Violence & nonviolence

Thanks for your considered letter last issue. Yes, we can certainly agree that we should struggle for an end to class division: maybe we still disagree about the need for a proletarian dictatorship. Who knows?

Trying to create a nonviolent revolution, like working for Swaraj in India, carries risks. That we might end up with civil war is one of these risks. Given the atrocities of war, everywhere, I sincerely hope PN continues to preach nonviolent revolution.

Village Life
by Gill Knight
from PN 2532, April 2011

During my time working with the International Women’s Peace Service I have witnessed many human rights abuses in the West Bank Palestine – house demolitions, settler violence, army and settler destruction of olive trees and fields, army intimidation of workers – the list goes on.

But none has been more heart rending than the Israeli attempt to crush the nonviolent Popular Resistance to the Occupation in the small…

Ten years ago the Quaker project Turning the Tide (TtT) commissioned this short documentary which follows three activists – Trident Ploughshares activist Ellen Moxley, environmental activist Martin Shaw, and student campaigner Alison Matthias – as they take part in a variety of demonstrations and examines some of the core issues around protest, democracy and nonviolence. Can violence be effective? Is property damage justifiable and if so under what circumstances? Is civil disobedience anti-…

This letter is to add my voice to the many which will no doubt be raised in protest against your response to George Paxton in Dec/Jan PN.
My initial thought, on reading your letter, was to cancel my subscription to PN. It was apparent to me that Gandhi’s integrity was under attack. Surely you must accept that to support a move towards civil war would mean everything he stood for – like Satyagraha – was no more than window dressing. Peace News often comes across as promoting class…

People close to Batasuna, the political wing of ETA, the Basque separatist guerrilla group, launched a new nonviolent political party on 7 February. The separatists hope that the new party, Sortu, will be recognised and allowed to stand in elections – Batasuna itself is banned. ETA declared a ceasefire in September and made the ceasefire permanent in January. The Spanish government has refused to reciprocate in any way.

Chris’ recent  stay in Wandsworth Prison has led to some interesting conversations lately. And that’s got me thinking about when I became a pacifist and why I still am one.

I’m not sure I can pinpoint an exact moment in my life when pacifism made sense to me. But I know the milestones. The first was reading the World War 1 poets – particularly Wilfred Owen - whose  lines in…

There have been strong reactions to the student protests at Millbank on 10 November (see p8). Overwhelmingly, mainstream figures have condemned the “despicable” behaviour of the protesters – the word used by Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students.

From the left, in contrast, came a statement signed by Hilary Wainwright, Billy Bragg, Naomi Klein and a number of student activists saying: “We reject any attempt to characterise the Millbank protest as small, “…

I recently spent a little time studying “Nonviolent Communication” (NVC), and thought some Peace News readers who had never heard of it would be interested in it as a positive way of hopefully spreading peace and compassion.

NVC is probably easier to describe than to categorise, as I understand it to be more than just one simple approach to conflict resolution or a method of dialogue. NVC claims to have uses “from the bedroom to the boardroom, from the classroom to the war zone…

Iraq’s third annual Week of Nonviolence began on 10 October, organised by La’Onf (“no violence” in Arabic), a network of nonviolent Iraqi civilians and civil society groups.

The theme of this year’s actions was making the upcoming provincial elections safe, free, and truly democratic.

During the intensive week of activities La’Onf stuck up masses of posters, and handed out nonviolent literature to soldiers, shoppers, schoolchildren, police, politicians, youth and women’s groups…

What does it really mean to “demonstrate in solidarity” or “support a solidarity campaign”, or to go to a country and join a solidarity project or action?

People Power brings together some answers from those involved in international nonviolent solidarity action – supporting conscientious objectors in Turkey (War Resisters International) – as international observers or in transnational accompaniment (Peace Brigades International) – and in global solidarity and transnational campaigns…

The War Resisters International Triennial (now held every four years, in a cunning ploy to avoid police detection and repression) is being held here in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, at Gujarat University or “Gujarat Vidyapith”. Coming from the recent ice, snow and slush of southern England, Ahmedabad is jarringly hot – but not too hot, dusty but not too dusty. The university, which was closed down three times by the British authorities during the national freedom struggle, was founded by Gandhi…

On the second morning (the third day) of the Triennial, we had our first “reflectors” session. The reflectors were five people who had been chosen to give their reaction to the conference so far. There were four women (all English-speaking, one African, one Australasian, one European, one North American) and one man (Spanish-speaking, Latin American).

Incidentally, this reminds me of something Jai Sen said about the book he co-edited: World Social Forum: Challenging Empires. They set…

The War Resisters International Triennial (now held every four years, in a cunning ploy to avoid police detection and repression) is being held here in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, at Gujarat University or “Gujarat Vidyapith”. Coming from the recent ice, snow and slush of southern England, Ahmedabad is jarringly hot – but not too hot, dusty but not too dusty. The university, which was closed down three times by the British authorities during the national freedom struggle, was founded by Gandhi…

Imagine a radical activist going through pretty much the entire publicly-available English-language literature on how to do soldiering (how to train a ground-hugging grunt), and also digesting quite a lot of the open literature on police forensics and government surveillance techniques – in order to extract the stuff that would be (or could be) useful for activists wanting to break into places and stop dastardly deeds.

Bumping Back is pretty much the result. Two randomly-selected…

Bil’in

The small West Bank Palestinian village of Bil’in depends on agriculture for its livelihood, but since 1980 has lost some 60% of its farmland to illegal Israeli settlements and the illegal separation wall.

Bil’in’s response? For over four years, after Friday prayers each week, the Bil’in popular committee has organised a nonviolent walk to the wall, often with Israeli and international supporters, to demand access to its land, and has been stopped by Israeli troops…