to King Hui of Liang:

[The king] asked abruptly, "How shall the world be settled?"
"It will be settled by unification," I answered.
"Who will be able to unify it?"
"Someone without a taste for killing will be able to unify it…. Has Your Majesty noticed rice shoots? If there is drought during the seventh and eighth months, the shoots wither, but if dense clouds gather in the sky and a torrent of rain falls, the shoots suddenly revive. When that happens, who could stop it? … Should there be one without a taste for killing, the people will crane their necks looking out for him. If that does happen, the people will go over to him as water tends downwards, in a torrent - who could stop it? (1Analects6)

Erich Fromm: The Art of Loving

2009-03-17T08:55:00.002-05:00

One of the new essays included in the 16-week “University Class” of Nonviolence is The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm. Fromm (1900 –1980) was a social psychologist, psychoanalyst, humanistic philosopher and peace activist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. These three videos were recorded with Mike Wallace in 1958, shortly after publication of his bestseller, also called “The Art of Loving.” The second segment most directly speaks to the subject of the essay.

Big Brother Was Watching . . .

2009-03-16T08:20:00.002-05:00

One of the strengths of the Class of Nonviolence is its use of original writings: you don’t read about Gandhi – you read what he wrote. Even better, I think, is to peek at original documents. I stumbled into the FBI’s online “reading room,” where the heirs of J. Edgar Hoover archive photocopies of some of their most requested files. Tucked away amid Bonnie & Clyde and the KKK you’ll find a few writers from the Class of Nonviolence: Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Einstein, Clarence Darrow and Erich Fromm. Many others of interest to scholars of peace and nonviolence are here as well: César Chávez, Marion Anderson, Edward Abbey, Jane Addams, W.E.B. DuBois, the Highlander Folk School, Malcolm X, Eleanor Roosevelt, the ACLU and the AFSC.

Most of the files (this is SO cool) consist of documents: in Fromm’s file, for example, you’ll find the manifesto from the 1965 Washington Mobilization, a petition from the Chicago Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy and a flier from Women’s Strike for Peace. There are 142 pages on Lucille Ball, described as “testimony at the 1953 House Select Committee on Un-American Activities hearings which reflected her registration to vote as a communist in 1936 due to the insistence of her grandfather.” Did I mention that this is cool?

Justice or Philanthropy?

2009-03-15T15:21:00.003-05:00

This is another little gem I found in Upton Sinclair’s anthology “The Cry for Justice.” John Lawson entered the mines as a pit boy when he was eight years old. By the time of the Ludlow Strike and Massacre (1913-1914), of which he writes, he was an organizer for the United Mine Workers. The unnamed philanthropist is, of course, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. To increase profits, his Colorado Fuel and Iron Company cut corners on safety: more than 1,700 miners died in Colorado from 1884 to 1912, a rate 2 to 3.5 times the national average. (A good summary of this era is in Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States, pgs 346-349. The headline image is from the Jan 30 1915 New York Times, describing Lawson’s testimony before the Federal Commission on Industrial Affairs inquiry.) We would use this article during the Dorothy Day session of the Class of Nonviolence, where we typically discuss the difference between charity and justice. Think of some contemporary examples . . . companies that brag of their charitable giving while their employees lack health insurance . . .

Concerning Charity
by James R Lawson

There is another case of industrial discontent. This is the skillful attempt that is being made to substitute Philanthropy for Justice. There is not one of these foundations, now spreading their millions over the world in showy generosity, that does not draw those millions from some sort of industrial injustice. It is not their money that these lords of commercialized virtue are spending, but the withheld wages of the American working class.

I sat in this room and heard a great philanthropist read the list of activities of his Foundation “to promote the well-being of mankind.” An international health commission to extend to foreign countries and peoples the work of eradicating the hookworm; the promotion of medical education and health in China; the investigation of vice conditions in Europe; one hundred thousand dollars for the American Academy in Rome, twenty thousand a year for widows’ pensions in New York, one million for the relief of Belgians, thirty-four millions for the University of Chicago, thirty-four millions for a General Education Board. A wave of horror swept over me during that reading, and I say to you that the same wave is rushing over the entire working class of the United States. Health for China, a refuge for birds in Louisiana, food for the Belgians, pensions for New York widows, university training for the elect—and never a thought or a dollar for the many thousands of men, women and children who starved in Colorado, for the widows robbed of their husbands and children of their fathers, by the law-violating conditions in the mines. There are thousands of this great philanthropist’s former employees in Colorado today who wish to God that they were in Belgium to be fed, or birds to be cared for tenderly.

