Water Protectors – Page 2

Nonviolence: The powerful antidote to youth recruitment to gangs, terrorists, and the US Military

Posted on January 9, 2017January 10, 2017 by kathiemm

by Alice LoCicero

Terrorists, gangs, and the US military recruit youth and train them to be violent. Each time a young person is recruited to violence, one or more adults benefit, but the youth and their families pay the price.[1]

The US military, for example, recruits in high schools—typically high schools serving poor families. The myth perpetrated is that the youth have no other options—or that this is their best option.

However, even the distant benefits that may accrue after the youth have put themselves in harm’s way with one or more deployments to one of the current wars, the rosy picture presented by recruiters is often not fulfilled. About 21% of those discharged from the military in recent years did not receive honorable discharges[2], leaving them at risk of not getting all of the veterans’ benefits expected.[3]

Many communities and organizations work against youth being recruited to violence.[4] While these organizations hold a moral high ground in their respect and advocacy for youth, they lack the power and financial resources of the US military. That power and those resources enhance recruitment through formal advertising and informal infiltration of schools, video games, and community events– including family and sports events.[5]

Perhaps the most powerful antidote to recruitment to violence is not resisting recruitment, but instead welcoming recruitment to non-violence. This became clear to me recently during several days at the Standing Rock encampment.

Hearing young people speak about their experiences there, I reflected on the power of nonviolence in a variety of 20^th and 21^st century movements: The US civil rights and anti-war movements, the nonviolent civil disobedience by Gandhi and his followers, and now the nonviolent actions at Standing Rock.

To fully understand this alternative, one must realize that nonviolence is not simply the absence of violence, which might seem to be associated with weakness. Rather nonviolence is a positive approach, requiring strength, training, and discipline based on a positive philosophy of resistance to injustice and insistence on change.

What would it be like if non-Native communities in the US followed the lead of the Water Protectors at Standing Rock?

What if there were groups recruiting youth to set things right with society through active non-violence? Surely there are youth all over this country who are well-aware of the injustices in their own communities. What if there were elders from those communities who were prepared to lead resistance groups?

Let’s start a discussion about this.

References

[1] LoCicero, A. (2010) The hidden economics of youth violence. The New Renaissance.

[2] http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/09/29/54696/minor-infractions-in-uniform-keep-thousands-of-vet/

[3] https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1039945/dod-announces-new-outreach-efforts-to-veterans-regarding-discharges-and-militar (The Department of Defense has recently recognized that some of the veterans who received less than honorable discharges had behavioral infractions associated with PTSD, and has proactively reached out to those veterans and others to inform them of the possibility of review of status.)

[4] For example, the American Friends Service Committee and the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth.

[5] LoCicero, A. (2016) Resisting Recruitment, Unpublished presentation to the American Psychological Assocation.

Standing Rock: A Change of Heart, Part 4

Posted on December 12, 2016December 13, 2016 by kathiemm

by Charles Eisentstein

The way we see and treat someone is a powerful invitation for them to be as we see them. See someone as deplorable, and even their peace overtures will look like cynical ploys. Distrust generates untrustworthiness. On the other hand, when we are able to see beyond conventional roles and categories, we become able to invite others into previously unmanifest potentials. This cannot be done in ignorance of the subjective reality of another’s situation; to the contrary, it depends on an empathic understanding of their situation. It starts with the question that defines compassion: What is it like to be you?

That question is anathema to the militant and the warmonger, because it rehumanizes those that they would dehumanize. Broach it, and they will call you soft, naïve, a fool or a traitor.

What it is like to be a police at Standing Rock? Or what it is like to be an ETP executive? Can you bring yourself into the knowledge that they are our brothers here on earth, doing their best under the circumstances they have been given? I imagine myself in the ETP executive suite. The stress level is high. The board of directors are freaking out. The banks are threatening to pull their funding. We’ve spent tens of millions leasing capital equipment. Maybe we have bond payments due. Business is tough enough as it is, and now these protestors come in who don’t realize that pipelines are safer than rail tankers. They use gasoline too, the hypocrites! And they’re making us into the bad guys! And look how hate-filled they are! Yup, it’s obvious who the good guys are.

I am not endorsing this viewpoint. I am merely trying to understand it. One product of that understanding that is uncomfortable for the ego of the militant is that it would take courage for the ETP executives to halt the project — to do so would require sacrificing their self-interest as they understand it. Similarly, it might take courage for a policeman to defy orders or disbelieve propaganda or break ranks. In a way, we are all in the same boat; we are all facing situations that invite us to choose love over fear, to listen to the heart when it feels unsafe to do so. We need to help each other obey that call. In that, we are allies. We can be allies in calling each other to our highest potential.

