Fear, anger, discouragement, and a sense of helplessness are running rampant in this country today, and they have been charging towards this sorry state for generations.
But as pointed out in our recent series of posts , there are thousands of individuals around the world working actively on behalf of peace and justice. Most started out pretty much as ordinary people, but they saw injustice and oppression and cruelty and had to act, no matter how big and frightening and indomitable the Big Brothers appeared to be.
You may be closer to belonging in their ranks than you realize.
Just think of the following:
Did you ever, as a kid, stick up for some other kid who was being bullied?
Did you ever try to be nice or include in activities some kid who was shy or shunned by others?
Did you ever, as a child, try to enlist the help of an adult to stop bullying or harassment ?
Did you ever, as a parent. confront a teacher or a principal or some other adult because you thought your kid or some other kid was being bullied or mistreated?
Did you ever, as a parent, take time to help your children understand prejudice, injustice?
Did you ever attend a school board or town meeting because you believed something harmful was going to happen to people in your town if particular policies or procedures were enacted?
Did you ever call upon family members or friends to join with you to protest something harmful to people or the environment that a city council or state senate or big corporation was trying to promote?
Have you ever signed petitions or written to politicians, or participated in rallies against injustices?
Have you ever voted for a new politicalcandidate because you did not like what the incumbent was doing?
If you have done any of these or similar actions, tell us about them — and recognize that you’ve been a protestor on behalf of justice. Keep it up. People all over the world are taking actions such as those and achieving successes. But that’s a subject for another post.
Trees actually begin to show their true colors in autumn.
Here’s why: The four primary pigments that produce color within a leaf are chlorophyll (green), xanthophylls (yellow), carotenoids (orange), and anthocyanins (reds and purples). During the warmer growing seasons, leaves produce chlorophyll to help plants create energy from light. The green pigment becomes dominant and masks the other pigments. As days get shorter and nights become longer, trees prepare for winter and the next growing season by blocking off flow to and from a leaf’s stem. This process stops green chlorophyll from being replenished and causes the leaf’s green color to fade. The fading green allows a leaf’s true colors to emerge, producing the dazzling array of orange, yellow, red, and purple call fall foliage before the stem finally detaches. Leaves fall, and their true colors are revealed.
We may never know the true colors of the Las Vegas shooter — why he did it, what forces internal or external drove him. We see only the dominant color of his behavior that one dark night. I lovingly offer that we need to shift focus from his behavior to our own behavior in response. One clear view I have about the fraught issue of forgiveness comes from another atrocity, another October massacre. On October 2, 2006, a shooting occurred at the West Nickel Mines School, an Amish one-room schoolhouse in the Old Order Amish community in Pennsylvania. A gunman took the children in that school hostage and then shot eight of the 10 little girls (ages six to 13), killing five of them before taking his own life.
The emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation in the Amish community brought me to my emotional knees. Each time I find myself in this same spot, driven by anguish or anger or awe, I remember this:
On the day of the shooting, the grandfather of one of the murdered Amish girls was heard warning some young relatives not to hate the killer, saying, “We must not think evil of this man.” Another Amish father noted, “He had a mother and a wife and a soul, and now he’s standing before a just God.”
Jack Meyer, a member of the Brethren community living near the Amish in Lancaster County, explained, “I don’t think there’s anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts.”
Amish community members visited and comforted the gunman’s widow, his parents, and his parents-in-law. One Amish man held his sobbing father in his arms, to comfort him. About 30 members of the Amish community attended the man’s funeral, and the widow of the killer was one of the few outsiders invited to the funeral of a victim.
The widow wrote an open letter to her Amish neighbors, thanking them for their forgiveness, grace, and mercy. She wrote, “Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need. Gifts you’ve given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you.”
Today I received the message pasted in below from a number of different groups, and I say Hooray!
Hooray that out of divisiveness can come unity, that out of hate and violence can come love and nonviolence, that out of prejudice can come tolerance and empathy.
It may be too late for you to stand up against hatred in one of these groups today but it is never to late to stand up on your own or with others on behalf of peace and social justice.
Just look at the groups listed below that are coming together today to stand up against the violence and racism demonstrated in Charlottesville, VA, yesterday–violence and racism that are increasingly wreaking devastation on our planet. If anti-hate/pro-peace and social justice groups such as these continue to flourish and work together, I believe they cannot fail while there is life on earth.
Here is the message:
“Stand in Solidarity with Charlottesville – Find an Event
North Dakota: At the daily meetings, anyone who wishes to speak can do so, for any length of time, on any topic. Others listen carefully, patiently, and respectfully, in order to learn from those who do, and those who do not, initially look like they have a lot to teach.
For non-natives, noticing the patience and listening attentively is the first lesson: That there is a different way to engage—that unwavering focus with determination to meet a known goal is not the only—and not always the best–approach. That pushing someone to get to the point might lead you to miss the point entirely.
The wisdom the speaker has to share might come in the first sentence or the last paragraph, or throughout the comments. You cannot know in advance. You must remain engaged.
In the meetings I attended, some who spoke had traveled—some by foot– hundreds of miles to share their experiences and their hard-won wisdom—from other actions in other times.
Grandmothers led the communal prayers that began each meeting, and ended it, and their prayers of gratitude, of memory, of humble request, and of hope, were enhanced by drumming and singing, done by men—usually young men. Those prayers reminded us we were all in this together now—indigenous people, immigrants—voluntary and forced–and the descendants of immigrants. All races and ethnicities.
We all share this one, beautiful, earth. And every meeting left me in hope and awe, as I watched privileged young men and women—the descendants of colonizers–who had opted to learn, for now, from their indigenous relatives, rather than from their college professors. And oppressed young men and women who had committed themselves to stand up and lead others in non-violent actions to protect the earth.
Everyone there was ready to stand with all willing relatives—we are all relatives–putting our bodies and souls on the line to protect the water for future generations.
This experiment in democracy, sustainability, justice, egalitarianism and community was not viewed favorably by the larger community. It was viewed with suspicion, hatred, and condemnation. And the response of the authorities in the nearby non-native communities, with the support of non-native community members, was unbridled, unjustified, absurd levels of violence, both direct and indirect. Violence toward the water protectors and toward the water itself.
Indeed, for hundreds of years, the democratic, egalitarian, spiritual, communal societies of indigenous western hemisphere natives have been viewed by non-natives with fear and hatred.
Natives have consistently been treated with absurd levels of violence, because, for all this time, the settler/colonizers did not—and probably could not–see the indigenous groups as human. If they had, it would have posed a challenge to the colonizers’ values and way of life, with its central assumption that it is normal for humans to be driven by greed, competition, and individualism. With such values, respect is given not to those who share, but to those who own land, animals, and people.
Dr. Alice LoCicero is currently a visiting scholar at The Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, and president-elect of the Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict (Division 48 of the American Psychological Association.) Dr. LoCicero was the first president of the Society for Terrorism Research. She is author of two books and several peer-reviewed articles on terrorism. Her recent scholarship has documented the costs of the US counterterrorism policies, focusing on the flawed Countering Violent Extremism programs, and the American Psychological Association’s actions that supported torture of detainees at Guantanamo and other sites. Dr. LoCicero was shocked to see water protectors at Standing Rock, who were committed to non-violence, being treated as if they posed a threat equivalent to terrorists.