Lesson 4:
Democracy and Social Justice
Objectives:
Explore case studies of organizations and individuals working on Democracy and Social Justice with nonviolent means.
Think strategically about constructive programme in the context of this sector
Introduction
Democracy and social justice are an essential ingredient in moving towards a more peaceful world, where people know that their voices are respected and heard. Without agency, people are deprived of their full humanity.
While representative democracy is therefore far better than, say, dictatorship, the mere structure of democracy does not necessarily fulfil the word’s actual meaning: from the Greek demos = (local) people (or local land, or region) and kratos = authority or power, thus: people power. Since the US and other Western countries have tried to “export” democracy to other countries and frequently waged war in the name of democracy, it is quite important that we help our society get closer to this ideal. As Gandhi said, “Democracy, disciplined and enlightened, is the finest thing in the world.” And he specified, “No perfect democracy is possible without a perfect non-violence at the back of it.” Again, he said, “Science of non-violence can alone lead one to pure democracy.”
Martin Luther King’s ideal of “beloved community” meant, on the political level, a democracy with social justice -- and on the cultural level a culture that valued every individual, regardless of race, class, or other distinctions.
Social justice therefore means fair treatment of all people, including respect for the rights of minorities and equitable distribution of resources among members of the given community.
For these reasons our exploration of nonviolent, i.e. true democracy will lead us to Restorative Justice as an alternative to the current retributive justice that is in place in the US and many other countries.
Beloved Community and Nonviolent Leadership
In the context of social justice, one may expect that we'll learn something about racial equality and gender equality, or perhaps LGBTQI rights. These are all important issues and certainly part of the most well-known social justice movements. Our approach will be through the underlying vision of Martin Luther King: Beloved Community. In the beloved community people have gone beyond ‘us and them’ thinking altogether, and focus on their common aspirations and the humanity of every person in the general framework of unity in diversity,
The Beloved Community was for King a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.
It has three main elements:
All people share in the wealth of the earth: international standards of human decency
do not allow poverty, hunger or homelessness.An all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood prevails: there is no racism or any forms of discrimination, bigotry or prejudice.
Restorative justice will replace retributive justice and international conflict-resolution and reconciliation replace the reliance on military power.
This sector of the Roadmap clearly overlaps with others, particularly economy and peace. The question it raises in particular is, how do we cultivate that spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood?
In 1957 King wrote: “the aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of a beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness.”
Of course, before such a community can be fully established (i.e. for any foreseeable future!) there will be a need for processes of reconciliation and truth telling, for people to build a shared narrative and shared understanding.
Also an important question is leadership. In a more democratic and just society we will still need leaders, but leaders that are not practicing “power-over” but what is sometimes called ‘servant leadership. Of this kind of leadership Gandhi was a classic example.
In addition, consider the following model from the Study Guide “Engaging Nonviolence” done by the Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service:
Nonviolent power is based on the individual resources that a person has: their sense of self-worth and capacity to be proactive, to trust oneself to take initiative and stand up for the truth as you have understood it. This can be called power-from-within. Secondly, nonviolent power is based on the resources that are within a group and the synergy that emerges from it. It is the power that comes from finding common ground among different interests and building collective strength. This can be called power-with. Finally, there is power-to, which means your ability to impact or shape a situation, alone or as a group.
Restorative Justice
The following comes from Michael Nagler’s book The Third Harmony:
Psychiatrist James Gilligan, who worked with serious offenders for twenty-five years, calls our present system the most powerful stimulant of violence yet discovered. This system, retributive justice, causes us to see an offender as separate from us and needing to be punished to be brought into line or to satisfy an abstract idea of justice. But there is an alternative to this retributive justice, restorative justice, that operates from a different model, in which the offender must be treated as a thinking and feeling fellow human being, capable of responding to insights offered in the course of a dialogue.
Restorative justice (RJ) is more than just a different tactic; it’s situated in an entirely different paradigm, featuring an entirely different conception of human relationships, based in turn on an entirely different conception of what a human being is. RJ is growing mainly because it is vastly more effective and less costly, humanly and financially, than our present system. But if the new story were our way of viewing the world, restorative justice would grow even faster and in due time would become our normal way to respond to injury and offense.
RJ is spreading through the U.S. school system. In a school in Santa Rosa, California, within one year of RJ being implemented suspensions had dropped by 60 percent. Oakland schools that have implemented RJ are enjoying reductions in suspensions of up to 80 percent, not to mention the benefits to human dignity. It can cost about $7,000 to call everybody together, pay a trainer, and hold a proper restorative circle. Before you think that’s too high, bear in mind that the national average cost for keeping someone incarcerated is $150,000 a year; in California it’s twice that.
