Honoring a truly great man, deserving of peace prizes

by Stefan Schindler

Nobel Peace Prize: The medal

There are many things we could say about this leader and the respect he has earned–for his courage, his values, his integrity. But he says it best himself.

“I ain’t draft dodging. I ain’t burning no flag. I ain’t running to Canada. I’m staying right here. You want to send me to jail? Fine, you go right ahead. I’ve been in jail for 400 years. I could be there for 4 or 5 more, but I ain’t going no 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people. If I want to die, I’ll die right here, right now, fightin’ you, if I want to die. You my enemy, not no Chinese, no Vietcong, no Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. Want me to go somewhere and fight for you? You won’t even stand up for me right here in America, for my rights and my religious beliefs. You won’t even stand up for my right here at home. “ — Muhammad Ali (nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the US Gandhi Foundation, 2007)

That quote says it all. Which is why we  honored Ali with The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award (“we” being The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey family and friends), and why we were equally honored to have his presence and his words at the unveiling of The Memorial Stone for Unknown Civilians Killed in War — Ali reminding all of us gathered there that nine out of ten casualties in modern war are civilians, and more than half of these are children.

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Muhammad Ali receiving Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award

Stefan Schindler is a philosopher, teacher, and poet.  He is co-author with Lewis Randa, the founder of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey, of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection.  Stefan is a frequent contributor to Engaging Peace; a Board Member of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey; author of The Courage of Conscience Awards for John Lennon and Howard Zinn; and author of Space is GraceDiscoursing with the GodsThe Tao of Socrates, and America’s Indochina Holocaust, and Buddha’s Political Philosophy.

Cartoon: Right, Moral, Ethical… vs Legal

by Antonio C.S. Rosa

Rule of law? What law?

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 6 Jul 2020.

Antonio Carlos da Silva Rosa (Antonio C. S. Rosa), born 1946, is founder-editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS (from 2008), an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, and recipient of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility’s 2017 Anthony J. Marsella Prize for the Psychology of Peace and Social Justice. He is on the Global Advisory Board of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies and completed his B.A., M.A., and graduate Ph.D. work in the fields of Communication-Journalism and Political Science-Peace Studies/International Relations at the University of Hawai’i. Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe-India since 1994. Books: Transcender e Transformar: Uma Introdução ao Trabalho de Conflitos (from Johan Galtung, translation to Portuguese, 2004); Peace Journalism: 80 Galtung Editorials on War and Peace (2010, editor); Cobertura de Conflitos: Jornalismo para a Paz (from Johan Galtung, Jake Lynch & Annabel McGoldrick, translation to Portuguese, 2010).

Turning anguish into action

On June 6, in Lisbon, 5000 people gathered in Alameda and marched down Almirante Reis Ave in a peaceful manner to protest against the killing of George Floyd and for the Black Lives Matter movement, remembering the portuguese victims of police brutality and racism since the 90’s. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Anita Braga

By Marc Pilisuk

So many of my white friends and I are anguished over the injustice of yet another Black man murdered by police. We find ourselves agreeing with Black Lives Matter that the strong and necessary response to the recent killings involves working not only for justice in these individual cases, but also for addressing the systemic racism underlying the repeated injustices.

Calls for system change must be more than slogans to which we nod our approval. The change must involve going beyond our comfort zone—affecting how we communicate with political leaders and friends about the types of change needed, and impressing on them how urgent our efforts are. Even if we can prevent the imminent destruction to the planet posed by global warming and nuclear war, survival demands that we also work to build a more just society.

System change has many parts and provides many opportunities for involvement. A first step is to communicate to political leaders our dismay that a system providing greater funding for policing, criminalizing, and imprisoning people than for feeding, providing healthcare, and housing deprives people of dignity and healthy lives. We must also question why budgets for urban police provide military grade materials for surveilling and shooting protestors, when money for human social services is insufficient. In response to our own question, we must point out that this systemic misallocation of resources contributes to a bloated Defense Department budget that bolsters authoritarian governments that neglect the needs of their own people.

To take that first step, you can phone the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to obtain contact information for elected officials. You can send the same message to candidates for office and as op-eds or letters to local media. For example, you can recommend forming a nonpartisan group of experts to confront the legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. and propose ways forward, as proposed by Representative Barbara Lee

A second action involves assisting community organizations to speak with a larger megaphone by joining together. Several groups across the country are working hard to promote racial justice in our systems, amplify Black voices, and rid our country of an implicit caste system. If you’re able to do so, you can help by splitting a donation among organizations such as these, Reclaim the BlockMovement for Black LivesBlack Visions Collective, and Violence in Boston, as recommended by Senator Elizabeth Warren.

In addition, an important step we can all take is to examine the often unnoticed ways in which our own actions may unwittingly impede the needed change from a racist society to a more just and fair society. There are ways to be more reflective and to be more active in addressing racism in sectors of our personal lives, in schools, in work situations, and within families. A well thought out compilation of resources specifically for anti-racism work can be found here.

Marc Pilisuk, Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus, The University of California, and Faculty, Saybrook University Berkeley, CA 94708. The Hidden Structure of Violence: Who Benefits From Global Violence and War by Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Achord Rountree. New York, NY: New York Monthly Review, 2015. Released July 2015. You can Order the book here. http://marcpilisuk.com/bio.html

This is a lightly edited post originally published by Dr. Pilisuk on the discussion group of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility, of which he is a member.