Tag Archives ⇒ publication

Quakerism of the Future

October 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er lifts up a 1974 pub­li­ca­tion by John Yungblut:

Grant­ed, as a deep stu­dent of Carl Gus­tav Jung and Pierre Teil­hard de Chardin, Yung­blut’s def­i­n­i­tions of those three adjec­tives may not have exact­ly been old-school. This par­tic­u­lar­ly goes for his reflec­tions on the word “evan­gel­i­cal.” But the dynam­ic con­ver­sa­tion among these qual­i­ties — dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions and all — may be vital if Friends are to grow in use­ful­ness to the Body of Christ, and to those who’ve not yet been convinced. 

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​1​0​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​i​s​m​-​o​f​-​f​u​t​u​r​e​.​h​tml

Facebook superposters and the loss of our own narrative

August 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

In the NYTimes, a fas­ci­nat­ing piece on fil­ter bub­bles and the abil­i­ty of Face­book “super­posters” to dom­i­nate feeds, dis­tort real­i­ty, and pro­mote para­noia and violence.

Super­posters tend to be “more opin­ion­at­ed, more extreme, more engaged, more every­thing,” said Andrew Guess, a Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty social sci­en­tist. When more casu­al users open Face­book, often what they see is a world shaped by super­posters like Mr. Wasser­man. Their exag­ger­at­ed world­views play well on the algo­rithm, allow­ing them to col­lec­tive­ly — and often unknow­ing­ly — dom­i­nate news­feeds. “That’s some­thing spe­cial about Face­book,” Dr. Paluck said. “If you end up get­ting a lot of time on the feed, you are influ­en­tial. It’s a dif­fer­ence with real life.”

A great many general-interest Face­book groups that I see are dom­i­nat­ed by troll­ish peo­ple whose vis­i­bil­i­ty relies on how provoca­tive they can get with­out being banned. This is true in many Quaker-focused groups. Face­book pri­or­i­tizes engage­ment and noth­ing seems to get our fin­gers mad­ly tap­ping more than provo­ca­tion by some­one half-informed.

For­mal mem­ber­ship in a Quak­er meet­ing is a con­sid­ered process; for many Quak­er groups, pub­lic min­istry is also a delib­er­at­ed process, with clear­ness com­mit­tees, anchor com­mit­tees, etc. On Face­book, mem­ber­ship con­sists of click­ing a like but­ton; pub­lic min­istry, aka vis­i­bil­i­ty, is a mat­ter of hav­ing a lot of time to post com­ments. Pub­lic groups with min­i­mal mod­er­a­tion which run on Face­book’s engagement-inducing algo­rithms are the pub­lic face of Friends these days, far more vis­i­ble than any pub­li­ca­tion or rec­og­nized Quak­er body’s Face­book pres­ence. I writ­ten before of my long-term wor­ry that with the rise of social media gate­keep­ing sites, we’re not the ones writ­ing our sto­ry anymore.

I don’t have any answers. But the NYTimes piece helped give me some use­ful ways of think­ing about these phenomena.


Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests (Published 2018)

Face­book Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Ger­many, New Research Sug­gests (Pub­lished 2018) 

Towns where peo­ple use Face­book more also had more attacks on refugees, build­ing on sus­pi­cions that the platform…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

The Seed as Quaker metaphor

March 28, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Jnana Hod­son’s blog, a look at “The Seed” as a Quak­er metaphor:

Con­sid­er­ing today’s empha­sis on indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, plu­ral­i­ty, and per­son­al psy­chol­o­gy, I believe that return­ing to the metaphor of the Seed holds the most poten­tial for fer­tile spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment and guid­ance in our own era.

I find the evo­lu­tion of Quak­er metaphors fas­ci­nat­ing. Ear­ly Quak­er ser­mons and epis­tles were packed with bib­li­cal allu­sions. I grew up rel­a­tive­ly unchurched but I’ve tried to make up for it over the years. I’ve read the Bible cover-to-cover using the One Year Bible plan (like a lot of peo­ple I sus­pect, it took me a lit­tle over two years) and have been part of dif­fer­ent denom­i­na­tion­al Bible study groups. I try to look up ref­er­ences. But even with that I don’t catch half the ref­er­ences ear­ly ser­mons packed in.

