…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 encouragement for your struggle. Based on our experience, we would share the following thoughts with you at this critical juncture:

Your cause is just. Despite the blackout, people all over the world are following your struggle and our hearts are with you. To have a just cause and courage are the two main requirements for a nonviolent movement, and you have both.

What you have done already is to open up a bridge between the people of Iran and the people of America and many other parts of the world. Your protest has created an emotional bridge with people everywhere — for who does not love freedom? — and shown us in the West in particular that many, many Iranians are just like us, and not the hardliners our media have often portrayed you to be. This is a great achievement that has already changed history.

Continue Reading An Open Letter to Sisters and Brothers in Iran»

We recorded this on Friday, before the government crackdown began. Michael Nagler and the Metta Center staff would like to express our continued solidarity with the protesters, and urge them to stay the course through this difficult part of the struggle: “Don’t seek suffering, but know that if it comes to you, it is often part of the very success of a nonviolent movement”.

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…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

(via Sullivan)

by Michael Nagler

In the discourse that plays itself out on the nation’s bumper stickers there is a ‘dialogue’ (or at least a face-off) between two messages.  The first, and more familiar, is GOD SAVE AMERICA — not too prominent in West Marin, but we’ve all seen some.  The other is the reaction: GOD SAVE THE WHOLE WORLD — NO EXCEPTIONS.

Behind these two stark messages are two entirely different — and incompatible — worldviews.  I say incompatible because they are not merely rival positions.  The first belongs to the old and (I sincerely hope) dying paradigm of scarcity and competition, the second springs from an emerging paradigm of unity and cooperation. Therefore the ‘bless America (only)’ people do not understand that when we invoke blessings on everyone America is included: yes, America is part of the world.  Nobody is saying, for example, ‘God Bless Iran.’ That would only put us all back in the simplistic, dangerous ‘me against you’ confrontation we’re trying to rise above at last.

‘God bless everyone’ implies that there can be a way we can all benefit — that there can be a world without abrasive confrontation and deadly combat, without — dare we say it — winners and losers. Such a wide difference in vision cannot be resolved, of course, by honking when we pass one another on Highway One. The combative style of our political culture means that, unfortunately, there has been no useful dialogue at all between the two communities — and that is what we must address.

Why am I saying this right now?  Because a number of Americans were offended when President Obama bowed to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.  They are clearly of the ‘God bless America’ persuasion, where not just material goods like oil or water but spiritual forces like respect and compassion are forced into their worldview of scarcity, though as we all experience, the more we respect others the more we rise in respect ourselves (and “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” as Martin Luther King, Jr said from his prison cell in Birmingham in 1963). We should, therefore, appreciate why some individuals were shocked at the President’s gesture — but we should do everything we can to help them be proud of our President for doing such a thing.  Look how far he has already brought us: in 1988 when it came to light that the U.S. Cruiser Vincennes had shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 civilian passengers onboard, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children, Vice President George H. W. Bush stated, “I don’t care what the facts are.  I will never apologize for the American people.” Did this blind patriotism not lead us into the regime of spying, torture, and needless war that caused us so much grief and the loss of our global position — even our meaning in history?

President Obama, by contrast, is more like the soon-to-be-President Mandela who publically took the hand of his arch-rival, F.W. deKlerk, and said, “I am proud to hold your hand—for us to go forward together. . . . Let us work together to end division.”  And the world applauded (Mandela and de Klerk received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993). The President has made some decisions that make me cringe, and he will make more; but the one thing beyond doubt is that by being the kind of human being he is he has restored dignity to his office — and every one of us in the process.

Also beyond doubt is that we have to help our narrowly patriotic friends out of their old and almost certainly dying paradigm of win/lose, of scarcity and competition.  This will never be done by showing them disrespect (nothing good every comes of showing another person disrespect). As I’ve argued before, we need to reach out to these friends and convince them that we mean them and their America no harm.  On the contrary, we’re trying to create the only conditions that will help us all to thrive.

by Michael Nagler

One of the things we’ve been saying and hearing about us lately is that what we are is as significant as what we do. Not that we’d find it easy to define what we are as a group; but it’s worth a try because the way people are forming new associations today is itself a key part of the revolution, paradigm shift, or whatever it shall be called.  Just as the struggling rebels in the Spanish Civil War congealed into “affinity groups” that live on today in the caracoles of indigenous Mexican movements — and of course the affinity groups of grassroots protests — so also, if less romantically, groups and communities are finding their way into non-standard forms of organizing. And we are one of them.

Michael Nagler and Rev. Heng Sure at a Hope Tank.

Let me share with you just one idea that emerged from a recent hope tank.  It started

when we were reviewing the appalling statistics about soldier and veteran suicides, here and in Israel, with some recent documentaries about ‘basic training’ for military service at the back of our minds.  Like many hope tank ideas, it’s very simple.  Here’s a moral compass: never degrade a human being. For any reason.  You can then go to any institution in the present system and ask yourself, as Gandhi did, is this sound, would it be sound if modified, or must it be tossed aside.  Do you want to defend the country?  Fine, but do not dare to dehumanize prospective soldiers to do it.  Do you want protection from crime?  Prisons?  You can have anything you want, but not if you have to dehumanize people (including yourself) and lock them away. Do you want a sound economy?  No problem, but if you have to lie to people and make them feel empty and insecure, if you have to  distract them from seeing own their inner resources, you are doing irreparable harm for a small good, and that’s not allowed.

This is an idea, of course, not a plan.  Some hope tank ideas roll right out into projects, others just help to fill in the ’story’ of the future toward which humanity is feeling its way. We need both.

The other two ingredients of our life are guests and projects.  Sometimes they’re both: this month we were visited by Prof. Elizabeth Lozano of Loyola University who came to know of us when a friend who has too many books gave her The Search for a Nonviolent Future. Elizabeth is Colombian, and went back there, armed with her social science skills and the nonviolence models in Search to visit and study those islands of courage in the midst of extreme and unrelenting violence — the peace communities.  The talk we had her give here in town, filmed and taped, may end up part of the three-volume book I am coediting for Praeger right now, Peace Movements Worldwide. (OK, that’s not technically a Metta project, but the line is blurry).

As one of our newest and youngest, UC freshman Justine Parkin said recently, “The days I spend time with Metta are always the best of my week.”  Now that Chris and Audrey have stepped up so impressively to the challenge of organizing this summer’s Mentors program (they were mentees in it themselves just last year), I hope there will be many more good days for many such idealistic, capable, visionary and smart young people.  And that we can find ways to make you part of us.