The War Resisters League is part of a National Call for Nonviolent Resistance, though this is the first we at Nonviolence.org have heard of it (lucky we surfed by this morning, does the peace movement take pride in its insularity?). See the “iraq Pledge of Resistance”:http://www.iraqpledge.org/ for more info. Unfortunately with this little advance notice, we won’t be going to DC’s events this weekend. If any Nonviolence.org readers do we’d love a report.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Category Archives ⇒ Nonviolence
From 1995 – 2008 I was the publisher of Nonviolence.org, a ground-breaking portal and blog about peace. Many of these articles are archived from that period.
Important Posts:
* The Revolution will be Online (1995)
* NYTimes Profile of Nonviolence.org (1998)
* The Early Blogging Days (2005)
* The History of Nonviolence.org, 1995 – 2008 (2008)
MoveOn at peace with War?
March 16, 2005
Over on AlterNet, Normon Solomon is asking why the internet progressive group MoveOn has dropped iraq from it’s agenda: “When a large progressive organization takes the easy way and makes peace with war, the abdication of responsibility creates a vacuum. Ironically, a group that became an internet phenom by recognizing and filling a void is now creating one.”
Seattle Five Years Later
December 6, 2004
It’s been five years since the instantly-famous world trade protests in Seattle invented a new sort of activism. Angry confrontations with police dominated the pictures coming from the protests. The protest marked the coming-out party of the Independent Media movement, both both brought together and reported on the protests.
In the _Seattle Weekly_, Geov Parrish asks “Is This What Failure Looks Like?”:http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0447/041124_news_wtogeov.php:
bq. But it’s one thing to shut down a high-level meeting for a day; it’s quite another to get your priorities enacted as public policy. And so, in the half-decade since Seattle’s groundbreaking protests, anti-globalization and fair-trade organizers in the United States have struggled to find ways to not simply create debate but win.
I’ve always respect Geov, who’s been one of the rare pacifist organizers who’s acted as a bridge between the gray-haired oldline peace groups and the younger Seattle-style activists. So it’s kind of funny to see his thoughtful article described by Counterpunch this way. Read Charles Munson’s critique, “Seattle Weekly Trashes Anti-Globalization Movement”:http://www.counterpunch.org/munson11302004.html.
The WTO protests were a landmark and radicalized a lot of new activists. But despite being 99% peaceful, they never shook the image of the black-clad anarchist spoiled brats throwing bricks through windows. Although I had friends who donned the black hankerchiefs, the black bloc always reminded me of the loser high school kids who turn over dumpsters behind the 7 – 11; the high political rhetoric seemed secondary to the joy of being “bad.” It was look-at-me! activism, which is fun and occassionally useful, but not the stuff to create fundamental social change.
I participated in a few post-Seattle events: the anti World Bank protests in Washington DC and the Republican National Convention protests in my hometown of Philadelphia, serving as an Indymedia worker for both. I witnessed wonderful creativity, I marveled at the instant community of the Indymedia Centers, I was fasincated by the cell-phone/internet organizing.
But there was also this kind of nagging sense that we were trying to recreate the mythical “Seattle.” It was as if we were all derivative rock bands trying to jump on the bandwagon of a breakthrough success: the Nivana clones hoping to recatch the magic. It was hard to shake the feeling we were play acting ourselves sometimes.
It’s good to honestly reflect on the protests now. We need to see what worked and what didn’t. The fervor and organizing strategies changed activism and will continue to shape how we see social-change organizing. The world is better for what went down in Seattle five years ago, and so is North American polticial organizing. But let’s stop idolizing what happened there and let’s see what we can learn. For we’ve barely begun the work.
FBI Cracking Down on Indymedia?
October 13, 2004
The “Indymedia” movement of independent media centers has been one of the most hopeful initiatives for democracy over the past few years. The Indymedia sites post stories from amateur reporters, in print, video and audio formats. The regional Independent Media Centers have been particularly active during large scale protests, covering them with a range and detail seen nowhere else.
Now there’s disturbing news that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has “seized Indymedia’s computers in Britain”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3732718.stm. Details are lacking, but it certainly looks like yet another chilling violation of free speech in the name of “homeland security.” Here’s another article, from a “local Indymedia Center”:http://www.phillyimc.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/08/1818236. More as this frightening story develops. As we get information we will participate in any and all protests of this seizure. You can also check out thread on the “Nonviolence.org Board”:http://www.nonviolence.org/comment/viewtopic.php?t=2663 (though much of it lame name-calling, sigh…)
NVA: US Military Draft Probably Isn’t Coming Back
August 26, 2004
Rick Jahnkow argues in May’s _Nonviolent Activist_ that there’s a “Decreased Likelihood of Draft”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm. There are many aging pacifists that have become obsessed lately with the idea that compulsory military service might be returning to the United States. For example, I’ve watched the leader of one annual anti-draft workshop predict the draft’s imminent return year after year, in ever more excited terms and wondered what evidence this organizer has seen that I haven’t.
Jahnkow watches this issue as much as anyone in his work for the San Diego-based “Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft”:http://www.comdsd.org/ and he’s been watching the hype build as he’s become more skeptical:
bq. Warnings about an impending draft have been circulating on the Internet for months now. Some are tying a possible draft to the election and predicting with bold certainty that conscription will be introduced in 2005… The energy that�s been generated on this topic has been both amazing and, I have to confess, somewhat seductive to anti-draft organizations like the one for which I work.
