2010-04-23 Peace Demonstration for Obama on Charlotte Street

2010-04-23 Peace Demonstration for Obama on Charlotte Street

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Birmingham to Fredonia: Civil Strife to Simple LIfe

While nonviolence empowers the weakest of individuals to stand up for justice and rights…nonviolent action requires the same discipline, the same planning and the same training as military action.

--Arun Gandhi, In M.K. Gandhi’s Own Words: Nonviolent Action Manual, 2001, M.K. Gandhi
Institute for Nonviolence

Birmingham is one of the cities where the history of nonviolence in the U.S. South is particularly poignant. It was the courage of Black children marching out from the 16th Street Baptist Church, eventually to be bombed by racist extremists, to face fire hoses and police dogs in 1963 that awakened a nation’s conscience and led to solidarity demonstrations across the country and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “Mighty Times: The Children’s March”, a video available from the Southern Poverty Law Center, tells the story.

Such disciplined courage must be practiced and developed and applied strategically on the ground, sometimes with stubborn persistence. JimDouglass knows that, both in theory and practice. He led the retreat group out into the streets of Birmingham where he has joined others for a decade or more in a public witness for justice and peace. It was a beautiful afternoon, and passersby either ignored us or waved in support. No dogs or fire hoses challenged our stand. What will it take this time to reawaken America to the oppression and injustice that still haunts our society?
In a nearby pub, Clare and Coleman listened over a cold brew to some of the hopes, concerns and frustrations of many of the younger activists who had joined in the vigil.

From troubles in relating to parents, to how to get to a job opportunity in Alaska; whether or not to continue in school or work for a while; what to do with themselves and how best to serve a higher purpose - -these young “20 somethings” all wanted to know what we older folks thought might be good paths to follow in these troubled times. Even though we recognized many of these same questions from when we were their ages, the best answers at this time seemed to be to explore and experiment as much as they could, and suggesting that it’s never as desperate as it seems. Many of our new young friends wanted to come to Asheville so we agreed to stay in touch and provide space if needed. With some advance notice, we’ll try to hook them up with a service project or maybe, simply give them good directions into the wilderness for camping, rest, and relaxation -- time to chill out!

We shared dinner later that evening with Veterans for Peace member and friend David Waters, a long-time war tax resister and Birmingham carpenter. Over a good meal at the Garage Cafe, a Birmingham landmark, we discussed how nonviolence can be effectively applied in a violent world. David has been reading Ward Churchill's Pacfism as Pathology, and Peter Gelderoos' How Non-Violence Protects the State.

“I’m not a pacifist,” David told us. “I would come to a workshop where there was a discussion of nonviolence if I felt that my opinion wasn’t considered antagonistic, but relevant and realistic.” Having been in numerous situations through military and police work where violence has been directed at him many times, we could understand Dave’s feelings.

Arun Gandhi himself had earlier presented the question of defending oneself in the face of life threatening violence. “Until we live in a perfect world”, he said, ”we will have to be prepared to accept some smaller amounts of violence to avoid greater harm to ourselves or to the world at large. If a mad gunman comes to the door of this hall while we’re meeting here, to shoot us, it’s too late to simply say please, we’re nonviolent, don’t kill us.” Everywhere we turn, our retreat time with Arun Gandhi continues to resonate and have impact.

As we continued along our Dixie loop, listening and observing, we tried to apply our understanding of Gandhi’s lessons as we stopped and met locals – working hard not to let our built-in bias shade our opinions of new people we met. In the Waffle House in Anniston, a serious military town, a young woman busy at the grille broke through my own assumptions about the mindset of local folk. “What can I get for ‘ya’ll, baby?” she asked as we poured over the menu. Later she pointed to the large “Jail Bush For Lies and Deception Leading Us to War” button Clare wore on her lapel. “I like that button, baby,” she said as she rang up the order. “That’s a button I’d wear.” Her co-worker agreed. So we left the Anniston, Alabama, Waffle House with our server pinning the “Jail Bush” button on her uniform blouse as she turned to the next customer – add one more silent vote for the cause.

