Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nonviolence

  • The Myth of Peace

    If history is any indication, the United States may be subject to the violence of war within my lifetime, I am 42. Military scholars say that war and its resulting violence on a civilian population is unavoidable. We are told that peace just isn’t obtainable in the Middle East, or in other war torn countries across the globe; that violent conflict will always be a fact of life as we try to control territory and natural resources. We are given example after example how, throughout history and including today, violent conflict is inevitable and in some cases necessary.

    Some people are quick to defend the notion that there is nothing to be done about civilian death and destruction caused by violent conflict, that in times such as these, war is best left to the experts. It is true that only war experts know how to successfully conduct war, that to win a conflict is to win by any means, and that includes civilian casualties. Talking heads for the military tell us that they are working to reduce the number of civilian casualties through more efficient means of killing-smarter bombs, better technology. But, the truth remains that while any military is good at killing, it is inept at not targeting civilians. After all, to target civilians is to terrorize a population and to attack an enemy’s infrastructure. With this illogic, there is no such thing as a non military target.

    Yet, if we leave war to the war experts, who will oversee the peace process? Who are our peace experts? Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld? They have been buddies since their early thirties, and they have amassed power by putting their friends in important positions throughout the government and the military. They are war experts dictating military policy for this country, yet there is not a diplomat for peace between the two of them. There is no peace equivalent to the Department of Defense, we have no such office or branch of government that we can go to in times such as these. Our nonexistent Department of Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution Services didn’t just get an additional $40 billion infusion into an already huge capital, operating, and maintenance budget-that was our Department of War. Blind military spending appears to be a priority for our country, with no visible way to counteract or slow it down. The peace dividend has long since been chucked out the window.

    And, what has become of our domestic programs that deal with our children’s education; our failing health care system, our weakened social security, our declining environmental health, and our loss of morale as citizens of this country?

    It wasn’t the destruction of the twin towers on September 11, 2001 and the threat of terrorism that is causing this country’s morale to plummet. It is the lack of hope that things will ever get better in the lifetime that is ahead. There is no clear way out, no end in sight.

    That is because we are spending billions of dollars on high tech toys of destruction for a group of people who want to see major conflict, so that they can use their toys against military targets, and civilians if necessary. They want to see this conflict happen just like a six-year-old boy with a firecracker wants to see it explode.

    Civilian Casualties

    Let the facts speak for themselves: World War II resulted in killing 61 million people, 67% of those killed (40 million) were civilian. Violent clashes and wars world wide for the 1950s resulted in 4.6 million people killed, 50 percent being civilian (2.3 million). In the 1960s, 6.5 million people were killed, 56% were civilian (3.64 million). The 1970s saw fewer people killed (3 million), but most of them were civilians (2 million). The 1980s saw 5.5 million people killed through violent conflict around the world, with over 4 million being civilian. Conflict and wars of the 1990s left 5 million people killed worldwide, half were civilian. From WWII to 2000 we have seen 85.6 million killed, with 63 % of those being civilian (54 million).

    The Gulf War

    The Gulf War has seen 200,000 casualties, both civilian and military, by the end of the conflict. But, ten years after the end of this conflict, 10,000 American service men and women had died from the Gulf War Syndrome. Of the 600,000 troops that had served in the Gulf War, 230,000 have applied for medical assistance since the end of that conflict. A combination of things are suspected causes of this widespread illness. It is believed that either untested anthrax vaccinations, the transfer of toxic poly-hydrocarbons from plastic packaging of MRE’s (meals ready to eat), or troop use of depleted uranium munitions (which was never disclosed to the troops who were using them) have caused severe illness. Whatever the cause, this is a better kill and injury rate than any enemy could hope to level on our troops.

    Because of sanctions on Iraq, 500,000 children have died from diarrhea and malnutrition from the lack of clean water, a direct result of targeting civilian infrastructure by the U.S. military.

    Why are these numbers significant?

    As technology improves and as dollars increase, the efficiency of killing also improves. But improving the efficiency of killing doesn’t reduce the number of civilian deaths, it increases the number of civilian deaths. The number increases because there is a greater tendency to use these weapons on lesser known targets. If it can be claimed that a “smart bomb” (remember- bombs are only as smart as the people who use them) can “surgically” remove a military target within tight civilian quarters with minimal civilian casualties, then the tendency to use these weapons in tight civilian quarters will increase, resulting in higher numbers of civilian deaths.

    The myth of Peace

    Civilians do not wage war. Indeed, war and military police actions are argued as necessary to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure. So, civilians agree to support the military in promise that the war will not touch them. Civilians are confident that their families will not suffer the losses of their enemies. Most civilians who have experienced war however, come to know that war only means to reduce profits and production, bringing only pain, suffering, and agony down the road. But nonetheless, these civilians have been convinced that their experts have exhausted all other diplomatic avenues and have come up empty handed. The leaders come back to say “Sorry, war is inevitable. Prepare for war,” and the civilians feel they have no other choice.