Most of the people I’ve seen get excited by a possible return of the draft were in their teens back in the Vietnam War era. Their organizing sometimes seems almost nostalgic for the issues of their youth. They’re trying to save the current generation from having to go through the same trauma. But the older activists’ anti-draft work is often patronistic and self-congratulatory, for it doesn’t take into account the fact that younger Americans don’t need saving.
The bottom line truth is that the Pentagon simply couldn’t reinstate the draft. Jahnkow cites a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll that found that 88 percent of people 18 – 29 oppose a return of the draft. There would be mass mayhem if the draft returned. While some young men would surely obey, a huge percentage would actively defy it. Even if only 10% dramatically refused, the system would break down. This is a generation raised in a post-punk culture and many of its members aggressively question authority. They were raised by parents who lived through the sixties and saw widespread lies and abuse of power, including the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The media mythology around sixties-era radicalism has kept us from realizing that there’s a baseline of everyday radicalism today that far overshadows much of what was going on thirty years ago. The Pentagon knows this better than the peace movement does.
It’s not the only nostalgic protesting this generation is engaging in these days and I’ve compared revived organizing around “phone war tax resistance”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000230.php to “recycling dead horses.” I agree with Rick that today’s teens and twenty-somethings have real issues which we need to address. He says it so well:
bq. The latter point leads me to the second reason why I have some negative feelings about the current concern over the draft: Much of the anxiety is coming from people who are ignoring the more pressing problem of aggressive military recruiting, which, among other things, disproportionately affects non-affluent youths and people of color. In essence, there has been a draft for these individuals�a poverty draft�and yet it has drawn relatively little attention from antiwar activists. There is a race and class bias reflected in this that needs to be seriously considered and addressed by the general peace movement.
“Here’s the link to his article again”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm
h4. Related:
* Last November we published a provocative article by pacifist Johann Christoph Arnold arguing that “A Military Draft Would be Good for Us”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php and a personal response piece I wrote about how the “pressures of a military draft”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php can force an eighteen year old to really think hard about issues of war and peace.
* Nonviolence.org has guide to issues of “military conscription and conscientious objection”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/conscience.php. We also watch issues of the “peace movement”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_peace_movement.php, and tend to highlight generational issues a lot.
* The Urban Legend debunkers at Snopes.com have tracked and researched the “draft fear emails going around”:http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/draft.asp. They don’t think a draft is coming back and any time soon, citing many sources.
Recreating the theatrical residues of history
April 3, 2004
On the Picket Line, a funny post about the “circus of the current progressive movement”:http://www.sniggle.net/Experiment/index.php?entry=26Mar04
bq. In San Francisco, to be part of the anti-war, progressive movement means to be sharing the stage with a whole bunch of unapologetic Stalinists, paranoid schizophrenics, ersatz intifadists, tin-eared rhetorical broken-records, insatiable identity-politics police, new-age gurus of every variety, publicity hounds, careerist Democrats, and the like… A superficial fetishization of the theatrical residue of history gets you a renaissance faire, not a successful political movement.
The author also gives some hopeful reports from a recent conference he attended.
Collaring the Peacniks in Iowa
February 11, 2004
It’s getting “scary in Amerikkka when they start rounding up peaceniks in Iowa”:www.nytimes.com/2004/02/10/national/10PROT.html
bq. To hear the antiwar protesters describe it, their forum at a local university last fall was like so many others they had held over the years. They talked about the nonviolent philosophies of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., they said, and how best to convey their feelings about iraq into acts of civil disobedience. But last week, subpoenas began arriving seeking details about the forum’s sponsor — its leadership list, its annual reports, its office location –and the event itself.
Mild-mannered protesters wearing 1980s-style Guatemalan clothing, talking about Gandhi and climbing the fences of National Guard bases are not a threat to state of Iowa. But this kind of strong-arm tactic is a clear threat free speech and a clear act of intimidation to those who might join the peace movement. How sad. Unfortunately I know lots of people who are already afraid to speak out to loudly – this will silence at least some of them.
Of course, it’s hard to get too worked up about Iowa subpoenas, when much more serious civil rights violations have been going on since the start of the Afghanistan War. The “prisoners of war” down in the American base at “Guantanamo Bay have been held without charge or trial for two years now”:http://web.amnesty.org/pages/guantanamobay-index-eng.
Religious Peace Left: Puny, Aged & Marginalized?
January 16, 2004
Journalist Mark I. Pinsky talks about the “state of the religious left”:www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/7644649.htm :
bq. Left-wing religious efforts at political mobilization — where they exist — seem puny, aged and marginalized. After decades of riding popular social movements such as civil rights, the left splintered and now seems unable to regroup. Conversely, the GOP has co-opted the support of religious voters by focusing their attention on cultural and lifestyle issues — such as gay marriage.
Article found from a link on “The Right Christians”:http://www.therightchristians.org/ site, which has more commentary on the subject and a proposal to mimic the Dean Campaign internet organizing to rebuild a progressive Christian left.