The Cost of War

2009-03-13T09:30:00.004-05:00

To a Nine-Inch Gun
By P.F. McCarthy (1915)

Whether your shell hits the target or not,
Your cost is Five Hundred Dollars a Shot.
You thing of noise and flame and power,
We feed you a hundred barrels of flour
Each time you roar. Your flame is fed
With twenty thousand loaves of bread.
Silence! A million hungry men
Seek bread to fill their mouths again.

click here to learn more

This poem was found in Upton Sinclair’s “The Cry for Justice,” an anthology of social protest literature, updated in 1996. As our economy tanks, one of the more intriguing questions in peace studies is the cost of war. We usually discuss this in session seven of the Class of Nonviolence. This is a lively discussion for an economics class, but could also be incorporated into U.S. history. San Antonio author Donald F Fies’s 54-page booklet, American Military History: The Costs of American Wars in Lives and Dollars From April 19, 1775 Through December 31, 2005, includes financial costs for each war in "at-time" dollars and in current dollars compared to total federal government spending. (How many barrels of flour for a $871,000 Tactical Tomahawk missile? I reckon about 4,500.) It’s available on Amazon.com.

These two videos explain the cost of our current U.S. wars, each powerful in its own way:

Thomas Merton

2009-03-12T07:29:00.004-05:00

I’ve just completed scanning, proofing and laying out 77 essays for the 16-week “University Class” of nonviolence. A new section, not covered in the 8-week course, is about the Trappist monk, writer and peace activist Thomas Merton. This first video is about the connection between Merton and the Dalai Lama, the second is a hauntingly beautiful montage of one of Merton’s poems, “First Lesson About Man,” with a background of paintings by Giorgio de Chirico.

Online Workshop - Civic Dilemmas: Religion, Migration, and Belonging

2009-03-10T13:57:00.002-05:00

Educators are invited to join this free online workshop designed to introduce new materials exploring migration and identity, hosted by "Facing History and Ourselves." The free workshop is from 03/26/2009 - 04/08/2009. Through facilitated online activities and conversations, the workshop will consider how schools negotiate both the needs of diverse student populations and the national need to form community cohesion. To explore these ideas Facing History and Ourselves developed two new publications -- Stories of Identity: Religion, Migration, and Belonging and What do we do with a Difference: France and the Debate Over Headscarves in Schools. Both are available free on their Web site. Pre-registration is required, on their site.

Halide Edip Adivar: a Turkish Peacemaker

2009-03-10T09:45:00.004-05:00

Video, “Young Indiana Jones,” The Greedy Heart of Halide Edip, Vol 3, disk 2

For International Women’s Day I watched an excellent “Young Indiana Jones” mini-documentary about Halide Edip Adivar (1884-1964), a Turkish writer, scholar, translator (George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”) and public figure dedicated to the rights of women and Turkish independence (she was the interpreter and press advisor to Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), who led the successful resistance against the Greek invasion of Turkey.) The class of nonviolence does not have any essays by Muslim writers, and this half-hour video is an opportunity to lift up the story of a non-western Muslim woman.

She met Gandhi on a 1935 trip to India, where she delivered a series of lectures at the National Muslim University in Delhi. She later wrote in her book, Inside India: "Mahatma Gandhi sat on a cushion, surrounded with charcoal braziers, for the night was cold. Eyes from the packed crowd in the hall and eyes from the packed crowd on the spacious platform were riveted on him. The atmosphere vibrated with a mixture of profound affection and mystic fervour. And the fragile figure was more like Buddha than ever. Though I was delivering a speech on a historic phase of a distant country, I was conscious of a distinct line of thought which had nothing to do with what I was saying. I was thinking about the quality of Mahatma Gandhi's greatness."

Ernesto Cardenal: Psalm 5

2009-03-09T15:27:00.003-05:00

My favorite essay in the Class of Nonviolence is Letter to Ernesto Cardenal: Guns Don't Work, by Daniel Berrigan. This is a video of Fr. Cardenal reading his paraphrase of Psalm 5: HEAR MY PROTEST Hear my words, Oh Lord, give ear to my groanings. Listen to my protest. For you are not a God who is friendly with oppressors . . .

Anti-War Musical Production Numbers

2009-03-07T12:13:00.004-06:00

I had an urge to re-watch the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933), and was rolling on the floor for one hour and eight minutes. The going-to-war minstrel scene ("They got guns, We got guns, All God's chillun got guns! I'm gonna walk all over the battlefield, 'Cause all God's chillun got guns!")is in exquisite bad taste, which, of course, brought to mind the "Springtime for Hitler" scene from The Producers (1968). So, for your viewing enjoyment . . .

Duck Soup

Springtime for Hitler

Civil Disobedience Videos

2009-03-05T07:47:00.003-06:00

We'd be interested in finding more short videos that illustrate contemporary instances of civil disobedience. These two 2007 videos -- 15 minutes each -- are good. The first shows a CD campaign in Portugal, against genetically modified seeds that are driving small farmers out of business. The second (produced by high school students!) is about animal liberation.