    How many times have you heard someone say that it is in our “human nature,” to go to war? That the human species is violent and war like and there is nothing that we can do about it? That might makes right, to the winner goes the spoils?

    To say that it is in our human nature to kill others and that war is inevitable perpetuates the myth that war is forever our way. It is not our nature to kill others who don’t agree with us or who think differently from ourselves. But, it is our human nature to be fearful of others who have opposing ideas or who are different from ourselves. This fear may go in two directions: Our fear may sway into curiosity or it may sway into anger and violence.

    Another trait of our “human nature” is to divide ourselves into leaders and followers. Leaders can choose to go to war for entire populations and will not hesitate to call upon the followers to do the dirty work. It is not our human nature to go to war, but it is in our human nature to be led into war.

    Therefore, if we can be led into war, we can be led into peace.

    People are not warlike creatures. It is the random individual who sees value in herding the masses into violence. Every war is lead by someone who has convinced a critical mass of people that war is the only option. This is true with either side of any war or violent conflict. And, it is the same for peace. In any conflict that has not escalated into violence or where violence has ceased, a leader has led a critical mass of people to great change.

    The war in the Middle East is being perpetuated not because Israel and Arab leaders can’t come to an agreement, but because the concept of peace is being used incorrectly. The myth of peace begins within the very roots of the Judeo-Christian religion. Peace in this religious sense is an unattainable time/place. Peace is symbolized by the phrase, “when the lion lays down with the lamb,” which indicates that all life on Earth will be as one, living in harmony for the rest of all eternity.

    This peace does not exist, nor will it ever exist on this Earth inhabited by our wonderfully fallible human species. Peace is not the cessation of conflict, and a resulting agreement in totality. For the Mideast, the lion may never lay down with the lamb. Peace is a continuing evolving process that produces nonviolent results. Peace can revert to war or it can be sustained through constant communication, but it can never be stagnant or absolute.

    Peace begins when violence ends. That doesn’t mean that the conflicting ideas will suddenly disappear. It means that when people stop doing violence to each other-stop killing-negotiations can begin. In the simplest terms, peace is a process where no one is dying from an act of aggression. This is a real living peace that is attainable and quite possible when built upon the hard work of conflict resolution and diplomacy. Peace is not a time/place. Peace is a process that is ongoing and never without tension.
    *Dane Spencer, a Landscape Architect by profession, has been active with peace issues since 1986 when he became involved with the Seattle/Tashkent Peace Park. Constructed in the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union and the capital of Uzbekistan, the Peace Park is an example of citizens working together to promote diplomacy instead of tired war rhetoric and cold war politics. Recent U.S. posturing has rekindled Dane’s interest in the promotion of non-violence and his contemplation of peace.

  • Nonviolence 101

    Conversations pertaining to work often begin like this:
    “What do you do?”
    “I’m a high school teacher.”
    “What do you teach?”
    “Peacemaking.”
    “Huh?”
    And then it takes a moment to register. The follow-up question usually is, “Is that a real class in high school?”

    And thus begins the story of how classes on nonviolence wind up in high schools.

    I tell people about the various chapters, how we start out at the beginning of the semester with personal peacemaking and nonviolent responses to assault. Students always want to know how a pacifist would respond if he or she were to be attacked by a random stranger leaping from the bushes or from behind a dumpster in a dark alley. So I ask them how many of them have ever been physically hit by a random stranger in any way at any point in their lives. Maybe one or two people. Then I ask them how many people have ever been physically hit by a member of their family or someone they know at any point in their lives. Nearly every hand goes up. We worry about the boogeyman and abandoned buildings but fail to address some of the most conflict-ridden arenas, the places where we usually go like home, school and work.

    That’s how the semester begins, by examining our own personal lives. This first chapter introduces students to nonviolence, the myths, the truths and the power of responding with nonviolent force to our precarious lives. We create a working definition of peace, of violence, conflict and of nonviolence. We explore where we need to create spaces for peace in our lives, in our communities, in our state, in our nation and in our world. We start to learn about consensus, following a process and taking turns. We begin to disarm our disbeliefs, our doubts and our misgivings about peacemaking. We start to let our defenses down in order to let peace in.

    After establishing a baseline for conceptualizing nonviolence, the class learns about historical figures who usually get the short end of the stick in traditional high school classes. Primary sources are a must in Solutions to Violence, the name of the course which I teach and which my mentor, Colman McCarthy, founded. We study Gandhi in his own words. We watch A Force More Powerful, the video series by York&Ackerman which aired on PBS in October 2000. We read Dr. King in his own words, and learn about the civil rights movement, hassle lines and nonviolence trainings. The class begins to understand the structure and discipline which nonviolence requires. We then read Dorothy Day, learning about intentional communities and communal living. The students I teach are accustomed to mass marketing, consumerism and capitalism, so Dorothy Day’s commitment to generosity, hospitality and precarity tends to shock them. That chapter demonstrates a very exciting learning curve.

