Signs of Hope

November 26, 2003

I think I some­times appear more pes­simistic than I real­ly am. Here are some of this week’s rea­sons for hope.
* Being in touch with Jorj & Sue and Barb and Tobi because of these writ­ings (could the “Lost Generation”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000147.php be mud­dling towards a new coalesence?)
* A small flur­ry of recent talks and pam­phlets about redis­cov­er­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism: Mar­ty Grundy’s 2002 lec­ture _Quaker Trea­sure: Dis­cov­er­ing The Basis For Uni­ty Among Friends_, Paul Lacey’s _The Author­i­ty Of Our Meet­ings Is The Pow­er Of God_ , and Lloyd Lee Wilson’s “Wrestling With Our Faith Tradition”:http://www.ncymc.org/journal/ncymcjournal3.pdf (PDF)
* Tony P. say­ing he was griev­ed that Julie has left the Soci­ety of Friends and car­ing enough to talk to her. Thank you.
* A fly­er I saw this week­end, writ­ten by PYM Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion staff. It was a list of what they thought they should be doing and it was real­ly pret­ty good (why don’t they’d print this in _PYM News_ , it’s much bet­ter than their boil­er­plate entries this issue). Even more I hope the work does take a move in that direction.
* Thomas Ham­m’s The Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca, which just came in yes­ter­day. It’s per­haps a lit­tle too intro­duc­to­ry but we need a good intro­duc­tion and Ham­m’s the one to write it. His book on Ortho­dox Friends, Trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism is amaz­ing­ly well researched and essen­tial read­ing for any involved Friend who wants to under­stand who we are. He’s work­ing on a com­pan­ion his­to­ry on the Hick­sites, which is very much needed.

A Military Draft Would be Good for Us

November 12, 2003

From Johann Christoph Arnold, a “provoca­tive argu­ment that a mil­i­tary draft might not be a bad idea”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/1003-arnold.php. “Decid­ing which side to stand on is one of life’s most vital skills. It forces you to test your own con­vic­tions, to assess your per­son­al integri­ty and your char­ac­ter as an individual.”
It’s a pret­ty dras­tic wish. I don’t real­ly wish it on today’s youn­gins’ (I’m not sure Arnold is quite con­vinced either). But I will give a snip­pet of my own per­son­al sto­ry, since it’s kind of appro­pri­ate to the issue: when I was a senior in high school my father des­per­ate­ly want­ed me to attend the U.S. Naval Acad­e­my. I went on inter­views and even took the first phys­i­cal. The pres­sure to join was sort of akin to the pres­sure young peo­ple of ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions have faced with a mil­i­tary draft (except more per­son­al, as I was essen­tial­ly liv­ing with the chair of the draft Mar­tin Kel­ley board). I was forced to real­ly think hard about what I believed. I had to rec­on­cile my romati­cism about the navy with my gut instincts that fight­ing was nev­er a real solu­tion. My father’s pres­sure made me real­ize I was a paci­fist. With my deci­sion to forego the Naval Acad­e­my made, I start­ed ask­ing myself what oth­er ram­i­fi­ca­tions fol­lowed from my peace stance. Almost twen­ty years, here’s Non​vi​o​lence​.org.
Arnold’s argu­ment, right or wrong, does reflect my story:
bq. A draft would present every young per­son with a choice between two paths, both of which require courage: either to heed the call of mil­i­tary duty and be rushed off to war, or to say, “No, I will give my life in the ser­vice of peace.”

Peace and Twenty-Somethings

October 17, 2003

Over on Non​vi​o​lence​.org, I’ve post­ed some­thing I orig­i­nal­ly start­ed writ­ing for my per­son­al site: Where is the grass­roots con­tem­po­rary non­vi­o­lence move­ment? It asks why there’s no the kind of young, grass­roots cul­ture around peace like the net­works that I see “else­where on the net.”

The piece speaks for itself but there is one point of con­text and a few obser­va­tions to make. The first is that the grass­roots cul­ture I was think­ing of when I wrote the piece was the “emer­gent church,” “young evan­gel­i­cal” move­ment. Thir­ty years ago the kids I’ve met at “Cir­cle of Hope”, a Philadel­phia “emer­gent church” loose­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Brethren could eas­i­ly have been at a Move­ment for New Soci­ety* train­ing: the cul­ture, the inter­ests, the demo­graph­ics are all strik­ing­ly similar.

