Book Group—Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist
Book Group—Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist
Waging Peace Published as Free Online Audiobook
Jan. 28, 2022 — The Waging Peace book is now on YouTube, each chapter read by Dr. Steward Burns. (see link in story)
Waging Peace: 2014 Interview on Dedham, MA, Public Television
Waging Peace: 2014 Interview on Dedham, MA, Public Television
To see video controls, hover mouse pointer over video area.
David Hartsough interview on TheWorldIsMyCountry.com
September 2020
David Hartsough is a Co-Founder of World BEYOND War, a global movement to end war – making it as illegal to kill people outside countries as it is inside! He has been Waging Peace since meeting Martin Luther King at age 15 – from civil-rights sit-ins to blocking nuclear weapons plants at LIvermore Laboratory. He’s blocked trains carrying munitions to fuel Central American wars — enforcing international law as laid out at Nuremberg. He’s Waged Peace in some of the most dangerous and war-torn places on the planet — including the Philippines, Iran, Kosovo and even the Soviet Union. Arthur met him in the early 60’s when David, a fellow Quaker, led the San Francisco to Moscow peace march — to end the cold war before it ended all of us!
At a time when the US and the World are teetering on the bring of tyranny, ecocide and nuclear extinction, we’ll talk to David about how we can inspire the frustrated and angry to gain real power by renouncing violence and waging peace!
David recommended these books: “From Dictatorship to Democracy”, “Waging Nonviolent Struggle”, “Global Security System: An Alternative to War” Also the film “A Force More Powerful” and these websites: ChooseDemocracy.us, WorldBeyondWar.org, Nonviolentpeaceforce.org, ThePoorPeoplesCampaign.org and Divestfromwarmachine.org
David invites you to buy his book “Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist”! You can read free chapters in PDF format here.
David Hartsough: Remembering Past Wars
a talk at the San Francisco Public Library — 2017
Dr. King’s Radical Revolution of Values
By Richard Eskow — January 20, 2020 — Nation of Change
Dr. King’s spirit lives on in the new Poor People’s Campaign,
and in every place radicals gather to change the world.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This Monday, the nation celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. If he hadn’t been murdered, he would be 91 years old. How would Dr. King view today’s activists?
The words to his “I Have a Dream” speech will be repeated from podiums and in classrooms across the country. But many of the people repeating these words have never heard other King quotes, like this one:
“I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.”
King’s answer:
To those who condemn idealism, who preach the quiet cynicism of self-limiting “pragmatism” and insist it’s “how the world works,” Dr. King had an answer: He was, in his own words, “maladjusted.”
read more at Nation of Change
David Hartsough talk: Waging Peace Around the World
January 13, 2020
David Hartsough knows how to get in the way! He has used his body to block Navy ships headed for Vietnam and trains loaded with munitions on their way to El Salvador and Nicaragua. He has crossed borders to meet “the enemy” in East Berlin, Castro’s Cuba, and present-day Iran. He has marched with mothers confronting a violent regime in Guatemala and stood with refugees threatened by death squads in the Philippines. In this talk, David explores the power of nonviolence as he has witnessed it unfolding around the world.
There MUST be a Better Way
Thoughts as the USA Stumbles Blindly Toward War with Iran
A guest editorial addressed to his fellow U.S. citizens by Dennis Rivers
January 6, 2020
In the name of Jesus, who said “love your enemies,” and from the Inner Light of my own heart, I mourn the death of every person killed in war, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani of Iran included. May his children find consolation on the loss of their father.
To all those American politicians and commentators who have just said loudly, “No American will mourn the death of this man,” I ask this question: Is this the best that America can do? Is this all that America can do? How can we ask God to bless America if all America can do is kill people, assassinate leaders of other countries, and then threaten to kill even more people after that?
There MUST be a better way. We cannot possibly be so smart that we can put rovers on Mars, and then be so dumb that we can’t work out our disagreements with other countries. Continue reading
Aug. 6, 2019 Rally Against Designing Armageddon at Livermore Lab
LIVERMORE, CA – On August 6, 2019 a Rally, March and Nonviolent Direct Action titled, “Designing Armageddon at Livermore Lab,” will commemorate the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the site where the U.S. is designing new nuclear weapons for use today.
