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Dialog Continues And here’s Part II — your part — of “What Makes an Action Nonviolent?” Don’t stop
now So why do we care? First of all, in order to understand each other and communicate, we need shared vocabularies for our concepts and shared meanings for our words. Even when we stretch and twist these meanings for rhetorical effect, the effectiveness of the rhetoric depends on the listeners already knowing the usual meaning of the word so they can appreciate the creative use. Thus, we impoverish the language if we say “Nonviolence is good. Therefore we will call everything we believe in ‘nonviolent,’ but only what we believe in.” Another reason we care about semantics, as people have recently been discussing in these pages, is the way in which our word choices shape perceptions. And that is why, even if we clearly explain the meanings we’ve assigned to the word, our definition of “nonviolence” should not be so narrow that it privileges the preferences and habits of an elite clique, nor should it be so wide open that the difference between “violence” and “nonviolence” depends on who the victim is. Because then the victim is us—and our best hope of breaking the cycle of violence. —Robert Alan Wake Our nonviolent way of life must remember its history and its call to create a new blueprint of thinking and direct action for social and environmental and economic change. Let us hold the legacy of our own civil rights movement and remember that Seattle was a blood transfusion long in the making and remember from the streets the history of apartheid in South Africa and how it enabled the world to take a stand against fascism. It is not over. The cast of characters assumes new names, and apartheid under the corporate state has a new set of rules culled from old terms. Let us understand the ethics of our own collective intelligence in the era of the information highway. Recognizing each other as intelligent beings is to grant each other a social identity and begin the process of coordinating our technological, scientific, economic, legal and artistic skills. We can rethink our way of living in this world and move to act on it. This is why nonviolent action is for the long term and why it will not always be equal to conformity and solidarity of opinion. But therein lies its creativity and the human desire for transformation and freedom. Power based on fear destroys community from communicating with itself. The nature of nonviolence is community based and avoids the limits of power. —Mary Jane Sullivan The discussions you’re having about what is, or is not, nonviolent are long overdue. Keep talking! For my part, I agree that destroying inanimate objects—things that cannot feel pain—is not violence. I also feel that property destruction as a tactic is counterproductive. It does not intimidate the great corporations of the planet, but it does confuse people who might be our allies. If the economic powers that be are ever to be meaningfully challenged, our ranks must grow a millionfold. We will win more recruits by disciplined nonviolent action, backed by rational analysis and argument, than we ever could via inarticulate window-smashing. As a related topic, would you consider changing the name of your publication? The Nonviolent Activist is almost always referred to by its acronym, “NVA.” “NVA” in and of itself, is an obstacle to communication. Everyone of my generation recalls that the North Vietnamese Army was always called the NVA. It appears to some of us that, when WIN Magazine (Workshop in Nonviolence) was renamed the NVA, it was a subtle, probably not unconscious way of celebrating the defeat of the U.S. military in Vietnam. While understandable in the euphoria that accompanied the end of the war, it’s nevertheless inappropriate that an organization dedicated to nonviolence should adopt an acronym synonymous with a nation’s—any nation’s—army. —Steve Trimm John M. Miller replies: When the NVA (the magazine) was founded from the merger of WIN Magazine (for which I was the last staffer) and WRL News, the Vietnam War had been over for nearly a decade. I can honestly say the similarities in initials never occurred to us. As far as I can recall, this is the first time it has ever come up. I found the discussion of “What Makes an Action Nonviolent?” disappointing. I don’t think anyone said anything new in it. Most authors seemed to be rehashing debates from the sixties; a few rehashed the post-Seattle property destruction debate. Not that it’s bad to restate old points—I was reminded of things I’d forgotten—but no one was engaging any of the new and interesting questions raised since Seattle. In particular, I think that the Black Bloc has raised some important questions, although I don’t agree with most of their answers. Dismissing the Black Bloc and other young activists as incapable of critical thinking, as Alan Koontz does in his letter (Activist Letters, July-August), is just to engage in ageist insults—something I, as a 27-year-old, don’t particularly care for. We should instead engage in constructive, critical dialogue with the Black Bloc, in particular about the questions they raise on the limits of civil disobedience—as distinct from nonviolent direct action. Much civil disobedience is not even direct action—it doesn’t disrupt the workings of dominant institutions—but is instead a simple statement of conscience. When civil disobedience has been disruptive—as with the shutdown of the World Trade Organization in Seattle, A16 in DC, the protest against the prison-industrial complex in Philly, etc.