(MNS was a nation­al but West Philly-centered net­work of group hous­es, pub­li­ca­tions, and orga­niz­ing that forged the iden­ti­ties of many of the twenty-somethings who par­tic­i­pat­ed; Non​vi​o​lence​.org is arguably a third-generation descen­dant of MNS, via New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers where I worked for six years).

The obser­va­tion for Friends is that retro-organizing like the relatively-new “Pen­dle Hill Peace Net­work” [web­site URL long since dropped & picked up by spam­mer] will have a real­ly hard time act­ing as any sort of out­reach project to twenty-somethings (a main goal accord­ing to a talk giv­en my month­ly meet­ing by its direc­tor). The grass­roots peace-centric com­mu­ni­ties that were thriv­ing when the Net­work spon­sors were in their twen­ties don’t exist any­more. Rather pre­dictably, the pho­tographs of the next two dozen speak­ers for the Pen­dle Hill Peace­build­ing Forum series show only one who might be under forty (maybe, and she’s from an exot­ic locale which is why she gets in). I’m glad that a gen­er­a­tion of sixty-something Quak­er activists are guar­an­teed steady employ­ment, but don’t any Quak­er insti­tu­tions think there’s one Amer­i­can activist under forty worth lis­ten­ing to?

I think the best descrip­tion of this phe­nom­e­non comes from the mil­i­tary. They call it “inces­tu­ous ampli­fi­ca­tion” and define it as “a con­di­tion in war­fare where one only lis­tens to those who are already in lock­step agree­ment, rein­forc­ing set beliefs and cre­at­ing a sit­u­a­tion ripe for mis­cal­cu­la­tion.” I sus­pect that peace activists are so wor­ried about their own rel­e­van­cy that they have a hard time rec­og­niz­ing new peers or changed circumstances.

These num­bers and the lack of speak­er diver­si­ty explain why I rarely even both­er with Quak­er peace con­fer­ences any­more. I would­n’t mind being over­looked in my peace min­istry if I saw oth­er activists my age being rec­og­nized. But I can’t take my invis­i­bil­i­ty as feed­back since it’s clear­ly not about me or my work. The homo­gene­ity of the speak­ers lists at most con­fer­ences sends a clear mes­sage that younger peo­ple aren’t want­ed except as pas­sive audi­ence mem­bers clap­ping for the inspir­ing fifty- to seventy-somethings on stage. How much of cur­rent retro peace orga­niz­ing is just self-stroking Boomer fantasy?

The in-group inces­tu­ous­ness has cre­at­ed a gen­er­a­tion gap of rel­e­van­cy. When insti­tu­tions and move­ments become myopic, they become irrel­e­vant to those locked out­side. We have to go else­where to build our identities.

The inter­net is one place to go. From there it’s clear that the insti­tu­tion­al projects don’t have the “buzz,” i.e., the sup­port and excit­ment, that the Gen-X-led projects do. The inter­net alone won’t save us: there’s only so much cul­ture one can build online and computer-mediated dis­cus­sions favor argu­men­ta­tion, ratio­nal­i­ty, and ide­o­log­i­cal cor­rect­ness. But it’s one of the few venues open to out­siders with­out cash or insti­tu­tion­al clout.

But what about the con­tent of a twenty-first cen­tu­ry twenty-something peace movement?

Many of today’s twenty-something Quak­ers were raised up as sec­u­lar peace activists. Our reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams often de-emphasize con­tro­ver­sial issues of faith and belief to focus on the peace tes­ti­mo­ny as the uni­fy­ing Quak­er val­ue. Going to protests is lit­er­al­ly part of the cur­ricu­lum of many Young Friends pro­grams. Even more of a prob­lem, old­er Friends are often afraid to share their faith plain­ly and ful­ly with younger Friends on a one-on-one basis. The prac­tice of per­son­al and Meeting-based spritu­al men­tor­ship that once trans­mit­ted Friends val­ues between gen­er­a­tions is very under-utilized today.

Almost all of these Friends stop par­tic­i­pat­ing in Quak­erism as they enter their twen­ties, com­ing back only occa­sion­al­ly for reunion-type gath­er­ings. Many of these lapsed Friends are out explor­ing alter­na­tive spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions that more clear­ly artic­u­late a faith that can give mean­ing and pur­pose to social action. I have friends in this lost Quak­er gen­er­a­tion that are going to Bud­dhist tem­ples, prac­tic­ing yoga spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, build­ing sweat lodges and join­ing evan­gel­i­cal or Roman Catholic church­es. Will they real­ly be won back with anoth­er lec­ture series? What would hap­pen if we Friends start­ed artic­u­lat­ing the deep faith roots of our own peace tes­ti­mo­ny? What if we start­ed tes­ti­fy­ing to one anoth­er about that great Pow­er that’s tak­en away occa­sion for war, what if our tes­ti­mo­ny became a wit­ness to our faith?

