Class of Nonviolence Colman Mccarthy
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THE CLASS OF NONVIOLENCE designed by Colman McCarthy Class of Nonviolence 1 ISBN 1440441480 EAN-13 9781440441486 The Class of Nonviolence was developed by Colman McCarthy of the Center for Teaching Peace 4501 Van Ness Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20016 202.537.1372 2 Class of Nonviolence Table of Contents Readings for Lesson One If We Listen Well by Edward Guinan . 7 Nonviolent Response to Assault by Gerald Vanderhaar . 11 Human Nature Isn’t Inherently Violent by Alfie Kohn . 15 Axioms of Nonviolence by Lanzo del Vasto . 18 Teaching Reverence for Life by Albert Schweitzer . 23 Students Astutely Aware by Colman McCarthy . 26 Readings for Lesson Two Doctrine of the Sword by Mohandas Gandhi . 30 Gandhi in the ‘Postmodern’ Age by Sanford Krolick and Betty Cannon . 33 Family Satyagraha by Eknath Easwaren . 39 Ahimsa by Eknath Easwaren . 41 My Faith in Nonviolence by Mohandas Gandhi . 43 Love by Mohandas Gandhi . 45 A Pause From Violence by Colman McCarthy . 47 Readings for Lesson Three Love is the Measure by Dorothy Day . 52 Poverty and Precarity by Dorothy Day . 54 Undeclared War to Declared War by Dorothy Day . 56 This Money is Not Ours by Dorothy Day . 58 The Scandal of the Works of Mercy by Dorothy Day . 62 Dorothy Day by Colman McCarthy . 65 Readings for Lesson Four Martin Luther King, Jr. by Charles De Benedetti . 72 Loving Your Enemies by Martin Luther King, Jr. 77 Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam by Martin Luther King, Jr. 80 Pilgrimage to Nonviolence by Martin Luther King, Jr. 83 King and Pacifism: The Other Dimension by Colman McCarthy . 93 Class of Nonviolence 3 Readings for Lesson Five Feminism, Peace and Power by Mary Roodkowsky . 98 Rape is all too Thinkable for Quite the Normal Sort of Man by Neal King and Martha McCaughey . 105 To the Women of India by Mohandas Gandhi . 107 Narrowing the Battlefield by Carol Ascher . 108 Patriarchy: A State of War by Barbara Hope . 112 An American Shero of 1941 by Colman McCarthy . 115 Readings for Lesson Six The Technique of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp . .120 The Politics of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp . 125 The Methods of Nonviolent Protest and Persuasion by Gene Sharp . 133 Albert Einstein on Pacifism . 136 Letter to Ernesto Cardenal: Guns Don’t Work by Daniel Berrigan . 144 Building Confidence at Prairie Creek by Colman McCarthy . 149 Readings for Lesson Seven On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau . 154 The Judge and the Bomb by Miles Lord . 158 Patriotism or Peace by Leo Tolstoy . 161 What Would You Do If? by Joan Baez . 164 Pray for Peace but Pay for War by Maurice F. McCrackin . 168 A Vigil for Life While We Celebrate Death by Colman McCarthy . 172 Readings for Lesson Eight Animals, My Brethren by Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz . 176 Interview on Respect for Animals by Isaac Bashevis Singer . 179 A Vegetarian Sourcebook by Keith Akers . 183 Diet for a New America by John Robbins . 188 Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé . 195 ‘Terrorists’ for Animal Rights by Colman McCarthy . 201 4 Class of Nonviolence Introduction elcome to class. Your class. Your time. Your future. The literature on nonviolence is rich with powerful prose and trenchant thinking. If peace is what every government of earth says it seeks and if peace is the yearning of every heart, then why aren’t we studying it and learning it in schools? All of Wus are called to be peacemakers. Yet in most schools, the history, methods and successes of creating peace through nonviolence have no place in the curriculum. The course you are about to take is designed to make modest amends for your peace miseducation. The eight lesson course could really be an eighty lesson course - the literature is there - but since we are all rushing about making sense or making progress, so we think, start with what’s here. Studying peace through nonviolence is as much about getting the bombs out of our world as it is about getting them out of our heart. Many people are avid about creating peace across the ocean but meanwhile there’s a war going on across the living room. Every problem we have, every conflict, whether among our family or friends, or internationally among governments, will be addressed through violent force or nonviolent force. No third way exists. In teaching courses on nonviolence to some 5,000 high school, college and law students since 1982, I have gone into this class the first day knowing I would have a better chance of being understood were I to talk about astro-neo-bio-linear physics and speak Swahili. They would get it sooner than they would nonviolence. Courses on nonviolence should begin in kindergarten and the first grade, and on up, which is how we do with math, science and language. Why not with peacemaking? Your opportunity