Focus on nonviolence globally.
Harris, R. "On Islamic Nonviolence." Fellowship 76, no. 1-3 (April 1, 2010): 26-28.
Gandhi's great colleague in the struggle for the freedom of Indian peoples from British colonial rule was Abdul-Ghaffar Khan, who developed his nonviolent understanding independently of Gandhi, through reading the Qur'an in jail. Abdul-Ghaffar Khan raised an army of 100,000 unarmed soldiers, the Khudai Khidmatgar, from the same villages that today yield many fewer young men up to the Taliban. (His arguments must have been more convincing than theirs.) We don't hear enough about Abdul-Ghaffar Khan because he opposed the partition of the Indian subcontinent, and was vilified for it afterwards. But it is past time to reconsider his work.
His third characteristic is to prefer what God prefers: allembracing compassion for the plight of creatures. Allah said in a non-Qur'anic divine report, "When I created the creation, I inscribed upon the Throne, 'My mercy overpowers My wrath.'" And He said of Muhammad (PBBUH) in the Qur'an, "We have not sent you save as a mercy to the worlds."
Jihad, struggle for justice - and particularly the special form of jihad that involves fighting - is too central to the Prophetic example for us to be able to ignore it, no matter how distorted the word has become through centuries of misuse. For it is not just in recent times that low motives have baited traps with high ideals. Whatever the apologists for past empires have said, the great body of prophetic traditions on this topic simply does not apply to struggles for political power, for vengeance, or for glory, whether or not there is Arabic writing on one's flag. Sadly, fighting "for Islam," as it is commonly understood, almost always means nothing more than fighting for political power, vengeance, or glory. In Qur'anic terms, it does not qualify as jihad.
Werner, H. "Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent Relationality. Global Perspectives." Review. Asian Studies Review 33, no. 4 (December 1, 2009): 553-555.
Ganguly asserts that it is Gandhi's "alternative language of political engagement [. . ., a] language of nonviolent relationality in the public domain, of a moral internationalism based on the notion of compassion for and connectivity with strangers, the language of soul-force based on truth and love" (p. 3) that turns him into an outstanding advocate for modes of resistance. The articles sum up several topics central to the book: questions regarding the translatability of Gandhian thought across historical and geographic distance, particularly his approach to nonviolence; Gandhi's relationalist strategies in dealing with transcultural techniques and practices that aim to transgress the typical dichotomy of "modern" and "traditional" as well as static conceptions of politically framed ethics; and the importance of a historiographie method that emphasises the centrality of flows of "collective imaginaries" (p. 253).
Davis, P. "La'Onf: The Making of an Iraqi Nonviolence Movement." Fellowship 75, no. 10-12 (January 1, 2010): 9-11.
La'Onf defies this simplistic and dualistic view. La'Onf, which translates in Arabic as "no to violence, " is a network of Iraqi organizations committed to enabling the agency of the Iraqi people in determining a peaceful future through active nonviolence. As La'Onf representative Abdulsattar Essmat Younus stated upon receiving the 2009 Pfeffer International Peace Award from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, "For a peaceful and democratic Iraq to emerge, we must get there through nonviolence. That is the way."
La'Onf supports a democratic Iraq by requiring each elected governorate board to include 30 percent women and at least one person from a group that is a minority within that governorate. There is also a strong commitment to including tribal leaders and Islamists, although there are no specific quotas. By the time elections had been held in each governorate in June 2008, well over 100 Iraqi organizations had committed to the principles of nonviolence and joined the La'Onf network. "We are affirmed and motivated that so many Iraqis have become involved in the nonviolent cause," says Younus. "It proves that Iraqis want a unified peaceful country, and we can work together to create it."
La'Onf has also sought support from the international community. Peaceful Tomorrows - an organization founded by family members of those killed on September 11, 2001, advocating nonviolent options in pursuit of justice - has taken up the cause of promoting La'Onf's work among American peace activists. Terry Rockefeller is a documentary filmmaker and project director at Peaceful Tomorrows. Her sister Laura died in the World Trade Center in 2001. Rockefeller met members of La'Onf during one of their trainings. "I was so struck by the vast differences between the images and stories Americans see of Iraqis and what it was like to talk with these visionary Iraqi advocates."
Anonymous, . "Mary King Receives El-Hibri Peace Education Prize." The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs 28, no. 9 (December 1, 2009): 52.