Another friend described his encounters with pepper-spraying police at Standing Rock. He noticed that in each instance, it was only one or two police who were doing most of the violence. The others were standing around looking uncomfortable, probably wishing they were somewhere else.

What would activist tactics look like if they were based on the conviction, “Most of the police don’t really want to be doing this”? What would it look like to express in word and deed an underlying certainty that each of them is here on earth to carry out a sacred mission of service to life? How would it feel to them to be told, “I am sorry you are being put in this position. I am sorry you are under such pressure to contravene your heart. But it is not too late. We forgive you and welcome you to join us in service to life.”

As I write this, the first of two thousand U.S. military veterans are entering the camps at Standing Rock. They have vowed to stand with and protect the Water Protectors with their own bodies. They are not bringing weapons. Many of them are leaving jobs and families in order to help protect the water. If they too can keep peaceful hearts, they will magnify the invitation to the government, the company, and particularly the police to make the courageous choice themselves.

Victory at Standing Rock will have far-reaching consequences. It may seem inconsequential in the macro view if the pipeline is merely rerouted or replaced with rail tankers (which are even worse than pipelines). On a deeper level though, a victory will establish a precedent: if it can happen at Standing Rock, why not globally? If a pipeline can be stopped against great odds in one place, similar violations can be stopped in every place. It will shift our view of what is possible. That’s one reason why I agree with the Sioux elders’ preference to keep the movement focused on the water and not let it be hijacked by climate change activists. Climate change is the result of a million insults to a million places on earth. Honoring the place of Standing Rock establishes a principle of honor to all places.

Writ large, the situation at Standing Rock is the situation of our whole planet: everywhere, dominating forces seek to exploit what remains of the treasures of earth and sea. They cannot be defeated by force. We must instead invite a change of heart by being in a place of heartfulness ourselves – of courage, empathy, and compassion. If the Water Protectors at Standing Rock can stay strong in that invitation, they will demonstrate an unstoppable power and win a miraculous victory, inspiring the rest of us to follow their example.

What if I am wrong? Not every nonviolent action succeeds in its explicit aims; not every invitation, no matter how powerful, is accepted. Yet even if the pipeline goes through, if the Water Protectors stay off the warpath another kind of victory will be won – the creation of a psychic template for the future. With each choice we face, we are being asked what kind of world we want to live in. The more courage required to make that choice, the more powerful the prayer, because Whoever listens to prayers knows we really mean it. Therefore, when we choose love in the face of enormous temptation to hate, we are issuing a powerful prayer for a world of love. When we refuse to dehumanize in the face of atrocity, we issue a prayer for universal dignity. When thousands of people sacrifice their safety and comfort to protect the water, a powerful prayer issues from their gathering. Some day, in some form, it will be answered.

This is the final post in a four-part series. You can read the original essay here and learn more about Charles at charleseisenstein.

Standing Rock: A Change of Heart, Part 2

Posted on December 9, 2016December 9, 2016 by kathiemm

Note from Kathie: Nonviolence in support of human and environmental rights have won the day at the recent Standing Rock protest.

However, because Charles Eisenstein’s message of peace, recently begun on this blog , is timeless and there will be other challenges to human and environmental rights in the years to come, we will publish the rest of his posts with their critically important advice concerning how to conduct a nonviolent and successful protest.

Standing Rock: A Change of Heart, Part 2

by Charles Eisenstein

OK then, back to love as an instrument of protest. I am not talking about shying away from confrontation and hoping to stop the pipeline by loving the police or energy company from afar. Standing Rock has given us many examples of love in action that offer a hint of the miracle that is possible.

I heard about one incident in which a group of Water Protectors went to talk to the sheriff about the water cannons. They were met with police who began to arrest them. While she was being arrested, one of the women began to sing a native prayer song; soon all of the group were singing in unison. The police began to look uncomfortable; one of them even started crying. Another, who looked like he might have Native heritage himself, started to take off his helmet but thought better of it when he saw none of the other police were doing it.

There have been many actions like this at Standing Rock involving song, prayer, ceremony, and nonviolent resistance. To a great extent the urging of the elders has been heeded, and as the above incident demonstrates, these actions have an effect on the police. They disrupt the narratives that legitimize the forceful suppression of the Water Protectors, narratives about violent extremists, criminal elements, protecting the public, and so forth. This has already born fruit: if not for the resolute nonviolence of the resistance, the government would surely have forcefully evicted the Water Protectors by now, justifying violence with violence.