    Next we read Gene Sharp, Tolstoy’s “Patriotism or Peace”, Daniel Berrigan and a very articulate piece by Joan Baez which examines a dialogue between a pacifist and a skeptic. We learn about the humanitarian crisis in Iraq as a result of the economic embargo, about the School of the Americas Watch movement, about Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, about sweatshops and maquiladoras, about child labor and child soldiers, about economics and the Pentagon and about the environment and animal rights. By the end of the semester, the Students in Solutions to Violence know how to find alternative news and pacifist perspectives on the Internet from websites like Commondreams, Indymedia and the Nonviolence Web.

    What students really learn…

    “This class made a difference in my life. I see things in a whole new way now that I didn’t see before. I’m not saying this class changed my whole viewpoint on life, but it did help me to be a little more open-minded. I’m seeing a little more color these days than just black and white. I don’t think this class is about learning a bunch of stats and info. It’s more than that. I’ve learned to be a little more positive than negative. I hope that the class becomes required in the future.”

    I hope that my students learn the specifics of nonviolence, that they learn to tell the stories of nonviolence and that they grow in their understanding of key nonviolent figures both past and present. Even more than the facts, though, I hope that they learn about themselves. About halfway through the semester, I ask the class what they think my goals are in teaching Solutions to Violence. Items from the following list invariably arise each semester in their responses to that question:

    Compassion. Compassion is a difficult skill to teach. Everywhere around them in the world, they learn to be tough, not to show their softer side and that kindness is a weakness. Perhaps the best place to start is teaching with compassion. My mentor, Colman McCarthy, gave me some good advice about how to do this. He told me that before every class, he reminds himself to listen more than talk. He says that good listeners have many friends and poor listeners have many acquaintances. Many people like to talk just to hear their heads rattle. The skill of being a good listener is perhaps the most important one in the teaching profession.

    I have learned many things from my students just by listening. In fact, even if I just show up to class and don’t say a word, the students will create their own dialogue because they so often need a forum to vent their emotions and share their experiences. When we study Gandhi and review the nine steps for conflict transformation, “Work on your listening skills” is one of the toughest on the list. I ask my class if, when they’re having a conversation or argument, if they are truly digesting the words of the other person, or if they’re planning in their heads what to say next, letting the other person’s words go in one ear and out the other. We so desperately want to be heard and understood, but have little experience in truly listening with patient hearts.

    Compassion also comes from empathy. I always hope for my students that they make other people’s experiences a part of their own, whether they live in the same town or around the globe.

    Ownership of their learning. Students have very little opportunity to exercise their natural creativity in school in no small part to the reliance on standardized testing and multiple-choice exams. These brain-numbing techniques lull the students into a passive state of receiving information without truly testing the measure of its worth, without examining it for relevance and truthfulness. Standardized tests stratify students into categories that teachers, administrators and colleges are comfortable with, but have little bearing on what students have actually learned.

    I am interested in students learning. I want them to assume responsibility for their own education, and become partners with the school and their teachers in an active pursuit of knowledge. In Solutions to Violence, students have the opportunity to grade themselves, and each semester they report that this is the toughest assignment. The class writes about what they are learning, how they are learning and how it is affecting them in their daily lives. Then they must assign a comparable grade so that the administration is satisfied. Learning ought to be a cooperative process. Sharing power with the students demonstrates respect and attentiveness to their autonomy and gives them the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned. It is also tremendously valuable insight for me to know what parts of the curriculum reach the students and what elements of truth they have gleaned from the stories, videos and discussions.

    This semester, one student said the following: “Why can’t you just give us grades, Miss Wells? I mean, if you gave us grades then we could just be angry with you if we didn’t like them. If we give ourselves grades, we have to live with what we have done and either be angry or happy with our own effort. Can’t you just do our grades for us?” For me, this says it all. Students are too far-removed from the processes by which we measure them. Perhaps we don’t trust them to give honest evaluations of their work. Perhaps it ought to be part of the teacher’s job to evaluate the students independently. But I believe that empowering students to grade themselves is one of the best privileges to bestow on them. They must assume responsibility this way.

    Occasionally, students will respond with less-than-honest recommendations for their grades. So we review what they have written as a part of their evaluation, and use their overestimated grade as a jumping off point. What I have realized all too often, though, when a student grades himself or herself higher than I would have is that I have not accurately measured what that student has learned, and upon closer inspection, I learn that indeed that student has assumed a great deal of responsibility for taking back his/her education. Sometimes it takes a while to know what you know, though, and test-centered accountability does not take into account this gestation period for knowledge to develop.

