Tag: Tunisia

Does nonviolent resistance work? Part 2a

Posted on by kathiemm
Rally at Ft Meade for Bradley Manning
Rally at Ft Meade for Bradley Manning
Photo used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

The next three posts are Part II of a series of posts in which Dr. Ian Hansen shares his thoughts on nonviolence.

See also Part 1a, Part 1b, Part 1c, Part2b and Part2c.

In March 17, 2014 post, I suggested that in their book Why Civil Resistance Works Chenoweth and Stephan provide  good evidence that:

  • relatively nonviolent movements are more likely to achieve their goals than exclusively violent movements, and
  • nonviolent movements are less likely to bring to power the type of people who drag their nations into bloody purges and genocidal-scope mass killings.

That said, recent history reminds us that nonviolent uprisings against brutal governments (e.g., Libya, Syria) can stir up mass participation with some significant likelihood of tilting towards violence (particularly if the state responds to the peaceful protests with psychotic carnage).

Moreover, mass movements in strategically important states (like Syria and Libya) also tend to attract the meddling interest of large regional powers—as well as global imperial powers—and this meddling can tilt the probabilities even further towards mass carnage.

The prognosis for exploited and manipulated nonviolent revolutions is probably still better than the prognosis for exploited and manipulated violent revolutions, though perhaps not better than the prognosis for cleverly innovating some new form of rebellion that authoritarian and imperial forces are not so confident about co-opting or disrupting.  The hacktivism of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden may be an example of this kind of avant garde rebellion.

Still, transforming the relations of power will require more than simply exposing the vileness of current state policies on the internet.  Tunisia may owe the tinder-striking moment for its revolution in part to Chelsea Manning’s whistleblowing courage and wikileaks’ reportage, but it still had to make a revolution in the streets.  The Tunisian revolution was televised (and tweeted) but it was live too, and without the live part it would not have succeeded.

Ian Hansen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at York College, City University of New York. His research focuses in part on how witness for human rights and peace can transcend explicit political ideology. He is also on the Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility.

No causes to kill for

Posted on by kathiemm
Gandhi in 1944
Gandhi in 1944 (Image in public domain)

“There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”     (Mahatma Gandhi, The story of my experiments with truth, 1927)

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, often known as Mahatma (“Great Soul” in Sanskrit) was born October 2, 1869. In 2007, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved a resolution to create an International Day of Non-Violence on October 2 to commemorate his birthday.

In anticipation of his birthday, we provide a list of some of the relatively recent non-violent movements and their goals:

  • Martin Luther King’s campaign in the 1960s to achieve his dream: “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal'”
  • Anti-nuclear protests in the 1970s and 1980s—for example, at the Montague Nuclear Plant site where the actions of one man, Sam Lovejoy, led to cancellation of plans for a nuclear power plant
  • The Chinese pro-democracy movement of 1987-1989, most memorable for the protests in Tiananmen Square
  • The end of apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s
  • The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions of 2010 and 2011
  • The current demonstrations against economic and political control of the United States by Wall Street

To start a non-violent campaign of your own, you may find the steps offered in this document helpful.

Non-violence can achieve results.

Some wonderful examples can be found in the book A force more powerful: A century of non-violent conflict by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Signs of the times (Stories of engagement)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today in our series of portraits of moral engagement, we introduce Dean Hammer, a clinical psychologist and peace activist, who shares with us excerpts from his essay “Beyond War: A Time for Revolutionary Hope,” presented to the Leverett Peace Commission Lecture Series #2—March 4, 2011.]

Ploughshares Eight
Ploughshares Eight (Image used with permission)

The framework for my reflections is constructed from Dr. Martin Luther King’s Speech delivered at Riverside Church in April, 1967 (a year before his assassination).

Dr. King’s speech was entitled, Beyond Viet Nam: A Time To Break Silence. This vintage oratory occurred during a time of awful blood-letting, much like our current times.

In his wonderful cadence, Dr. King exhorted the audience by stating, “A time comes when silence is betrayal….A new spirit is rising among us… These are revolutionary times.  All over the globe men (and women) are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born…We in the West must support these revolutions.”

While I was a student at Yale Divinity School during the 1970s, I had the very good fortune of meeting Daniel and Philip Berrigan, two radical Catholic peace activists.  These notorious trouble-makers became my mentors and called me into the pathway from Yale to jail.

In Sept. 1980, I joined them and five other friends in a peace witness that came to be known as the Plowshares Eight.  We entered a plant owned by General Electric where components of nuclear weapons were being built.  With household hammers, we disarmed the nuclear nosecone for Mark 12A intercontinental ballistic missiles—beginning a series of over 90 Plowshares actions in the U.S., Europe, and Australia during the past thirty years and leading to time spent in federal prison for my efforts.

From the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya—and yes, Madison Wisconsin– we can hear the drum beat of revolution.  We have our work cut out for us to understand the signs of the times and to join this dramatic movement of liberation and justice-making.

Dean Hammer