WHAT: Dozens of groups will mark the 74th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan at the gates of Livermore Lab. The rally will expose the humanitarian consequences of the bomb with first-hand testimony from a survivor. Livermore Lab is designing Armageddon. It is imperative to gather at Livermore Lab on the date a nuclear weapon was first used in war to stop the creation of new warheads proposed by President Trump. More than 80% of Livermore Lab’s fiscal 2020 budget is for Nuclear Weapons Activities. Participants on August 6 will say “never again” to the use of nuclear weapons – and demand their global abolition.
WHEN: Tuesday, August 6. Rally at 8:00 AM (see below). At 9:30 AM, participants will march to the Lab’s West Gate, where a Japanese bon dance will call in the ancestors and the outlining of bodies on pavement will commemorate the vaporized shadows found after the atomic bombings. Those who choose will peaceably risk arrest.
WHERE: The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, corner of Vasco & Patterson Pass Roads in Livermore. The march will go southward down Vasco Road to Westgate Drive. Continue reading
An American Casualty of US Economic Sanctions on Iran
By David Hartsough,
March 7, 2019
I went to Iran in February of this year with a peace delegation of 28 Americans organized by CODEPINK, a women-led peace activist group. The first day in Iran we had a very fruitful hour-and-half conversation with Javad Zarif, the Foreign Minister of Iran. He listened to our thoughts and concerns and then shared his perspectives about what is needed to help move our countries to a more peaceful and mutually respectful relationship.
Unfortunately, during that day I got increasingly severe chest pains. Friends encouraged me to go a hospital to have my heart checked. We went to the Shahram Hospital where they quickly did tests and discovered that there was major blockage in the arteries of my heart. The doctor in charge encouraged me to undergo surgery immediately (angioplasty) to avoid having a heart attack.
My heart was heavy in more ways than one. I had been working on and looking forward to this trip to Iran for many months. I hoped that our delegation could contribute to moving our government from extreme economic sanctions and threats of war toward building peace and mutual understanding.
Continue reading
Black Arm Bands
Classic Statement on Protests of Conscience
What a Black Armband Means, Forty Years Later
By Mary Beth Tinker — 2009 — first published on DailyKos.com
(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)
Just before Christmas in 1965, a group of students in Des Moines, Iowa wore black armbands to school to mourn the dead in Vietnam. I was 13 and in eighth grade. The nightly TV news, with scenes of flaming huts, screaming children, and soldiers in body bags had gotten to me. Along with a small group of high school students, including my brother John and our friend, Chris Eckhardt, and even my little brother and sister Paul and Hope, who were in elementary school, I decided to wear an armband that Christmas. Our message was peace.
We had no idea that our small action would lead us to the Supreme Court, or that the ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District 40 years ago today would become a landmark for students’ rights. But that is how history is made.
Mary Beth Tinker in 2017 holding detention slip see received for campus protest.
Continue reading
Poor People’s Campaign and more — David Hartsough Interview
“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing‐oriented” society to a “person‐oriented” society.”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
David Hartsough, Executive Director of Peaceworkers, author of Waging Peace, and long-time nonviolent activist joins Nonviolence Radio to talk about the Poor People’s Campaign, some gray areas of nonviolence, and the power of people who are ready to take action to transform our society through the means of justice and love. Plus, our segment of Nonviolence in the News and an analysis of the Direct Action Everywhere action in Petaluma, CA.
click here to listen…
Remembering Gene Sharp (1928 – 2018)
Some thoughts about Gene Sharp from David Hartsough, Director of Peaceworkers January 31, 2018
What a mighty contribution Gene Sharp has made to humankind’s understanding of nonviolent struggle and the power of nonviolent action.