    Knowledge about the world. Most students do not read the news section of the newspaper. Many students read the sports section, but that is just not comparable. Solutions to Violence teaches them how to dissect the newspaper, learn about the places in the stories and try to connect with the lives of those impacted by international events. We talk about letters to the editor, discuss news items and read through articles, point to places on the map and follow up with case studies about places that interest the students, like Palestine and South Africa.

    But Solutions to Violence is more than just encouraging students to be more informed. It is giving them the tools to take action and create change in their lives, in their school, in their community and in their world.

    In the past few semesters that I have been teaching in California, my students have incorporated their theoretical knowledge about how and why nonviolence works into practical action to address current needs in the community and in the world. For example, in response to learning about the mushroom workers’ struggles to win a contract for fair pay, better health and retirement benefits, the students organized a school-wide canned food drive to benefit the farmworkers. This particular action impressed me because it was during the last week of school and coordinated primarily by the seniors in the class, people who had tuned out of nearly every other subject and had their minds only on graduation.

    Nonviolence is not only about changing the world. Students begin to learn about how their hearts and minds can be transformed by considering peacemaking a legitimate skill. We read a selection from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Peace is Every Step, learning to be mindful of our breathing and to recover ourselves and refocus when our attention turns to anger and potential violence. Many times my students have reported that in a tense situation, one where they were ready to loose their cool, they remembered the conscious breathing exercises we do in class, concentrating on naming our in-breath and out-breath. When they were in control of their own emotions through mindful breathing, they felt less likely to react violently. It is this exact personal transformation which makes me believe that Solutions to Violence is a worthwhile class that ought to be a part of any standard high school curriculum.

    It teaches them how to be better friends, better children, better students and better people. It helps them define their talents, articulate their thoughts and cooperate with each other.

    I, too, am transformed each semester, impressed with the level of life experience and wisdom my students bring. I learn from them as much as they learn from me.

    Teaching peacemaking in school is the most logical non-reactive component to ending intolerance, racism, ageism and all other forms of personal, structural and institutional violence. I am hoping that more people will recognize this and that the movement to teach peace will be the saving grace for the sake of our young people, our communities and our world.
    *Leah Wells is a high school teacher and the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. This article was initially published in the spring edition of Peacebuilding, the newsletter of the Peace Education Commission.

  • Teens Grapple with U.S. Role in Conflict

    Two hours after the first airliner slammed into the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, the International Day of Peace, 24-year-old Leah Catherine Wells walked into her classroom at St. Bonaventure Catholic High School in Ventura, Calif., with a huge challenge before her.

    For the next 50 minutes, Wells, a Georgetown graduate, former high school English and French teacher turned nonviolence advocate, was supposed to teach her daily class on nonviolence.

    It never happened. The half-dozen-plus students who showed for the elective class were “off the wall,” said Wells. “It was bedlam. They were chatterboxes. ‘Did you see this? Did you hear that?’ ”

    Wells, a staff member of the Santa Barbara-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, decided too much was still happening to make classroom discussion possible, so she folded her group into the world history class so they could watch developments on television.

    Her class homework assignment that night was simple: Be patient, be kind.

    Wells herself had an evening appointment in Los Alamitos (see related story).

    The following day, Wells’ students had calmed down. They faced three questions on the chalkboard: “What were your reactions yesterday? How do you respond nonviolently to a situation like this? And WWGD (what would Gandhi do?)”

    NCR sat in on the class with this understanding: no photographs, no last names. There were two Lisas, one in red, one wearing a lei, two Davids, one in red, one in white, Jeff, Paul, Veronica, Debby and Alyssa (with a Mike and a Drew arriving very late indeed, carrying excuse notes).

    There were opening prayers, including one for a dad on military “high alert.”

    In class, the talk went straight to television news reports on Sept. 11 following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

    Students talked about how life had changed the previous day — cops everywhere in cities around the country, tanks stopping people at the nearby U.S. Naval Base, Ventura County, in Port Hueneme.

    “Tanks!” exclaimed one student.

    Dave (in white) said watching television was like watching a movie. The news coverage seemed like the end of the movie “Fight Club.” An unanswered question Wells posed was: How can this be real if it’s like a movie?

    Debby, whose dad is a firefighter, was mindful of the missing rescue workers. “I thought, ‘That could have been my dad if it was here,’ ” she said.

    Wells eased the conversation toward nonviolence. Veronica found it “weird” that the attacks could occur on American soil. “I wonder why they did it,” she said. “Because they are getting back at us? They wouldn’t bomb us for no reason.”

    Paul thought it was a power play, an attack on “the strength of the United States.”

    “They want the power of knowing they can beat us, the power to say, ‘We attacked the U.S. We’re so cool.’ ”

    Wells asked these sophomores, juniors and seniors, “Where has the United States bombed or invaded or stationed troops in your lifetimes?” Various places in the Gulf area, Iraq and Kuwait, Sudan and Afghanistan, all made the list.

