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.
Quaker Ranter
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Tag Archives ⇒ nonviolence
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 Nonviolence.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.”
Site of the Week: The Picket Line
October 17, 2003
Well, I don’t really have a “Site of the Week” feature. But if I did, I’d highlight Dave Gross’ blog, The Picket Line, which is perhaps the first blog I’ve seen actually connected to one of the historic Nonviolence.org groups (in this case the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee). Dave describes it as “a running account of my experience with war tax resistance and what I’m learning along the way.” Here’s a a good recent post to whet your appetite:
A friend asks: “How can you break bread with taxpayers in the evening after spending the morning posting a rant that says that taxpayers are willingly complicit in the government’s evil deeds?”
http://www.sniggle.net/experiment/index.php?entry=06Oct03
Peace and Twenty-Somethings
October 17, 2003
Over on Nonviolence.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; Nonviolence.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 Nonviolence.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 Nonviolence.org about the recent lack of condemnations of Palestinian violence. It’s a fair critique and a good question. For the record, Nonviolence.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 Nonviolence.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.