Through Gene’s work and writing people around the world have learned about the power and effectiveness of nonviolent struggle and have put that understanding into action and built powerful campaigns and movements to create positive change in their societies including building people power movements to overthrow many dictators and governments which were not listening to their people. We and all future generations are grateful for Gene’s life and all he has contributed. With deep appreciation for a LIFE WELL LIVED!!! Gene Sharp, PRESENTE!!
A couple memories of our work together.
Gene and I were in Moscow at the invitation of the Living Ring after the August attempted coup d’etat against Gorbachev in 1991. Boris Yeltsin and the others opposing the coup were hiding out in the Parliament building, while 10,000 people (the Living Ring) surrounded it for three days and nights nonviolently facing the tanks and soldiers who had order to attack. The Living Ring wanted training in how to nonviolently defeat future attempted coups against the government. Gene gave talks and we led workshops on nonviolent means to defeat further coup d’etats. It was a real privilege to work with Gene who selflessly shared the power of nonviolent struggle with people, groups and movements who wanted to use peaceful methods to challenge oppression and injustice.
Continue reading
What a mighty contribution Gene Sharp has made to humankind’s understanding of nonviolent struggle and the power of nonviolent action.
Through Gene’s work and writing people around the world have learned about the power and effectiveness of nonviolent struggle and have put that understanding into action and built powerful campaigns and movements to create positive change in their societies including building people power movements to overthrow many dictators and governments which were not listening to their people. We and all future generations are grateful for Gene’s life and all he has contributed. With deep appreciation for a LIFE WELL LIVED!!! Gene Sharp, PRESENTE!! A couple memories of our work together.
Gene and I were in Moscow at the invitation of the Living Ring after the August attempted coup d’etat against Gorbachev in 1991. Boris Yeltsin and the others opposing the coup were hiding out in the Parliament building, while 10,000 people (the Living Ring) surrounded it for three days and nights nonviolently facing the tanks and soldiers who had order to attack. The Living Ring wanted training in how to nonviolently defeat future attempted coups against the government. Gene gave talks and we led workshops on nonviolent means to defeat further coup d’etats. It was a real privilege to work with Gene who selflessly shared the power of nonviolent struggle with people, groups and movements who wanted to use peaceful methods to challenge oppression and injustice.
Continue reading
How anti-Vietnam War activists stopped violent protest from hijacking their movement
Robert Levering — March 7, 2017 — https://www.truth-out.org
Only the Vietnam era protests match the size and breadth of the movement unleashed by the election of Donald Trump. One point of comparison: The massive march and rally against the Vietnam War in 1969 was the largest political demonstration in American history until the even more massive Women’s March in January.
All around us we can see signs that the movement has only just begun. Consider, for instance, that a large percentage of those in the Women’s March engaged in their very first street protest. Or that thousands of protesters spontaneously flocked to airports to challenge the anti-Muslim ban. Or that hundreds of citizens have confronted their local congressional representatives at their offices and town hall meetings about the potential repeal of Obamacare and other Trump/Republican policies.
As activists prepare for future demonstrations, many are rightfully concerned about the potential disruptions by those using Black Bloc tactics, which involve engaging in property destruction and physical attacks on police and others. They often appear at demonstrations dressed in black and cover their faces to disguise their identities. Their numbers have been relatively small to date. But they garner an outsized amount of media coverage, such as a violent protest in Berkeley to block an appearance by an alt-right provocateur or the punching of a white nationalist during Trump’s inauguration. The result is that an otherwise peaceful demonstration’s primary message can get lost in a fog of rock throwing and tear gas. Even worse, fewer people are likely to turn up at future protests, and potential allies get turned off.
This is not a new phenomenon. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. confronted this issue. So did those of us active in the struggle against the Vietnam War.
read more…
It’s Time to Claim Our Highest Vision:
Let’s Embrace the Great Turning
Saturday, February 25, 2017
By Chris Moore-Backman, Truthout | Op-Ed
Across the nation, activists, organizers and newly enlivened social change onlookers are hungry for a shared, coherent sense of direction. George Lakey’s recent 10-point strategy for nonviolent resistance to the new Trump administration offers an excellent beginning to an absolutely critical conversation about comprehensive movement strategy.
