Week of March 8, 2023
(the Nonviolence Report begins at 32:55)
Topic Scan and Links:
Update on Daniel Ellsberg -
Dan has released a statement about being diagnosed with cancer
Escalation tensions, escalating military budgets
Culture Reform -
We really have to address the culture of violence
Faith in Democracy?
Regarding the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign, “This is the worst lie that’s been told in the history of our democracy, as long as I can tell – because it’s eroding faith in the whole enterprise.”- Chuck Schumer stated.
Protests against militarization of the police - Atlanta, GA to Pakistan
Mobilizing actions to stop the – what’s called, “Cop City,” which is in Atlanta.
Pashtuns have held a massive demonstration in protest of police harassment and militarization.
Occupy – ten years after
“If we achieve nothing else in the fight against the oligarchs and the autocrats, we will at least salvage our dignity and integrity.” Chris Hedges
Global Days of Action on Military Spending
April 13th to May 9th have been declared as the Global Days of Action on Military Spending
The Global Commission on Military Spending – GCOMS.
Nonviolent workshops and conversations
With Rev James Lawson [No link]
Jewish Voice for Peace is holding a series of conversations, ‘Power Hours for Palestine’.
Coal mines and Lützerath.
“Persistence is required along with the strength to rise to the struggle, even when we're in despair.” Rivera Sun
Protests and actions against war profiteering
CODEPINK
Stop the War Coalition organized protests in London while Italian citizens in Rome, Florence, Milan, and Genoa, they marched against the transfer of weapons to Ukraine.
Election Contestation in Nigeria - with Amos Oluwatoye
Full Transcript
Michael: Greetings everyone. Michael Nagler here with the Nonviolence Report.
Update on Daniel Ellsberg
Before I get into the news with you this week, I would like to give a signal of support to a dear friend and extremely brave colleague who has done a great deal to reduce the danger of nuclear confrontation. And that is Daniel Ellsberg. And Dan, who is now 92 years old, who’s a great friend and supporter of mine, personally, a real inspiration, he has recently been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and probably will not live very long.
Dan has preserved his sense of humor in a long statement that he released. He said how he had been working with his son, Robert Ellsberg, as his editor. And Robert Ellsberg was always asking him to work to deadlines. And he says now he’s working to the final deadline.
So, I just want to give a word of support and encouragement to a dear friend who risked spending his entire life in prison. If he were to do today what he did back then, which is to release the Pentagon Papers, describing the falsehoods that were accompanying the Vietnam War, he probably would have been in prison.
But be that as it may, he took a terrific risk for world peace, and we all owe him a great vote of support.
Escalation tensions, escalating military budgets
As a general observation, my sense is that things are intensifying, that both democracy and anti-democratic forces are intensifying. And that means that violence and nonviolence are intensifying. And that’s not only in the United States. And so, all of this in the United States is in the context of an increased military budget that always gets the support of both democratic and republican presidents.
Culture Reform
So, moving along now, we have a spokesperson named Shawnee Baldwin commenting on the March 6th episode. “Many folks on March 6th,” she says, “Many folks will give public testimony on various bills regarding safe storage of guns and tightening up ghost gun loopholes.”
This is not, for me, terribly important, but what’s interesting is her comment. “My first thought was how long will we debate safe gun reform? How many kids must die before we offer more than ‘thoughts and prayers’ which is a code for not doing anything. How many kids must be traumatized by lockdown drills in schools before we stop kowtowing to the gun industry, the NRA, and gun lobbyists?”
This is a very heartfelt statement by a mother. It expresses the feelings of millions of us. This is all putting band-aids on the problem. The loophole of storage of guns and so forth. It will save some lives, and that’s all to the good. But the fact is we really have to address the culture of violence that is causing people who have some kind of a minor disagreement – I’m thinking about something that happened in our town here, Santa Rosa, last week.