The presentation ceremony, a joint effort between Nonviolence International and the El-Hibri family, was held in front of a large crowd in the renovated historic mansion that now serves as headquarters of the El-Hibri Charitable Foundation, a few blocks north of the White House on 16th Street.
Chernus, I. "Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy." Review. Journal of Church and State 51, no. 4 (October 1, 2009): 706-708.
By seeing politics and society through the lens of violence, the Fellowship [of Reconciliation] unmasked the ideological assumptions behind reigning political and economic structures. [..] one need not share their rejection of all violence, he adds, to appreciate the value of such critique in the present as well as the past. Since this book is likely to be the definitive study of its subject for some time, some readers may wish that it delved deeper into the intellectual dimension of the nonviolence tradition.
Collyer, C., K. Johnson, P. de Mesquita, L. Palazzo, and D. Jordan. "SENSITIVITY TO VIOLENCE MEASURED BY RATINGS OF SEVERITY INCREASES AFTER NONVIOLENCE TRAINING." Perceptual and Motor Skills 110, no. 1 (February 1, 2010): 48.
It was hypothesized that training in nonviolence would increase participants' sensitivity to violence because such training emphasizes both the harm and the avoidability of many kinds of violence. This research built upon earlier studies, which had proposed that ratings of the severity of violent behaviors (e.g., murder, bullying, cursing) can be interpreted as measuring sensitivity to violence. Two quasi-experiments examined changes in ratings of severity obtained before and after nonviolence training. In Study 1, 28 college-age traffic offenders who received nonviolence training judged stimulus behaviors ranging from life-threatening physical harm to verbal disrespect as more violent after their training. An untrained comparison group did not show this change. In Study 2, 30 student teachers who received instruction in nonviolence also rated behaviors as more violent after training; an untrained comparison group did not. Results are interpreted as showing increased sensitivity to violence following exposure to nonviolence.
Douglass, S. "Stepping Stones: Memoir of a Life Together/Held in the Light: Norman Morrison's Sacrifice for Peace and His Family's Journey of Healing." Review. Fellowship 75, no. 7-9 (October 1, 2009): 28-29.
"Lynd" is a familiar name to aging activists like me. I remember their books, especially [Alice]'s We Won't Go: Personal Accounts of War Objectors (Beacon, 1968) and [Staughton Lynd] 's Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History (reissued by Orbis, with Alice as co-editor, 1995). Staughton was central in organizing and planning strategy with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. They became early critics of the war in Vietnam. As a young Yale professor, Staughton joined a peace delegation to North Vietnam in December of 1965, coming home to speak against the war and American actions there. Alice's book and her accounts of draft counseling were bedrock for those of us working with war resisters. In the decades after the war they continued their work, collaborating with workers to organize unions, travelling to Nicaragua, and visiting and representing incarcerated individuals in Ohio's worst prisons.
Goossen, R. "Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy." Review. Peace Review 22, no. 2 (April 1, 2010): 213.
Goossen reviews Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy by Joseph Kip Kosek.
Gottlieb, L. "Community of Living Traditions Launched as Interfaith Nonviolence Initiative." Fellowship 75, no. 10-12 (January 1, 2010): 8.
Engaging Judaism through "The Torah of Nonviolence" is the centerpiece of the Shomer Shalom House, which supports Jewish life at Stony Point under the guidance of Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a long-time member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, peace advocate, and cofounder of the Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence. The house will serve as a ceremonial and educational center for Jews interested in pursuing nonviolence as a form of Jewish practice.
Christian followers of Jesus who are grounded by the teachings of Jesus, especially in the sixth chapter of the Book of Luke, have created community in formation at the Luke 6 Project House. Kitty and Rick Ufford-Chase, the executive directors of Stony Point Center, facilitated the birth of the Luke 6 Project nationally. They practice in the Quaker and Presbyterian tradition, respectively, and are long-time peace activists, especially in the field of immigration rights. (Rick previously served as founding director of BorderLinks, a bi-national U.S.-Mexico organization.)
Harris, I. "A Select Bibliography for Peace Education." Peace & Change 34, no. 4 (October 1, 2009): 571-576.
Peace education is an umbrella term for education about problems of violence and strategies for peace. This bibliography provides references for books about the following aspects of peace education: nonviolence, peace, peace education, historical aspects of peace advocates, peace organizations, peace movements, and war and violence. The bibliography omits, e.g., multicultural education, international education/global studies, and human rights education.
Johnson, M. "Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire." Review. Fellowship 75, no. 10-12 (January 1, 2010): 34-35.