But our many social change movements, which together have begun to comprise the macro “movement of movements” Lakey describes, may have a short window of time to get our strategic ducks in a row. The new administration has demonstrated a determined will to consolidate power, and to do so quickly. Fascistic executive orders; the systematic delegitimization of existing institutions, checks and balances; unfettered propaganda; and the normalization of bombastic and hateful rhetoric are stark early-warning signs of totalitarian takeover. In this setting, as Lakey argues, the new administration is relying on social changemakers to stay in their customary mode of “playing defense.” We’re called to be culture-shifting movement builders, but by setting enough fires in enough places, Trump, Bannon and Co. seek to render us firefighters.
read more…
Across the nation, activists, organizers and newly enlivened social change onlookers are hungry for a shared, coherent sense of direction. George Lakey’s recent 10-point strategy for nonviolent resistance to the new Trump administration offers an excellent beginning to an absolutely critical conversation about comprehensive movement strategy.
But our many social change movements, which together have begun to comprise the macro “movement of movements” Lakey describes, may have a short window of time to get our strategic ducks in a row. The new administration has demonstrated a determined will to consolidate power, and to do so quickly. Fascistic executive orders; the systematic delegitimization of existing institutions, checks and balances; unfettered propaganda; and the normalization of bombastic and hateful rhetoric are stark early-warning signs of totalitarian takeover. In this setting, as Lakey argues, the new administration is relying on social changemakers to stay in their customary mode of “playing defense.” We’re called to be culture-shifting movement builders, but by setting enough fires in enough places, Trump, Bannon and Co. seek to render us firefighters.
read more…
Pope Francis’ 2017 New Years Day Peace Message
Full text of Pope Francis’s message for the World Day of Peace
From Vatican Radio: https://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2017/01/02/non-violence_at_heart_of_popes_plea_for_world_day_of_peace/1283120
“Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace”
1. At the beginning of this New Year, I offer heartfelt wishes of peace to the world’s peoples and nations, to heads of state and government, and to religious, civic and community leaders. I wish peace to every man, woman and child, and I pray that the image and likeness of God in each person will enable us to acknowledge one another as sacred gifts endowed with immense dignity. Especially in situations of conflict, let us respect this, our “deepest dignity”, and make active nonviolence our way of life.
This is the fiftieth Message for the World Day of Peace. In the first, Blessed Pope Paul VI addressed all peoples, not simply Catholics, with utter clarity. “Peace is the only true direction of human progress – and not the tensions caused by ambitious nationalisms, nor conquests by violence, nor repressions which serve as mainstay for a false civil order”. He warned of “the danger of believing that international controversies cannot be resolved by the ways of reason, that is, by negotiations founded on law, justice, and equity, but only by means of deterrent and murderous forces.” Instead, citing the encyclical Pacem in Terris of his predecessor Saint John XXIII, he extolled “the sense and love of peace founded upon truth, justice, freedom and love”. In the intervening fifty years, these words have lost none of their significance or urgency.
On this occasion, I would like to reflect on nonviolence as a style of politics for peace. I ask God to help all of us to cultivate nonviolence in our most personal thoughts and values. May charity and nonviolence govern how we treat each other as individuals, within society and in international life. When victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become the most credible promotors of nonviolent peacemaking. In the most local and ordinary situations and in the international order, may nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms.
Continue reading
1. At the beginning of this New Year, I offer heartfelt wishes of peace to the world’s peoples and nations, to heads of state and government, and to religious, civic and community leaders. I wish peace to every man, woman and child, and I pray that the image and likeness of God in each person will enable us to acknowledge one another as sacred gifts endowed with immense dignity. Especially in situations of conflict, let us respect this, our “deepest dignity”, and make active nonviolence our way of life.