GMO civil disobedience, Portugal

The ALF and Civil Disobedience

Examples of Civil Disobedience

2009-03-04T17:46:00.003-06:00

Civil Disobedience PDF Handout

Most of the examples of Civil Disobedience that we hold up are ancient history to many of our students. They “get” Gandhi’s Salt March and Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus but have trouble relating it to contemporary issues. This .pdf handout is a list of 17 recent examples of civil disobedience that we’ve used as a discussion starter. They are meant to be provocative. I struggle, for example, with including pharmacists refusing to fill morning-after pill prescriptions because it infringes on the rights of the women presenting their prescriptions, but it generates interesting discussions.

We would use this list after having read and discussed Thoreau’s essay, defining civil disobedience (“Civil disobedience is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies”) and perhaps engaging in a few other activities, such as watching the civil disobedience debate scene from “The Great Debaters” and acting out a short scene from “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail.” By this point in the Class of Nonviolence we will also have studied Gandhi (and have shown the Salt March and Dhrasana Salt Works scenes from the film “Gandhi”) and shown the Nashville lunch counter episode from “A Force More Powerful” as part of our exploration of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Human Nature and Aggression

2009-03-03T12:48:00.003-06:00

DVD “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train,” 2004, NR
PDF Handout

In lesson one of the Class of Nonviolence we read Alfie Kohn’s “Human Nature Isn’t Inherently Violent.” A good film clip that supplements this essay is an 8-minute “bonus” feature from Howard Zinn in “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train,” On Human Nature and Aggression. He makes three points: (1) from his personal experience in WWII, men at war do not naturally want to kill; (2) from his historical research, governments have to persuade the people to go to war and (3) from his anthropological research (Turnbull, Wilson), aggression is caused by circumstances, not human nature. We also sometimes hand out a simplified copy of the Seville Statement, written by an international team of specialists in 1986 for the United Nations sponsored International Year of Peace, which contains five scientific statements about human nature and violence.

Reverence for Life

2009-02-28T17:27:00.003-06:00

Albert Schweitzer: Reverence for Live
Young Indiana Jones, DVD, (Vol. 2, Disk 4) 2007, NR

In 1993 George Lucas produced a television series, Young Indiana Jones, which showed his hero participating in many of the great events of his time. The series itself is surprisingly engaging, but the real gems for a peace educator are the special features that accompany each episode. In episode 11 “Oganga, the Giver and Taker of Life," Indy is in Africa and encounters Dr. Albert Schweitzer, recipient of the 1953 Nobel Peace Prize and, as a fellow Lutheran, a great hero of my own youth. This half hour feature will add depth to Schweitzer’s essay in lesson one of the Class of nonviolence and introduce new generations to this exceptional peacemaker. (The YouTube video is from the fictional series, not the accompanying documentary.)

The Mindless Menace of Violence

2009-02-28T17:21:00.002-06:00

Bobby
DVD, 2006, R

Bobby is a fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the June 5, 1968 shooting of Robert F. Kennedy following his win in the California Democratic Party primary. The last scene (#16, 10 minutes) shows the assassination and its aftermath. As we watch in horror, Kennedy’s voice engages us, slowly intoning the speech he delivered the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. just a month before, “On the Mindless Menace of Violence.” This is incredibly powerful: in my opinion, one of the finest American speeches ever written. A printable version is available online from the JFK archives. Give everyone a copy. This could be a thoughtful opening for the first session, or a concluding meditation.

Goya's Ghost: does torture work?

2009-02-28T17:00:00.003-06:00

Goya’s Ghost
DVD, 2006, R

In this film the painter Goya becomes involved with the Spanish Inquisition when his muse, Ines, is arrested by the church for heresy. The most powerful episode with contemporary relevance is about torture (scenes 12-14, about 10 minutes.) Ines is tortured into confessing that she is secretly practicing Jewish rites. Her father, in an attempt to get her released, invites the inquisitor to dinner with the family. He tries a bit of bribery, then logical argument, but Lorenzo will not budge. The father then has his sons and servants torture the monk to extract a false confession . . but let’s not give it all away. This is an excellent film, well worth watching in its entirety, although the scene in which Ines is tortured is probably not suitable for a high school audience. We sometimes show Goya’s paintings (The Third of May 1808 and the Disasters of War etchings) as part of lesson six, and this excerpt works well there too.