Just a dispute, you know, a fight that happens between school children. And this one took out a knife and killed somebody else. It’s not even the guns so much, though they’re a big, big problem – it’s the violence. And ultimately, I think, it’s the alienation. It’s the feeling that one person is so separate from another person that their suffering can lead to the benefit of another.
Faith in Democracy?
So, on January 6th, there were a lot of lies that were being spread by FOX News. And the senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, stated that this is – that is the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign, if you will, “This is the worst lie that’s been told in the history of our democracy, as long as I can tell – because it’s eroding faith in the whole enterprise.” Interestingly enough, when I get to talk about Nigeria in a little bit, you’ll be seeing a very similar crisis of faith.
Protests against militarization of the police – Atlanta, GA to Pakistan
In another issue, United States activists are mobilizing as we speak – mobilizing actions to stop the – what’s called, “Cop City,” which is in Atlanta. It’s a planned tactical urban warfare training center for police.
And these protests have already led to one protester’s death. The militarization of police is a very dismal process that has been going on for quite a while, and I think people are quite right to raise consciousness about it, protest against it. But you know, merely to protest, as we’ve said so many times on this program, is not enough by itself, though it’s an essential beginning.
I want to move on now to a different part of the world where something very similar is happening. You, of course, are probably familiar with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who was a member of a large community in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan called the Pashtuns or the Pakhtuns. Recently, they have held a massive demonstration in protest of police harassment and militarization.
So, this increasing militarization of the police is something that should concern all of us. Police forces’ sense of socially or legally permissible levels of violence will be impacting friends and fellow organizers on the front lines and, of course, citizens everywhere.
Of course, the militarization of police is, in a sense, a reaction. It’s a reaction to the militarization in other sectors of society. This is not by any means to excuse it. They are professionals. They are supposed to be able to understand and believe this and know how to de-escalate, but they’re human beings, and it becomes very, very difficult under harassment.
And here I feel that sometimes movements on the left have been, well, disrespectful of police to the extent that it becomes like a personal thing against them as persons rather than as functionaries. And that is always harmful.
Occupy – ten years after
I want to just share with you a quote from someone that I think very highly of. And a lot of you probably do also. This is Chris Hedges. He was commenting on the recently passed 10th anniversary of Occupy, which you might think of as the quintessential protest movement. And this is what Chris Hedges said.
“If we achieve nothing else in the fight against the oligarchs and the autocrats, we will at least salvage our dignity and integrity.”
Global Days of Action on Military Spending
Next month – starting next month, from April 13th to May 9th, have been declared as the Global Days of Action on Military Spending. And of course, the acronym for this is GDAMS – kind of an unfortunate acronym, maybe. And it’s a project of something called The Global Commission on Military Spending – GCOMS.
They are going to organize antiwar protests. They’re going to talk about the Pentagon budget, the problems between Russia and Ukraine and wars and militarism, in general. And April 24th will be the main day of action. Now, there’s an organization called SIPRI, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and in their figure for 2022, they’ve been doing this for years now, they have released the new military spending data on that day.
And so, they’re planning to hold press conferences and launch a social media storm. And they’ll be sending instructions for that soon for those who are interested.
Nonviolent workshops and conversations
Also in the US, Reverend James Lawson has been holding a series of highly recommended workshops, that is, highly recommended by me. And the next one will be on March 29th. You can find it by just looking up his name, I’m sure.
So, more news about the world at large. The Jewish Voice for Peace is holding a series of conversations, as Jim Lawson is. Theirs are called ‘Power Hours for Palestine’. And they’re leading to a lot of actions, including sitting in at the home of representative Schumer, whom we just mentioned.
Here’s a quotation from JVP. “The horrors of the Israeli government and military know no bounds. We must continue coming together in shared rage and resolve to renew our commitment to take action until Palestinians and all people can live in safety and dignity.” Let me repeat that. “Until Palestinians and all people can live in safety and dignity.” Because I have long thought that if we could reach a nonviolent resolution to this conflict, it would radiate out into conflicts everywhere. I’m not sure why, but it seems to be a focal point.
