Professor Colman McCarthy, the Founder and Director of the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C. once commented that, “The most revolutionary thing anybody can do is to raise good, honest and generous children who will question the answers of people who say the answer is violence.”

I was reminded of his words a few weeks back.  I was sitting in my dining room, talking to my friend Jeremy and his family about my work at the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.  We were discussing the gun lobby’s current campaign to allow individuals to carry loaded handguns in public spaces across America—churches, parks, schools, government buildings, child day care centers, metro transportation, airports, etc.—when Jeremy’s nine year-old son Colin piped in.

“There are people who think you can prevent violence with guns?” he asked.

“That’s right,” we told him.

“Cuckoo,” Colin replied, tracing rings around his ear with his finger.

I was pleasantly surprised.  It’s not that Colin isn’t a great kid; he is.  But he’s been obsessed with guns since he was a baby.  I distinctly remember a boy of two—denied toy guns by his parents—running around with a vacuum cleaner tube and “shooting” everything around him.  Now, a few years later, he’s graduated to air guns, water guns and violent video games like Commando 2.  This fascination with firearms that boys seemingly acquire upon exiting the womb is both awe-inspiring and disturbing.

So how does this young boy, who delights in shooting his guests with his Nerf N-Strike Maverick Blaster rifle, have the maturity to grasp the enormous danger that real guns represent to our society?  Why is he is able to embrace the thrill of violence in fantasy while rejecting it completely in reality?

Professor McCarthy says, “Peace is the result of love,” but cautions, “If love was easy, we’d all be good at it.”  He also warns, “If we don’t teach [our children] peace, someone else will teach them violence.”

I must have had my own good influences because, like Colin, I grew up with a gun obsession.  One of my prized possessions as a boy was a plastic M-60 rifle, complete with unfolding tripod.  My friends and I loved to get our toy guns out and play “war” around our elementary school.  I was also in the first generation of video gamers, and played all the shooters:  Postal, Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, Soldier of Fortune, you name it.  And movies?  Die Hard, Predator, Assault on Precinct 13—I loved all that stuff.

Yet I never had the desire to own any real firearms, or mimic the “protagonists” of these games/movies in real life.  I was a big fan of Marvel Comics growing up and it always struck me that Captain America never carried a gun—the bad guys he brought to justice did.  Today, as a husband and father, I have become a passionate advocate for nonviolence.

Professor McCarthy’s dream is to add comprehensive peace studies programs to the curriculum at the nation’s K-12 schools and colleges.  “Every member of Congress was in first grade someplace,” he says.  “Maybe if we taught them a little bit about Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the first day, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in.”

That’s a goal that’s worth working for, but until it is realized, we should all endeavor to learn from kids like Colin.

As Mother Theresa once said, “So often people say that we should look to the elderly, learn from their wisdom, their many years.  I disagree.  I say we should look to the young: untarnished, without stereotypes implanted in their minds, no poison, no hatred in their hearts.  When we learn to see life through the eyes of a child, that is when we become truly wise.”

Amen.

Where were you on February 15, 2003? If you were a part of the biggest global demonstration in history against war, which took place that day, I’m sure you remember well.

I was in the streets of Castellon, a small town on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, where I was studying for a master’s in Peace Studies, with some 20,000 other Spaniards protesting the impending war against Iraq. It was really very moving to be a part of such a large gathering.

Now a team is working on a full-length documentary, called “We Are Many,” about that historic day. Although it’s not set to come out until late 2011 or early 2012, they have already completed a very nice trailer for the movie (above).

While I’m all for commemorating that important event, I also think it’s worth looking at critically. Yes, millions of people around the world came out to protest a war that had not even begun yet. Nothing like that has ever happened before. As Noam Chomsky has said, it took years for any comparable protest to develop during the Vietnam War. And there is hope in that.

Nevertheless, it didn’t stop the invasion of Iraq. Bush brushed off the demonstrations with ease. To let the protesters influence his decision to attack Iraq, he quipped, would be like saying “I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group.”