John Wool­man lived a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions after the first Friends. We Quak­er remem­ber his Jour­nal for min­istry of its anti-slavery sen­ti­ments, final­ly becom­ing a con­sen­sus among Friends by the time of its pub­li­ca­tion in 1774. But oth­er reli­gious folks have read it for its lit­er­ary val­ue. Open a ran­dom page and Wool­man will have up to half a dozen metaphors for the Divine. It’s packed and rich and acces­si­ble. I find a kind of par­tic­u­lar Quak­er spir­i­tu­al truth in Wool­man’s rota­tion of metaphors: it implies that divin­i­ty is more than any spe­cif­ic words we try to stuff it into.

Late­ly Quak­er metaphors have tend­ed to become more ster­ile. I think we’re still wor­ried about specifics but instead of expand­ing our lan­guage we con­tract it into a kind of impen­e­tra­ble code. The “Light of Christ” becomes the “Inward Christ” then the “Inward Light” then “the Light” or “Spir­it.” We’re still echo­ing the Light metaphors packed into the Book of John but doing so in such a way that seems par­tic­u­lar­ly parochial to Friends and non-obvious to new­com­ers. A major New Tes­ta­ment theme is reduced to Quak­er lingo.

Jnana Hod­son’s prob­lem with “the seed” as metaphor is inter­est­ing: “ ‘seed,’ as such, has far few­er Bib­li­cal cita­tions than the cor­re­spond­ing com­ple­men­tary ‘light’ or ‘true’ and ‘truth’ do.” I’m not sure I ever noticed that. I like the seed, with its organ­ic con­no­ta­tions and promise of future growth.  But appar­ent­ly the few bib­li­cal allu­sions were rather sex­ist (spoil­er: it often meant semen) and lack­ing in bio­log­i­cal aware­ness. It feels like Friends are search­ing for neu­tral metaphors like “the seed” these days; we also have a lot of gath­er­ings around “weav­ing.” I cer­tain­ly don’t think we should be lim­it­ed to first cen­tu­ry images of divin­i­ty but I also don’t think we’ve quite fig­ured out how we can talk about the guid­ance we receive from the Inward Teacher.

The Seed, ini­tial­ly, is the most prob­lem­at­ic of the three cen­tral Quak­er metaphors

Expanding the Quaker writing pool

November 3, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Shhh: there have been a few times late­ly when I wish we had more options when choos­ing arti­cles forFriends Jour­nal issues. Yes yes, we did notice that the fea­ture arti­cle con­trib­u­tors for the Octo­ber issue on “Con­science” were all old­er men and that the top­ics were per­haps a bit too famil­iar for Friends Jour­nal (non­vi­o­lence, civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, con­sci­en­tious objec­tion). They were all great arti­cles. And I think clich­es can be impor­tant (see foot­note below) for a pub­li­ca­tion like ours. But yeah.

I had hoped the idea of con­science would leap up to new writ­ers, espe­cial­ly in our cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate, and that the arti­cles might serve as a bridge between 1960s Quak­er activism and today. Some­times our themes inspire writ­ers and some­times they don’t.

I’ve occa­sion­al­ly writ­ten Quak­er­ran­ter blog posts about upcom­ing sub­mis­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties but I’d like to make it more offi­cial and post these every month from the Friends Jour­nal web­site. We’re call­ing the fea­ture “From the Editor’s Desk.”

I’d also like you all to share these with peo­ple you think should be writ­ing for us, espe­cial­ly if they’re new writ­ers com­ing from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. Diver­si­ties of all kind are always welcome.

I was a Quak­er blog­ger (and thus writer) for many years and I worked for Friends Jour­nal for part of that time but I only once sent in a sub­mis­sion before I became senior edi­tor. Why? Was I wait­ing to be asked? Was I unsure what I might write about? What­ev­er the rea­son, we need to always be find­ing and encour­ag­ing new peo­ple. Some of the most inter­est­ing arti­cles we’ve pub­lished start­ed after one of our fans shared an upcom­ing issue top­ic with some­one who was out­side of our net­work. My goal with these posts is real­ly to encour­age you all to share these in emails and on your Face­book walls so we can keep expand­ing the Quak­er writer universe.

Here’s the first one: a call for writ­ers for the March 2018 issue on Quak­ers and the Holy Land.


