What do you call a law that allows a person to shoot and kill another human being when they could otherwise walk away safely?

I can only call it immoral.

With George Zimmerman soon headed to a pre-trial hearing to evaluate whether he will be protected by the “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida, it is important to understand exactly how the law has made permissible the use of lethal force and legalized acts of murder that previously never would have been deemed “justifiable homicides.”

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Colman McCarthy, the former Washington Post columnist who established a second career teaching nonviolence in high schools and colleges, once published this pithy gem: “I had a student at the University of Maryland who wrote a 13-word paper that has stayed with me: ‘Question: Why are we violent but not illiterate? Answer: Because we are taught to read.’”

There was a time when only the 1 percent learned to read, but in the 19th century a movement for universal literacy took hold. Though this global effort is still a work in progress (even today illiteracy is enforced culturally, religiously, politically and economically in many contexts) it has dramatically changed the world. This transformation has not been easy or magical. Like every movement, this far-reaching campaign challenged the injustice and debilitating inertia of the existing order. It resisted the systems that benefited from the literacy monopoly and slowly established the right to read as the default.

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The headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer told us last week that, on the other side of the country, a brick hit a police officer in Oakland and sent him to the hospital. Civil Rights organizer Jim Bevel predicted headlines like this in the ’60s when arguing about the then-current version of “diversity of tactics.” He said something like: “We want people to talk about our issues, about the suffering of our people from racism and poverty. When you throw the brick, people don’t talk about our issues, or the thousand black people on the streets that day, they talk about the police officer who was hit by the brick.”

The question for all those, whether using black bloc tactics or not, who consider adding to the Occupy movement tactics of either property destruction or violence: Do you want the issues of injustice to be talked about, or your bricks? In my own definition, property destruction is not the same as violence—there can be very significant differences between the two. But in this historical-political situation, the impact of either is similar; they give an easy out for people who don’t really want to talk about injustice.

I don’t, however, recommend Chris Hedges’ recent essay, “The Cancer in Occupy,” as a model for how to respond to the black blocs. Demonizing, calling people names, using the giveaway metaphor of “cancer” (I’ve had cancer) is about as far away from effectively opposing a tendency one disagrees with as it’s possible to get.

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At an Occupy Wall Street meeting in midtown Manhattan on December 20th, a debate broke out about the general assemblies (hereafter, GAs)—the core decision-making forums of the movement and its most visible embodiment of direct democracy. The meeting was the second of its kind devoted to exploring the idea of a city-wide general assembly. About 80 people attended, including members of several OWS working groups and GAs across the city, of which there are now about a dozen. While some people seemed dissatisfied with the GAs, and perhaps even ready to dispense with them, others appeared intent on popularizing them even more. The discussion reminded me that this movement is growing and deepening its ties with local neighborhoods—yet as it does, it is encountering the challenge of how to accommodate new communities and support existing organizations that share its goals. While this challenge is still fairly new for OWS, it is one that has been faced and overcome by other movements before.

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Egypt began its first round of balloting in November, one of the outcomes of the January uprising that ousted the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. This followed the military’s attempt to hold onto power by using draconian measures against renewed protests in Tahrir Square, where military and police killed 40 and injured 2,000. With two more rounds of voting remaining, it is small wonder that many Egyptians are afraid of what is to come. Early indications are that the Muslim Brotherhood will show well in free parliamentary elections, and the more doctrinaire Salafists will claim seats. Debates over the prospects for the Arab Awakening now rage as a result.

After a spellbindingly rapid series of events in the Middle East in the early months of this year, progress seems to have slowed. The liberal spirit that characterized those nonviolent revolutions appears to be dissipating in favor of old rivalries—as well as the specter that new forms of repression will simply replace their predecessors.

What’s happening now in Egypt and Tunisia—to say nothing of Bahrain and Syria—is also bringing back to the fore worn-out arguments claiming that nonviolent struggle works slowly, while violence is quick. Efficient, even.

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Every experienced teacher knows that the line between the teacher and the taught can be a thin one. My students at the University for Peace’s main campus in Costa Rica come from Burma, Canada, Costa Rica, Fiji, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippine island of Mindanao, Pakistan, the United States, Vietnam and Zambia. Largely mid-career graduate students, they often bring experience in human rights and civil society organizations. One is a medical doctor who quit a postdoctoral program in healthcare administration because he decided that neither of these degrees would help him make a genuine difference in his country. The university—called UPEACE—may be the most multicultural institution of higher learning in the world, in terms of both faculty and students.

Why, one might ask, is it located in Costa Rica?

To make a long story short, Edgar Cardona, minister of security in the junta that ruled Costa Rica from May 8, 1948, to November 8, 1949, proposed the abolishment of the armed forces as a permanent institution. In December of 1948, the head of the junta, José Figueres Ferrer, later president of the country, declared that a nation that was not rich could not simultaneously afford good education, health care, and a military. The funds dedicated to the armed forces should instead be destined for education, Figueres said in a speech, and in a symbolic act handed the key for a military fortress to the minister of education. In November 1949, a new constitution recognized the ideal of “changing rifles into notebooks.” This perspective of valuing education over militarization has become part of the national memory and aspiration, to be materialized in UPEACE.