And unfortunately, when the war began a little more than a month later, many who took part in that global day of protest felt deflated. Afterwards, it took months to build the momentum for action back up and it’s my sense that many people stopped demonstrating against the war for good. Perhaps they felt that it was of no use, since the massive protests before the invasion didn’t apparently bear fruit.

However, the hard truth is that we never should have expected one day of protest, no matter how big, to stop a war. That’s not how nonviolence works. If we actually wanted to stop the imminent attack on Iraq, we would have had to come back the next day, and every day after that, until the administration listened. Almost all nonviolent campaigns that have been successful against such a powerful, determined opponent required this type of sacrifice and perseverance from participants.

Protesters would also have needed to try other, more aggressive tactics – like civil disobedience or even a general strike – that more directly disrupt business as usual. If millions of people indefinitely refused to go to work, blocked roads around the country and filled the jails, then Bush may have perhaps faltered.

Rather than simply celebrate February 15, I would encourage the filmmakers to include some discussion along these lines, so that their very promising documentary can contribute to the building of a more effective movement in the future.

Here is a bit of hopeful news from Palestine. Two and a half years after the Israeli Supreme Court deemed that the section of the separation wall that cuts through the village of Bil’in was illegal, the Israeli military has begun re-routing the wall to comply with the ruling. This move will return 30 percent of Bil’in’s land to the village.

In response to the news, Mohammed Khatib, the coordinator of the West Bank-wide Popular Struggle Coordination Committee and a member of the the Bil’in Popular Committee, said:

There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the only reason that this is finally happening now are the five years of persistent struggle and the sacrifices the people of my village have made. While we are happy for the lands that do return, we do not forget the lands and crops that remain isolated behind the Wall. Our struggle will continue until all of our lands are returned and the Occupation is over.

Since the wall was erected in 2005, Bil’in has been a focal point for nonviolent resistance in Palestine and garnered widespread support and positive media attention around the world. Residents from the village, along with other Israeli and international activists, participate in a weekly march to the wall every Friday. According to the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee:

In addition to grassroots demonstrations and nonviolent direct actions, Bil’in has held annual conferences on popular resistance since 2006; providing a forum for villagers, activists and academics to discuss strategies for the unarmed struggle against the Occupation.

In their latest weekly protest, activists from Bil’in demonstrated their creativity by dressing and painting themselves as the native Na’vi from the film Avatar.

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It’s hard not to mourn the extent to which the origin of Christmas is lost in the orgy of holiday shopping. One veteran of the peace movement recently told me that she even hoped a judge would expedite her case and let her serve the month in jail that she is expecting for a previous action now, so that she could escape the madness.

While we must always use this time to remind folks that this holiday is ultimately a celebration of the birth of Jesus – who not only taught the gospel of nonviolence, but perfectly embodied his teaching to “love your enemies” by voluntarily dying on the cross - a fascinating article in The Cowl, Providence College’s student newspaper, recently alerted me of another connection between Christmas and nonviolence that should be highlighted.   

The 1970 classic stop motion film, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, could actually be seen as a story of nonviolent resistance. As Tim Fleming recounts:

…it’s the movie that tells the story of Santa Claus from start to finish. It explains how he chose to enter homes via chimneys and how one man can be named Kris Kringle, Santa Claus, and Saint Nick at the same time. The birth of the Christmas stocking is explained, and Winter Warlock is introduced as the in-charge director of seasonal cold and snow. However, as I watched this film with my eight-year-old sister I couldn’t help but think that we were viewing, for all intents and purposes, different films. For her the movie was about the history of Christmas, but I saw something different. It’s possible that my being a global studies major had influenced this perceived difference but I saw a case study in Yuletide civil disobedience.