The argument is built chronologically and geographically. We see the early Christian church change as it migrates first to Europe, encountering and wrestling the Roman Empire, then with the pagan cultures of the Saxons, and then "going global" as the Crusading enterprise expands beyond the Holy Land and infects the colonial explorations of post-Andalusian Spain seeking the Indies but "discovering" the Americas. The end result is a plague on all our houses.
Their chapters are poetically tided: "The Portal to Paradise," "Dying for Love," "Escape Routes," and "Weeping Encounters." They move from the universal to the particular quite fluidly, from the monastic system to particular monks and nuns, from the Papacy to particular popes, from the imperial to particular empires. They summarize cogendy. Their treatment addresses a wide range of issues from ecological apocalypse, through warfare, romantic love, nonviolence, and conscientious objection. Women enter the culture of Christendom in their narrative as witnesses and martyrs more fully than in many other interpretations. Nonviolence and the recovery of the earliest traditions of pacifism and just peacemaking are a central theme of the treatise, richly illustrated and persuasively presented.
Klejment, A. "Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy." Review. The Journal of American History 96, no. 4 (March 1, 2010): 1247.
Rather than narrating events, memorializing or demonizing one particular figure, or tracing institutional development, the author analyzes how radical religious activists associated with the ecumenical Protestant Fellowship of Reconciliation (for) confronted the use of force during the first halt of the twentieth century. [..] Kosek suggests that the perception that nonviolence died in the 1960s fails to explain antinuclear activism in the 1970s and 1980s and the Christian Right's adoption ot nonviolence in its campaign against legalized abortion.
Lakey, G. "The Three Applications of Nonviolent Action." Fellowship 75, no. 7-9 (October 1, 2009): 12-15.
Another version of social defense is using it on a national level, either against invasion from outsiders or against a coup d'etat from insiders. In Russia in 1991, for example, much of the KGB, army, and Communist Party leadership decided to seize the state. They arrested top leader Gorbachev, took over the media and mobilized tanks. They also ran into such major non-cooperation from the people that the "waverers" in the middle turned against them and they lost their coup. Similar events happened in Argentina in the mid-1980s: a million people demonstrated in Buenos Aires, the fence-sitters turned against the military plotters, and civilian government remained.
Third-party nonviolent intervention is the physical intervention of a third party into the arena of the conflict in such a way as to reduce the level of violence. Mediation and arbitration are also facilitated by third parties, but they are not nonviolent thirdparty intervention; here are some differences: nonviolent thirdparty intervention is unilateral (does not require both parties to participate in structured interaction), expresses the value of process, rather than determination/ judgment, enables the struggle to continue (rather than shutting down the struggle).
George Lakey (center) and Michael Beer (inside right; now the executive director of Nonviolence International) meet with young Burmese activists in 1 990. Lakey and Beer were smuggled across the border from Thailand to teach nonviolent struggle in the "jungle university" that had been established at the headquarters camp of the democratic forces.
Li, H. "From Decolonisation of Alterity to Democratic Listening." Social Alternatives 29, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 29-33.
Defining and implementing justice is a formidable task, especially in culturally diverse societies. In modern democratic societies, making a speech is taking both a formal and an informal political action. In point of fact, modern civic and citizenship education, more or less, aim at facilitating one's becoming a speaking subject. However, it is not clear whether becoming a speaking subject can transform a world that seems to be increasingly prone to violence. Above all, it remains uncertain that the ideal deliberative process of speech making can engender effective pedagogical and political actions for long-lasting justice and nonviolence. In view of the limitation of speech making, this article offers a critical inquiry into the pedagogical merits of silence in order to facilitate decolonization of alterity and democratic listening for world peace.
Long, M. "Gandhi & Jesus: The Saving Power of Nonviolence." Review. Interpretation 63, no. 4 (October 1, 2009): 432-433.
The result of his admirable openness is a stunning book that explains how Mahatma Gandhi can positively affect not only our understanding of Jesus, but also our theology of salvation. Because Rynne is an enthusiastic fan, readers looking for a critical read of Gandhi will be somewhat disappointed.
Menon, B. "Hind Swaraj II: Gandhi's Legacy at One Century." Fellowship 75, no. 7-9 (October 1, 2009): 20-27.