—it is increasingly met with brutal repression. Why should we get arrested and tortured by the police if we can avoid it? I think the Black Bloc’s techniques of un-arresting people and the like are worth exploring. Arrest may be a chance for dialogue for some, but it comes at a price not everyone is willing to pay. As a possible alternative to the Black Bloc’s trashing and street-fighting, we should instead look at the “white overall” tactics developed by the Italian group Ya Basta!—they dress up in helmets and padded white overalls so they look like the Michelin man and are able to simply wade through the cops, considerably less likely to be hurt than someone without this armor, all the time remaining nonviolent. I think that much of the problem that Koontz half-perceives is not lack of critical thinking, but lack of knowledge. The works of the major radical pacifist thinkers like Paul Goodman, Dave Dellinger and Barbara Deming are either entirely or almost entirely out of print. Not having read their work, most people of my generation have no foundation to build a complex understanding of nonviolence on. So they associate it with liberals like Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange, not revolutionaries like Dellinger and Deming. Making the works of the great radical pacifists readily available and showing enough respect to engage in critical dialogue with groups like the Black Bloc might go a long way to building a more nonviolent movement. —Matthew Williams Ed. note: Many works by Goodman, Dellinger, Deming, et al., are available from WRL—write and ask for our Literature List, or go to our online bookstore. Congratulations for an outstanding discussion of the parameters of nonviolent action. It is impossible, for this reader at least, to say which one was best. Given the radically wide spread of value systems from which nonviolent actions arise, there will obviously never be a basic handbook or even near-universal agreement about fundamentals, let alone practical application of nonviolent philosophy. Perhaps if every writer could have summarized her or his position as did Dan Berrigan’s declarative sentence, “The war stops here,” your contributors’ eloquence would have been easier to deal with. Virginia Baron’s “Between Sticks and Swords” raises questions that have been troubling me lately. Are there any attempts at widespread, organized civil disobedience among the Palestinians? Why has not the limited but real initial success of the West Bank’s Beit Sahour civil disobedience in the first Intifada received greater publicity? Baron says only, “The people of Beit Sahour paid a heavy price” for their resistance. And what are the nonviolence camps on the West Bank this summer? Is the apparent silence of the PLO in the face of spontaneous and unorganized violence the only response from their side to their continuous and tragic leakage of blood and spirit? If there is no Gandhi arising from the masses of oppressed Palestinians, cannot there at least be greater attempts to elicit support for whatever sparks of nonviolent resistance do come into our consciousness? As many in this country are supportive of Peace Now and Israeli attempts at nonviolent conflict resolution, certainly there could be much support here from the Arab community and beyond, to similar attempts by the Palestinians. Eager for answers. —Al White Virginia Baron is traveling in Israel/Palestine as this issue goes to press. She’ll respond in November-December. Thank you for your recent issue on “What Makes an Action Nonviolent?” I found especially valuable the views of those who share the Plowshares and anarchist approach to nonviolent protest. Here are some further thoughts on the destruction-of-property element: The destruction of property is not inherently a violent act unless it is the destruction of another’s property. No one can object when I destroy my own property and am the sole bearer of financial loss. But if it is someone else’s property that I destroy, it is not enough for me to claim that such property is an agent of violence and should be destroyed. Unless my destruction of another’s property costs me at least as much as it costs them, I am not owning up to my own complicity in the evil the property represents. What then is a fair cost for me to bear? Certainly time in