So, RJ is far less expensive than traditional punitive methods, and where wardens have the courage and imagination to try it, it works not just in schools—where it cuts off the school-to-prison pipeline—but also in prisons themselves. When I participated in a course at San Quentin Penitentiary, I was told that the inmates who elected to go through the program—all serious offenders, mind you—had a recidivism rate that hovered around 2 percent. I hope you realize the significance of that number. The national average is 74 percent. When you remember how recidivism (reoffending after release) has become a political football and a way to scare the public off compassionate methods and the political candidates who support them, you realize there’s a potential for real change here, with benefits beyond the rehumanization of the individuals lucky enough to benefit directly.
In RJ a person who has committed an offense is perceived as a thinking and feeling fellow human being. Which then lead to questions such as: why did s/he do that? To satisfy what need? What can we do now to make sure s/he doesn't need to do that again? Most importantly: who was hurt in this process, and how can that hurt be addressed: how can we heal the community? When a person has hurt someone or some group of people, the community itself has to address the hurt of the offender and the victim to achieve healing. How might the community have contributed to his or her feeling a need to engage in hurtful behavior: avoidable poverty? Homelessness?
Among the Bemba people of what is today Zambia, when someone has committed an offense, that person is made to sit in a circle with the whole village around them. Then each person in turn says something positive about the offender. Usually at some point the offender breaks down and cries; then discussions are launched about how to make restitution for the injury. Indigenous practices have in fact been a rich resource for RJ in our “advanced” industrial societies.
The stark difference between the retributive and restorative approaches has been characterized succinctly and pungently by the late Bo Lozoff of the Prison Ashram Project: “Whereas retributive justice immediately says ‘Get the hell out of here!’ when someone commits a crime, restorative justice says ‘Hey, get back in here! What are you doing that for? Don’t you know we need you as one of the good people in this community? What would your mama think?’ It’s an entirely opposite approach, one that, I think, would result in stronger and safer communities.”
One dean, who had been totally skeptical because “it would never work at my school,” became one of the most enthusiastic advocates of RJ, and poignantly explained why: “Every time I used the usual method, I lost a relationship; every time I use the new system, I gain one.”
In one Santa Rosa school where RJ was introduced,a young man had been offered the opportunity to do twenty hours of community service to erase the graffiti he’d plastered around the school and neighborhood. By the time of the meeting he had already done fifty hours and was gearing up to do more. It’s not rocket science: obviously people like to be useful. They want their self-respect, and being useful to others is a good way to get it.
There are various ways to set up a restorative circle, but they almost all involve a direct dialogue (where that’s possible) between offender and victim in the presence of a trained mediator. Each is asked to try to understand the other’s situation and the other’s feelings. Then some kind of restoration or repayment is worked out that’s agreeable to all parties.
Below is a story that illustrates how one person can apply a different thinking even within the current system, not changing the whole system, but changing the life of one person. How could the lessons learned here be spread and institutionalized?
Soul Force
I got a phone call from my cousin. My uncle was killed. My Uncle John, Kingston’s first black physician, was a compassionate, wonderful man. Why would anyone kill him? Some punk kid with a harsh background had broken into the clinic with a gun in his pocket looking for something to steal. Uncle John caught the kid by surprise and was shoved hard against the wall. He fell to the floor, gasping for breath. Yeah, the kid dialed 911, and then he tried to run for it. But it was too late—Uncle John was dead, and the cops were at the door.
The whole family was in shock and outrage, and some wanted the kid’s ultimate punishment.
My cousins assured that the district attorney would send the criminal straight to death row.
The public defender came by; the kid had made up his mind to plead guilty. The defender said, “The charge doesn’t fit the crime.” The boy committed a crime for sure, and it is a terrible tragedy, but it would be a real stretch of the law to call it a capital offense. Did our family want justice, or did we want vengeance? A discussion started and we decided we needed to talk to the kid. Once we arranged a visit in the jail, my cousin Rhonda took the lead. “I need to know what happened. We need to know why.” “I’m sorry about your dad,” he started. “It’s too late for sorry!” Rhonda reacted. “How old are you?” she wanted to know. David was a poor, illiterate 19-year-old kid whose life had gone wrong, owed people money and had no way to get it. He also grew up in a trailer park, where Uncle John used to visit.