Writing Opp: Quakers and the Holy Land (closed) - Friends Journal

Writ­ing Opp: Quak­ers and the Holy Land (closed) — Friends Journal 

In March 2018 Friends Jour­nal is pub­lish­ing an issue on reli­gion and pol­i­tics in the Mid­dle East. We…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Foot­note: Every once in a while we’ll get some arti­cle in and I’ll sigh because I can remem­ber a pre­vi­ous arti­cle that cov­ered the same ground. When I go to look it up I real­ize that the ear­li­er arti­cle was pub­lished fif­teen or more years ago. We have new read­ers every year and it’s okay to cir­cle around to core themes every decade or so. We also need to remem­ber the inter­est­ing peo­ple and inci­dents that hap­pened long enough ago because our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry is always in the process of fad­ing. I’m a peacenik long­time Quak­er so I knew Dan Seeger was the named defen­dant in a major land­mark Supreme Court deci­sion in the 1960s, for exam­ple, but I don’t assume most Friends knew this. It’s still a cool sto­ry. It still inspires. It’s impor­tant to keep the sto­ry alive.

Black with a capital B

March 17, 2017
· Martin Kelley

It’s been a long-running debate in edi­to­r­i­al cir­cles: whether to cap­i­tal­ize ‘black’ and ‘white’ in print pub­li­ca­tions when refer­ring to groups of peo­ple. I remem­ber dis­cus­sions about it in the ear­ly 1990s when I worked as a graph­ic design­er at a (large­ly White) pro­gres­sive pub­lish­ing house. My offi­cial, stylesheet-sanctioned answer has been con­sis­tent in every pub­li­ca­tion I’ve worked for since then: low­er­case. But I remain unsatisfied.

Cap­i­tal­iza­tion has lots of built-in quirks. In gen­er­al, we cap­i­tal­ize only when names come from prop­er nouns and don’t con­cern our­selves about mis­match­es. We can write about “frogs and sala­man­ders and Fowler’s toads” or “dis­eases such as can­cer or Alzheimer’s.” Reli­gious terms are even trick­i­er: there’s the Gospel of Luke that is part of the gospel of Christ. In my Quak­er work, it’s sur­pris­ing how often I have to go into a exe­ge­sis of intent over whether the writer is talk­ing about a capital‑L divine Light or a more gener­ic lower-case light­ness of being. “Black” and “white” are both clear­ly low­er­cased when they refer to col­ors and most style guides have kept it that way for race.

But seri­ous­ly? We’re talk­ing about more than col­or when we use it as a racial des­ig­na­tion. This is also iden­ti­ty. Does it real­ly make sense to write about South Cen­tral L.A. and talk about its “Kore­ans, Lati­nos, and blacks?” The counter-argument says that if cap­i­tal­ize Black, what then with White? Con­sis­ten­cy is good and they should pre­sum­ably match, except for the real­i­ty check: White­ness in Amer­i­ca has his­tor­i­cal­ly been a catch-all for non-coloredness. Dif­fer­ent groups are con­sid­ered “White” in dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances; many of the most-proudly White eth­nic­i­ties now were col­ored a cen­tu­ry ago. Much of the swampi­er side of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics has been rein­forc­ing racial iden­ti­ty so that out-of-work Whites (code­name: “work­ing class”) will vote for the inter­ests of White bil­lion­aires rather than out-of-work peo­ple of col­or (code­name: “poor”) who share every­thing but their mela­tonin lev­el. All iden­ti­ties are incom­plete and sur­pris­ing­ly flu­id when applied at the indi­vid­ual lev­el, but few are as non-specific as “White” as a racial designation.

Back in the 1990s we could dodge the ques­tion a bit. The style guide for my cur­rent pub­li­ca­tion notes “lc, but sub­sti­tute ‘African Amer­i­can’ in most con­texts.” Many pro­gres­sive style sheets back in the day gave sim­i­lar advice. In the ebb and flow of pre­ferred iden­ti­ty nomen­cla­ture, African Amer­i­can was trend­ing as the more polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect des­ig­na­tion, helped along by a strong endorse­ment from Jesse Jack­son. Black wasn’t quite fol­low­ing the way of Negro into obso­les­cence, but the avail­abil­i­ty of an clear­ly cap­i­tal­ized alter­na­tive gave white pro­gres­sives an easy dodge. The terms also per­haps sub­tly dis­tin­guished between those good African Amer­i­cans who worked with­in in the sys­tem from those dan­ger­ous rad­i­cals talk­ing about Black Pow­er and reparations.

The Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment has brought Black back as the polit­i­cal­ly bold­er word. Today it feels sharp­er and less coy than African Amer­i­can. It’s the bet­ter punch line for a thou­sand voic­es shout­ing ris­ing up out­side the governor’s man­sion. We’ve arrived at the point where African Amer­i­can feels kind of stilt­ed. It’s as if we’ve been try­ing a bit too hard to nor­mal­ize cen­turies of slav­ery. We’ve got our Irish Amer­i­cans with their green St Paddy’s day beer, the Ital­ian Amer­i­cans with their pas­ta and the African Amer­i­cans with their music and… oh yes, that unfor­tu­nate slav­ery thing (wait for the com­ment: “oh was­n’t that ter­ri­ble but you know there were Irish slaves too”). All of these iden­ti­ties scan the same in the big old melt­ing pot of Amer­i­ca. African Amer­i­can is fine for the broad sweep of his­to­ry of a muse­um’s name but feels cold­ly inad­e­quate when we’re watch­ing a hash­tag trend for yet anoth­er Black per­son shot on the street. When the mega­phone crack­les out “Whose lives mat­ter?!?” the answer is “Black Lives Mat­ter!” and you know every­one in the crowd is shout­ing the first word with a cap­i­tal B.

Turn­ing to Google: The Colum­bia Jour­nal­ism Review has a nice piece on the nuances involved in cap­i­tal­iza­tion, “Black and white: why cap­i­tal­iza­tion mat­ters.” This 2000 lec­ture abstract by Robert S. Wachal flat-out states that “the fail­ure to cap­i­tal­ize Black when it is syn­ony­mous with African Amer­i­can is a mat­ter of unin­tend­ed racism,” deli­cious­ly adding “to put the best pos­si­ble face on it.” In 2014, The NYTimes pub­lished Tem­ple Uni­ver­si­ty prof Lori L. Tharps ’s con­vinc­ing argu­ment, “The Case for Black With a Cap­i­tal B.” If you want to go his­tor­i­cal, this thread on shift­ing terms by Ken Greeen­wald on a 2004 Word­wiz­ard forum is pure gold.

And with that I’ll open up the com­ment thread.

The Young Conservative

August 29, 2007
· Martin Kelley

The Young Conservative
Fran­cis on the cov­er of the mock magazine.

Pho­to: A new pub­li­ca­tion of the Neo Post Con­ver­gent Dia­per Set. An irony I have to point out is that I’ve agreed to have the boys raised Catholic, the faith to which Julie returned after eleven years with Friends. Can I help it if the kids look so dern pho­to­genic in front of Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es? Enlarged pho­to.

Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings

May 16, 2005
· Martin Kelley

For those that might not have noticed, I have an arti­cle in the lat­est issue of the awkwardly-named FGCon­nec­tions: “Wit­ness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings.” Astute Quak­er Ranter read­ers will rec­og­nize it as a re-hashing of “The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion” and its relat­ed pieces. Reac­tion has been quite inter­est­ing, with a lot of old­er Friends say­ing they relate to what I’ve said. It’s fun­ny how so many of us feel a sense of iso­la­tion from our own reli­gious institutions!

The Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings

By Martin Kelley

What is it like to be a thirty-something Friend these days? Lone­ly and frus­trat­ing. At least half of the com­mit­ted, inter­est­ing and bold twenty-something Friends I knew ten years ago have left Quak­erism. This isn’t nor­mal youth­ful church-hopping and it’s not some char­ac­ter flaw of “Gen­er­a­tion X.” They’ve left because they were sim­ply tired of slam­ming their heads against the wall of an insti­tu­tion­al Quak­erism that neglect­ed them and its own future.

I can cer­tain­ly relate. For the last decade, I’ve done ground-breaking work pub­li­ciz­ing non­vi­o­lence online. I’ve been pro­filed in the New York Times and invit­ed on nation­al talk radio shows, but the clerk of the peace com­mit­tee in my achingly-small month­ly meet­ing always for­gets that I have “some web­site” and I’ve nev­er been asked to speak to Friends about my work. I wouldn’t mind being over­looked if I saw oth­ers my age being rec­og­nized, but most of the amaz­ing min­istries I’ve known have been just as invisible.