jail is not enough, since my own jail time has actually cost the public many thousands of dollars. If my brick-through-the-window is not to be an act of violence, there must be dollar-for-dollar restitution. If not, I am admitting my unwillingness to sacrifice a portion of my livelihood for a cause I say I believe in—not much of a nonviolent witness. All of which is to suggest that a willingness to compensate in kind is a necessary element of nonviolent protest. Responses are invited. —David Duncome White I greatly appreciated your special section on the parameters of nonviolent action. The nine articles described a range of interesting perspectives on what constitutes nonviolent action. However, framing the question as “What makes an action nonviolent?” focuses attention primarily on the morality of various tactics. Discussing morality is good, but framing the discussion this way inadvertently resurrects an old, stale dichotomy in which nonviolent actions are seen as moral, but (unfortunately) ineffective and violent actions are considered immoral, but effective. I do not accept this formulation. Many of the techniques of nonviolent action developed over the last five decades were chosen because they make actions more effective in bringing about positive social change—and more effective than their violent counterparts. For example, angry tactics like throwing bricks through windows, taunting cops, or setting dumpsters on fire may make demonstrators feel powerful temporarily, but they usually don’t bring about much social change—they don’t empower or educate large numbers of people, democratize institutions and social systems, nor undercut the power of corrupt authorities or violent institutions. Instead, they typically open the movement to media distortion, infiltration and provocation by police agents and vicious counterattack (as we’ve seen recently), which eventually undermines our power and trashes the movement. In contrast, bold actions based on honesty, openness and love are not just more positive and moral, they also work better in bringing about positive change. By being honest, open and loving, we undercut any justification for repression by the authorities. By insisting that all participants be members of an affinity group and agree to adhere to nonviolent guidelines developed consensually in advance, we minimize police agent infiltration and provocation. By working together cooperatively and taking strong, active steps to stop all oppression, we visibly demonstrate what we are working for and tangibly show that “this is what democracy looks like.” By keeping our actions within the realm of what most people consider acceptable behavior, we focus attention on the issue at hand instead of allowing our tactics to become the focus. Still, as Barbara Deming argues in her essay “On Revolution and Equilibrium,” violent action often has one positive aspect that is usually not matched by nonviolent action: It can be bold and daring, demanding complete change of society and the immediate end of systemic oppression and exploitation. Too often, nonviolent action is timid, tepid and boring. Our challenge as nonviolent activists is to make our nonviolent actions as strong, colorful, exciting, far-reaching, penetrating and earthshaking as the best violent action. Over the last few decades, our actions have moved in this direction. For example, the 1999 Seattle WTO demonstration had creativity, beauty, joy and drama. Though marred by some clandestine trashing (by perhaps 100 of the 40,000 people there), it was a large, mostly nonviolent demonstration in which thousands of people chained themselves together and valiantly endured beatings, teargassing and pepper spraying. Massive organizing before the action had won large numbers of people to our perspective including environmentalists, labor activists, a large percentage of Seattle residents and even some reporters, officials and police officers. Since there were large numbers of dedicated activists willing to risk arrest and injury, it gave them the power to blockade large sections of the city for days. Activists also showed incredible courage in the face of vicious attack—inspiring awe in everyone who saw it. If we can continue to develop our actions so they are even more powerful, far-reaching, creative, fun, dramatic and convincing, there will be no excuse for considering violent action. —Randy Schutt The next trick is to figure out effective nonviolent approaches to deal with the trashers in our midst, both dedicated testosteroned anarchists and agents provocateurs—without “dividing the movement.” That dialogue would be as tricky as it is vital. Anyone who can gather one or two dozen activists from across the spectrum of perspectives on this and use dynamic facilitation (see www.co-intelligence.org/P-dynamicfacilitation.html) for a couple of days, would probably have a major breakthrough —Tom Atlee |
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