David said he wasn’t scared of prison; his father, an uncle, and his brother were inside too. After we returned to our van, my cousin wondered if we could set conditions for his early release. “What if he had to learn to read, and finish a long list of books, and had to pass the high school exams, and learn a trade?” We called the district attorney, asked to lower the charges and gave our conditions.
David requested to attend the memorial service. He turned to the congregation and began to speak: “A good man is dead because of what I did. I’m sorry. I’m going to be in prison for a very long time, but I am not sent there to die. . . . What I want to ask all of you here is: is there any way you can forgive me?” The pastor reached out to David and asked him to kneel. He asked for a lay-on of hands and began to pray for mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The entire gathering finally came forward laying hands on one another until all were connected as one. All prayed for David to be healed, and for ourselves too. The memorial ended singing “Amazing Grace” together. We disarmed our hearts by opening up to the possibility to heal and be healed. Instead of anger and revenge, we chose active nonviolence, what Gandhi calls “soul force.”
Shortened version of “Soul Force” by Cynthia Statesman, published in Engage Exploring Nonviolent Living, Pace e Bene Press 2005.
Other aspects of beloved community: direct democracy, consensus, and sociocracy.
The theory and practice of direct democracy and participation as its common characteristic was the work of many theorists, philosophers, politicians, and social critics, for example, Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and G.D.H. Cole.
Democratic theorists have identified three desirable characteristics of an ideal system of direct democracy: participation – widespread participation in the decision making process by the people affected; deliberation – a rational discussion where all major points of view are weighted according to evidence; and equality – all members of the population have an equal chance of having their views taken into account. Either everyone needs to be involved directly or there needs to be a representative random sample of people from the general public.
Consensus decision making is an alternative to majority rule, which often causes a sense of alienation in the minority. It is an inclusive method of reaching agreement based on the active participation and consent of group members to collectively reach a decision. The Society of Friends (Quakers) operates by consensus, whereby each person can either approve, stand aside (roughly, ‘abstain’) or, if the proposal is felt to violate their conscience, block it.
Reaching consensus often takes longer than voting, but increases the sense of belonging and community among members of the group: there are no “winners” and “losers.”
Sociocracy, also called dynamic governance, is a form of consensus-based governance developed in the Netherlands by Gerard Endenburg, based on the work of activists and educators Betty Cadbury and Kees Boeke.
The method uses a hierarchy of circles corresponding to units or departments of an organization, but it is circular rather than pyramidal — the links between each circle combine to form feedback loops up and down the organization. All policy decisions about allocation of resources or operational decisions require the consent of all members of a circle. Day-to-day operational decisions are made by the operations leader within the policies established in circle meetings. Policy decisions affecting more than one circle's domain are made by a higher circle formed by representatives from each circle. This structure of linked circles can maintain the efficiency of a hierarchy while preserving the equivalence of the circles and their members.
Circle decisions can be reached without full agreement in sociocracy; consent is defined as "no objections." Members commonly ask themselves if a given decision is "good enough for now, safe enough to try". If not, they can raise an objection, which leads to a search for an acceptable adaptation of the original proposal.
Obstructive Nonviolence & Democracy
The above examples are all advanced forms of Constructive Program. They can function as forms of alternative government which can be threatening to a nondemocratic regime but can also be crucial to build before dislodging such a regime, since the vacuum created by an overthrow can quickly be filled by “more of the same,” as we’ve seen recently in Egypt, in contrast to the earlier Otpor uprising in Serbia and more recent “Arab Spring” events in Tunisia and Sudan, where pre-existing civil society organizations have been collaborating with the military to create a democratic Sudan after the overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir who had been n power for thirty years, in April, 2019. The citizen’s groups and military embarked upon a 39-month transitional period to restore Sudan to civil democracy.
Reflection & discussion
How can you contribute to Democracy and Social Justice in your group or society? Is there a particular method that speaks to you? Where would you apply it? (explain your reasoning).
How could we create a beloved community to support such political or structural changes?
How might you work to bring in Restorative Justice in your school, city, or state? Are there any projects already underway in your community? Can you imagine introducing it in your place of work? How would you go about it?
What is the role of Restorative Justice in the new story?
Identify principles of nonviolence that you can see in the examples cited in this sector.
Identify one or two examples of constructive or obstructive nonviolent action that are happening around us; add something important that you think should happen, but hasn’t yet.
How would your examples, if carried out successfully, eliminate the need for some or all resistance/obstructive actions in that area?