That is not the only reason why Gandhi's ideas gained litde traction in mainstream politics either in India or anywhere else. An important reason is that he did not explain himself within die legitimizing materialist framework of his time, in particular Marxism, which was seen by young idealists then as the wave of the future. Karl Marx (1818-1883) had bought fully into the East India Company's view of India as a land of ageless despotism and oppression; and because of him generations of "Left" analysts and historians have taken the position that British rule brought "progress" to India. Typically, Marx dismissed as unimportant the social devastation and misery caused by die deliberate destruction of the self-sufficient village economy of rural India. Writing in the New York Daily Tribune in June 1853, he urged readers not to be too sympathetic to die wretched Indians, even though it was "sickening" to "witness those myriads of industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organizations disorganized and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their ancient form of civilization, and their hereditary means of subsistence. " In his view, those "idyllic village-communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism." Village life had "restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it die unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies;" it "brought about a brutalizing worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact diat man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Kanuman (sic) the monkey, and Sabbaia (sic), die cow." Britain "was actuated only by die vilest interests" in causing a social revolution in India, Marx said: "But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution." (As Marx is less in fashion these days, it is probably necessary to explain that the "destiny" he thought humanity should fulfill was of his own invention, an atheistic, communist society of perfect equality among individuals, brought into being by violent socialist revolution anda "dictatorship of the proletariat" to eliminate "class enemies. " Marx expected that after fulfilling those brutal tasks the State, inspired by idealism, would automatically wither away.)
Gandhi consistendy refused requests that he write about how a Satyagrahi would approach the issues raised in Karl Marx's deeply negative and violent treatise. Sushila Nayar recorded one such response in the diary she kept during Gandhi's last imprisonment (1942-1944) in die malarial confines of the Aga Khan's palace in Pune. In the entry for November 28, 1942, she wrote how Pyarelal, her brother, who had assumed die duties of Gandhi's secretary after the sudden deadi of Mahadev Desai, asked during their morning walk: "how non-violence can get the penniless masses out of the clutches of the capitalists." Gandhi answered, "My reply will be that if the penniless masses become conscious of their strength no one can hold them in their clutches." He pointed out that he was himself penniless, yet no one could make him do anything against his will. Returning to the topic on his walk the next day, he said to Pyarelal, "I believe we can find solutions for all problems on the basis of nonviolence. I also believe that if any country is ready for that experiment, it is India. Man aspires ever to go higher and higher. It is his nature. I know looking at the present state of society many arguments can be provided to counter my belief. Self-sacrifice and idealism will never become universal . . . Our people have many shortcomings," and so on. Marx, he said, discussed only capitalism and asked, "[Wjhere can it take mankind?" In contrast, "I ask 'Where can human nature take us?'" Pyarelal requested him to "write a treatise" on the subject. Gandhi replied, "The trouble is that I have to be Marx as well as Lenin. I have it all in my head. When the occasion comes I take out what is applicable to the situation." Pyarelal pressed him, asking, "You can see the situation and decide as to what should be done. . . . But who will give lead to the people when you are gone?" Gandhi replied, "I cannot do what you want me to do. It is beyond my power. .. I am not the man who can write a treatise. I speak under inspiration. I cannot decide as to how I shall tackle a particular situation until I am faced with it."
Mika, G. "Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?" Review. Fellowship 76, no. 1-3 (April 1, 2010): 41.
In "Torture and the Ethics of Photography," [Judith Butler] offers a compelling analysis of the significance of the photographs at Abu Ghraib, elaborating how norms are enacted through visual and narrative frames. She carefully explicates the way in which the state has controlled both visual content and perspective during times of war, thus controlling emotional responses and preventing organized opposition. Her assertion that the dominant Euro- American culture has defined Islam as "not yet having conformed to those norms that make the human recognizable" is critical to her arguments.
The final essay, "The Claim of Nonviolence," may be of particular interest to Fellowship readers. While acknowledging the way in which we are shaped by norms of violence, Butler insists that these norms are not deterministic, and that nonviolence is an ongoing practice that asserts our capacity to resist this conditioning. She suggests our responsiveness to the call to nonviolence rests on our mutual precariousness and interdependency. We "struggle to remain responsive to the equal claim of the other for shelter, for conditions of livability and grievability."
Mirra, C. "Peace Profile: Staughton Lynd and Nonviolent Direct Action." Peace Review 22, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 82.
Mirra profiles Staughton Lynd, an American activist and a conscientious objector of the Korean War. Lynd has committed his entire adult life to peace struggles, and indeed serves as a "contagious" exemplar of nonviolent action. His many works and his influence to the the realm of nonviolence was considerable.
