Training with Meta Peace Team’s Mary Hanna at the Metta Center… Lou leans into the kitchen, “If we need more room, we can do this training at my house.” “We’ll be fine,” I reply with a grin. Walking back into our office, I see that all the chairs have been filled, and some people… read more
By Jessica Anderson, the Metta Center for Nonviolence Note: If you are interested in getting trained the skills and strategies for building a national movement of local peace teams, we have good news. MPT Is going to be going on a nationwide tour to do just that. You can find out more about where… read more
On TPNI (“tipnee”) or Third Party Nonviolent Intervention, by Mary Hanna from Meta Peace Team Please use the comment box below to ask questions or discuss this point.… read more
In third party nonviolent intervention, interposition is the act of literally getting in between conflicting parties to deter them from using violence against one another. Commonly, it is assumed that interposition owes its effectiveness to the conflicting parties’ unwillingness to harm an innocent bystander. However, there is also a more subtle and compelling reason for why… read more
Shanti Sena, or peace army, was Gandhi’s proposed solution for the management of conflict through nonviolence, as opposed to the more traditional “threat power” employed by officers of the law and the State. His idea was to have trained volunteers living in the communities they would serve acting as trusted third parties. The volunteers could,… read more
Civilian-based defense (CBD) is a nonviolent form of defense against invasion or revolutionary overthrow of a government. This technique has been well documented and made somewhat known to the public by Gene Sharp in his books The Politics of Nonviolent Action (3 vols. 1973) and Civilian-Based Defense: a Post-Military Weapons System (1990). In CBD citizens… read more
Third Party Nonviolent Intervention (TPNI) is the term that has arisen for the age-old practice of an outside party intervening in a conflict in an effort to open the space for reconciliation and peacemaking. Some services of TPNI actors can include witnessing, accompaniment, monitoring, interposition, offering good offices, and rumor abatement. Because nonviolent interveners are not… read more