In Anniston, we were reminded of the disciplined courage of those Freedom Riders who brought nonviolent action into the face of vicious violence in that city with the integration of interstate public transit. When the Greyhound bus they rode arrived, it was set afire with them still aboard. Being burned and beaten for asserting their right to ride together through the deep South is a scar seared white hot on the nation's conscience and on the lives of those who fought for that freedom. At a gas station off the Interstate, a curious piece of graffiti on the wall of the men’s bathroom, which was built into the side of the carwash, reminded us again how deeply racial prejudice is embedded and how it cuts across community norms. An offer advertising a service read: “N E 1 NEED BJ? Got comfortable place? U can have this sweet 18yr’ol ass. WHITES ONLY”

We filled up and continued our adventure.

We enjoyed the slow, redbud brightened, back roads of rural Alabama, already punctuated with dogwoods and lush green in an early burst of spring. Passing a church sign warning us that, “Stop, Drop and Roll doesn’t work in Hell!” and then a local Volunteer Firefighter’s halloween “haunted chicken house,” we finally made it to the country cross road of Fredonia, one of those southern communities where generations of farmers have lived with the land and one another in an ever changing relationship of power and cooperation. Friends Jim Allen and Judy Collins, along with Jack Cumbee and his partner Kathy gave us a warm welcome as we arrived on Sunday afternoon. Both couples are working hard to reclaim the revoked town charter and to resist industrial development which threatens their way of life.

Clare and Judy caught up on life since their last visit, while Judy’s daughter Carrie tended to Christa, her beautiful daughter. Clare recounted our travels and the proposed training event we’re planning, Coleman pitched in to cut and stack firewood with Jim, preparing for a cold snap forecast for that night.

Judy and Jim live in a large house built by Jack’s father from stones found on the old Plantation, which once was over a thousand acres of land worked by slaves. Jack, a retired professor and Kathy, a former Hospice worker, are both long-time human rights advocates. With 100 prized chickens and much of their land planted with food and herbs, they are focused now on the farm and preparing for hard times as “peak oil” is fully realized. They also point to the dynamics of the coming intersect of energy, economy, and the environment – precipitating the global collapse that modern-day Cassandras already predict. They’ll be better prepared than most because of their ties to the land and the fact that they have one of the only hand-pumped wells in the county. “How’s the water going to get to you when the electrical grid collapses?" they asked.

“I’ve worked thirty years for peace and justice, civil rights and native rights, Jack said. “I haven’t slowed them down one bit.”

Jim is on the board of the Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network and speaks often on climate change and food security. Judy, whose activism and
relationship building in the South is legendary, was preparing for a Wild Edible Lunch on the land presented by her friend, Janice Key-Walding, known as “The Wild Southern Herbalist.”

Esther Brown, director of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, also lives on the old Plantation. She came by to talk with us and encourage our work. Her persistent dedication for decades in the harsh political climate of rural Alabama is a testimony of southern activism at its best. We were reminded of OREPA directer Ralph Hutchinson's comment that "In the South, where the work is most needed, it is the hardest to do."

Catch up with our Atlanta report next posting.

Old South, New Ways: Arun Gandhi Teaches Nonviolence in Alabama

Arun Gandhi, grandson of M. K. Gandhi, came to the Walnut Grove Methodist church near Birmingham to guide 50 people through a three-day retreat on nonviolence. With a quiet presence and a humble demeanor, this world class peacemaker and advisor to global leaders speaks with clarity and authority on the principles and practice of nonviolence.

As a young teenager living in South Africa, he was often ridiculed and attacked -- by blacks for being too light skinned and by whites for being too dark. Arun was filled with anger at the humiliations and oppression he experienced in the apartheid system, so his parents sent him to India to learn from his grandfather.

One theme that Arun repeated during the weekend is how anger is a natural emotion and can be understood like the energy of electricity – that it can be good or bad. When used intelligently, anger can be channelled positively as a power for good. In a “culture of violence “ such as exists in our world today, anger causes 85-90% of that violence.

