Arab Spring – Engaging Peace

News of its Death is Greatly Exaggerated

Posted on October 20, 2014October 20, 2014 by kathiemm

It is alive. It is well. It goes underground and then reasserts itself.

It can currently be seen in Hong Kong, striving for greater democracy, under the name of Occupy Central—Central being the major financial center in Hong Kong, sort of like Wall Street, New York.

Occupy Central was described this morning, Monday October 20, 2014, in the South China Morning Post, as “a civil disobedience movement which began in Hong Kong on September 28, 2014. It calls on thousands of protesters to block roads and paralyse Hong Kong’s financial district if the Beijing and Hong Kong governments do not agree to implement universal suffrage…”

The full name of Occupy Central is Occupy Central with Love and Peace –love and peace being central themes in Gene Sharp’s book, the “Manual of Disobedience.” This manual and Sharp’s other publications have energized and guided a growing number of nonviolent resistance movements such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement of 2011.

Sharp, who has been nominated three times for a Nobel Peace Prize, is founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, a non-profit organization devoted to the use of nonviolence in struggles for human rights, peace, and social justice. Many of his books and papers are available free on the Institution’s website. To see, for example, a list of his “198 methods of nonviolent action,” click here. Be inspired: Consider the extent to which many of these methods can be applied not just to Occupy Movement tactics but to conflicts at all levels of society. Become engaged: Join the nonviolence movement.

Globalization for good (Globalization, Part 2)

Posted on December 26, 2013December 26, 2013 by kathiemm

Arab Spring collage, from Wikimedia Commons. Used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Liberal economists—the ones ballyhooing about the benefits of unfettered capitalism–have gleefully co-opted the term “globalization.” [See Forbes article]. It is this form of globalization–the one of which the multinational corporations and financial institutions are so proud–that has kept multitudes of people in near or literal slavery.

Globalization, however, involves much more than economic profits and losses, ruthless greed and numbing poverty.

Consider, for example, the United Nations. Lots of folks argue that it is an unwieldy bureaucracy failing to fulfill its mission, yet it has globalized the idea of human rights. This achievement—anathema to the international corporate power structure–helped to change the face of the globe, and helped to free the colonies that survived not just the First but also the Second World War.

Moreover, that process has continued. Global transmission of values such as human rights, democracy, and self-determination has been fostered by globalization of systems of communication, including the social media.

The globalization of forms of quick communication is a double-edged sword, however. It can be used to promote violence as in the Rwandan genocide. It can be used by governments to spy on everyone, as in the case of the National Security Agency (NSA). But it can also be used to promote nonviolent resistance to vicious dictators, as in much of the Arab Spring movement, and to alert people around the world to horrors being perpetrated far from their homes.

Globalization is like knowledge—it can be used for good or ill. Our goal should be globalization for good.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Nonviolent activism: Engine of change, Part 1

Posted on July 22, 2013March 11, 2021 by kathiemm

Recovering nonviolent history: Civil resistance in liberation struggles. Edited by Maciej J. Bartkowski. Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2013 (US).

Reviewed by Ed Agro

This volume will interest anyone who is curious about the history of nonviolent activism and its prospects as an engine of change. The book shows in some detail the birth, development, and fate of little-known (or unknown) nonviolent liberation struggles in 17 countries. The aim is to counterbalance national histories that heroize violence and discount the nonviolent activism that preceded and/or paralleled armed struggle.

The editor and chapter authors are “engaged academics” in the field of peace studies; some were intimately involved in the activism they describe or are inheritors of that activism. In the introduction Bartkowski outlines the importance of these stories for peace studies; in his concluding chapter he draws lessons for those not only studying, but also actively pursuing, peace activism.

The tactics described will be familiar to those who have read Gene Sharp’s studies of strategic nonviolence (From dictatorship to democracy: A conceptual framework for liberation). What’s new here is the explicit recognition of how culture-dependent the expression of those tactics is. In fact, the first reading of the book can be difficult, because from chapter to chapter one has to reorient oneself to different modes of expression.

All peoples desire the same autonomy and dignity; all have discovered the same tools of struggle; yet each re-forges them suitably for their own culture. For example, the description of the Egyptian struggles for a nation-state between 1805 and 1922 are, despite different times and mores, similar to tactics used in the Egyptian revolt (Arab Spring) of 2011. Astoundingly, they also read like a description of Occupy Wall Street.

These convergences are partly due to historical memory and the worldwide intercommunication of activists; but they are also due to the rediscovery of the common principles underlying nonviolent resistance and nonviolent citizenship.

From this book I get the sense that there’s hope yet.

Ed Agro is a long-time peace activist. To learn more about Ed, read his autobiographical statement, as published in Forbes Magazine.

The psychology of revolutions, Part 2: The case of Egypt

Posted on July 18, 2013July 29, 2013 by kathiemm

By guest author, Dr. Majed Ashy

Following the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups won the first elections, due to their long history in organizing and their experience in politics compared to the other groups. They were also aided by the fact that people wanted to stay away from the previous system.

These Islamic governments immediately started to apply their vision of an Islamic state to their whole nations without taking into account or understanding the power of the other partners in the revolution and without understanding that the supporters of the previous system were working against them.

The previous system is called “deep government” in the Middle East because it created systems and cultures that are so deeply rooted that it is hard for any government or revolution to make any fundamental changes.

Thus, in the Middle East—for example in Egypt–there are several competing visions for the future. Should the Middle East become a set of religious states or modern secular civilian democracies? Or should the old system of corruption and oppression continue in some form? Could it be true, as some people argue, that the old autocratic systems are the only ones that will work in the Middle East?

The revolutions that have been taking place in the Middle East are faced at this stage with challenging geopolitical realities both inside each country and internationally. People cannot escape from their history, cultural realities, human tendencies, or geopolitical environment.

I think the Middle East needs to understand the role of culture and history in their behavior. I believe that a successful government is one that does not exclude anyone and includes all visions of society in its steps forward. I think groups in the Middle East need to understand the politics of co-existence, power sharing, and respect for human rights.

Winning an election does not mean that a small group can use its powers to change the legal system and the government in ways that will guarantee its power forever, nor does it mean the winning group can take the whole nation in its own preferred direction without respecting the wishes of the masses and various interest groups in society.

Dr. Majed Ashy is an assistant professor of psychology at Merrimack College and a research fellow in psychiatry at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.