This is the fiftieth Message for the World Day of Peace. In the first, Blessed Pope Paul VI addressed all peoples, not simply Catholics, with utter clarity. “Peace is the only true direction of human progress – and not the tensions caused by ambitious nationalisms, nor conquests by violence, nor repressions which serve as mainstay for a false civil order”. He warned of “the danger of believing that international controversies cannot be resolved by the ways of reason, that is, by negotiations founded on law, justice, and equity, but only by means of deterrent and murderous forces.” Instead, citing the encyclical Pacem in Terris of his predecessor Saint John XXIII, he extolled “the sense and love of peace founded upon truth, justice, freedom and love”. In the intervening fifty years, these words have lost none of their significance or urgency.
On this occasion, I would like to reflect on nonviolence as a style of politics for peace. I ask God to help all of us to cultivate nonviolence in our most personal thoughts and values. May charity and nonviolence govern how we treat each other as individuals, within society and in international life. When victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become the most credible promotors of nonviolent peacemaking. In the most local and ordinary situations and in the international order, may nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms.
Continue reading 
Some Reflections from our Recent Trip to Russia
By David and Jan Hartsough — July 2016
We have recently returned from a two week citizen’s diplomacy peace delegation to six cities in Russia under the auspices of the Center for Citizen Initiatives.
Our trip included visits with journalists, political leaders, teachers and students, doctors and medical clinics, veterans of past wars, representatives of small businesses and nongovernmental organizations, youth camps, and home visits.
Since David’s earlier visits to Russia over the past fifty-five years, much has changed. He was struck by how much new building and construction has taken place, and the “westernization” of clothing, styles, advertising, automobiles and traffic, as well as global corporations and private companies and stores.
Some of our reflections include:
1. Danger of US and NATO military exercises on Russian border, like a game of nuclear chicken. This could very easily escalate into nuclear war. We must wake up the American people about the danger and encourage our government to move away from this dangerous posturing.
2. We need to put ourselves in the Russians’ shoes. What if Russia had military troops, tanks and bomber planes and missiles on the US border in Canada and Mexico. Wouldn’t we feel threatened?
3. Russian people don’t want war and want to live in peace. The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in World War II because they were not prepared militarily. They will not let that happen again. If attacked, they will fight for their Motherland. Most families lost family members in WWII, so war is very immediate and personal. In the siege of Leningrad between two and three million people perished.
4. US and NATO must take the initiative and show a commitment to living in peace with the Russians and treat them with respect.
5. The Russian people are a very friendly, open, generous and beautiful people. They are not a threat They are proud to be Russians, and want to be seen as an important part of a multi-polar world.
6. Most people that we met were very supportive of Putin. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, they experienced the shock therapy of the neo-liberal model of privatizing everything. In the 1990’s there was tremendous poverty and suffering of the large majority of the people while the oligarchs stole the previously state-owned resources from the country. Putin has given leadership to pull the country together and help improve the lives and well-being of the people. He is standing up to the bullies – the US and NATO – demanding respect from the rest of the world , and not allowing Russia to be pushed around and intimidated by the US.
7. Many Russians we talked with believe that the US is looking for enemies and creating wars in order to get more billions for the war profiteers.
8. The US must stop playing world policeman. It gets us in too much trouble and is not working. We need to give up our Pax Americana policies, acting like we are the most important country, the superpower which can tell the rest of the world how they can live and act.
9. My good Russian friend Voldya says “Don’t believe the propaganda of the political leaders and the corporate media.” The vilifying of Russia and Putin is what makes war possible. If we no longer see the Russians as people and human beings just like us, but make them the enemy, we can then support going to war with them.
10. The US and the European Union should stop the economic sanctions against Russia. They are hurting the Russian people and are counter-productive.
11. The people of Crimea, who are 70-80% Russian in nationality and language, voted in a referendum to become part of Russia as they had been for most of the past two hundred years. One Ukrainian nationality man living in Crimea, who opposed the referendum to join Russia, felt that at least 70% of the people in Crimea voted to join Russia. The people of Kosovo voted to secede from Serbia and the West supported them. The majority of people in Great Britain voted to leave the European Union; Scotland may vote to leave Great Britain. People of every region or country have the right to determine their own future without interference of the rest of the world.