The retreat was organized by Jim and Shelley Douglass of the Mary's House Catholic Worker, as part of their lifelong practice and promotion of nonviolence. Though many in attendance were Catholic, including some Benedictine sisters from the monastery in Cullman, Alabama, many other faith traditions were represented.

Rev. Ken Higgs of Birmingham's Methodist Church of the Reconciler, noted that "Alabama makes North Carolina look like a Socialist state." Through his ministry, Birmingham's thousand homeless persons are served. At least half are veterans, he said. A van load of high school students from a private Episcopal school in Austin, Texas, checked into the dorm the day before we arrived and their spirited interactions went point-counter-point with their elders’ insights throughout the weekend of discourse and exercises.

Coleman's technical assistance with the sound system and our help setting up the breakfast service during the weekend kept us active. As we had expected, the event drew a diverse group from Texas, New Orleans, Alabama, North Carolina and even Mexico. Our eclectic literature table attracted the students, and our interest in learning about the ways people do peace and justice work in Alabama, a bastion of the old south, kept us engaged in many lively conversations.

This past January Arun Gandhi was asked to resign his position as President of the Board of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence. The Institute has been located at the University of Rochester since 2007. Gandhi had written two paragraphs on the Washington Post blog, On Faith, titled "Jewish Identity Can't Depend on Violence." Within three weeks, according to reports, Gandhi was forced to resign as Director of the Institute he had founded after a storm of criticism that he was anti-Semitic by pro-Israel groups such as the Anti-DefamationLeague (ADL), the American Jewish Committee, and by pressure from the President of the University of Rochester, Joel Seligman. When questioned about the situation at the weekend retreat, Gandhi said that Jewish funders threatened to withhold money from the school as a consequences of his remarks. His apology, he said, was not for criticizing the use of violence by recent Israeli governments, but for any unnecessary hurt and anger caused by the way he made the criticisms.

Another perspective on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict was embodied in the presence of author and former CNN Middle East correspondent Jerry Levin. His capture in July 2002 and eleven-month imprisonment by the Hezbollah, ending in his escape, becomes a human narrative of commitment and transformation in his book West Bank Diary. Jerry, a Jew, has now converted to Christianity and is teaching nonviolence to Palestinians. Both he and his wife Sis brought their own form of giving to the dynamic of the retreat. Dr. Sis and Jerry Levin, founders of community Nonviolence Resource Center in Birmingham told us about their upcoming Conference Workshop: Teaching Creative Nonviolence- Education's Missing Link, to be held at Birmingham Southern College in November.

"We have translated religion into meaningless ritual," Gandhi told the mostly faith-based group. "Get to the essence and use the essence to build yourself and make a better human being of yourself.” Addressing his remarks to the students, Gandhi said "the whole education system is based on creating technocrats for industry. The ambition you young people need is not how to make millions but how to become a better human being." Gandhi continued, “Life is not about moving in circles, but more about climbing a ladder. Every day take time to consider how to be better today than yesterday; each day a rung, climbing higher and higher."

"Nonviolence is more than just not fighting; this does not equal peace," Gandhi said. There is both physical and passive violence - conscious and unconscious. Ignoring how the products we use daily are made would be a passive violence against nature. Ignoring our affluent society and wasting our resources is a passive violence against humanity. If you were to plot your daily experience of physical versus passive violence, you will discover that the passive greatly outweighs the physical. It is this passive violence, which is mostly unspoken, that fuels physical violence or the need to strike back.

We don't live in a perfect world, Gandhi said. So until we have created the perfect world we will be forced to occasionally accept some lesser form of violence in order to avoid a greater amount. When asked about abortion, Gandhi was treading on contentious ground with this group. His clear and firm response that abortion is "not a societal matter or a matter for government...it's a woman's choice," diverted the conversation for awhile as the group attempted to listen, both to those who appreciated the moral complexities of the issue, and those who could not accept it as a woman's choice.