It’s like this even at the small-scale lev­el. I’ve gone to count­less com­mit­tee meet­ings with ideas, enthu­si­asm and faith­ful­ness, only to real­ize (too late, usu­al­ly) that these are just the qual­i­ties these com­mit­tees don’t want. Through repeat­ed heart­break I’ve final­ly learned that if I feel like I’m crash­ing a par­ty when I try to get involved with some Quak­er cause, then it’s a sign that it’s time to get out of there! I’ve been in so many meet­ing­hous­es where I’ve been the only per­son with­in ten years of my age in either direc­tion that I’m gen­uine­ly star­tled when I’m in a room­ful of twenty- and thirty-somethings.

I recent­ly had lunch with one of the thir­tysome­thing Friends who have left. He had been drawn to Friends because of their mys­ti­cism and their pas­sion for non­vi­o­lent social change; he was still very com­mit­ted to both. But after orga­niz­ing actions for years, he con­clud­ed that the Friends in his meet­ing didn’t think the peace tes­ti­mo­ny could actu­al­ly inspire us to a wit­ness that was so bold.

I wrote about this lunch con­ver­sa­tion on my web­site and before long anoth­er old Friend sur­faced. Eight years ago a wit­ness and action con­fer­ence inspired him to help launch a nation­al Quak­er youth vol­un­teer net­work. He put years of his life into this; his state­ments on the prob­lems and promis­es fac­ing Quak­er youth are still right on the mark. But after ear­ly excite­ment his sup­port evap­o­rat­ed and the project even­tu­al­ly fell apart in what he’s described as “a bit­ter and unsuc­cess­ful experience.”

The loss of Quak­er peers has hit close to home for me. When one close Friend learned my wife had left Quak­erism for anoth­er church after eleven years, all he could say was how pleased he was that she had final­ly found her spir­i­tu­al home; oth­ers gave sim­i­lar empty- sound­ing plat­i­tudes. I felt like say­ing to them “No, you dimwits, we’ve dri­ven away yet anoth­er Friend!” Each of these three lost Friends remain deeply com­mit­ted to the Spir­it and are now involved in oth­er reli­gious societies.

Young adults haven’t always been as invis­i­ble or unin­volved as they are now. A whole group of the Quak­er lead­ers cur­rent­ly in their fifties and six­ties were giv­en impor­tant jobs at Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions at very ten­der ages (often right out of col­lege). Also, there’s his­tor­i­cal prece­dent for this: George Fox was 24 when he began his pub­lic min­istry; Samuel Bow­nas was 20 when he was roused out of his meet­ing­house slum­ber to begin his remark­able min­istry; even Mar­garet Fell was still in her thir­ties when she was con­vinced. When the first gen­er­a­tion of Friends drew togeth­er a group of their most impor­tant elders and min­is­ters to address one of their many crises, the aver­age age of the gath­er­ing was 35. Younger Friends haven’t always been ghet­toized into Young

Audlt Friends only dorms, pro­grams, work­shops or committees.

There is hope. Some have start­ed notic­ing that young Friends who go into lead­er­ship train­ing pro­grams often dis­ap­pear soon after­wards. The pow­ers that be at Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence have final­ly start­ed talk­ing about “youth min­istry.” (Wel­come!). A great peo­ple might pos­si­bly be gath­ered from the emer­gent church move­ment and the inter­net is full of amaz­ing con­ver­sa­tions from new Friends and seek­ers. There are pock­ets in our branch of Quak­erism where old­er Friends have con­tin­ued to men­tor and encour­age mean­ing­ful and inte­grat­ed youth lead­er­ship, and some of my peers have hung on with me. Most hope­ful­ly, there’s a whole new gen­er­a­tion of twenty- some­thing Friends on the scene with strong gifts that could be nur­tured and harnessed.

In the truest real­i­ty, our chrono­log­i­cal ages melt away in the ever-refreshing cur­rents of the Liv­ing Spir­it; we are all as chil­dren to a lov­ing God. Will Friends come togeth­er to remem­ber this before our reli­gious soci­ety los­es anoth­er generation?

Mar­tin Kel­ley is a mem­ber of Atlantic City Month­ly Meet­ing, Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. He works for FGC as the web­mas­ter and book­store sec­re­tary. This arti­cle is writ­ten from his experience.