12. The US needs to stop meddling in other nation’s affairs and supporting the overthrow of their governments (regime change) – like Ukraine, Iraq, Libya and Syria. We are creating ever more enemies around the world, and getting ourselves involved in more and more wars. This is not creating security for Americans or anyone else.
13. We need to work for the common security of all peoples, not just one nation at the expense of other nations. National security does not work any more and current US policies cannot even create security in America.
14. Back in 1991 US Secretary of State Baker committed to Gorbachev that NATO would not move one foot eastward towards Russia’s borders in return for the Soviet Union allowing the reunification of Germany. The US and NATO have not kept that agreement and are now have battalions of military troops, tanks, military planes and missiles on Russia’s borders. Ukraine and Georgia may also join NATO, which gets Russia ever more worried about western intentions. When the Warsaw pact was disbanded, the NATO pact should have been disbanded as well.
15. The American people must organize to stop the US and NATO operations on Russia’s borders and stop meddling in Ukraine and Georgia. The future of these countries should be decided by the people of these countries, not by the US. We must resolve our conflicts by negotiations and peaceful means. The future of billions of people on our beloved planet depends on what we do. Thank you for thinking, speaking out and acting to stop this madness. And please share these reflections widely.
________________________________________
David Hartsough is the author of WAGING PEACE: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist, Director of Peaceworkers, and is a co-founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce and World Beyond War. David and Jan were part of a twenty person team of citizen diplomats who visited Russia for two weeks in June of 2016. See www.ccisf.org for reports from the delegation. Contact us if you would like to do an interview.
Why I am Going to Russia — David Hartsough 6/14/2016
The US and Russian governments are pursuing dangerous policies of nuclear brinkmanship. Many people believe we are closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuba missile crisis in 1962.
Thirty-one thousand troops from the US and NATO countries are engaged in military maneuvers on the Russian border in Poland – together with tanks, military planes and missiles. The US has just activated an anti-ballistic missile site in Romania which the Russians see as part of an American first strike policy. Now the US can fire missiles with nuclear weapons at Russia, and then the anti-ballistic missiles could shoot down Russian missiles shot toward the west in response, the assumption being only the Russians would suffer from nuclear war.
Continue reading 
Catholic Agitator Review of Hartsough’s Waging Peace
Reviewed by Sandi Huckaby in the February, 2015,
issue of the Catholic Agitator Vol. 45/No. 1
As the title suggests, David Hartsough has been a lifelong peace activist, not just on the East Coast, but all over the world—and what an adventure it has been! His iron-strong commitment to nonviolence has taken him from Castro’s Cuba to the Oval Office in the Kennedy White House. He attended many of Dr. King’s sermons at Howard University, and was at the lunch counter sit-ins in the South. He bore nonviolent witness to erecting the Berlin Wall, held an anti-nuclear demonstration in Red Square—and was threatened with 20 years in a Russian prison …
read more
David Hartsough — Public Talks Fall 2015
SEPT 26: CULVER CITY, CA Saturday 7pm at the Peace Center 3916 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City, CA 90230 (Located between Venice and washington Blvd. Parking behind building
SEPT 27: PASADENA, CA Sunday 10am Orange Grove Friends Meetinghouse, 520 E Orange Grove Blvd, Pasadena, CA
SEPT 27: RIVERSIDE, CA Sunday 7pm Universalist Unitarian Church 3657 Lemon St., Riverside, CA
SEPT 28: SAN DIEGO Monday, 7pm Peace Resource Center, 3850 Westgate Pl (promoted by San Diego Peace Resource Center, Friends Meetings and Veterans for Peace)
OCT 4: BERKELEY, Sunday, 11:30am, St. Johns Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave, Berkeley, CA
OCT 18: SALT LAKE CITY, Utah Sunday, 11:30am Salt Lake City Friends Meetinghouse, 171 E 4800 S, Murray, UT 84107-
OCT 20: ITHACA, NY, 7pm Ithaca Friends Meeting, 120 3rd St, Ithaca, NY
OCT 21: ALBANY, NY, 6pm, Social Justice Center,
David Hartsough, author of WAGING PEACE: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist, PM press 2014. Available through Peaceworkers for $20 at 721 Shrader St., San Francisco, CA 94117.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world:
Indeed it’s the only think that ever has.” Margaret Mead
Talk Nation Radio: Waging Peace With David Hartsough
Interviewed by David Swanson, June, 2015.
