Week of July 30, 2024

Nonviolence Report Begins at 44:10

Michael: Thank you so much, Stephanie. Before I launch into the nonviolent aspect of the news, which is really very rich this week, I want to share a quantum experience that I had on our way into the studio this morning. I was driving behind an RV, which is not unusual. The name of that RV was Open Range – and I want to talk about that a little bit.

But what disturbed me was the cover of the spare tire on the back of that RV. Once you’re trained in symbolism you can see it everywhere. And as a literary scholar, I was well-trained in symbolism. So, let me tell you what was on this cover. The top third of it was the American flag. The bottom third of it was the unmistakable silhouette of Sasquatch – you could call this Sasquatch on the open range.

And now you’ll never experience a moment of perfect peace and tranquility once you start seeing symbolism around. But seriously, symbolism is often a way for people to express what is in the preconscious, if you will, of their mind which they cannot express verbally. And if I had to interpret this spare tire cover, I would say that it is a perfect symbol of utter savagery combined with nationalism. That’s why I was so disturbed. And I hope I’m not disturbing you too much by describing all of this.

But Sasquatch or Bigfoot, as you know, may or may not exist. I’m inclined to think he doesn’t, and I hope I never find out to the contrary. But the fact that it’s not “physically real” is even more compelling because it means that that symbolism is spilling out of our unconscious. And so, it is the symbol of a violently projected human being, that is the most violent humanoid we can possibly imagine.

So, connecting that with the American flag led to my disturbing experience which I thought I would share with you.

Stephanie: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I think there might be some real Sasquatch lovers out there who realize that the Sasquatch is a completely peaceful being and that’s why we don’t see much of him. Let’s keep going.

Michael: Yeah, we don’t want to get into that and sidetracked.

Stephanie: So, let’s talk about the news.

Michael: Right. Now, Campaign Nonviolence is a source that I often rely on for the news. And our friend Rivera Sun is very good at picking things up. You can look for, among other things, Ten Tips for Action and a long list of actions around the world, which are focusing on – or they have focused on but are not limited to protest action.

So, I’ll pick a couple of them along the way to compliment what I’ve noticed myself, but I think what all of it does show is that nonviolence and the recognition of nonviolence, equally important, are growing. And that is a great development. There’s no question that violence is growing. We see kinds of violence today which are very disturbing, but I think it’s important for us to know that the counter to that growing violence is a growing nonviolence.

And when we learn to recognize that and develop it, very much the way Dr. Goswami was just describing for us, we could get to the kind of paradigm shift to a world of peace that I describe in the Science of Nonviolence course that Joanna Macy and so many others have described.

Now, the first thing I want to talk about is a coming event which is called, “A Celebration.” And I want to talk about that concept a little bit. Celebrations are extremely important for us in the nonviolent movement. They are a way of reaching encouragement, a way of sharpening our recognition, as I was just describing, of good developments that are happening all around us. But they have to be dealt with cautiously because celebrations can actually be either a distraction or even worse, a countervailing force to nonviolence.

This is why Martin Luther King, when he began to achieve some success in Birmingham and they went on to more difficult struggles like Albany, when they “won” he said, “We must avoid at all costs the psychology of victors.” That leads to deepening of confrontational dipolarities.

And, you know, as a former classicist I’m thinking of a play by Aristophanes, the Athenian tragedian, or comedian rather, who wrote a play called, “Peace.” And in this play, Peace is a goddess who’s been buried in a cave, which doesn’t sound too unlike our own situation.

And all the farmers and other simple folk get together to drag Peace out of the cave. When she’s partly out, but not out yet, they decide to celebrate. And they start dancing and jumping around. And the hero of the play, Trygaeus, has to say, “Wait, let’s get back to work. It’s not time to celebrate, yet.” So, those are all very interesting precautions that we can pick up from ancient and modern history, while we do indeed celebrate victories. When they occur.