Unfortunately for the children of Little Sombertown, toys had been outlawed by the evil Burgermeister Meisterburger. This unjust decree was enacted on the basis that toys do not foster civil productivity, but instead lead to laziness, dependence, and in the worst case scenario, a healthy imagination. Kris Kringle, however, will not stand for such intolerable rules. He is told over and over that his practices of delivering toys on “the holiest day of the year,” Christ’s birthday, are morally, socially, and lawfully wrong, yet he refuses to cease and desist as his orders prescribe. When he no longer can work in the daylight because of the law, he continues under the cover of night. When he can no longer walk freely through the front doors of houses, he resorts to chimneys. He starts stuffing socks with small toys to hide them from the Burgermeister’s guards when they begin searching houses. In my eyes Kris Kringle was one of the original champions of civil disobedience.

On December 13, the History Channel aired a great new documentary called The People Speak, which I had been looking forward to seeing for months. The film, for those of you that missed it, is based on Howard Zinn’s famous book A People’s History of the United States, which greatly impacted the way I look at history and the potential for ordinary people to affect change. 

Over the last few years, Zinn put on a series of events around the country where actors, musicians, writers and activists, read excerpts from both famous and obscure speeches, books and documents – by Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez and many others - that highlight the long struggle for social justice in this country.

Narrated by Zinn, The People Speak weaves archival footage with dramatic readings of these speeches by actors and artists such as Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Viggo Mortensen, Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei, Bruce Springsteen, and John Legend.

I was fortunate enough to be at one of these events a couple years ago in New York, where Kurt Vonnegut read Mark Twain, who was an outspoken critic of the US war against the Philippines.  It was something to behold, as Vonnegut, then in his 80s, bore a close resemblance to Twain.  

You can still check out clips from the film, or buy a copy of it, on a special website that was developed by the channel to promote the film.  And if you’d prefer to avoid supporting the History Channel, which is normally quite conservative, you can sign up to pre-order the film on its official website. It should be available early next year.

I’ve never tried dumpster diving for food. While I’m intrigued by the idea, it honestly also scares me a bit. After watching a trailer (above) for a new 45-minute movie on the subject, called Dive!, Ryan Rodrick Beiler somewhat reluctantly discusses what has become his “primary (and free) food source,” in an interesting post on Sojourners’ blog. In it, he describes dumpster diving as an act of nonviolence and talks about his reasons for starting to dive in the first place:

Rescuing food from the landfill is both a delight and a duty. The amount of food that’s routinely discarded is overwhelming in both quantity and quality — almost magically so. And with the waste from the business of food production and distribution feeding our landfills better than many of our citizens, dumpster diving is one act of nonviolent civil resistance against the excesses of our corporate food chain.

If any of you have tried dumpster diving, let us know about your experience with it and whether you view it through the lens of nonviolence.

I had the good fortune of being able to catch Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno’s new film, “The Yes Men Fix the World,” when it aired on HBO a couple months ago, and thought it was fantastic.

If you weren’t able to catch it then, however, and you live in New York City, you’re in luck.  The film opened at the Film Forum last week and is currently scheduled to run for two weeks. Over the next month or two, it is set to open in other cities across the country as well. Check out the film’s site to see if it’s coming to a theater near you. (And if it does really well now – if my limited understanding of these things is correct – it has the potential to make it on to many more screens.)

For those not familiar with the Yes Men, their M.O. is to finagle their way into business conferences or onto major media outlets posing as representatives of major corporations – such as Exxon Mobil and Halliburton – or U.S. government officials. They then give speeches that either take the free-market thinking to it’s logical extreme, revealing its absurdity in the process, or make altruistic announcements for government or business action that we would only see if they were moral entities. For example:

In the film’s opening scene, Bichlbaum, purporting to be a Dow Chemical representative, goes on the BBC to announce that after 20 years of denial, his company will finally clean up India’s toxic Bhopal plant and compensate all the victims of the industrial disaster that occurred there. As people connected to the issue celebrate the news, Dow’s stock plummets.