 

 

The Revolution will be Online

August 6, 1995
· Martin Kelley

This essay was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in 1995.

IT’S HARD TO IGNORE the sor­ry shape of the social change com­mu­ni­ty. The signs of a col­lapsed move­ment are every­where. Orga­ni­za­tions are clos­ing, cut­ting back, lay­ing off staff, and drop­ping the fre­quen­cy of their magazines. 

On top of this, the basic resources we’ve depend­ed on are get­ting scarcer. Paper prices and postage prices are going up. Direct mail solic­i­ta­tions are for many economically-unfeasible now. With every aban­doned mail­ing list, with every dis­con­tin­ued peace fair, we’re los­ing the infra­struc­ture that used to nour­ish the whole movement. 

Here in Philadel­phia, the last few years have seen food coops close, peace orga­ni­za­tions lay off staff, and the book­stores dis­con­tin­ue their polit­i­cal titles. I’ve been meet­ing peo­ple only a half-generation younger than I who aren’t aware of the basic orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples that the move­ment has built up over the years and who don’t know the mean­ings of Green­ham Com­mon or the Clamshell Alliance

Like many of you, I’m not giv­ing up. We can’t just aban­don our work because it’s becom­ing more dif­fi­cult. We need to strug­gle to find cre­ative ways of get­ting our mes­sage out there and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with oth­ers. What we need is a new media.

The Promise of the Web

The Web’s rev­o­lu­tion is it’s incred­i­bly min­i­mal costs. Fif­teen dol­lars a month gets you a home­page. As an edi­tor at New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers (1991 – 1996), I’ve always had to wor­ry whether we’d lose mon­ey on a par­tic­u­lar edi­to­r­i­al project, and it some­times seemed a rule of thumb that what excit­ed me would­n’t sell. With the Web, we don’t have to wor­ry if an idea isn’t pop­u­lar because we’re not putting the same lev­el of resources into each publication.

Nev­er before has pub­lish­ing been so cheap. Just about any­one can do it. You don’t need a par­tic­u­lar­ly fast or fan­cy com­put­er to put Web pages online. And you don’t have to wor­ry about dis­tri­b­u­tion: if some­one sets their Web brows­er to your address, they’ll get you “prod­uct” instantly.

All the forces push­ing move­ment pub­lish­ing over the edge of finan­cial insol­ven­cy dis­ap­pear when we go online. Switch­ing to the Web is a mat­ter of keep­ing our words in print. The Web is the lat­est inven­tion to open up the dis­tri­b­u­tion of words by birthing new medias. The print­ing press begat mod­ern book pub­lish­ing just as the pho­to­copi­er begat zine cul­ture. The Web can like­wise spawn a media where words can flour­ish with less cap­i­tal than ever before.

Advertising Each Other

The prob­lem with the Web is not acces­si­bil­i­ty, but rather being heard above the noise. Peo­ple gen­er­al­ly find your web­site in two ways. The first is that they see your web address in your newslet­ter, get on their com­put­ers and look you up; this of course only gets you your own peo­ple. The sec­ond way is through links.

Links take you from one web­site to anoth­er. Web­page design­ers try to get linked from sites of sim­i­lar inter­est to theirs, hop­ing the read­ers of the oth­er site will fol­low the link to their web­page. This bounc­ing from site to site is called surf­ing, and it’s the main way around the web.

Link­ing is a very prim­i­tive art nowa­days. The Non­vi­o­lence Web has inter­nal links that active­ly invite read­ers to explore the whole NV-Web. Every­time some­one comes into the NV-Web through a mem­ber group, they will be inticed to stay and dis­cov­er the oth­er groups. By putting social change groups togeth­er in one place, we can have a much-more dynam­ic cross-referencing. Think of it as the equiv­a­lent of trad­ing mail­ing lists in that we can all share those web surfers who find any one of us.

In the web world as in the real one, coop­er­a­tion helps us all. If you’re an activist group doing work on non­vi­o­lent social change then con­tact us and we’ll put your words online. For free. If you have your own web­site already, then let’s talk about how we can crosslink you with oth­er groups work­ing on non­vi­o­lent social change.

Come explore the Non­vi­o­lence Web and let us get you con­nect­ed. Come join our revolution.

In peace,

Mar­tin Kelley