Morrison, T. "Are You Listening? Ancient Wisdom of the Spiritual Quest." Review. Fellowship 76, no. 1-3 (April 1, 2010): 44.
The author is a Fellowship of Reconciliation member and went on one of FORs peace delegations to Iran. Simmons presents programs culled from that experience - one of various ways in which she facilitates a nonviolence practice.
Mukherjee, M. "Transcending Identity: Gandhi, Nonviolence, and the Pursuit of a "Different" Freedom in Modern India." The American Historical Review 115, no. 2 (April 1, 2010): 453.
Mukherjee talks about historical exploration into the Gandhian discourse of "renunciative freedom" and how it differs from Western conceptions of political freedom. As opposed to Western understandings, which are anchored in notions of national identity, the nation-state, individual rights, and private property, the Gandhian notion of freedom had its origins in Indic-Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu--renunciative and non-identitarian traditions, embodied in the figure of the renouncer. Most historians approach Gandhi as a unique, if not an odd, figure in history, but Mukherjee shows that he was in fact the culmination of a long line of important thinkers in modern India who sought to negotiate the competing and conflicting claims of the two discourses of freedom, a project that had emerged as the central intellectual problem in colonial India.
Parry, W. "Israel Responds to Palestinian Nonviolence With Violence and Repression." The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs 29, no. 2 (March 1, 2010): 12-13,33.
[..] nonviolent resistance belies Israel's claims of victimization and reveals the true victims, thereby subverting Israeli propaganda, which has depended on portraying Palestinians as violent murderers in order to justify Israeli aggression and murder. [..] it was largely as a result of Othman's BDS advocacy trip to Norway that the Norwegian finance minister announced the State Pension Fund's $5.4 million divestment from Elbit, an Israeli company involved in producing security and military equipment that aids Israel's illegal occupation.
Pasquini, E. "Marchers Bring Message for Global Peace, Nonviolence to Northern California." The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs 29, no. 2 (March 1, 2010): 36-37.
The five men have been seeking justice since May 2007, when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on their behalf against Jeppesen, a San Jose flight-planning company and subsidiary of Boeing Commercial Aviation Services, for assisting in the CIA's rendition program, which included the plaintiffs' forced disappearance and secret transfer to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas, where they were interrogated under torture. Using state-of-the-art high-definition technology, Stanford Medical School's Department of Radiology conducted three-dimensional computed tomography (CT) scans of Irethorrou, who is one of four human mummies and one crocodile mummy in the Fine Arts Museum's permanent collection.
Piper, J. "Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy." Review. Church History 78, no. 4 (December 1, 2009): 930-932.
The topics included are pacifism in America, the role of religion in American life, the importance of nonviolence in social change in America and around the world, and the role of key American and international figures in formulating a nonviolent theory and a process to achieve that change. No single individual emerges as the key person in this long discussion, although Kosek gives Gregg and Muste considerable space for their arguments and praise for their part in reaching a conclusion. [..] the conclusion is that by putting the "problem of violence at the center of its theory and practice." the Christian nonviolent tradition "offers an alternative model of political action and an alternative history of the twentieth century" (1).
Presbey, G. "Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence." Review. Fellowship 75, no. 10-12 (January 1, 2010): 35-36.
It is widely known that [Cesar Chavez] was a dedicated practitioner of nonviolence, but this book focuses on Chavez's unique contributions to nonviolent theory. Founder and organizer of the United Farm Workers, Chavez's larger goals were to create a social movement for Latino/as. [Orosco] intends his study of Chavez to debunk authors like Samuel Huntington and Victor Davis Hanson who stereotype Latino/as as apathetic and lacking ambition.
Orosco 's book succeeds in showing us the theoretical contributions of Chavez to debates during his time as well as to contemporary controversies over organizing strategies. The Chavez that Orosco presents is sensitive, levelheaded, practical, and multi-faceted as he charts a course for a Chicano/a movement in league with other groups of similar interests who want to tackle problems of systemic injustice so that humans can flourish together more fully. Peace and Justice Studies programs and literature for the most part have focused on Gandhi and King, but this book makes it clear that such studies should be complemented by works like this one that cover the contributions of Chavez.
Price, N. "World March for Peace and Nonviolence." Peace and Freedom 69, no. 2 (October 1, 2009): 13.
As WILPF envisions a transformed world at peace, where there is racial, social, and economic justice for all people everywhere (through making connections that link and challenge root causes of oppression, especially racism, sexism, heterosexism, militarism, economic disparity, and political disempowerment) the World March for Peace and Nonviolence organizers embody a similar vision.