with this course is to get involved with remedial learning. In any subject, there are the four As’: Awareness, Acceptance, Absorption and Action. This course is meant to place you, at least, in the Awareness stage. If you move on and Accept the truths you have studied, and Absorb them into your heart and soul, then you are ready for Action. Through reflection, possibly prayer, and an openness to risk-taking, it should become clear what kind of Action you are meant for. Class of Nonviolence 5 Students are hungry to learn nonviolence. They understand it is much more than a noble ideal, it is also a basic survival skill. Learning nonviolence means that we dedicate our hearts, minds, time and money to a commitment that the force of love, the force of truth, the force of justice and the force of organized resistance to corrupt power is always more effective, moral and enduring than the force of fists, guns, armies and bombs. Yet we still resist. Theodore Roszak explains: “The usual pattern seems to be that people give nonviolence two weeks to solve their problem and then decide it has failed. Then they go on with violence for the next hundred years and it seems never to fail or be rejected.” As a student, you have a right to courses in peace. Let’s not only give peace a chance, let’s give it a place in the curriculum. Study hard. Think clearly. Listen well to others. Write forcefully. Be of one peace. And remember this thought of Martin Luther King: “The choice is not between violence and nonviolence, but between nonviolence and nonexistence.” Colman McCarthy 6 Class of Nonviolence Readings for Lesson One If We Listen Well by Edward Guinan Nonviolent Response to Assault by Gerald Vanderhaar Human Nature Isn’t Inherently Violent by Alfie Kohn Axioms of Nonviolence by Lanzo del Vasto Teaching Reverence for Life by Albert Schweitzer Students Astutely Aware by Colman McCarthy Class of Nonviolence 7 If We Listen Well By Edward Guinan For too long we have considered peace as the absence of conflict. We have ap- proached the issue with this limited perspective and have directed our attention to the pre- vailing conflict of the moment, attempting to discover ways of reducing the destructiveness of the event. This approach is both necessary and desirable, but insufficient as we continue to approach the problem in a fragmented and isolated way. We continue to deal in symptomatic terms as if war and destruction and violence are the extensions and natural outgrowths of malignant attitudes, values, relationships, and beliefs that we continue to embrace. Peace Conflict will always be an integral part of human life but our methods of dealing with it need to change. We must be willing to develop and ongoing critical view of our values, operating premises and relationships, and a sensitivity to those about us. Peace demands that one anticipate the effects of his views and actions on others and the unifying or destructive effects they may have. Most importantly one comes to realize that the “end” does not justify the “means”: we get what we do, not what we hope for or intend. You cannot improve a man through punishment, nor can you bring peace through war or brotherhood through brutalization. Finally one comes to appreciate the reality that there can be not “wes” and “theys” in our lives but only brothers and sisters – all children of God – all sacred and dignified. Destruction of any one of these God-gifts means a certain destruction of oneself, and a mystery that is gone forever from this small, fragile world. Violence Violence can be seen as destructive communication. Any adequate definition must include physical, verbal, symbolic, psychological and spiritual displays of hostility and hatred. The definition must include both our acts and our inactions and that which is done directly to people or indirectly to them through what they esteem. Many forms will take on a combination of these characteristics. Violence should then include physical acts against another (i.e., the range of acts from personal attack to war which violate human autonomy and integrity); verbal attacks that demean and humiliate; symbolic acts that evoke fear and hostility; psychological attitudes that deny one’s humanity and equality (legal, institutional, and moral); spiritual postures that communicate racism, inferiority, and worthlessness (i.e., beliefs and values that demean or categorize). Violence then becomes a dynamic rather than merely an act. Hunger, poverty, squalor, privilege, powerlessness, riches, despair, and vicarious living are forms of violence – forms that a society approves and perpetuates. We have been too willing to discuss violence in terms of ghetto uprisings, student unrest, street thievery, and trashing, and have been unwilling to direct our attention to the more pathological types of violence that are acceptable – the types that daily crush the humanity and life from untold millions of brothers and sisters.