    When Wells told them that the United States had bombed Iraq this week and killed eight innocent people, students said, “We did?” “No way.”

    Lisa (with the lei) talked about the inevitable violent reaction: “Now we’ll go kill them. I can understand where that’s coming from, the pain and fear. But if you stop and think about it, that’s doing the same thing we’re so upset about.”

    Dave nodded, and added, “but you can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

    But “We’d be attacking innocent people, too,” countered Lisa (in red).

    “Patriotism comes into it — playing songs, people waving American flags,” she said. “We’re proud of the country. But that’s assuming the people who did this are foreign.”

    Alyssa asked: “When we first decided what nonviolence meant, didn’t we say nonviolent people were strong? So wouldn’t being nonviolent be the strong thing to do?”

    David (in red) echoed the 20th-century American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in his next remark. “Being a nonviolent person, that’s between you and other people,” he said. “It’s different for nations to be nonviolent when faced with violence. This is actual war.” He speculated on the obstacles to nonviolent government.

    Lisa (in red) said that responding with weapons is going to make people “so mad. It’s like getting out a map and saying, ‘Oh, we’ve bombed them before, and they’ve been in our path so let’s just bomb them again.’ ”

    Drew, however, didn’t think America should just bomb. It should then go in and set up “a proper government there. Then there won’t be as much poverty and stuff like that.”

    The buzzer sounded. Class was over. The questions remained on the board.

    *Arthur Jones is NCR editor at large.

  • Terrorism and Nonviolence

    Understandably, after the tragedy in New York and Washington DC on September 11 many have written or called the office to find out what would be an appropriate nonviolent response to such an unbelievably inhuman act of violence.

    First, we must understand that nonviolence is not a strategy that we can use in a moment of crisis and discard in times of peace. Nonviolence is about personal attitudes, about becoming the change we wish to see in the world. Because, a nation’s collective attitude is based on the attitude of the individual. Nonviolence is about building positive relationships with all human beings – relationships that are based on love, compassion, respect, understanding and appreciation.

    Nonviolence is also about not judging people as we perceive them to be – that is, a murderer is not born a murderer; a terrorist is not born a terrorist. People become murderers, robbers and terrorists because of circumstances and experiences in life. Killing or confining murders, robbers, terrorists, or the like is not going to rid this world of them. For every one we kill or confine we create another hundred to take their place. What we need to do is to analyze dispassionately what are those circumstances that create such monsters and how can we help eliminate those circumstances, not the monsters. Justice should mean reformation and not revenge.

    We saw some people in Iraq and Palestine and I dare say many other countries rejoice in the blowing up of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It horrified us, as it should. But, let us not forget that we do the same thing. When Israel bombs the Palestinians we either rejoice or show no compassion. Our attitude is they deserve what they get. When the Palestinians bomb the Israelis we are indignant and condemn them as vermin who need to be eliminated.

    We reacted without compassion when we bombed the cities of Iraq. I was among the millions in the United States who sat glued to the television and watched the drama as though it was a made for television film. The television had desensitized us. Thousands of innocent men, women and children were being blown to bits and instead of feeling sorry for them we marveled at the efficiency of our military. For more than ten years we have continued to wreak havoc in Iraq – an estimated 50,000 children die every year because of sanctions that we have imposed – and it hasn’t moved us to compassion. All this is done, we are told, because we want to get rid of the Satan called Sadam Hussein.

    Now we are getting ready to do this all over again to get rid of another Satan called Osama Bin Laden. We will bomb the cities of Afghanistan because they harbor the Satan and in the process we will help create a thousand other bin Ladens.

    Some might say “we don’t care what the world thinks of us as long as they respect our strength. ” After all we have the means to blow this world to pieces since we are the only surviving super-power. Do we want the world to respect us the way school children respect a bully? Is that our role in the world?

    If a bully is what we want to be then we must be prepared to face the same consequences a school-yard bully faces. On the other hand we cannot tell the world “leave us alone.” Isolationism is not what this world is built for.

    All of this brings us back to the question: How do we respond nonviolently to terrorism?

    The consequences of a military response are not very rosy. Many thousands of innocent people will die both here and in the country or countries we attack. Militancy will increase exponentially and, ultimately, we will be faced with another, more pertinent, moral question: what will we gain by destroying half the world? Will we be able to live with a clear conscience?

    We must acknowledge our role in helping create monsters in the world and then find ways to contain these monsters without hurting more innocent people and then redefine our role in the world. I think we must move from seeking to be respected for our military strength to being respected for our moral strength.

    We need to appreciate that we are in a position to play a powerful role in helping the “other half” of the world attain a better standard of life not by throwing a few crumbs but by significantly involving ourselves in constructive economic programs.