Pundits ask whether the duo perpetrated a cruel joke by giving Bhopal survivors false hope, so Bichlbaum and Bonanno travel to India to ask residents for their reactions. Some say they were disappointed to learn of the fraud, but others seem pleased that the prank called attention to the shameful neglect of big business and government.

I think the Yes Men’s actions hilarious and at times incredibly poignant indictments of a system that thrives on greed and is – in an absolutely literal way – destroying the earth.

While some will undoubtedly see their nonviolent tactics as deceitful and distasteful, I was moved by Bichlbaum’s explanation of their work to someone confronting him after one of their pranks. What they are doing, he said, is “truth-telling where there would normally be lies.” And the lies of the powerful few have profound repercussions on billions of lives at the bottom that they see as worthless, or at least not of enough value to do anything to help.

One exciting new direction that the Yes Men are heading in, which the movie only touches on briefly, are pulling off stunts that require the collaboration of thousands of people – such as the creation and release of nearly a million copies of a fake New York Post last month that focused on what needs to be done to avert the worst effects of climate change.  The more people can be drawn in to participate in these types of creative actions, the more hope we can all have for the future.

A few years ago environmental activist Derrick Jensen gave a talk in which he imagined how Star Wars might have turned out if it had been written, not by George Lucas, but by a bunch of environmentalists. He called it “Star Non-Violent Civil Disobedience” and described how various pacifist factions would fight over the best way to stop Darth Vader from blowing up the Earth. In doing so, they would never reach a consensus or form a unified resistance movement, which would allow Darth Vader to succeed. But the environmentalists would rejoice because there would be a three-sentence clip in the back pages of The New Empire Times about their efforts.

The folks at endciv.com—who brought Jensen’s story to life in the above video—say, “The ‘Star Wars’ piece is one of Derrick’s best analogies, one that delivers a precise critique of mainstream environmental groups.”

I certainly see a lot of truth (and humor) in his criticisms, particularly in regards to lack of organization and disagreement on strategy. But, from what I know of Jensen, he wouldn’t think much of the environmental movement if it were unified and enacting a truly strategic nonviolent campaign.

If I understand his philosophy correctly, Jensen doesn’t think people can be persuaded to do the right thing—hence his criticism of nonviolence. He favors acts of sabotage, e.g. taking out phone lines and blowing up dams, because he believes they would have more immediate and forceful results.

I can’t say that I agree with that logic. I’m not aware of any major acts of property destruction that had the effect of reversing a particular injustice. And even if there are some examples, I’m not sure they don’t measure up to the successes nonviolence has attained over the past hundred years.

But rather than dive further into that debate, I think it’s better to take what good lessons we can from Jensen’s critique of nonviolence, as he certainly makes some legitimate points.

I had a piece on Huffington Post over the weekend about Quentin Tarantino’s WWII revenge-fantasy Inglourious Basterds, a film in which a band of Jewish soldiers brutally terrorize Nazis on their way to take part in a plot to kill Hitler and other high ranking Third Reich officials.

Like other recent WWII movies—Valkyrie and Defiance—Basterds reinforces the myth that only violent resistance could have worked against the Nazis. To counter this myth, I present several prominent case studies of successful nonviolent resistance against the Nazis—any one of which would make for a great film.

Ultimately, my point is to say that it’s time to move on from the stale and misleading storyline that violence is what saved us from the Nazis, when there are so many positive stories of ordinary people triumphing over what we often consider the greatest evil to ever walk the earth.

Only days before it was set to premier on Al Jazeera English earlier this month, a new film on the nonviolent movement in West Papua was pulled off air by the Qatar-based TV channel – apparently at the behest of the Indonesian government.

Called “Pride of Warriors,” the documentary was inspired by the arrival of 43 West Papuan refugees in Australia in January 2006.

According to Jason MacLeod, a lecturer at the University of Queensland’s Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, who has viewed the film:

Faced with an Indonesian ban on foreign media, [Australian filmmaker Jono] van Hest smuggled six video cameras into West Papua. The result of this unparalleled access into the West Papuan resistance is a film that gets behind the media headlines to give an upfront and personal account of nonviolent resistance in West Papua.