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While Discover Chicago is a class that meets weekly during the fall term, it kicks off with an intensive Immersion Week, where students traverse the city by public transportation and begin to get engaged.

Joyana Jacoby Dvorak, Lorena Shkurti and I are team-teaching “Nonviolent Chicago” this quarter. When I mention the name of this class to most people, they often react with startled laughter: “Chicago… nonviolent?” Violence is pervasive in this city—I recently wrote about a dimension of this reality on this site—but there is a growing web of programs and organizations that is slowly forming a culture of nonviolent options. By some counts, as many as 300 peace and nonviolence organizations are at work in this city.

In their first week in college, twenty-two students got to know seven of these organizations on Chicago’s South, West and North Sides: Voices for Creative Nonviolence; the Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation; the White Rose and Su Casa Catholic Workers; the South Austin Coalition; The Peace Corner; and the Vincent and Louise House on DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus.

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Sometimes, when one belongs to the richest and most militarily over-equipped country in the world, there’s a bit of a temptation to overthink things. I was reminded of this at the end of my interview—just published at The Immanent Frame—with the great Pakistani anthropologist Saba Mahmood. I asked the tangled question of what American women can do to help their Afghan counterparts. Some American feminist groups, you might recall, were among those who mobilized to support the initial invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Her reply was thorough, though the gist of it was plain: “Stop bombing them.”

The entire social fabric of Afghani society has been torn apart as a result of, first the war between the United States and the Soviet Union, between 1979 and 1989, and then the U.S. war against the Taliban and now al-Qaeda. There are civilian casualties reported almost every day—the vast majority of whom are women, children, and the elderly—as a result of U.S. bombs and drones. This violence exceeds and parallels the violence unleashed by the Taliban on the Afghanis.  We read about these casualties in the media, but I do not see any mobilization by major U.S. feminist organizations to demand an end to this calamity. This silence stands in sharp contrast to the vast public campaign organized by the Feminist Majority in the late 1990s to oust the Taliban. I am often asked by American feminists what they can do to help Afghan women. My simple and short answer is: first, convince your government to stop bombing them, and second urge the US government to help create the conditions for a political—and not a military—solution to the impasse in Afghanistan. It is the condition of destitution and constant war that has driven Pakistanis and Afghans to join the Taliban (coupled with the opportunistic machinations of their own governments). Perhaps it is time to asses whether diverting the U.S. military aid toward more constructive and systemic projects of economic and political reform might yield different results.

Mahmood also discusses her debt to Talal Asad, whom I interviewed, also for The Immanent Frame, earlier this month.

When a country is shaken by violence, most people expect it to react in kind with force. We’re certainly reminded of that now, as we in the US approach the tenth anniversaries, respectively, of the 9/11 attacks and the hot-on-the-heels launching of the War on Terror. So what about the most recent act of terrorism in the news—Anders Behring Breivik’s rampage in Norway?

I was struck by a comment left here at Waging Nonviolence the other day by Susanne Kromberg, who wrote, “I am a Norwegian who is vainly trying to get The New York Times to cover the passive resistance that has sprung up in Norway as Norwegians under good leadership decide to demonstrate that only love is powerful enough to overcome hatred.” I didn’t know Susanne personally, but I wrote to her and asked to hear more.

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What is wrong with this picture?

After all, it looks like a typical photo of world leaders making decisions for their countries. That is precisely the problem. What’s wrong is the total absence of women—at the table, in the room, and, as a result, from the agenda at this meeting and too many meetings like it.

I worked with the United Nations in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2010 with women human rights defenders. Since coming back to the US, I am aware of the urgency in public calls to end our military involvement in Afghanistan, which means increasing pressure to negotiate with the Taliban for a political power sharing deal. Yet, I also hear in the back of my head the voices of Afghan women, who have warned all along, Don’t wager human rights, especially the fragile ones of women, for the sake of political expediency in striking a peace deal.

The photo portrays a three-way summit on June 24 hosted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and his Afghan counterpart, President Hamid Karzai. The goal of the meeting was to discuss “concern over a rising lack of security, extremism and terrorism,” and the need for “cooperation to combat these phenomena.” The day following the photo, Presidents Zardari and Karzai attended an international anti-terrorism conference, again hosted by Ahmadinejad. Also present was Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Darfur, where rape was used rampantly as a weapon of war.

As the Obama administration and President Karzai’s government undertake talks-about-talks to engage the Taliban, how many women will be at that table? Afghan women have expressed concerns that “behind the scenes” peace deals are already taking place. While women have fought to be included in public processes (they hold 9 of the 70 seats of the Afghanistan High Peace Council put together by Karzai last year), they are consistently locked out of the “old boy networks” of male world leaders where decisions are being made that will have vital consequences on the lives of women and their families. That is the problem the photo makes clear. Right now, the Afghanistan peace process is proceeding without the participation of women.

In 2000, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1325, obliging all UN member states to promote and protect women’s meaningful participation in peace and security processes. Yet, UN Women’s research has found that in 24 peace processes over the past two decades, women formed less than 8 percent of negotiating teams—and, as a result, women’s needs and concerns are almost entirely missing from the resulting agreements. A study of 585 peace agreements concluded between 1990 and 2010 found that just 16 percent referred to women at all—only 3 percent had a reference to sexual- or gender-based violence.

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