Given the extensive negative media coverage of Yemen since the botched Christmas airplane bombing, and our focus on a military rather than humanitarian response to the country’s plight, I was happy to catch this video on Al Jazeera English a couple days ago. It tells the story of Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Marwani, an amazing peacemaker in Yemen.

The founder of Dar al-Salam (House of Peace), an organisation that aims to bring feuding tribes together and to end revenge killings, al-Marwani travels around Yemen unarmed acting as a peace negotiator.

[...]

As a youth he was attracted to extremism and violence, but over time, as he took advice from clerics and read a range of books, including the Bible, his views began to change.

[...]

His daily work involves negotiating a truce between warring tribes or trying to negotiate the release of a kidnap victim, meeting government or international representatives, organising workshops or plays, and dealing with the administration and promotion of his organisation.

[...]

Al-Marwani expects to die on a peace mission long before his country sees peace but his young son is preparing to one day take on his father’s role – it will probably be a lifetime’s work for him too.

To read the article that accompanied the video, click here.

To watch Part 2, click here.

At The Immanent Frame today, I interview Mark Johnson, executive director of the pioneering Christian pacifist organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation. (I wrote about the Fellowship in a recent book review for Commonweal.) We discuss the FOR’s current work, its legacy, and how it is adapting to the the challenges of religious (and non-religious) diversity in its ranks.

NS: How is the FOR’s religious identity evolving today?

MJ: We’re forced to ask ourselves what it means to do peacemaking in an interreligious—or even a secular—world. There’s quite a bit of anxiety among many people, who are asking, if the community consciously opens itself more broadly to humanists and avowed atheists, what confidence do we have that we will share basic values in common? But you can argue, I think, that atheism or agnosticism or humanism are as much religions as any denomination or sect in terms of having an identifiable set of values and, eventually, sets of rituals that shape how people think about and act in the world. A lot of what we struggle with is simply a matter of words. I love Charles Taylor’s arguments about the emergence of the secular age. We’re also reading Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld’s very nice new book, In Praise of Doubt. Doubt lies at the heart of the practice of pacifism. You can never know, ultimately, how you’re going to respond when confronted by violence. Absent a total conviction or confidence that you’ll act nonviolently, can you characterize yourself as a pacifist? Part of the conversation that we’re having, also, is about how doubt can create the space for being more accepting of more people.

Read more at The Immanent Frame.

We had a lively discussion last week about violence in video games. A new story from the AP promises for more: Venezuela is going to ban violent video games and toys.

Venezuela would be one of few countries to impose an all-out ban on the “manufacture, importation, distribution, sales and use of violent video games and bellicose toys.” The proposed law would give Venezuela’s consumer protection agency the discretion to define what products should be prohibited and impose fines as high as $128,000.

As the article goes on to explain, the government’s reasoning sounds downright Gandhian, and it goes much beyond a simple ban:

The Venezuelan bill would mandate crime prevention classes in public schools and force the media to “implement permanent campaigns” to warn against the dangers of violent games. Another provision requires the government “to promote the production, distribution, sales and use” of games that teach kids “respect for an adversary.”

The very next lines, however, makes one suspect that perhaps the Chavez administration might not be the best teacher of this lesson:

Some 2,000 people marched across Venezuela’s capital Saturday to protest what they call widespread persecution of Chavez’s opponents.

“It’s a bit ironic that supporters of Chavez, who persecutes his political opponents, want to teach our children the need for respect,” quipped Tomas Sanchez, an opposition lawmaker who broke ranks with Chavez.

While I don’t believe such outright censorship is necessarily the right approach, crime prevention classes (or, rather, conflict resolution classes, to take a more positive approach), which teach “respect for an adversary,” sound like a worthwhile option. Simply enacting a ban will likely fan a black market. Somehow minimizing the demand for such things, however, offers some hope.

Mixing a class like this with a violent suppression campaign can be a fraught proposition—witness the failure of D.A.R.E. anti-drug programs in the United States. The government became so fixated on drugs that students adopted that fixation and drug use didn’t decline for people who took those classes. Much better, of course, is to offer a range nonviolent alternatives, both to drugs and violence, including a more vibrant and demanding community life, employment, and positive role models. Perhaps most of all, though, the government needs to practice what it preaches.

