The Toys of Peace

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 . . .

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.