Why are a lot of the more thought­ful under-40s going to alter­na­tive church­es and what are they hop­ing to find there?

Don’t get me wrong: I hope these new peace ini­tia­tives do well and help to build a thriv­ing twenty-something activist scene again. It’s just that for fif­teen years I’ve seen a suces­sion of projects aimed at twenty-somethings come and go, fail­ing to ignite sus­tain­ing inter­est. I wor­ry that things won’t change until spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tions seri­ous­ly start includ­ing younger peo­ple in the decision-making process from their incep­tion and start rec­og­niz­ing that our focus might be rad­i­cal­ly different.


Post­script
I share some obser­va­tions about the dif­fer­ent way insti­tu­tion­al and out­sider Friends use the inter­net in How Insid­ers and Seek­ers Use the Quak­er Net.

UPDATE: The Pen­dle Hill Peace Net­work was laid down in late 2005. The cit­ed rea­son was “bud­getary con­straints,” an emp­ty excuse that side­steps any respon­si­bil­i­ty for exam­in­ing vision, inclu­sion or impli­men­ta­tion. It’s forum is now an adver­tis­ing stage for “free mature porn pics.” It’s very sad and there’s no joy in say­ing “I told you so.”

UPDATE: After twelve years I laid down Non​vi​o​lence​.org and sold the domain. I nev­er received any real sup­port from Friends.

U.S. throwing out Al Qaeda trial

September 26, 2003

Updat­ing a sto­ry we brought you back in July , the U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment wants to drop the charges against the only per­son charged in an Amer­i­can court over the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks two years ago. The Jus­tice Depart­ment doesn’t want to allow Zacarias Mous­saoui or his defense team to inter­view oth­er sus­pect­ed terrorists.

What does Mous­saoui know? What do his poten­tial defense wit­ness­es know? And why doesn’t U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Ashcroft want these peo­ple to speak in an open tri­al? Mous­saoui has admit­ted being a mem­ber of Al Qae­da but any infor­ma­tion he or his wit­ness­es know is at least two years old. Why is a tri­al so wor­ri­some that the U.S. would throw away a tri­al over it?

U.S. taking on Hussein Strongman Role

August 24, 2003

It should­n’t be a sur­prise but it makes me sick any­way. The _Washington Post_ reports that the “U.S. occu­pa­tion is hir­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein’s ex-spies”:www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37331-2003Aug23.html.
It must be a good job mar­ket for mid-level Sad­dam Hus­sein loy­al­ists. Back in June, we learned that the U.S. had put “ex-Iraqi gen­er­als in charge of many Iraq cities”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000027.php (at the same time the U.S. can­celed promised elec­tions). The U.S. trum­pets cap­ture of big-name Iraqi lead­ers like “Chem­i­cal Ali”:www.msnbc.com/news/955391.asp?vts=082120030615 but then qui­et­ly hires their assis­tants. The major­i­ty of the new U.S. intel­li­gence recruits come from Sad­dam Hus­sein’s Mukhabarat, an agency whose name is said to inspire dread among Iraqis.
The infra­struc­ture of Sad­dam Hus­sein’s repres­sion appa­ra­tus is being rebuilt as a U.S. repres­sion appa­ra­tus. The stat­ues of Sad­dam Hus­sein go down, the “play­ing card” Iraqi fig­ure­heads get caught, but not much changes.
The arti­cle says that the new spy hir­ing is “covert” but it’s appar­ent­ly no secret in Iraq. even the Iraqi Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil, a dum­my rep­re­sen­ta­tive body hand­picked by U.S. forces, has expressed “adamant objec­tions” to the recruit­ment campaign:
bq. “We’ve always crit­i­cized the pro­ce­dure of recruit­ing from the old regime’s offi­cers. We think it is a mis­take,” Mah­di said. “We’ve told them you have some bad peo­ple in your secu­ri­ty apparatus.”
No, the “covert” audi­ence is the U.S. pub­lic, who might start feel­ing quesy about the Iraq War if they knew how eas­i­ly the U.S. was slip­ping into Sad­dam Hus­sein’s shoes.

