Our friends at yes! Magazine have again posted Michael Nagler’s latest blog in which he advances the idea that climate disruption should perhaps be the issue of the coming decade. Here‘s the link. We highly recommend a free subscription to the weekly news service of yes! .
Metta’s Opinion
Open Letter to President of Egypt from the Gaza Freedom March
26 December 2009
Dear President Mubarak,
We, representing 1,362 individuals from 43 countries arriving in Cairo to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, are pleading to the Egyptians and your reputation for hospitality. We are peacemakers. We have not come to Egypt to create trouble or cause conflict. On the contrary. We have come because we believe that all people — including the Palestinians of Gaza — should have access to the resources they need to live in dignity. We have gathered in Egypt because we believed that you would welcome and support our noble goal and help us reach Gaza through your land.
As individuals who believe in justice and human rights, we have spent our hard-earned, and sometimes scarce, resources to buy plane tickets, book hotel rooms and secure transportation only to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza living under a crushing Israeli blockade. We are doctors, lawyers, students, academics, poets and musicians. We are young and old. We are Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and secular. We represent civil society groups in many countries who coordinated this large project with the civil society in Gaza. We have raised tens of thousands of dollars for medical aid, school supplies and winter clothing for the children of Gaza. But we realize that in addition to material aid, the Palestinians of Gaza need moral support. We came to offer that support on the difficult anniversary of an invasion that brought them so much suffering.
The (R)evolution is Fun! :-)
The Ironies of Peace
In 1982 Mother Teresa of Calcutta stunned the world by announcing that she was going into a raging conflict in Beirut to rescue disabled children from an abandoned orphanage. It was during the bombardment that Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel called “Operation Peace [that word again] for Galilee.” It was a stunning gesture, perfectly worthy of her, and the judgment of the Nobel Peace Prize committee which had awarded her the coveted honor some years before. What the world didn’t notice is that PM Begin, author of the carnage, had also been given the Nobel Prize for Peace! From that day to this — or even further back if you consider that Alfred Nobel made his fortune by inventing dynamite — the prize has been accompanied by ironies. Last week in Oslo those ironies took on a particular form that is of great significance to all of us.
There were many noble thoughts resounding throughout President Obama’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. The knowledge he revealed of some of his great predecessors, particularly Martin Luther King and Aung San Suu Kyi, was astounding for someone in his position; but at this point he makes a fatal mistake, and it is essential to recognize that mistake and to correct it. to make sure that it does not happen again. He said, “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.” In this I make bold to say that he was wrong. In March,1943, Gestapo headquarters in Berlin ordered the arrest and departation of the remaining Jewish men who had been left out of the roundups so far because they were married to ‘Aryan’ wives. But then a totally unexpected thing happened. First one, then another of those wives began to converge on the detention center at 1-2 Rosenstrasse demanding their men be released. By the end of the weekend they were nearly 6,000 strong, and refusing orders to disperse though Gestapo headquarters was only a few blocks away. And the Gestapo caved in. They returned the men. Moreover, as we have learned only recently, in Nazi-occupied capitals all over Europe officials carefully watched the failed experiment and decided to leave their own Jews who similarly had aryan spouses alone. In other words; a primitive, weak, unorganized form of nonviolence carried out spontaneously by untrained people with no organization and no followup “stopped Hitler’s armies” in their most virulent form, saving tens of thousands. On one level, it should come as a surprise that such a sophisticated President, who speaks knowledgeably about King and Gandhi, should come out with the oldest objection in the book, ‘it wouldn’t have worked against the Nazis’ — the most frequently heard cavil, the most knee-jerk reaction that people like me who advocate the ‘sweet reasonableness’ of nonviolence can hear in our sleep.
Afghanistan: What Would a Real Policy Look Like?
At a Washington meeting some years back Rep. Jim Moran of VA said to a group of us who had come to discuss Mideast policy, “All foreign policy is domestic politics.” The recently announced ‘surge’ of 30,000 additional troops for Afghanistan was designed to placate political pressures on the President, which, even if it were possible, is not the right way to formulate a policy. What would be?
Shortly after 9/11 we got a letter from a friend of ours who was in western Pakistan helping Greg Mortenson, of Three Cups of Tea fame, build schools. People from the village streamed in to express their condolences, and the local mullah came hastily back from a long trip to assure my friend that ‘this is not Islam.’ I remember commenting during a lecture shortly thereafter that the people in that part of the world seem to resemble human beings: if you build schools for them, they like and respect you; if you bomb their schools and homes with drone rockets…well, you take it from there.