    For too long our foreign policy has been based on “what is good for the United States.” It smacks of selfishness. Our foreign policy should now be based on what is good for the world and how can we do the right thing to help the world become more peaceful.

    To those who have lost loved ones in this and other terrorist acts I say I share your grief. I am sorry that you have become victims of senseless violence. But let this sad episode not make you vengeful because no amount of violence and killing is going to bring you inner peace. Anger and hate never do. The memory of those victims who have died in this and other violent incidents around the world will be better preserved and meaningfully commemorated if we all learn to forgive and dedicate our lives to helping create a peaceful, respectful and understanding world.

    Arun Gandhi Founder Director M.K.Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence 650 East Parkway South Memphis TN 3810

  • Learning About Peacemaking Is a Step Toward Ending Violence

    Orginally published in the Los Angeles Times Ventura County Edition

    Martin Luther King, Jr. said that our choice is not between nonviolence and violence, but a choice between nonviolence and nonexistence. Statistically we are told that crime has steadily decreased for the past eight years, however we also feel an increasingly random, yet eerily personalized, degree of susceptibility to being victimized. Our neighborhoods and schools, once thought inviolable, are now the target of more bold perpetrators. And yet we have a choice: be a part of the problem or a part of the solution.

    But what’s the solution?

    How do we fix our ‘gated community’ mentality, mend our broken relationships, care for the castaways in society, and work toward achieving solidarity, tolerance, and peace? By making a commitment to educating the next generation of leaders, our young people, in the ways of nonviolence. If our human species is to survive, we must change the way we are doing things. Many of us feel helpless to fix our own personal troubles, much less rid the world of nuclear weapons, abolish the death penalty, make a more egalitarian economy, and protect global human rights. Violence originates in fear, which is rooted in misunderstanding, which comes from ignorance. And you fix ignorance through education.

    Violence is like a dandelion-filled yard. We tug at the stems and step on the flowers – and rather than ridding the yard of this nuisance weed, we beget more of them. Yet when we pull up the flower by the roots, we have isolated the problem and fixed it. Nonviolence education is like this. Educating young people about how to deal with the problems they face on a daily basis, as well as how to organize to fix world issues, is the most effective means to solving the endemic violence which has infiltrated nearly every corner of society.

    Through a structured, semester-long curriculum, students from junior high through college can read about the foundations, successes, and actors in the nonviolence movement. Exposing a young student to Gandhi and Thoreau can cause a permanent commitment to living a life of nonviolence. At the very least, it allows students to examine the institutional paradigms which govern their lives, like selective service registration, disparity of allocated funds for violent causes versus nonviolent ones, or perhaps conscientious purchasing power and food consumption. Nonviolence education stresses the availability of alternative options in conflict, like mediation and creative dispute resolution. Making an educational commitment to studying peace in our violence-inundated world is the very least we owe our future generations to whom we have left a legacy of destruction and might-makes-right domination.

    Societal trends seem to be working against the nonviolence cause. For example,our government allocates $289 billion for the Pentagon, and only $25 billion to Aid for Families with Dependent Children. Our justice system continues to be punitive rather than restorative, with little or no rehabilitation occurring in detention facilities despite the obvious need. New laws penalize communities and provide nothing for the welfare of victims nor restore the dignity of offenders, like the juvenile justice legislation Proposition 21 which was passed on March 7. We teach our children capitalistic consumerism yet tell them nothing about the lives of the workers who slave to assemble designer clothing, nor do we tell them about the animals which suffered to create fashion or food, nor do we inform them of the environmental impact of the trash which they create. And by no means do we tell them that these situations are inextricably linked, either.

    Yet there is hope! Learning about peacemaking is the first step to righting these inegalitarian situations. Students become aware that injustices exist; they then accept these injustices as tangible and real. Next, students must absorb this information in a utilitarian way; finally, they are ready to take action. The beauty of nonviolence curriculum is that it is available to everyone: it works at Georgetown University, as well as at maximum-security juvenile detention facilities. Deep-thinking is highly encouraged, and reflective and action-oriented writing is often assigned to students in nonviolence classes. Because this material speaks to students as co-proprietors of authority, rather than as subordinates, they tend to internalize the pacifist messages quickly and discreetly. It subtly permeates their thoughts and actions.

    We cannot continue to cheat our students by doling out tidbits of revisionist history. They deserve to know about Jeanette Rankin, Dorothy Day, and Oscar Romero. Institutionalizing nonviolence remains the goal, and to clearly send that message we must bring this peace studies class to our school boards and curriculum committees, and maintain persistence and fidelity to the cause of peacemaker education.

  • Nonviolence: Teacher Explores Finding Peaceful Paths In Life

    Invoking the words of Gandhi and Thoreau, a young Ventura teacher is spreading the message of nonviolence to all who will listen.