Insuring Violence Never ends

August 22, 2003

“Bill Hobbs”:http://hobbsonline.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_hobbsonline_archive.html#106139209827725521 chal­lenged Non​vi​o​lence​.org about the recent lack of con­dem­na­tions of Pales­tin­ian vio­lence. It’s a fair cri­tique and a good ques­tion. For the record, Non​vi​o​lence​.org agrees with you that bomb­ing bus­es is wrong. Hamas should be con­demned, thank you. Of course, Israelis build­ing in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries is also wrong and should also be con­demned. The zealots in the con­flict there demand that every­one take sides, but to be paci­fist means nev­er tak­ing the side of evil and always demand­ing that the third way of non­vi­o­lence be found.
The Israelis and Pales­tini­ans have so much in com­mon. Both are a historically-persecuted peo­ple with con­test­ed claim to the land. The war between them has been large­ly fund­ed and egged on by out­side par­ties who seem to have a vest­ed inter­est in the vio­lence con­tin­u­ing ad infini­tum. Both sides chron­i­cle every bus bombed and bul­let fired, using the out­rage to ral­ly the faith­ful to fresh atroc­i­ties. Blogs like Bill Hobbs’ and orga­ni­za­tions like the Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty Move­ment help insure that the bomb­ings will nev­er stop. Caught in the mid­dle are a lot of naive kids: sui­cide bombers, sol­diers, and activists who think just one more act of over-the-top brav­ery will stop the violence.
The war in Israel and Pales­tine will only stop when enough Israelis and Pales­tini­ans declare them­selves trai­tors to the chants of nation­al­is­tic jin­go­ism. We are all Israelis, we are all Pales­tini­ans. There but for the grace of God go all of us: our hous­es bull­dozed, our loved ones killed on the way to work.
Once upon a time we in Amer­i­ca could think that we were immune to it all; the idea that we’re all Israelis and Pales­tini­ans seemed a rhetor­i­cal stretch. But I was one of the mil­lions who spent the night of 9/11/01 call­ing New York friends to see if they were safe (I was on my hon­ey­moon and was so shak­en that one of my calls was to an ex-girlfriend’s par­ents; my wife grace­ful­ly for­gave me). On that day, we Amer­i­cans were deliv­ered the mes­sage that we too are com­plic­it. We too must also declare our­selves trai­tors to our coun­try’s war mytholo­gies and start being hon­est about our his­toric com­plic­i­ty with war. As a peo­ple, Amer­i­cans weren’t inno­cent vic­tims at either Pearl Har­bor or the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers (though as indi­vid­u­als we were, which is the point of non­vi­o­lent out­rage of nation­al­is­tic vio­lence). every blog post com­mem­o­rat­ing a vic­tim­hood, whether in New York City or Tel Aviv, sup­ports the cause of war. I will not con­demn every act of vio­lence but I will con­demn the cause of vio­lence and I will expose the mytholo­gies of war.

Almost Famous

August 22, 2003

Con­ser­v­a­tive god­fa­ther of the inter­net Instapun­dit almost linked to Non​vi​o​lence​.org the oth­er day. He did­n’t like our take on the eno­la Gay exhib­it, but instead of link­ing direct­ly to us so his read­ers could see what we had to say, he linked to Bill Hobbs’ cri­tique. I guess Instapun­dit alter ego Glen Reynolds must not think his read­er­ship can han­dle dis­sent­ing voic­es. Instapun­dit read­ers who cut and past­ed to get here:

  • Yes, the Japan­ese were secret­ly try­ing to sur­ren­der before the atom­ic bomb­ings of Hiroshi­ma and Nagas­ki. The U.S. thought incin­er­at­ing 150,000-some peo­ple was a good nego­ti­at­ing tac­tic, and it worked: the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment to instant­ly agree to uncon­di­tion­al surrender.
  • Yes, the U.S. takeover of Hawaii and the Philip­pines were aggres­sive acts to secure ship­ping routes in the South Pacif­ic. In 1854, a Unit­ed States war­ship under the com­mand of Com­modore Matthew Cal­braith Per­ry sailed to Japan and forced it to sign treaties open­ing up its mar­kets. The threat of Russ­ian expan­sion from the West and U.S. expan­sion from the south and east was a large part of the rea­son Japan mil­i­ta­rized in the first place. These are the kind of facts one should have when stand­ing in the Smith­son­ian gaz­ing up at Eno­la Gay and won­der­ing how it ever came to be that the U.S. would drop two nuclear weapons over two heavily-populated cities.