Second, events will be held in cities and communities worldwide and along the route - marches, festivals, forums, conferences, and other activities - to create consciousness of the urgent need for peace and nonviolence. There is a World March USA website to facilitate the registration and planning of local events (www.worldmarchusa.net). These are posted on a map along with contact information for 'State Coordinators.' As WILPFers plan their World March activities, we ask that they also inform National Program Co-chairs Carol Urner (carol.disarm@gmail.com) and Tura Campanella Cook (turacc @ earthlink.net).
Roedel, J. "Sacrificial and Nonsacrificial Mass Nonviolence." Contagion 15/16, (January 1, 2008): 221-236,262.
I will not suggest that Gandhi bore some moral responsibility for this violence, but I will suggest that his (and others') ignorance of what I will term the sacrificial aspects of mass nonviolence did have a role to play. I will model my distinction between sacrificial and nonsacrificial nonviolence on Girard's distinction between sacrificial and nonsacrificial Christianity as presented in Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, and will attempt to use this distinction to suggest how violence might arise out of the practice of mass nonviolence, using the example of the nonviolent movement for Indian independence as an example.
Sauerbrun, S. "Artist's Statement, Painting." Frontiers 31, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 63-68,173.
The casual tourist goes beyond hypnosis to an alert state of visual perception that puts the nutritional value back into seeing. Because of his objector status, after he was wounded he was the last to receive treatment. The artist's sainted Roman Catholic grandmother raised three sons and a daughter in the backseat of a Ford Model T in the hobo camps between Cleveland and Detroit during the Great Depression. A commitment to a woman's education coupled with a long-standing practice of nonviolence propels the artist's creative search for personal resolution into the chaos that surrounds her.
Saxena, I. "Peace and Peacemakers in Books for Children." Bookbird 47, no. 4 (October 1, 2009): 21-26.
The spirit of freedom and nonviolence underline many adventure stories (Adventure before Midnight) that record real episodes and real people, such as the brave act of a bunch of school children, resolute to hoist the Indian flag on their school building and sacrifice theit lives on the altar of freedom in doing so. A pantheon of renowned artists and authors like Lois Lowry, Katherine Patetson, Jetry Pinkney, Maurice Sendak, Yoshiko Uchida contributed to The Big Book of Peace (El Gran Libro de La PAZ - Spanish translation) offering stories about the roots of war, about princes struggling over a piece of turf, a letter from a concentration camp, and an everyday story of rivalty between two friends.
Anonymous, . "LETTERS TO THE EDITOR." Fellowship 75, no. 10-12 (January 1, 2010): 4.
Richard Deats's article, "Active Nonviolence Across the World," published in the Winter/Spring 2009 issue of Fellowship, is a wonderful contribution to the tools available to persons committed to the goal of nonviolence on this planet. [Ed. Note: The Fellowship of Reconciliation is now offering the essay as a stand-alone booklet for purchase in single or bulk orders. Contact FOR's Bookstore at 845-358-4601 ext. 20 or bookstore@forusa.org for details.]
In November 2009, Ambassador [Karl Eikenberry] met with a group of Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers in the Bamiyan Peace Park and offered to relay their message "Reconciliation of Civil Hearts" (see http://ourjourneytosmile.com). The message is a simple one from ordinary Afghan youths. It does not make the U.S. military, or the Taliban, wrong for the sadness and lack of hope. Rather, like Gandhi, it points to the opportunity now for peace.
Anonymous, . "LETTERS TO THE EDITOR." Fellowship 75, no. 7-9 (October 1, 2009): 4.
Wendell Potter, former vice president of the large health insurance company, Cigna, could no longer continue at his highly-paid, prestigious job, once he attended a free, three-day health care clinic held under primitive conditions in stalls in a county fair ground, where individuals had often traveled a great many miles to have access to otherwise unaffordable medical care. After this experience, Potter became an outspoken advocate of affordable health care for all.
Richard Deats has written a mustread booklet, only 3 1 pages, that summarizes successful active nonviolence across the globe. [Ed.: "Active Nonviolence Across the World," 2009.] Few people know the widespread number, significance, and dimension of diese things that have been happening.
I would encourage tax-deductible contributions toward this effort as follows: "FOR c/o Richard Deats," Fellowship of Reconciliation, Box 271, Nyack NY 10960.