Other themes discussed throughout the weekend included:

• Trusteeship: We each have talent and think we own it to exploit for our own gain. We don’t own; we’re in trust of these talents and need to share them with and for the betterment of others.
• Constructive Programs: The sense of making others self-sufficient. Providing assistance, not out of pity, such as giving the homeless money just to make them go away.
• Greed of American Capitalism: As a society, our behavior is counter-intuitive to self-sufficiency, decentralization, and community. That we’re seeing the effects of our living beyond our means through the current recession. Materialism and morality have an inverse relationship and that materialism makes for more greed.
• Anonymity of Mega-cities: Neighborhoods in our cities are just localities and do not automatically produce community. It’s not enough to just live somewhere. Humans must have an understanding of who else is around and how folks are interconnected.
• Living with Violence: Until we have created the perfect world we will be forced to occasionally accept some lesser form of violence in order to avoid a greater amount, such as defending yourself if you being attacked.

In a group exercise, Gandhi listed what his grandfather named as the SevenDeadly Sins:·

• Wealth without work
• Pleasure without conscience
• Knowledge without humanity
• Commerce without morality
• Science without humanity
• Worship without Sacrifice
• Politics without Principles, and another Arun added:·
• Rights without responsibility
  

How do these lead to violence? What would the opposites mean as well? In our next posting, to really do justice to the Gandhi retreat, we will expand on some of the themes and exercises that have deepened our understanding of the practice of nonviolence as a lifetime pursuit.

Sweet Home Alabama: Revolution and Reconciliation in "Bombingham"

Not knowing where to go in Birmingham didn’t seem to matter. She just grabbed us with several turns onto one-way streets that placed us right in front of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Echoes of dogs and fire hoses, children screaming and bombs exploding reminded us of the historic importance of this city in the struggle for civil rights, human dignity, and social justice for all people. The museum is opposite the four-acre Kelly Ingram Park, a staging ground for the civil and social unrest of the 1960’s. The park, the original point of massive demonstrations and confrontations, including a children's march from the adjacent church, is laid out to create a circular Freedom Walk which takes the visitor through a series of sculptural sites and structures depicting the assault by police dogs and fire hoses that shocked the world and led to passage of major civil rights legislation throughout the country. The four fountains at the center of the Freedom Walk commemorate the ghastly deaths of four children murdered in the 1963 KKK bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, opposite the park entrance. As soon as one leaves the Civil Rights Museum, an excellent historical tour itself, you’re immediately drawn into the park where you can’t help but reflect on the struggles, the indignations and ultimate success of the will of a people to overcome generations of oppression.
As we paused at the sculpture of a police dog attacking a terrified child held by an officer, we introduced ourselves to a tall black man also captivated by this scene. Norman Hatley, a military veteran, was raised in North Memphis, in a neighborhood near Clare’s childhood home. With the images and history of racist oppression fresh in our minds, we apologized for the white racism in our shared history. We parted with greater sense of appreciation for the power of this special place where people can encounter one another in the spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness.

Before we left the Freedom Walk, two long-time Birmingham natives called us over and beckoned us to join them at their vantage point from a park bench. Guarding a black plastic bag that held some of their possessions, Sam Owens, who said he was a nephew of 1936 Olympic track star Jesse Owens, reflected on the condition of the park before the civil rights movement. With a pointed reminder that “You know what all you folks did to us,” he recounted the high weeds, the snakes and dirt, and the huge shade trees that framed their original park.

“…One night some rich white folks brought us a load of gravel, some picnic tables, shovels and wheel barrows. That’s how we got this park straightened up,” he told us. With Shorty looking on, Sam continued to detail his having been a local body guard for Martin Luther King, Jr. during his time in Birmingham. He explained that while they were setting up for a Barbque in the park for later in the day, the bomb went off in the church across the street. We'll spare the reader the graphic details of how the bodies of the four little girls were carried across the street and laid out in the park for identification. At the end of Sam’s story he asked if we could help them with money for a meal. For a moment we wondered if this was all a well-orchestrated ploy for sympathy, but decided his story was real; the stark details and the tears on Mr. Owens’ face told us that he was recounting his personal experience of a tragic history that left deep marks in his psyche. Real or not, this encounter pointed to the need to let everyone tell their stories, to listen without judgment and to pass on the spirit of that moment. So we gave them our lunch money and went on our way.

