Aqus Community and the Metta Center Present a Conversation Cafe: Nonviolence and Nonviolent Conflict Resolution in our Community Sunday Jan 8, 2012 from 5-6pm at Aqus Cafe Foundry Wharf 189 H Street Petaluma 707.778.6060 … read more
Posts by Metta Center
Militarization in academe
by Michael Nagler | Originally published at Waging Nonviolence, November 29, 2011 The day after Mothers’ Day, May 14, 1961, the front-page picture of a Greyhound bus engulfed in flames galvanized the American public. It was Anniston, Alabama, and Klansmen had fully intended to burn the freedom riders alive. For the first time many Americans realized the… read more
How would Gandhi lead the leaderless?
by Michael Nagler | Edited and posted at Waging Nonviolence on November 23, 2011 In the spring of 2005 I stood on the roof of the Student Union building in Berkeley, overlooking Sproul Plaza, where I had lived through the exhilaration of the Free Speech Movement four-plus decades earlier. Milling about behind me were about thirty or… read more
Remembering the Palestinian Declaration of Independence
by Michael Nagler and Stephanie Van Hook | Originally posted on November 15, 2011, at Waging Nonviolence The Palestinian Declaration of Independence, written by Mahmoud Darwish, 1988 “We have triumphed over the plan to expel us from history.” – Mahmoud Darwish Twenty-three years ago today, on November 15, 1988, the Palestinian Declaration of Independence was presented by… read more
Toolkit for Occupy Activists
Dear Friend, As a volunteer for the Metta Center, I have found and inquired a vast array of knowledge and wisdom that has allowed my journey within nonviolence to progress at an exponential rate. It is truly is a gift to have this source of information at our hands in a time… read more
Building the World We Want:
A 1-Day Course with the Metta Center for Nonviolence on Gandhian ‘Constructive Programme’ “My real politics is constructive work.” –M.K. Gandhi What was “Constructive Programme?” Why did Gandhi consider it the keystone of his campaign for India’s liberation and the overturning of colonialism (as it was then)? How would it help us with the present struggle… read more
Is this the movement we’ve been waiting for?
by Michael Nagler | On Waging Nonviolence, November 9, 2011, 12:57 pm Ever since Paul Hawken published Blessed Unrest(2007), it has been clear to many that the progressive world is a million projects in search of a movement. A movement, Hawken reminded us, has “leaders and ideologies; … people join movements study [their] tracts, and identify themselves with… read more
Their weapon’s don’t scare us
Originally published on Waging Nonviolence, by Michael Nagler | November 1, 2011, 1:41 pm I have long argued that nonviolence works best when it deals not with mere symbols but with real things that have symbolic power. Gandhi’s Salt March was an… read more
A Tower Too Far?
By Michael Nagler The other day I was chatting with a friendly checkout clerk at an upscale supermarket in Petaluma, CA. The young woman behind me, far from getting impatient, cheerfully joined in. This is California. As the conversation was about little-known facts I took a chance and mentioned a little-known fact that has… read more
Crunch Time for Occupy Wall Street
By Michael Nagler Originally published on Waging Nonviolence, October 18, 2011 Remembering the agonies I went through when the tanks moved in on Tiananmen Square in June, 1989, I was relieved that most (I wish it were all) of the protestors who make up today’s amazing Occupy movement do not intend to occupy the… read more
