Sticks and Stones will Break their Bones (and put us under Martial Law)

Deeply disturbed by the protest at UC Berkeley that erupted into violence on February 1st, I attempted to write an article that would speak to the idea of non-violence as the truly radical option in these amazing and terrifying times we’re living in. It began like this.

 I was ten years old in 1967. I became politicized by watching Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News as he read off the names of the soldiers who died each day in the Vietnam War. As a child of the anti-war, civil rights, and women’s movements of the 60’s, the belief in non-violent direct action as a means to bring about political change resides in me at a cellular level.

 I then went on, laying out a reasoned and sane argument for the necessity of non-violence as the only tool that can ultimately bring us victory in this fight against the oppressive forces of the Trump juggernaut. I wrote pages: laying out a quick history lesson of the different historical movements that chose non-violence and were successful; and conversely, naming those movements in which a commitment to violence predicated their downfall. I sought to create the most potent analysis in order to convince my readers (and ultimately the activist in each of us), of the profound importance of committing to non-violence at this time in our history.

Halfway through, I got stuck.

The more I wrote and researched—dates, times, quotes—so as to present a cogent, defensible argument, the more I began to feel that I would be but one more voice in the deafening cacophony of voices out there, all of them explaining and pontificating, analyzing and critiquing, until nothing new is being revealed, and no one is any longer being heard. I would become just another sound bite, adding to the ever-present noise that has overtaken our lives since the 2016 presidential campaign began, now over two years ago.

I spent the next twelve hours considering my role as a writer in a time of oppression, and questioned if, up against the massive systemic disinformation that is underway, and the accompanying counter-narrative, there was any place for my thoughts, my reflections, my two cents. I moved through feelings of despair, defeat, defenselessness, and an overall sense of powerlessness.

And then I woke up.

My need to speak doesn’t come from a rational place of thought and counter-thought, critique and post-critique. My carefully chosen words probably aren’t going to change the world or stop the madness. But, if I speak from my deepest place of pain, and truth, and wonder, then perhaps it may enter the heart of one other frightened, distraught, yet impassioned human who is looking for comfort, solidarity and inspiration.

And so, I begin again, this time speaking from my heart to yours.

Choose peace. Choose non-violence. Do not, please, do not make the same mistake as your comrades before you, who have repeatedly chosen the stick, the rock, the gun, the tank to further their “righteous” cause, no matter which side of the barricade they stood on.

We all have our heroes. One of mine, Audre Lorde, gave us a clear dictate when she wrote: The Master’s tools will never dismantle the Master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.

Apply that premise to violence as a form of protest and we play right into the hands of the current master. Violence begets violence. And who among us doesn’t understand that the Trump administration is waiting breathlessly for violence to erupt on a large enough scale that they can claim that “our national security is being threatened” and send in the National Guard, the militarized city police force, or, if “threatening enough,” the Armed Forces? He has already insinuated such a move in a recent tweet concerning the violence in the streets of Chicago. And if anyone should think they can win a war against the might of the American military behemoth, think again.

Choose peace. Committing to non-violence is the most radical stance each of us can take. What if this moment became the moment in the history of our planet that enough of us gained power over the violence in ourselves for a long enough period of time, that the commitment to non-violence spread throughout the land, and became the one clear and defining option going forward?

Let us be honest with ourselves. Our anger, our pain, and our frustration comes from the sense of our individual power being negated by a system that attempts to silence and dismiss us, and for many of us, to strip us of our rights. The urge to respond violently is a direct result of our sense of perceived disempowerment. We must redefine power as the ability to govern ourselves and make conscious choices as to how we will respond.

An army of lovers shall not fail. This idea, immortalized in a poem by Rita Mae Brown, became a rallying cry for the lesbian and gay community in our quest for civil rights in the 1970’s. It is the only army that will ultimately win.

So choose love. The Women’s March on January 21st was an outpouring of conscious loving: love of self, love of other, love of our bodies, love of our freedom to choose. Without one arrest, or act of violence committed, three million women, our partners, our parents, our children, our friends walked the streets of this nation in love, in peace, and in the belief that our right to govern ourselves is an inalienable right, not given or taken away by any governmental authority.

A radical act: Dissent with love!

What if each of us who wish to see a different nation, a different world emerge, would commit to love as our unifying force? What would it look like?? What if, with each phone call we made, each petition we signed, with each town hall meeting we attended, and with each step along the way of every march we took, we did it with the conscious thought of loving? How long would it take to change the minds, and more importantly, the hearts of the people in power?

And now a really radical act!

What if we each committed to loving Donald Trump? What if we each recognized his need for an inordinate amount of love, and gave it to him, by engaging in the Buddhist practice of sending out love to a person who has aggrieved us, and feeling compassion for that person’s pain? What if we set aside one full day where all of us would engage with this man, by holding his pain in our hearts, and send him peaceful, compassionate loving? Would the collective power of our love be strong enough to change one man’s heart?

Peace and love! Sound retro? But it worked. Those hippies with their peace signs stopped a war. Let’s take a page from their playbook. The Trumpians have the monopoly on fear and hate. Let’s take up the monopoly on peace and love. Following is a possible PEACE and LOVE agenda:

First and foremost, take care of yourself. Eat right, get a good night’s sleep, turn off the media noise machine for at least an hour a day. Go longer if you can.

Take a break in nature. Touch the earth. Feel the wind on your face. Sit next to a creek. Build a fire and sit with it as it burns. The elements have much to teach us.

Engage with the other side. Give a smile to the neighbor who still sports a Trump/Pence sign, and count yourself lucky if none of your neighbors do. Start a dialogue. Create community, one conversation at a time.

Call your congressman and thank him for his service, AND then demand that he vote to save the Affordable Care Act/or against gutting the EPA or…. you get the idea.

If you’re already involved with a resistance organization, commit as a group to non-violent direct action, and make a statement announcing that.

Do all that you can do to make a difference. Start small, think big, take one action a day. And with every thought, conversation and idea that inspires you, remember the words of the great Bob Marley:

Could you be love? Then, be love.

***** ***** ***** *****

A few articles that can help you resist through peaceful means.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/12/10/violence-brought-us-trump-its-not-how-we-will-stop-him

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/02/03/our-resistance-must-not-descend-chaos-practical-suggestions-growing-movement

 

If you want to get involved, here are some places to go.

https://www.thenation.com/article/your-guide-to-the-sprawling-new-anti-trump-resistance-movement