[...]

The film tells the stories of four individuals: Yani, the daughter of an independence leader, who was kidnapped and tortured because of her father’s nonviolent political activity; Matias Bunai, a customary leader from Paniai who is fighting to keep his culture alive; the rebel leader Tadius Yogi who has put down his guns and now advocates a peaceful solution to the conflict; and a group of young dancers who were interrogated by the Indonesian security forces for performing a dance.

[…]

By refusing to screen his film Al Jazeera has come down on the side of a withering of democracy. When it is eventually premiered, Pride of Warriors promises to blend the best of art, politics and investigative journalism. The very act of filming is itself a story of nonviolent action and solidarity with a people determined to be free, highlighting the power of the video camera as a tool for liberation.

In the Jakarta Post, Ary Hermawan suggests that the film was canceled, or at least postponed, because the presidential elections were approaching on July 8, and the Indonesian government saw the documentary as threatening.

While it’s perhaps not surprising, I guess this is just evidence that when it comes to being critical of Muslim countries, Al Jazeera is not as independent as you’d hope.

Badshah Khan and Gandhi

What does it take to imagine that nonviolent approaches to conflict might be possible? Millennia-old religious traditions? A prophet? Common sense? Certainly the last place one would expect to find it: a race of hardened warriors in a hardened land, where a gun is part of the common attire and tribal feuds last for generations.

Yesterday evening, the Brooklyn Academy of Music screened T.C. McLuhan’s 2008 film—decades in the making—The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, a Torch for Peace. It tells a story desperately in need of being told: the life of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the towering Pashtun leader who worked with Mohandas Gandhi in the nonviolent struggle to rid colonial India of British rule. After that, he worked to dissolve the incendiary lines of cultural and religious identity that marked Pakistan from the beginning. In all, he spent a third of his 98-year life in prison.

The Khudai Khidmatgar

Those interviewed in the film refer again and again to a “miracle”: that Khan, a product of the chaotic tribal region in present Pakistan and Afghanistan, could have become a “Badshah”—an “emperor”—of peace. And that he mobilized a hundred-thousand-strong nonviolent army, the Khudai Khidmatgar, whose soldiers wore locally-spun red cloth, symbolizing their commitment to shed blood for the cause of peace and freedom. Amidst a supposed culture of killing, Khan came to realize that violence can only lead to defeat and the only victory worth having is a nonviolent one.

At the time, many assumed that Khan learned his methods from Gandhi. Or perhaps through his British schoolteacher, Reverend Wigram. No, Khan insisted, he had come to them on his own, through his Muslim faith and through the traditions of his people.

The most powerful parts of the film are those with the 82 Khudai Khidmatgar soldiers—5 of whom were women—that McLuhan managed to gather by traveling among remote villages of Pakistan and Afghanistan. All in their nineties at least, they spoke proudly of their service and of their devotion to the ideals that Khan taught. Khan was the son of a wealthy landowner, and he had a British education. But, by and large, not these men and women. Yet somehow, they fail to act out the barbarous stereotype that everyone—inside and out—seems to have about their society. Their witness reminds us, in fact, that traces of nonviolence are deeply ingrained in every human society, no matter how warlike. We forget this too easily when violence is all that titilates us enough to make headlines.

The Frontier Gandhi could hardly be more timely, yet it also runs the risk of being lost in the same senseless politics that kept its subject so marginalized and persecuted throughout his life. India-Pakistan tensions were palpable in the voices of those in the present trying to claim or disown Khan. Pakistan has erased his memory from the schoolbooks, and former President Pervez Musharraf even appears in the film, calling the Badshah a detractor from the Pakistani cause. For Indians, however, he represents a vindication for the Gandhian legacy which they claim. During the incredibly violent period of partition between India and Pakistan, which Khan and Gandhi opposed, the Khudai Khidmatgar stood guard over Hindu homes and property in Pakistan to protect them from Muslim mobs. While the film shows people on Pakistani streets for whom Khan’s name doesn’t ring a bell, a gaggle of Indian schoolgirls gives a glowing account of his accomplishments.