I have friends who advocate pulling our combat forces out of the region, period; but while I completely understand their feelings there seem to me to be two things against that policy. It would send a message that the United States is capable of doing great harm but not capable of doing good, which is not true as I will be outlining in a moment. Second, if we go about it in the right way we can help repair the damage we’ve been partly responsible for causing and help that country find its way to a stable solution, and if we can, we should. I am not arguing from guilt here: I follow the moral reasoning laid out by Roger Fisher of the Harvard Negotiation project some years ago (and many others down the years, of course), that the obligation to help others arises not from any prior harm we may have done them but simply because we have the capacity to do so. We are human beings, after all – do we need special reasons to help others when we have the capacity to do so?
Vote for Nonviolence with Free Range Studios
![350[1]](https://archives.mettacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/35011-300x157.png "350[1]")
A vote for nonviolent communication is a vote for nonviolence!
Have you seen The Story of Stuff? If not, consider stopping to watch it now. Then by all means, continue…
Did you think it captured the attention of the world in a way that no other medium had done before? Many people did. Did you learn something from that short animated film that stuck in your mind the way that the endless news reports about global warming and overconsumption of resources, etc., had not? Many people did. Have you ever wished you could turn an issue dear to your heart into a little animated flick like that one, in order to reach deeply into the hearts of the citizens of Earth the way The Story of Stuff did?
We have. (Our version: “If only we could work with Free Range to do a film about nonviolence, just imagine how many people we could reach, how many hearts we could transform, etc.!”…or something like that….)
…Fast forward to now. Free Range Studios, the makers of The Story of Stuff, are planning another concept animation film on a topic that is yet-to-be-decided. And the topic will be decided by public voting! With their Youtopia Grant, Free Range will be offering one group the opportunity to create a video share with the world and speak to people as only hard-hitting intelligent animated commentary can 🙂
Over 100 UC Berkeley Concerned Faculty Sign Open Letter To Chancellor
November 22, 2009
Open Letter from Concerned Members of the Faculty to Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau,
We, the undersigned faculty, are writing to voice our strenuous objection to the use of unwarranted violence by the police forces enlisted by the University of California (UC) at Berkeley to patrol the student demonstration outside of Wheeler Hall on Friday, November 20th. It is now abundantly clear that in addition to UC Police, there were squads from the City of Berkeley and Alameda County, and that some of these police forces acted with undue violence at various points during the day, most conspicuously at mid-day and then again in late afternoon when they used batons against students and a faculty member. In some cases this occurred to defenseless people who had already been pushed to the ground, among them several who sustained injuries to hands, heads, and stomachs, and were forced to seek urgent medical care. These abuses of police power were captured on video recordings and in photographs, corroborated by numerous witnesses. They have now been widely circulated on the web and throughout the national and international media. We will send you a composite of those websites and testimonies under separate cover.
These documents clearly show that the students were acting in a [[nonviolence|nonviolent]] manner when their civil rights were abrogated by police harassment and assault. Such instances of unprovoked police brutality would be appalling and objectionable anywhere, but we find it most painful for these events to have taken place on the UC Berkeley campus, given the important tradition of protecting free speech that you, Chancellor Birgeneau, have only very recently defended. Hence we regard with dismay and astonishment your euphemistic reference to these Friday’s violence: “a few members of our campus community may have found themselves in conflict with law enforcement officers.” There is no doubt that our students and colleagues did find themselves subject to unwarranted and illegal police brutality. It is therefore incumbent on the Chancellor of UC Berkeley to condemn such actions unequivocally and to make sure that such actions are subject to comprehensive review and disciplinary action.
Nonviolence inspires art. Can art inspire nonviolence?
The Metta Center’s neighbor, Bill Denham,
is an exceptional poet.
He expresses himself sincerely in art, in poetry,
in wood, and in concert with the Earth.
When Bill read Gandhi the Man
he was inspired to write these beautiful haiku,
and to share them with us.
(The book was a gift to Bill from Metta,
and was written by Eknath Easwaran,
spiritual teacher of Metta’s founders.)
In turn, we share them with you as a reminder
of the connection between all things…
…for so it is that some people come to understanding
through reason.
Others come to it through emotion.
Some come to it through devotion,
Some through suffering,
Some through the work of their own hands.
Perhaps still others come upon it by accident 🙂
And for some,
Only art can tell a story that their souls can comprehend.
It is to those souls especially that these haiku are offered.
For it is the same with nonviolence as it is with all understanding. We all carry it within us, but it is through different points of entry that we gain access to its great treasures. Deep respect to all the artists of this planet, and loving gratitude to Bill Denham for tending to our shared space with his work and his words.
After reading Gandhi the Man
—five haiku
One question —a haiku
Tell me, whenever
Does a right act come out of
A violent one?
There’s always blowback —a haiku
Never, ever does
A bullet or a bomb make
Anything better.
Ahimsa —a haiku
Show me violence
In any form and I will
Show you a mistake.
Another question —a haiku
Tell me, when has fear
Ever produced a single
Right action? Can you?
Gandhi — a haiku
Gandhi, my main man,
Lays it out for all to see—
Just satyagraha!
BD 11/12/09