    Wearing a pin proclaiming “Victory over Violence,” 23-year-old Leah Wells leads a class in nonviolence at a downtown Ventura church. Her students are young, middle-aged and old, but they share a common goal: making peace.

    Dressed smartly in pearls and a black skirt and sweater, Wells teaches the course after a full day as an English and French teacher at St. Bonaventure High School. She begins one evening with a video decrying violence. Her students, gathered in the basement of the Church of Religious Science, quietly watch it.
    Its message is clear: violence is all around.

    “Everywhere you look, you see it,” the video says. “It’s in the school. It’s in the park. It’s everywhere.”

    Students read a passage written by pacifist and folk singer Joan Baez. They discuss ways to calm angry people. Wells leads them in discussions touching on the death penalty and the economics of war. The evening culminates with a speech by Carol Rosin, a former defense company official who urges their help in keeping weapons out of space.

    The course is structured around “Solutions to Violence,” a book developed by the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C.

    Two years ago, Wells started working as an intern for the center’s founder, noted writer and teacher Colman McCarthy.

    McCarthy wrote for the Washington Post for several years, but also is known for the nonviolence courses he developed to teach students how to resolve conflicts peacefully. His reach has extended from poor urban schools in East St. Louis to wealthy suburban schools in California, says an article in the nationally published Education Week.

    “We are peace illiterates,” he told Education Week.

    Leah Wells would like to change that in this corner of the world.
    She wants to see courses on nonviolence offered in schools as well as juvenile detention centers in Ventura, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties.
    “So many of the peace people are working with good kids, but we’ve got to focus on kids that are struggling,” she said.

    The Georgetown University graduate said she was inspired by her own parents. They taught her to do the right thing, that one’s word is one’s bond and that people should fight for justice, she said.
    “Violence comes from fear, fear from misunderstanding, misunderstanding from ignorance,” Wells said. “Ignorance is addressed through education.”

    She has taught nonviolence classes at a high school near the White House and at a juvenile prison in Maryland, she said. Next fall she will be teaching an elective course in nonviolence at St. Bonaventure, assuming that 20 to 25 students at the Catholic school sign up for the semesterlong offering. That will mark the first time St. Bonaventure has offered such a course, said the principal, Brother Paul Horkan.
    Wells said Los Angeles High School is already offering the course, and officials at various juvenile facilities are considering it.

    Such classes, though, are hardly ordinary. California schools offer training in conflict resolution to staff and students, but not usually as the separate courses that Wells envisions.

    Bill White, administrator of the state Safe Schools and Violence Prevention Office, said schools usually offer conflict resolution as an extracurricular activity. Some of these peacemaking skills also are incorporated into other classes, he said.

    “It’s not a stand-alone course,” White said. “I really don’t know how many of those there might be.”

    Dealing with the approvals required by education and government does not seem to sway Wells’ fervor.

    “She keeps pushing for what she wants,” Horkan said.

    Recalling the words of Thoreau, she puts it another way.
    “You are your own majority of one,” she said.

  • Non Violent Curriculum for Kids

    Orginally published in the Los Angeles Times Ventura County Edition

    The degree of violence in our world today, represented in our media via the television, newspapers, and internet, is deplorable. We are continuously handed pre-formulated thoughts that bombing, divorcing, and fighting are the only ways to solve disputes. With overflowing prison populations, guns in school, and escalating domestic abuse, it is no wonder that profound powerlessness and despair fester within our culture. What do we do about these problems? How do we go about reversing the cycles of inegalitarian practices which oppress so many? Whom can we solicit to address the questions of bringing peace to our disquieted world? I think I have the answer.

    Nonviolence education is a systematic curriculum designed to awaken students’ minds to the possibilities of thinking outside the ‘might makes right’ paradigm, allowing them to view global human rights as a part of their own cause, not something distinct from their own personal life experience. Peace studies education teaches the view of history from those who have worked for radical social change and fighting injustices; it promotes the values of constructive conflict prevention and resolution as well as nonviolent resistance and direct social action. Students acquire a comprehensive view of the current global situation by learning the links between poverty, religion, economics, governmental policies, technology, environment and education. In exploring alternatives to violence, students gain knowledge about their life choices, for example selective service registration. They also gain a context for their daily lives, like investigating the origins of the products they purchase and consume, i.e. whether they were tested on animals sprayed with pesticides, or what the lives, wages, and treatment of the producers are like. Peace studies education gives students the tools to constructively deal with the problems they encounter on both a personal and worldly level, as well as helping them to understand their responsibility for elevating the collective human experience.