From Montgomery to Ferguson — February 2015 Dialogue
WAGING PEACE: Reviewed by Patrick Jordan
If Ammon Hennacy were around to update his 1970 posthumously published The One-Man Revolution in America, he would likely add a chapter on David Hartsough (b. 1941). For nearly sixty years, this Quaker-inspired activist has resisted war, racism, and injustice at home and literally around the world. Hennacy’s book was a veritable Profiles in Courage for America’s unsung peacemakers and radicals. In Waging Peace, David Hartsough brings that tradition up-to-date by forty years, every year of which includes his actions of protest and courage.
This autobiographical record begins with David’s Ohio roots. His mother was a first-grade teacher and an activist, his father was a Congergational minister. At age seven, young Hartsough faced down a group of town bullies who had bloodied him. Later, he sought out—and became friends with—their jefe.
From there the story moves quickly to Pennsylvania, where the teenage David organizes his first peace protest (at a Nike missile site); then to Virginia, where the angered patron of a segregated lunch counter David and others were attempting to integrate threatens his life; and then on to the White House, Berlin, Red Square, and even the Holy Land, all places where he demonstrates nonviolently for reconciliation. The book concludes half a century later, with his arrest outside a U.S. drone base.
Continue reading
Breaking Our Addiction to War: A Five-Step Program
By Curt Torrell, Quaker House, Fayetteville, North Carolina — December 2014 – www.quakerhouse.org
Despite the fact that our nation is war weary after thirteen years of post-9/11 wars, we are embroiled in yet another war, this time on the so-called Islamic State (IS). And despite the fact that our bombs produced neither peace nor stability in Iraq and Afghanistan, but rather unleashed a firestorm of tribal and sectarian violence and a flood of arms circulating in that region, we are being led into doing it all over again. Our homeland was not pillaged or bombed, nor did we lose hundreds of thousands of our citizens to the ensuing violence, hunger, and lack of water and healthcare that inevitably follows warfare. Large segments of our population were not forced into refugee camps. Even so, Americans are beginning to understand that thirteen years of war have cost us dearly. But those most addicted to war, and those who profit from it, refuse to recognize the effects of their addiction upon others. Continue reading
WAGING PEACE reviewed by Rev. Sharon Delgado
Giants on the Earth: A Review of Waging Peace by David Hartsough
By Winslow Myers
WorldBeyondWar.org
There were giants on the earth in those days . . . (Genesis 6:4)
The fear that we citizens of the United States have been seduced into since 9/11 spreads across our benighted nation like a fog, inhibiting all policy alternatives not based in blind vengefulness. Special are those who have the spiritual clear-sightedness and persistence to make people-oriented global connections that pierce the fog of fear with the light of visionary possibility.
One such giant is David Hartsough, whose vivid, even hair-raising, memoir of a lifetime of peace activism, Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist, has just been published by PM press. It ought to be required reading for every U.S. citizen befogged by the crude polarization between Islamic extremism and the equally violent, ineffective, but seemingly endless Western military reaction it has elicited.
It hardly seems possible that Hartsough has been able to crowd into one lifetime all his deeds of creative nonviolence. He was there with Martin Luther King in the late fifties in the South. He was there when a train loaded with bullets and bombs on their way to arm right-wing death squads in Central America severed the leg of his friend Brian Willson in California. His initiatives of support for nonviolent resistance movements span both decades and continents, from efforts to get medical supplies to the North Vietnamese, to reconciliation among Israelis and Palestinians, to support for Russian dissidents as the Soviet Union was breaking up, to the resistance to Marcos in the Philippines, and on and on. Hartsough’s book thus becomes a remarkably comprehensive alternative history to set against “the official story” of America’s—and many other nations’—often brutal and misguided reliance upon military intervention.