But let me comment on this phrase, “Shared rage and resolve.” Obviously, rage is an appropriate reaction. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have it, but it’s extremely important to know what to do with it. It surprises people sometimes to learn that anger and rage play an important place in nonviolence. But they do. They are a crude energy which we transform into creative action.
So, if instead of railing at people, we take action against injustices that we see, there seems to be an automatic process where that rage within us is transformed into creative energy. The important thing, as always, is not to be against the person, but against the institution.
Last month I neglected to mention this, but I think it’s important, and I would like to say something about it. And that is something that took place in Pakistan. Thousands of Pakistanis flooded the streets for a peace march which was against both terrorism and the state violence. They were against violence wherever it’s coming from – against violence on both sides.
And they strongly urge all factions to halt the escalating conflict that is killing citizens there. That conflict reminds me a little bit of the Shining Path Insurrection in Peru, which became expert at killing people but never demonstrated any capacity to build anything institutionally and the Peruvian people eventually saw through them and refused to support them – which does not mean that things are peaceful today in Peru, where in fact, again, we’re seeing an episode or a locus of extreme police repression.
Coal mines and Lützerath.
Now in Western Europe, there has been a long-term struggle between the companies that want to develop more coal mines and the people who want to support the natural environment which has to be destroyed in order to get at that coal. And recently, it’s come to a crisis of acute proportions around a village called Lützerath, which is in north central Germany.
The protesters wanted to protect that village and they lost. The entire village was obliterated for the pursuit of coal. And at the moment, I have no idea what kind of compensation will be offered to the former residents of Lützerath.
Now, our friend Rivera has written something about this which, I think is, again, a useful general comment. “Persistence is required along with the strength to rise to the struggle, even when we’re in despair.” So, that’s the other hand of rage, is despair. And both of them have to be regarded as motivators rather than as end points.
Protests and actions against war profiteering
I learned recently from CODEPINK something I did not know, that there is a highly active peace movement in Europe against the war in Ukraine. The US Senate Armed Services Committee is now holding hearings on how to sell more – an escalated war to the public, which is becoming increasingly skeptical of this. Not always for the right reasons. The governments in Europe are actually facing a wave of anti-war protests. This has been going on all winter.
On the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was just past a year ago now, there was a Europe-wide weekend of action. There were banners raised up that said, “Helmets today. Tanks tomorrow. The day after, your sons.” That was in reference to Germany’s coalition government, which first sent 5000 helmets to Ukraine and then recently agreed to send Leopard 2 tanks.
In the UK, in England, the Stop the War Coalition organized protests in London while Italian citizens in Rome, Florence, Milan, and Genoa, they marched against the transfer of weapons to Ukraine. Some of them actually chanting, “Exit Italy from NATO”. Although, this will be a NEXIT instead of the BREXIT. And got this information from Lisa Clark and Reiner Braun, both of the International Peace Bureau, who will be giving a webcast very soon.
Unfortunately, the US is now poking the tiger, so to speak, in China, just as we did in Russia. It was a disaster when we did it to Russia and I cannot foresee anything more successful in China without encircling the country with allies of our own, potentially hostile to China, which provokes exactly the same reaction, I’m afraid, that Russia had in its apparent encirclement with Ukraine being one of the final links.
The struggle between democracy and violence that I cited earlier is happening not only here. It’s particularly acute right now in Guatemala. A woman named Thelma Cabrera, who is an Indigenous leader, sort of in the tradition of Rigoberta Menchu. She and her running mate were just prohibited by the constitutional court from running in the upcoming presidential election.
I have a similar comment here that I had in regard to the protests that I was talking about earlier, which is what next? I just came off a meeting, actually, of people who are proposing to get through the UN a binding resolution that all nations would reduce their military budget by 1%. And I made various comments at this meeting that I’m sure you’re terrifically interested in.
But one of them was, “What do we do if it fails?” Very often campaigns need to have a specific goal, and they do this very good. But you need to have a backup plan. What will you do when you succeed? Sometimes that’s actually a problem. And an equally big problem, if not bigger, is what will you do if you fail?