Gandhian Terms Crossword and Word Search

2009-02-28T16:23:00.005-06:00

Gandhian Terms Crossword and Word Search
PDF handout

When reading about Gandhi I confess to sometimes muddling the unfamiliar terms: is “swaraj” self-rule or a boycott? (It’s self-rule, and I remember it by recalling that the British Raj indicated British rule.) This PDF file contains two separate handouts that give students an opportunity to play around with 15 of the words they may encounter in their Gandhian studies: ahimsa, bapu, bramacharya, charkha, Dalit, dhoti, fakir, Harijan, hartal, khadi, mahatma, sarvodaya, satyagraha, swadeshi and swaraj. The crossword puzzle is the harder of the two because it doesn’t include the words, just the definitions. The word search puzzle includes both words and definitions: in addition to searching out the words, though, it is necessary to match them up with the corresponding definition. I’m not going to provide you with the answers – looking up the ones you don’t know is your exercise!

The Great Debaters

2009-02-28T16:08:00.004-06:00

The Great Debaters
DVD, 2007, PG-13

Based on a true story, The Great Debaters is about the 1935 Wiley College debate team from Marshall, Texas, who broke the color barrier to take on national champion Harvard (in real life it was USC, but let’s not quibble) and won. It’s a wonderful movie, evocative of the era and well worth showing in its entirety, but we show the last two scenes but one, #23 (The Harvard Debate) & #24 (Victory.) The students debated civil disobedience, Wiley invoking Thoreau and Gandhi and Harvard taking the side of the rule of law. It is an excellent conversation starter to accompany the reading of Thoreau’s “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” in lesson seven.

Class of Nonviolence

The War Prayer

Civil Rights Music at the White House

Punishment Park

A Biography of America

A Ripple of Hope: RFK and MLK

The Struggle for Justice (National Portrait Gallery)

Films To Help Us Rethink War

Violence: An American Tradition

Diderot: The Danger of Setting Oneself Against the Law

Images of War

The Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People's History

Howard Zinn: Three Holy Wars

Eyeless in Gaza

Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too

Nonviolence: The History of an Idea

Harvard's very popular course on justice now available to you online

What Bystanders Do When They Witness Violence

Facing History and Ourselves used a "Talk of the Nation" episode as the centerpiece for a lesson plan about bystanders to violence. We typically discuss this in the first session of the Class of Nonviolence and come around to it again towards the end.

US Nobel Peace Prize Anagram Worksheet

Brain Teasers

Conflict Revolution

How to celebrate the fall of the wall | National Catholic Reporter

Pigs Prove to Be Smart, if Not Vain

The 8th and final session of the Class of Nonviolence is about violence and animals. This article from the New York Times covers the new scientific field of "pig cognition." It says in part:

Here's one from Wired Science: Clever Crows Prove Aesop’s Fable Is More Than FictionIf the crow story interests you, here is a TED video about "The Amazing Intelligence of Crows" with Joshua Klein:

Understanding and Combating War

Understanding and Combating War

3 new books about the death penalty

What are Human Rights?

Reconsider Columbus Day

Who gets what and why

Dancing to the beat of a different rumba

Walden: a Game

Active U.S. Hate Groups

One New Book, Three New Covers

Nature Makes Us More Caring, Study Says

The People Speak - Coming to History Channel

Two new books!

Bartleby & Benito: 2 Melvilles

Visualize Whirled Peas

Fasts and Hunger Strikes: is there a difference?

Guernica

Death penalty videos

True Education

Happy Earth Day, Edward Abbey!

Peace Media Clearinghouse Launched Today

The REAL Boston Tea Party

Free Documentaries

The Hidden and Human Cost of War

Clarence Darrow

The Toys of Peace

Tolstoy Redux: Short Stories

I Watch Bad Movies So You Don’t Have To - War & Peace

They Laid Their Necks Bare

Civil Rights in the North

Civil Rights Sing-A-Long

¡Sí Se Puede!

Another Wicked Tyrant and the Howl for Justice

Wisdom of a Persian Poet

Joan Baez

We Have Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself

Mencius: The Just Ruler

Erich Fromm: The Art of Loving

Big Brother Was Watching . . .

Justice or Philanthropy?

The Cost of War

Thomas Merton

Online Workshop - Civic Dilemmas: Religion, Migration, and Belonging

Halide Edip Adivar: a Turkish Peacemaker

Ernesto Cardenal: Psalm 5

Anti-War Musical Production Numbers

Civil Disobedience Videos

Examples of Civil Disobedience

Human Nature and Aggression

Reverence for Life

The Mindless Menace of Violence

Goya's Ghost: does torture work?

Gandhian Terms Crossword and Word Search

The Great Debaters

Here's one from Wired Science: Clever Crows Prove Aesop’s Fable Is More Than Fiction
If the crow story interests you, here is a TED video about "The Amazing Intelligence of Crows" with Joshua Klein: