July-August 2001:
Activist Editorial
THE PARAMETERS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION
Activists on Trial
Activist Review
Letters
WRL News

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War Resisters League
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Activist Letters

Southern Discomfort

Thanks for a great editorial regarding the use and misuse of words reflecting and perpetuating value judgments, often subliminally. A current use of the up-down as north-south orientation of Eurocentric cartography that really bothers me is hearing stock market reporters blithely refer to a stock value decline as “going south,” equating southern, i.e., Third World, with valuelessness.

—John Cornwall Palm Springs, CA

Condoning Violence?

In her article “Microcosm of a Changing Movement” on the National Conference on Organized Resistance (May-June NVA), Lelia Spears admiringly compares the activist “interactions” she has seen in recent demonstrations to the stories, wounds, atrocities and victories of war. She notes that the conference’s organizing collective “felt a need to validate more tactics, including but not limited to civil disobedience.” And she reveals, “there is now a move towards acceptance of nonviolence as a tactic among other tactics.”

What tactics is Ms. Spears talking about? As I know from attending the conference, and anyone knows who has watched news and activist video of recent demonstrations in Seattle, DC, Philadelphia, Prague and Quebec City, she means tactics such as smashing store windows, setting dumpsters on fire, throwing up debris barricades, rushing police lines, pulling down fences and assaulting police with rocks, bottles, sticks, pipes, fencing and even Molotov cocktails (as in Prague and Quebec City). These tactics are commonly called “street fighting.”

A publication calling itself Nonviolent Activist should be speaking out against such violent mayhem. It should not seem to condone or even support it by printing this article without even a dissenting commentary.

I am writing this letter on the day of Timothy McVeigh’s execution. Like the activists Ms. Spears describes, McVeigh took the attitude that he was at war against an evil enemy and that war excused his killing 168 people.

It is time for those of us who do not condone riotous property destruction and assaults on police to speak out against it. We must criticize not only the street fighters, but those “nonviolent” activists who condone “diverse tactics” and support them by dividing protest areas into nonviolent and violent zones. The new activist violence is just a microcosm of the violence that may yet destroy humanity.

—Carol Moore Washington, DC

I would like to second Carol Moore’s veto of even tacit endorsement of “street fighting” by WRL in the Nonviolent Activist. Gene Sharp, Brian Martin, and others have warned against the dangers of “mixed” strategies when nonviolent methods are combined with violence. For purely tactical reasons alone violence of any form should be discouraged. WRL could help the cause by refreshing this discussion for the new generation of activists.

Meanwhile, to spur greater creativity in our protests and actions, see Sharp’s “198 Methods of Nonviolent Actions.” Doubtless a few more have been invented since 1973; perhaps you could run a contest? (If so, here’s my contribution: “charivari”—a loud, raucous noise used to disrupt other activities.)

See also: The Albert Einstein Institution, www.aeinstein.org, and Nonviolence International, www.members.tripod.com/nviusa/biblio.htm.

—Philip Bogdonoff Washington, DC

Pathological Trends

It is quite interesting to observe how more and more people seem to be swayed by the spurious arguments of Ward Churchill’s 1986 essay, “Pathology of Pacifism,” on the usefulness of violence. The article by Lelia Spears in your latest publication is yet another sign of this growing interest.

The trend to violence is reflective of a thoroughgoing lack of understanding on the part of its advocates of the underlying principle of nonviolent direct action, or, as in the case of Churchill, a deliberate oversight.

In this post-modern world, we are faced with a growing population of young people with absolutely no powers of conceptual or critical thinking. Writers such as Spears cannot see beyond the opposition they are so ready to face down to the conceptual world where lies the basis of political power. They are able to perceive power only in concrete terms and see only concrete ways of responding.

The ability to grasp the basis of political power and the implications for nonviolent direct action will forever be out of their reach. That is their lot. It can’t be helped.

—Alan Koontz Rockville, MD

Ed. note: See forum on the parameters of nonviolent action.