Worrying also is the appeal that this film might have for Western forces engaged in a war precisely where Khan lived and worked. Might promoting his story give rise to a more “passive” resistance? When Taliban fighters give up their guns to become meek peacemakers, one might imagine, it’ll be a whole lot easier to install a pro-Western nation state over the “lawless” tribal regions, ridding the universe of terrorism once and for all. Hamid Karzai, incidentally, praises Khan in the film. One can only hope that the convictions of Gandhi and Khan are true, that there is no weapon more powerful than nonviolent struggle, and that those who wield it, even against the American war machine, would truly and meaningfully win.

At his death in 1988, Badshah Khan showed one last time his mastery as an artist of human spirit. Though he died in a hospital in Pakistan, he insisted on being buried in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, across the Khyber Pass. His family objected, but he insisted. And so it was. Thousands poured over the border, with no papers or passports. The Afghan civil war went on hold for a few days. Business as usual—warfare as usual—stopped for a while so that people could celebrate the vision of a great man.

But there was a bomb. 15 people died, out of the hundreds of thousands who came in peace, in defiance of normalcy. There was a bomb, so the funeral was on the news.

• Fourteen activists shut down a coal digger at an Australian power plant

• Three University students in New Zealand were suspended for burning the NZ flag as part of an anti-war protest on Anzac Day

• NAACP considering a boycott and protest march at NASCAR events to force ban on Confederate flag

• Argentine oil company forced to shut down operations after month long blockade by Indians protecting ancestral land from developmen

• More than 200 students in Venice CA staged a sit-in to support the LA teachers union, who have been banned from striking

• Fifteen activists were arrested outside of Rep. Rick Boucher’s office for holding a sit-in to protest his support for coal

• Climate protesters gathered outside Tennessee Rep. Bart Gordon’s office to express opposition to the Cap and Trade bill going through Congress

• Hundreds of Tamils protest outside of White House

• Three UK medics denied entry to Gaza begin hunger strike

• 40 high school students suspended for launching a campus walk-out and protest over the firing of two teachers in Walla Walla, Washington

• London taxi drivers protest £3 parking fee to use bathrooms

• Hundreds of laid-off Cisco janitors plan protest outside supply chain conference where Cisco executives are scheduled to speak

• Days of protest and threat of boycott persuade Edinburgh Film Festival to return a $450 grant from the Israeli Embassy

• A reverend in Chicago is fasting to raise concern about the violence in Chicago

• Thousands of university students in Venezuela marched to protest government budget cuts in education

• Canola farmers in Australia protest the growing of genetically modified canola with a two day fasting vigil

It was announced yesterday that Dreamworks – the company behind Shrek and the recent comedy blockbuster I Love You, Man – acquired the life rights from the King Estate to make a new biopic on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“We are all honored that the King Estate is giving us the opportunity to tell the story of these defining, historic events,” said Steven Spielberg, who is set to co-produce the movie. “It is our hope that the creative power of film and the impact of Dr. King’s life can combine to present a story of undeniable power that we can all be proud of.”

But what part of Dr. King’s legacy is Spielberg proud of?

Will the movie give a taste of Dr. King’s famous speech at Riverside Church in New York City where he called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today?” Seems unlikely.

While Hollywood somehow managed to produce a great film on Gandhi in 1982, it’s hard to imagine that they will get this one right.

The radical side of King – the one that fought not only for civil rights, but also against the Vietnam War and for economic justice – has been consistently downplayed or ignored by the mainstream media since his death, because that King continues to threaten the status quo today.

Since this new film will likely reach an enormous audience and considerably shape how the average American sees Dr. King, the peace community should seek a dialogue with Dreamworks and the producers about the script as this project moves forward.