Our next stop on Thursday evening was Mary’s House, a Catholic Worker house in the nearby Ensley neighborhood of Birmingham, home of Jim and Shelley Douglass. As we arrived Shelley was packing food and supplies for the Lenten Retreat they were facilitating over the weekend with Arun Gandhi as the guest speaker. Jim returned later that night, after being delayed by a flat tire. He had been speaking in Kentucky at the Trappist monastery where his friend Thomas Merton had lived. Jim was on tour promoting his new book JFK and the Unspeakable.

During a spaghetti dinner we talked about our mutual journeys surrounded by iconic images of Ceasar Chavez, Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan, and St. Frances of Assissi. As we settled in for the night in one of the hospitality rooms, usually filled by family members with loved ones hospitalized nearby, we were startled awake by what we thought was a burglar alarm. It wasn't until the next morning over coffee that we discovered it had been a tornado warning.

"We don't pay much attention to those," Shelley said. "We don't have anywhere to hide from one anyway."

As we drove toward the retreat location along roadsides draped with lilac-hued wisteria, we were thinking about how far we have come in the South in the struggle for equality of civil rights. We were shaken by an anti-immigration sign, a stark reminder of how much work remains to be done. The wisteria that softened the harsh urban landscape seemed no more than the thin veil of hypocracy covering the deep racism still eating at America's core.

Nashville: Green Revolution in Music City!

We arrived in "music city," to the Nashville Greenlands, the Catholic Worker Community and WRL affiliate founded by long-time activists and war tax resisters Karl Meyer and Pam Beziat. It was late afternoon and Karl was conducting a tour for students visiting from Chattanooga, in town for a lobby day called Catholic Schools on the Hill." Karl was explaining the Catholic Worker movement and the "Green Revolution" philosophy advocated by Catholic Worker co-founder Peter Maurin, who hoped to place scholars and workers side-by-side on farming communes. Nashville Greenlands is helping to revitalize the economically depressed neighborhood where Karl is the only white member on the neighborhood association. The community has purchasesd and repaired five houses and has openings for youth interested in a constructive program of radical politics.

Veterans for Peace member Joey King, just back from serving as an observer in the recent elections in El Salvador, joined us on the porch to share his report. He also talked about the counter-recruitment work of the Nashville VFP. "We prefer the term 'truth in recruiting,'" Joey said, using the term coined by Chuck Fager and Quaker House in Fayetteville, N.C.

We arrived early at out next stop in the spacious home that serves now as the Nashville Peace & Justice Center. We were warmly greeted by staff and offered space to sort out our box of WRL literature and other materials we have been distributing along the way. Center Coordinator, Krystal Kinnunen-Harris, talked about the growth of the Center and the work of some of the member organizations working for long-term sustainable social change on a variety of issue areas, including Cumberland Greens Bioregional Council, NOW, Nashville WRL, and Tennessee Immigration Refugee Rights Coalition. Krystal was especially appreciative of the way member groups came together and worked successfully to defeat Nashville's "English First" proposition. "The heart of the message is a basic human rights issue," Krystal said. "We came together to keep Nashville as a place where immigrants feel welcome and protected." Another project the Center is considering is a Peace Summit where groups in the region can come together and discuss how we can collaborate, discover what are the issues, and how can we support one another, Krystal said.

Also visiting the Center while we were there was Mana Kharrazi, a field organizer in the south with Amnesty International.

Before leaving Nashville, we stopped by the beautiful campus of Fisk University to have a look at the special collections, including many books and news reports from the Nashville sit-in days during the Civil Rights struggles.
The library is a vital resource center for scholars of the nonviolent struggles, and we wished we had more time to spend there.

After a pleasant evening visiting with Michael and Dylan (Clare's brother and nephew), we headed out to Birmingham where we are tonight looking forward to our time with Jim and Shelley Douglas and others in town for the nonviolence retreat led by Arun Gandhi. Stay tuned for our next report. And, of course, comments most welcome.