Our friends at Nonviolent Peaceforce have been busy. First of all, if you’re not familiar with their work, check out this new 18-minute video about what they do:

Ready to do something about it? Starting in a few days, leading up to Gandhi’s birthday, NP is organizing a “12 Days of Peace” campaign as a way for people to take part in the struggle for peace. Each day, there is something you can do, in coordination with others around the world:

Monday, Sept. 21
Celebrate United Nations’ International Day of Peace by working a day for peace – donating all or a portion of your day’s wages to a non-profit, non-governmental organization seeking to foster nonviolent peacekeeping worldwide.

Tuesday, Sept. 22
Sign the Peace Alliance’s petition to create a Department of Peace with a cabinet level Secretary of Peace on the presidential staff (www.thepeacealliance.org).

Wednesday, Sept. 23
Write a blog post and/or a status update on Twitter and Facebook noting that you are marking The 12 Days of Peace.

Thursday, Sept. 24
Re-establish and re-connect with a past friend, relative or colleague with whom you’ve had conflict.

Friday, Sept. 25
Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, and/or a letter to your Congressperson expressing support for nonviolent, unarmed peacekeeping in conflict zones worldwide.

Saturday, Sept. 26
Visit a community park with your friends and family for a picnic or gathering in celebration of peace and harmony among those closest to you.

Sunday, Sept. 27
Conduct a prayer for, or meditate upon, peace.

Monday, Sept. 28
End your day by enjoying a piece of music that demonstrates peace to you, such as “Imagine” by John Lennon or “Peace on Earth” by U2.

Tuesday, Sept. 29
Watch the 18-minute film Civilian Unarmed Peacekeeping: Building a Nonviolent Peaceforce, documenting the social and economic benefits of unarmed civilian peacekeeping as trained Nonviolent Peaceforce workers seek to create a safe space for peace within conflict areas. View at: http://tinyurl.com/n7xvl9.

Wednesday, Sept. 30
Spend time with your children and family discussing the social and healthful benefits of practicing peace among their friends and community.

Thursday, Oct. 1
Plant a rock for peace. www.plantingrocksforpeace.org

Friday, Oct. 2
Celebrate Gandhi’s birth anniversary – and the U.N. International Day of Nonviolence – by borrowing Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth – from your local public library.

If you’re interested in taking part, let us know. We’d love to hear about it, and we’d be happy to be your blog of choice for September 23′s activity. Send in your experiences and we’ll post them.

My present travels in Costa Rica with the photographer Lucas Foglia, through a sequence of chance connections and exaggerated truths, landed us the opportunity to be in the press section at today’s meeting between (Nobel laureate) President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica and the two contenders for the presidency of neighboring Honduras. We understand our work here more under the auspices of art than plain reporting—to the point that we ultimately thought more about the press corps gazing upon the performances than the content of the acts themselves, whose Spanish we couldn’t fully understand anyway.

This was the scene: reporters gathered in a cordoned-off half-block of street in front of Arias’s house, with all their thick wires, cameras large and small, questions, computers, recorders, hook-ups, makeup, grumbles, and banter. There was a stage set up at the front of our pen, by the entrance to the house, surrounded by potted plants and guarded by tourist police in white shirts armed only with the friendliest-looking of clubs. Most press stayed all day, mainly waiting from morning through evening. We arrived in mid-afternoon. Not long after, at the back of the press area, on the opposite site of the press section from the prepared stage, a cluster of protesters arrived, bearing flags and banners in revolutionary red, shouting familiar slogans. There was a charge to the rear, pulling correspondents from their posts at the presidents’ stage. I joined.

Dozens of bored reporters finally had something to do, fixing their lenses and microphones and adrenaline on the passionate ones making so much noise through their loudspeakers. Against militarism. Against the powers that be and their inexhaustible corruption. One dressed as Che. An effigy burned. I let my voice recorder take in a speech from one of the ringleaders, far too fast for me to understand. I took too many pictures that have already been taken before in countless places, at countless protests. My hope was to find somewhere its unique vitality, doubtlessly somewhere, awaiting its capture by a sympathetic observer who could make this event really exist by recording it, by broadcasting it, by turning it from what it was to what it represents.

On the other side, the large, immovable cameras still awaited the presidents. They fixed on an empty stage, or on the door from which these men would emerge.

