I have recently been given an assignment. I have been told that if we are to reach people with a message of nonviolence, it is important that each of us, as individual contributors to the Metta family, take the time to share our thoughts and experiences with nonviolence as they rise to our attention, and to… read more
Posts by Metta Center
An Open Letter to Sisters and Brothers in Iran
…at a rally on June 17: Translation: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” — Mahatma Gandhi Dear Friends, We are a group of professors, students and activists of [[nonviolence]] who work with nonviolent movements and we would like to extend to you our solidarity and… read more
Inside Metta
by Shannon Wills To the Metta community, the random reader, the seeker of nonviolent Truth… I write to share with you a short story of what it feels like to be at Metta. I do not think you will be disappointed. Step inside the Metta office. Find a cushion for yourself among the books and… read more
Is Technology the Solution? No. And Yes.
by Chris Johnnidis Technology is often cited as “the solution” for the world’s problems: global hunger (better food distribution), conflict (better weapons), global warming (“energy-efficient” technologies), education (computers in every school!) just to name a few. At first I recoiled from this; can the answer to our deep human problems really be found in a… read more
Nonviolence in the Middle East: Obama’s Cairo Speech
By Starhawk On Thursday, President Obama made his speech to the Arab world in Cairo, a speech that did what he does so well, expressing contradictions and nuances in clear, simple poetic language that calls on everyone to be better than we are. My first reaction, reading it, was “This speech makes us all safer,… read more
Swadeshi
The word swadeshi derives from Sanskrit and is a conjunction of two Sanskrit words. Swa means self or own and desh means country. So swadesh means own country. Swadeshi, the adjectival form, means of one’s own country, but can be loosely translated in most contexts as self-sufficiency. Like many of Gandhi’s terms, swadeshi can be… read more
Summer 2009 Metta Mentors Program
Preamble First, watch this one minute video about a certain kind of power…. What is this power? Some call it love in action; Kenneth Boulding, a peace scholar and activist, called it integrative power. By whatever name, this is the power employed in nonviolence – that when applied to social change can awaken the conscience… read more
The Strongest Weapon in the Middle East
Dear friends, the following sections are from an email from Kathy Kelly, Co-Coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, January 19, 2009: Dr. Atallah Tarazi, a General Surgeon at Gaza City’s Shifaa Hospital, invited us to meet him in his home, in Gaza City, just a few blocks away from the Shifaa Hospital. “One of the… read more
“Amma” Krishnammal Jagannathan at The Metta Center
Krishnammal Jagannathan, known as “Amma” (“Mom”) spent some days with Gandhi and sang songs at his independence protests. After marriage, she joined Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement to walk tens of thousands of miles for the landless. In 1959, she hosted a visiting Martin Luther King, Jr. In 2008, for holding the beacon of Gandhian legacy… read more
How does a nonviolent teacher cope with school violence?
Joshua Kaplowitz wrote a haunting personal account for the City Journal of his experience a 5th grade Teach For America teacher at a school in the “other half” of Washington, D.C. Here’s a choice quote: My optimism and naiveté evaporated within hours. I tried my best to be strict and set limits with my new… read more