If the Water Protectors go onto the warpath and see and treat the police as enemies, they play into the narratives that legitimize state violence. Consider this report from an army veteran, Harlan Wallner, who wrote to me after spending some time at Standing Rock: “I witnessed people on the shore shouting that the police were fat donut-eating pigs, cowards, etc., that they should be ashamed of themselves, that they have no honor. I heard one man shout that a curse was being placed on them and all of their descendants. I saw one man throw a rock at police in a boat and then be shot in the leg with one of their bean-bag bullets. On two occasions when the anger got particularly fevered I shouted ‘It’s still important to be kind! It’s still important to be kind!’ and the second time I was nearly attacked. ‘Fuck you! Fuck that, it’s way beyond time for that!’ one man nearly growled at me. I shut up after that.”

Now put yourself in the shoes of the police officers. Nothing creates solidarity in the ranks like a common threat. Slurs like “donut-eating pigs” eliminate any possibility that the police will sympathize with the protestors. They play into the very narratives that justify police action to begin with: maintaining law and order in the face of violent extremists. In other words, by engaging in this kind of verbal violence against the police, the militants comply with their own demonization. They put themselves in a position where the only kind of victory possible is a victory by force.

That kind of victory is unlikely. Worse, even if it is achieved, it creates the conditions for an eventual defeat. What are the deep conditions that give rise to the desecration of indigenous peoples and destruction of nature? In the case of indigenous peoples, their oppression is invariably facilitated by their dehumanization or even demonization. This is the deep template of genocide, the primary prerequisite. By demonizing the police or ETP executives, one contributes to the field of dehumanization. One upholds the basic premise that some people are less fully human than others, that they are contemptible, abhorrent… deplorable. That is the essence of racism and the enabler of war.

You can learn more about Charles at charleseisenstein. You can read his original essay in its entirety here.

Standing Rock: A Change of Heart, Part 1

Posted on December 4, 2016 by kathiemm

by Charles Eisenstein*

I am told by Native American friends active at Standing Rock that the elders are counseling the Water Protectors to undertake each action prayerfully and to stay off the warpath.

I would like to explain why this advice is not only spiritually sound, but politically astute as well. I would like to translate it into a strategic compass for anyone who is going to Standing Rock or supporting the Water Protectors from afar. I also want to explain how it contains a recipe for the kind of miracles that we need for the healing of our planet.

Let me explain what I mean here by a miracle. A miracle is a kind of a gift, an occurrence that is beyond our capacity to make happen. It is something beyond the normal rules of cause and effect as we have understood them. These include the rules of political and economic power that determine what is practical and “realistic.”

The halting of the Dakota Access Pipeline would be miraculous simply because of the array of powerful ruling interests that are committed to building it. Not only has Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the pipeline, but a who’s-who of global banks has committed over $10 billion in lines of credit to ETP and other involved entities. Those banks, many of whom are facing financial stress of their own, are counting on the profits from the loans at a time when credit-worthy capital investments are hard to come by. Finally, the United States government has (in its estimation) a geopolitical interest in increasing domestic oil production to reduce the economic power of Russia and the Middle East. To hope to halt the pipeline in the face of such powers is in a certain sense unrealistic.

Since when has a Native American people successfully thwarted large-scale plans of mining, energy, or agricultural interests? The usual pattern has been one land grab after another in which resistance is at best futile and at worst suicidal. But at Standing Rock, something different is possible. It is not because the Dakota Sioux have finally acquired more guns or money than the pro-pipeline forces. It is because we are ready collectively for a change of heart.

That would be good news not only for the people directly affected by the pipeline, because the whole planet is in need of similar miracles on a massive scale. Around the globe, powerful interests are destroying ecosystems and landscapes, clearcutting, stripmining, and polluting. In every case, the destroyers have more military, political, and financial power than those who would resist them. If this planet and our civilization is to heal, it cannot be through winning a contest of force. When you have a chance of overcoming an opponent by force, then fighting is a reasonable option. Absent that condition, victory has to come some other way: through the exercise of a kind of power that makes guns, money, and other kinds of coercive force irrelevant. Dare we call this power love?

Before I go on, let me convey to you my awareness of the injustice and suffering that the Water Protectors have endured. Many of my friends have witnessed them first hand. These things must be taken into account if a philosophy of nonviolence is to be relevant to the real world. Furthermore, I am no armchair philosopher in this matter. My own son is at Standing Rock as I write this.

*This is the first post in a five-part series. You can read the original essay here.

You can learn more about Charles at charleseisenstein.