Will this sacred dissent be heard over the decorous speeches, I wondered? They were loud. We, among our cameras and our wires that ran under us like roots in a forest, were huddled between two competing performances, each competing for its presence in the final ontology of that moment. According to research I’ve seen in cognitive science, while people may be able to talk abstractly about the possibility of simultaneous things, “in fact” (says the science) no—in the intuitive processes of human minds, only one event can happen at any given time and be an event, fully. As gatekeepers of event-ness in media culture, the cameras adjudicated a contest of two events, one on either side of the street.

Each had its violence, each had its peace. On one side, a gracious act of conflict resolution among the heads of inevitably murderous states (even, one way or another, military-less Costa Rica). On the other, a riotous cry for an end to injustice and bloodshed.

But I should have expected what happened. Well in time for the actual arrival of the men, as I listened to (and recorded) a long speech about the tragedy of politics from a Honduran photographer, the protests calmly faded away. I didn’t see if it was police or simply being finished that did them in, though I suspect some eerie combination of the two. The air was clear and quiet for, not too long after, the arrival of the powerful.

We stayed only for the appearance by Roberto Micheletti, the leader of the Honduran coup, flanked by Arias. Micheletti spoke—something about elections and the rule of law—but I watched Arias intently. He has a wonderful expression on his face, apparently always. So sad, so stern, so mournful. Whatever he is, for whatever it could possibly be worth, he does look like he carries all the suffering of the world in his expression, as one perpetually in the presence of futility, either right there before him or, at least, during a fleeting moment of progress, in the corner of his eye.

But I don’t know if that’s worth anything at all. I didn’t even get a good picture of him. And I still have to read all the papers to figure out what’s (really, factually, politically) going on, and who I think is on the brave side of right and peace and justice, which is the only peace. On the evening Costa Rican newscast, it goes without saying, only one of the two performances appeared. Only one event, apparently, really happened.

(Photos and video are mine, not Lucas’s, by the way.)

Friday, reports the Providence Journal, hundreds turned out at St. Michael’s church in Providence, Rhode Island to celebrate the life of David Cartagena. I can begin to imagine the scene—when I lived in Providence, I knew the church as an incredibly vibrant, diverse, and powerful place of peace in a deeply troubled neighborhood. It’s hard to think of any spot more worthy of the man being celebrated.

In his own words:

Cartagena, who worked as a streetworker at the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence, had once been a gang member, in and out of jail for years. He finally turned his life around and became a respected force for peace and justice in the community. Says the Institute’s website:

In recent years, he was recognized by law enforcement and community organizations as a skilled mediator and valuable partner.  A gifted public speaker and storyteller, he was sought after as a speaker in nonviolence trainings.  He testified before Congress on gang intervention strategies and has worked with professionals in Connecticut, Guatemala, Massachusetts, Detroit, Michigan and Portland, Oregon on ways to curb youth violence.

In the early morning of May 31st, Cartagena was killed in a car accident on I-95 in Providence.

A release just came from Nonviolent Peaceforce with some happy news:

Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) is pleased to share today the release of Mr. Umar Jaleel, an NP international civilian peacekeeper working on Basilan Island in the Mindanao region of the Philippines who was kidnapped from the NP residence by a group of armed men on Friday, Feb. 13.  Jaleel is alive and is currently en route to medical facilities.  He was released today at 1245 UTC.  Jaleel was released through negotiations between a spokesperson for the captors and NP, with the assistance of local contacts supported by the provincial administration.

[…]

The release was accomplished nonviolently and without payment of ransom.

NP is an important experiment in using trained, paid peacemakers in conflict situations as an alternative to armed troops. Jaleel exemplifies their interfaith, intercultural approach:

Jaleel, an experienced Sri Lankan peaceworker and a Muslim, is widely admired and respected in the area of Basilan, where he is working. He began working for NP in 2004 in Sri Lanka to resolve disputes among communities in the Trincomalee district of Sri Lanka. Last October, he was asked to begin working in the Philippines to help improve Muslim-Christian relations and support local peace organizations and structures of peace to consolidate peace processes.  His efforts helped to strengthen the role of local civil society organizations and peace advocates in monitoring a fragile ceasefire between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and various armed groups on the island of Basilan.