Violence & nonviolence
Do you want to remain pure? Is that it?” a black man asked me, during an argument about nonviolence. It is not possible to act at all and to remain pure; and that is not what I want, when I commit myself to the nonviolent discipline. I stand with all who say of present conditions that they do not allow men and women to be fully human and so they must be changed - all who not only say this but are ready to act.
When one is confronted with what Russell Johnson calls accurately “The…
After experiencing my first couple of week-long prison sentences in the 1980`s - when all I did was keep my head down - I started to learn how to continue my actions and resistance from “inside”. I decided that I must be myself and really live, wherever I was, and that I did not stop being a conscious, political person just because the state had incarcerated me.
I now consider nonviolent resistance whilst in prison to be part of our struggle for a better world—a way of confronting…
"A group of eight activists blockaded the entrance to AWE Aldermaston this morning at 6.45am. Using steel lock-on tubes the group have completely blocked the road. Thus stopping all construction traffic entering or leaving the site. This has caused a large tailback and the police turned all traffic away from the site.”
(“Aldermaston shut down”
After several meetings, including one at the European Social Forum in Malmö, Sweden in September last year, the International Coordination Committee No-to-NATO 2009 (ICC) was officially formed at a conference in Stuttgart, Germany over the weekend of 4-5 October 2008. We agreed four main aspects: an international demonstration in Strasbourg on 4 April, a counter-conference, civil disobedience, and a camp (called a “village” by the French).
The French groups participating in the ICC…
For about eight years now, Pt'chang, a small activist organisation based in Melbourne Australia, has been experimenting and learning about how we can apply non-violent principles and approaches to help create safety at the local community level.
Pt'chang is a “Nonviolent Community Safety and Peacekeeping Group” that assists communities and grassroots organisations create safety. Pt'chang provides training workshops, and trained legal observer teams and…
The current bloody struggle between Israel and the Palestinians has continued for about two years. The many hundreds of victims on both sides, and the even greater number of injured, are merely the most conspicuous part of the terrible suffering that the war has brought.
No-one knows whether either side will eventually achieve its aims in the struggle. But we do know that the cost is terrible. Witnessing the appalling suffering and its appalling cost, we need to ask ourselves if it…
Medellín is a city of contrasts, where you find many ways of life. But in parallel, in different neighbourhoods, people live and wage a war that, besides death and prolonged absences, leaves an odd feeling of normality - as if, here, nothing will happen. But it does happen, and increasingly proposals that people should arm themselves to defend life and institutional normality gain strength, proposals that divide the world between goodies and baddies.
Youths tend to see themselves in…
The last two years have seen a remarkable development in a new peace movement – the local anti-militarism campaigns. Following a model developed in Brighton back in 2004, people across the country are beginning to focus on the arms dealers and weapons manufacturers in their own backyards.
Lacking a commitment to pacifism or legality, the methods and motives of these new campaigns have been questioned by the older, more established peace movement (not least the co-editor of this…
ZZZ: We try to walk the walk, whether we are challenging the Israeli occupation or resolving conflicts locally.
We're living in a pressure cooker. When you are confined to your home or your bantustan, when the economic situation is deteriorating, unemployment is skyrocketing, and trauma among children is increasing, abnormal conditions create abnormal relationships among people. They create displaced anger against each other.
Yesterday we were mediating conflicts between…
Over the last few years there has been a growing critique in the West of committed nonviolence (see the G8 article on the Wales page). There are now at least three English-language books whose main purpose is to criticise nonviolence.
The key text is Ward Churchill's Pacifism as Pathology (1986) which has had a number of responses, including by George Lakey (available online).
The latest addition is Peter Gelderloos's How Nonviolence Protects the State (…
Coskun, you were imprisoned for almost 12 years, from 1979 to 1991, when the rest of your sentence was changed to a suspended sentence. What was important for you in prison and where did you get your strength from ?
The most important source of strength was my belief in being right. But this wasn’t a blind belief. I was objecting to exploitation and human rights violations. I desired democratic and economic development in our country. These were quite simple demands, compared to…
The Arab Spring appears to be having positive results for Palestinians, notably the rapprochement between the main Palestinian political parties Fatah and Hamas, and the re-opening, after four years, of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt.
However, the antipathy between Fatah and Hamas persists and it remains to be seen whether they will indeed form a joint government and hold elections in 2012. And the re-opening of Rafah on 28 May was only partial: commercial traffic is not…
Given how frequently the international community uses violence to resolve political conflicts, it is perhaps not surprising that film and TV reflect this. The myth of redemptive violence is a powerful and familiar cultural theme, and, as the excellent documentary Tough Guise (Media Education Foundation) points out, our heroes get tougher and stronger, carrying bigger weapons each year. So it’s always refreshing to find a TV programme prepared to accept that life is more complex than this.…
Originally published (for Burmese dissidents) in 1993, From Dictatorship to Democracy has since been translated into at least 28 other languages, and has now been reprinted in English by Housmans Peace Bookshop.
Sharp’s analysis – and this short book in particular – has reportedly played a significant inspirational role in a whole series of nonviolent uprisings, from Serbia to Egypt. Nonetheless, his leaden prose, the extremely general nature of much of the analysis and the lack of…
“On December 23, April 6 activist xxxxxxxxxxxx … alleged that several opposition parties and movements have accepted an unwritten plan for democratic transition by 2011; we are doubtful of this claim” – secret cable from the US Embassy in Cairo to Washington [1]
“Nonviolent action is not just about non-violence, but also about joy and happiness … [People] saw in Tahrir what Egypt could possibly be in the future and they wanted to be part of this new Egypt” – Wael Adel,…