Election Contestation in Nigeria – with Amos Oluwatoye
So, I want to turn now to the Nigerian election. Unfortunately, in a scenario that we have seen elsewhere, the election was contested. It did not go the way that the party in power wanted it to go, and so elections become a site of contestation and frequently a site of violence.
In the case of Nigeria, there was actually violence during the election in the sense that polling places were threatened, as we’ve seen elsewhere in the world. Armed militia actually stormed some polling places and ran away with the ballot boxes.
So, this provides an opportunity, if you will, for whoever didn’t win the election to say it was not valid. And that is always a point of extreme tension. There have been nonviolent episodes, nonviolent forces in Nigeria that developed around the oil exploitation – especially among the Ogoni people. And one hopes that they left enough of a tradition, a residue, that that can be picked up on and developed. And the worst violence can be averted.
I might also say that this is an ideal opportunity for some international groups to intervene, just as they are doing in the Ukraine, for example, by surrounding and trying to protect the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Plant – taking a great personal risk, of course, in doing so.
So, regarding that election, although Mr. Bola Tinubu won it, it has not gone uncontested. And the contestation has not always been free from violence. But we are going to turn to our correspondent on the ground, Amos Oluwatoye, to tell us about nonviolent actions that he is aware of in that setting.
Amos: In the wake of the election result, there are various nonviolent methods used by political parties and ordinary citizens of Nigeria to seek justice about the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
There has been a series of protest demonstrations across the country. People clamoring that due to the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, they were not accredited and they were disenfranchised. And also, the technology on the IReV, the INEC Result Viewing Portal – which was not totally functioning during the election.
The accreditation officer was supposed to transmit the election results from the polling units to the INEC Result Viewing Center, which was not done as when the election was going on. So, that raised several suspicions among Nigeria and the political parties, which led to protests across the country.
There was a walkout during the National Coalition of the 2023 presidential election in Abuja. The National Coalition agent for the Peoples Democratic Party – the PDP, and the Labour Party, the LP, and other political parties, they staged a walkout of the Coalition Center at the International Conference in Abuja, Nigeria, where the election result was to be announced.
This definitely raised the consciousness of the Nigerian people. It helped to amplify the voices of ethnic Nigerians that actually wanted to vote, but didn’t have the advantage to vote. And the other Nigerians that felt that the election didn’t pass through a genuine democratic process.
The Labour Party has decided to take the case to court. And according to them, they are very sure that they are going to recover their mandate. According to the presidential candidates of the Labour Party, he said – and I quote – he said, “We won the election. And we will prove it to Nigerians. We will explore all legal and peaceful options to reclaim our mandate. Your support will not be in vain,” said Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, with a series of petitions against the Independent National Electoral Commission, calling for the INEC chairman to resign. And with a series and public declarations and speeches from civil society organizations, concerned citizens, activists, and other political parties also, undermining the result of the election.
The Obi-dient movement has spoken within the Nigerian political space. Since the Fourth Republic, we used to have two major political parties contesting in a general election like this. But when the Obi-dient movement on that, the Labour Party came up. There was a mass mobilization of young Nigerians. And we can see the result, that effect.
The Labour Party has won some of the seats in the House of Representatives, and also the Senate. And the people who won these elections, some of them are people that they never thought they can actually be in the Nigerian political landscape.
So, the Obi-dient movement, under the Labour Party, opened the Nigerian political space for ordinary Nigerians to contest the election and win without having to know any ruthless or selfish political godfathers. So, the movement also sees that, in opening the Nigerian political space for a greater future.
That has been the Nonviolence Report for this biweekly episode, ladies and gentlemen. I really look forward to bringing you better and more news in following programs.
You can be an important part of all this, listeners, if you have any nonviolent tips, if you have any awareness of nonviolent episodes that do not make it into the mainstream media, please let us know. We would be happy to do them the best justice that we can.
