My Own Highlander Folk School

I spent much of my day today researching nonviolent resistance (when, of course, I needed to be working on my current copyediting project). Alas, this was triggered by a post that appeared in my Facebook newsfeed about a recent issue of Sojourners magazine devoted to the subject of nonviolent resistance. I was especially intrigued by Jeannie Choi's interview with civil rights leader Bernard Lafayette. Lafayette describes the training in nonviolent resistance he received when he first became involved with the civil rights movement.

John Lewis [now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives] and I were good friends, and he was the one who persuaded me to come to those workshops. I was a little reluctant because I didn't have time; I was a student and had a couple jobs on campus and a job downtown during the lunch hour washing dishes. But through the training, I learned to see the world through another person's eyes. That was an important step in my personal development.

What methods were used to train you in nonviolence?

Myles Horton, who was in charge of the Highlander Folk School at the time, would always ask provocative questions that got us to think and analyze. At one point, he started making some racist comments like, Why do you black people want to be eating with whites? Don't you enjoy being by yourself? I started challenging him and arguing! Now I laugh at how I responded to that. But I learned so much from that experience. The entire training program was to get people to think about how to put yourself in another person’s position and see the world through their eyes. That was so helpful for me in being able to embrace nonviolence.

We practiced "loving, not judging" your opponent, but thinking about the fact that there was a reason your opponent behaves the way they do. It's important to understand that if you want to bring about change. We learned that the idea is not just to get rights, but to behave in such a way that we would win our opponents over. That was the difference between simply demanding your rights and the goals of the civil rights movement: We were concerned about others.

I want to go to that school. I want lessons in how to be an effective, persuasive change agent. Because it certainly does seem that there's a lot of increasingly powerful evil that needs to be resisted these days, and I want to do my best to resist it in ways that are effective and strategic.

Another thing that's driving me is that lately I feel overwhelmed by all that's going on in the world. "I don't even recognize the world I'm living in" runs through my mind on a regular basis. The assault on the workers and the middle class, the scapegoating of immigrants, racial profiling, the ever-widening chasm between the extremely rich and everyone else. My reaction to feeling overwhelmed is to read, because I can't shake the idea that the better I understand something, the better I can cope with it. And there sure is a lot to cope with and understand these days.

Another thing rattling around in my head a lot lately is a theory that I've read recently that we're still fighting the Civil War. That idea is spurring me to learn what I can about the history of the Civil War and race relations in the United States. I found a ton of stuff that I could download onto my Kindle for free: Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Souls of Black Folk, Up From Slavery, to name only a few. Maybe I've enrolled myself in my very own personal Highlander Folk School.

Moral war?

Every so often someone applauds what he calls a "moral" war, as Krugman does once again here: "the Civil War and World War II are the two great moral wars of our history, and they should be remembered with pride."

Once again, I have to respond:

The Civil War was never about slavery. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."--Lincoln Lincoln preserved the union to preserve its power. Shame on you, Professor Krugman, for calling Lincoln's war moral. You know better. If Lincoln had permitted the states to dissolve the union, we would not have the power to do the great evil we have wreaked in every small country we've meddled in since the end of WWII.

We entered WWII to punish the Japanese, who attacked our war-making capability in the Pacific. We prided ourselves in fighting the evil Hitler. In beating him, we became him. The list of countries the U.S. has attacked with our military, CIA, gifts and sales of weapons, gifts of money for weapons and military . . . is almost endless. The tail of war profiteering has wagged the dog of U.S. policy since Eisenhower succeeded in his quest, begun in WWI, to create the military-industrial complex he warned us of too late. "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."--Mohandas Gandhi The enemy is not an evil dictator. The enemy is evil itself. We do not win by doing evil.

--TomRW

Commit Yourselves to Nonviolence

"Nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

Now that we have gained national attention, the counterprotesters are coming. The purpose of some will be to bait the Wisconsin workers, to incite them to violence. This will be their strategy because they know that violence will undermine the protesters' message.

People of Wisconsin, stand firm in your resolve. Do not allow yourselves to be baited. Do not give in to the incitement to violence. Your cause will only be advanced by deliberate and determined acts of nonviolent resistance.

This is not something to be decided in the spur of the moment, with the sudden realization that the counterprotesters have arrived. This is something you must decide now. Firmly and with great resolve. Because it is not easy. In fact, it is very, very difficult. Much more difficult than erupting in violence. It may be one of the hardest things you ever do in your life.

Stand firm, and do not allow yourselves to be moved. You are in the right. The opposition knows that, and they also know that inciting you to violence will be to their benefit, not yours. Your commitment to nonviolent resistance will convince the world that you are in the right. Stand firm, my sisters and brothers. Stand firm. And guard the peace of your hearts just as you guard your families, your coworkers, and your livelihoods.

The Singular and Extraordinary Path of Nonviolence

Dr. King walked the not-always-popular and not-always-well-understood path of nonviolence.

Nonviolence is extraordinarily effective in demonstrating the rightness of one's cause. When the British attacked the nonviolent resistors in India, it was evident to the world that the resistors, many of whom lost their lives, were in the right and that the British were in the wrong. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, it was clear that her cause was just.

Nonviolent resistance requires the willingness to lay down one's own life for the sake of the cause, so it better be a damn good one. You don't make this kind of commitment to something that's marginally important.

Violence debases us. Nonviolence elevates us.

Violence strips both the perpetrator and the victim of human dignity.

Nonviolent resistance clothes the oppressed with dignity and enables them to view the oppressor with compassion.

Nonviolent resistance empowers the oppressed.

Violence begets only more violence.

Nonviolence begets understanding and empathy.

We need more nonviolent resistors of hate in the world today.

For my part, I commit myself to a path of nonviolence and compassion. Care to join me?

--Mary