    After teaching a revolutionary and widely successful class through the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C. last year in an urban high school and a juvenile prison, I can see a change in students’ attitudes: a motivation to mobilize toward the common cause of improving the well-being of the planet and its inhabitants. Colman McCarthy, who directs the aforementioned Center, suggests that peace rooms be designated in all schools for the resolution of disputes, and that programs be implemented so that students can become ‘peer mediators’ who serve as impartial negotiators for conflicts between fellow students. Why is peace studies not a mandatory class in school, especially when it reaches the core of how to interact and get along? What is so subversive about teaching the origins of the Hague Court, rooted in the early peace churches of Colonial America? Why is there suspicion with regards to questioning where our tax dollars go? Why is conflict management not an integral part of our school curriculum, like math or science?

    There is more money in a wartime economy than peacetime.
    We can fund an eighty-billion-dollar war, but not nonviolence classes. We can supply over three-fourths of the weapons used in the nearly forty ongoing conflicts worldwide, overtly profiting from the massacre of others, but no money can be found for teaching conflict management. At high school commencement speeches, we tell our graduating seniors to go out and be the peacemakers of the world, and yet we withhold the tools necessary to do so. Learning to co-exist with others is a fundamental component to surviving in life, and it does not necessarily come naturally or easily, especially in a world where images of violence are the norm to the point of desensitization. Our government, our leaders, our schools continuously tell us that there is just not enough money to expand the curriculum to incorporate peace studies.

    We owe it to our children to teach them that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. By implementing nonviolence classes, we can subvert the far-reaching problems associated with intolerance and mishandled anger. When we explore nonviolence curriculum we can address the problems of injustice and teach young people how to make the world more egalitarian. To effect real change and truly make a difference, each parent, each teacher-parent association, each school board, and most importantly, each student should lobby for peace studies education in each school.

    Leah Wells is a high school teacher in Ventura County, a member of Amnesty International, and personally committed to spreading nonviolence curriculum throughout our schools. She volunteers with Interface in the Youth Crisis Intervention department, as well as with the Juvenile Detention division of Ventura County.

  • Teacher Advocates Nonviolence

    Published in the Los Angeles Times

    Leah Wells has spent two years learning about nonviolence at the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, DC, and now is sharing that knowledge with her Ventura students.

    Wells, a teacher at St. Bonaventure High School, also will teach a nonviolence class for the wider community beginning next week at the Ventura County Church of Religious Science in Ventura.

    This interactive class will teach conflict management, and the history and scope of the nonviolence movement, Wells said.

    Before joining the St. Bonaventure faculty this year, Wells explored the roots of the nonviolence movement. At the time, she served as a student teacher in the high school that is closest to the White House and was volunteering at a juvenile facility in Maryland. “I’m very passionate about this subject because I feel the ideas put forward by peace advocates like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Albert Schweitzer are important to bring about social change and nonviolence,” Wells said.

    School violence is down, but reactivity is up, Wells said. Words and action have power. Nonviolent action is not passive.

    Wells’ lectures about the differences between violence and nonviolence go well beyond the obvious.

    “I teach my students how to make nonviolence real in their own lives,” Wells said. “We look at the effects of what violence does in families, schools and the community.”

    Her students learn nonviolent skills they can use in their own lives. They learn that violence in their community requires community members, young and old, to act, Wells said.

    “Through an issues-awareness curriculum, they learn that other people are more alike than different,” she said. “They learn how to confront their own prejudices and redefine the problems they have with other people. It is never just one person’s problem.”

    Wells teaches her students that the TV programs and news reports they choose to watch, the video games and magazines they guy, and the public policies and military actions they support all reflect a choice between violence and nonviolence.

    She talks to her students about nuclear weapons and the death penalty. They have discussed the decision by Illinois Gov. George Ryan to impose a moratorium on capital punishment after alleged misconduct by judges and attorneys and questions about evidence. Maryland’s governor and others are considering similar moratoriums.

    “Ninety-five percent of people on death row cannot afford their own attorney,” Wells said. “Poor individuals disproportionately receive death penalty sentences.”

    Sister Helen Prejean, who gave a lecture last week that Wells’ students attended, said capital punishment is aptly named because the people without capital are punished, Wells said.

    Prejean, whose story is chronicled in the movie “Dead Man Walking,” advocates a national moratorium on the death penalty, Wells said.

    Wells leads discussions with her students about Proposition 21, which strengthens penalties against youth offenders.

    “I absolutely believe that Prop. 21 is bad for the community,” Wells said. “It’s tough on crime and inflicts greater punishment, but it does nothing toward restoration of a relationship. It does nothing to benefit the victim and it objectifies the offender. It doesn’t foster trust, and it doesn’t bring that young person back into the circle.”

    Many youth offenders have never had someone on whom they could depend, someone who could show them the best way to deal with conflicts, Wells said.

    “I ask my students how they would feel if they didn’t have two people in the world who could show them the right way to be or to live. Those are the ones we are sending away,” she said.

  • A Nonviolent Political Agenda for a More Humane World

    https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/wagingpeaceseries/maguire.pdf

  • A Magna Carta for the Nuclear Age

    https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/wagingpeaceseries/krieger_woetzel.pdf