Now, this term celebration has been applied to August 6 coming up, which is Hiroshima Day. And that day will be celebrated – that’s the term that they use – at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Berkeley where a lot of the nuclear developments took place. And there’s going to be quite an array of very important folks in the nonviolence world. Norman Solomon will be there, Patricia Ellsberg, and David Hartsough, among many others.

Shortly after that, there will be the Global Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice. This is the first annual week of action for peace and climate justice. And they’re going to address the link between war, militarism, and climate justice. They’re going to be promoting grassroots action and policy making for peace and climate justice.

Their theme, I like very much, is called, “Divest from war. Invest in climate justice.” And you can learn more at Waging Nonviolence.

Yesterday something took place in the Bay Area that’s worth a mention. And that is that the Middle East Children’s Alliance, MECA, was proud to announce the third annual ride for Palestine which took place last Sunday, July 21. The ride for Palestine is an annual fundraiser – so you see, it’s this very good combination of symbolism and concrete reality – an annual fundraiser in support of MECA’s programs.

And this year, they were riding to raise funds for their emergency relief programs in Gaza. So, riding with them was an act of solidarity with Palestinian communities as they struggle to protect their children, educate them, and celebrate their spirits.

There’s a good development that took place in the area of law, which of course we who are sometimes drawn into civil disobedience against laws have to learn how to do very carefully. And that is a US court just ruled that protest organizers are not responsible for the violence of attendees at their protests.

At first when I saw that I thought, “Attendees? Why is that so important?” It’s so important because a lot of damage to our movements are wrought by what they call agent provocateurs, who will throw a bottle or a rock in order to disrupt the nonviolence of a demonstration and facilitate violent repression by the police or what-have-you.

So, this has a very chilling effect on movements and also on the, similarly, the million-dollar damages that they have to raise sometimes to overcome that. And this ruling was made in a case that dated back to 2016 during protests over the police killing of Alton Sterling. But it could have an impact on similar lawsuits facing organizations today for, like Stop Cops city campaign going on in Atlanta, Georgia and others.

One of the comments made by nonviolent activists involved in this movement which I like very much, which is to say we see distressing effects of political violence everywhere. Lately, of course, the attempted assassination as it seems of former President Trump. And that led to a discussion of what about political nonviolence? And a whole list of changes could be envisioned.

For example, if each community people were trained to defend democracy with nonviolent action, learning how to thwart coup attempts to steal elections and unjust policies that undermine fair participation in the political process. These are real threats which we must learn how to address. And if we address them nonviolently, we are much more likely to succeed. Thank you, Dr. Goswami.

I want to just mention one thing that comes not from the US, but from around the world. And that is there is a very large teacher’s strike going on in Hungary. It’s so instructive because once again there’s a large basic issue riding on a specific one. The specific one is schoolteachers are not being well-paid, not being able to carry out their jobs. The large one – we’re talking about Hungary now – is the dictatorship of Viktor Orban and his Fidesz government which is facilitating the oppression of the police.

So, this reminds us of the Norwegian school teacher strike which actually almost just about brought down the Nazi Quisling regime in Norway during the war and could be very productive of insights into how we’re going to deal with authoritarian movements in our present day.

Stephanie: Yes, that’s a great article from Waging Nonviolence. Michael, thank you so much for your brief but informative Nonviolence Report. This is the end of the show. We want to thank everybody for joining us today for Nonviolence Radio. We especially want to thank our guest, Amit Goswami. Thanks so much to Cassy and Michael who interviewed him. Special thanks to Robin and Matt, Annie, Sophia, Rob. Bryan Farrell over at Waging Nonviolence, thank very much for always supporting Nonviolence Radio, putting it up over at WagingNonviolence.org. We want to thank KPCA, KWMR, and all of the networks over Pacifica who help share this show.

If you want to find out more about nonviolence, visit us at MettaCenter.org. And if you want to find the archive of the show, go to NonviolenceRadio.org. Okay, everybody, that’s a wrap. Until the next time, please take care of one another. We’ll be back in two weeks.