Continue reading
Book Review: Waging Peace
The ordinary, extraordinary life of David Hartsough
Book Review by Ken Butigan — November 12, 2014 (from https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/ordinary-extraordinary-life/)
Years ago, my friend Anne Symens-Bucher would regularly punctuate our organizing meetings with a wistful cry, “I just want to live an ordinary life!” Anne ate, drank and slept activism over the decade she headed up the Nevada Desert Experience, a long-term campaign to end nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. After a grueling conference call, a mountainous fundraising mailing, or days spent at the edge of the sprawling test site in 100-degree weather, she and I would take a deep breath and wonder aloud how we could live the ordinary, nonviolent life without running ourselves into the ground.
What we didn’t mean was: “How do we hold on to our radical ideals but also retreat into a middle-class cocoon?” No, it was something like: “How can we stay the course but not give up doing all the ordinary things that everyone else usually does in this one-and-only life?” Somewhere in this question was the desire to not let who we are — in our plain old, down-to-earth ordinariness — get swallowed up by the blurring glare of the 24/7 activist fast lane.
These ruminations came back to me as I plunged into the pages of David Hartsough’s new memoir, “Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist.” David has been a friend for 30 years, and over that time I’ve rarely seen him pass up a chance to jump into the latest fray with both feet — something he’d been doing long before we met, as his book attests. For nearly six decades he’s been organizing for nonviolent change — with virtually every campaign, eventually getting tangled up with one risky nonviolent action after another. Therefore one might be tempted to surmise that David is yet another frantic activist on the perennial edge of burnout. Just reading his book, with its relentless kaleidoscope of civil resistance on many continents, can be dizzying — what must it have been like to live it? If anyone would qualify for not living the ordinary life, it would seem to be David Hartsough.
Continue reading
Book Review by Ken Butigan — November 12, 2014 (from https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/ordinary-extraordinary-life/)
Years ago, my friend Anne Symens-Bucher would regularly punctuate our organizing meetings with a wistful cry, “I just want to live an ordinary life!” Anne ate, drank and slept activism over the decade she headed up the Nevada Desert Experience, a long-term campaign to end nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. After a grueling conference call, a mountainous fundraising mailing, or days spent at the edge of the sprawling test site in 100-degree weather, she and I would take a deep breath and wonder aloud how we could live the ordinary, nonviolent life without running ourselves into the ground.
What we didn’t mean was: “How do we hold on to our radical ideals but also retreat into a middle-class cocoon?” No, it was something like: “How can we stay the course but not give up doing all the ordinary things that everyone else usually does in this one-and-only life?” Somewhere in this question was the desire to not let who we are — in our plain old, down-to-earth ordinariness — get swallowed up by the blurring glare of the 24/7 activist fast lane.
These ruminations came back to me as I plunged into the pages of David Hartsough’s new memoir, “Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist.” David has been a friend for 30 years, and over that time I’ve rarely seen him pass up a chance to jump into the latest fray with both feet — something he’d been doing long before we met, as his book attests. For nearly six decades he’s been organizing for nonviolent change — with virtually every campaign, eventually getting tangled up with one risky nonviolent action after another. Therefore one might be tempted to surmise that David is yet another frantic activist on the perennial edge of burnout. Just reading his book, with its relentless kaleidoscope of civil resistance on many continents, can be dizzying — what must it have been like to live it? If anyone would qualify for not living the ordinary life, it would seem to be David Hartsough.
Continue reading 
2014 Annual Peace Lecture — David Hartsough — Salem, OR — Oct 15th.
Annual Peace Lecture/Waging Peace Book talk
given by David Hartsough in Salem, OR, on Oct 15, 2014.
2014 Salem Peace Lecture- “Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Nonviolent Activitst.”
from Big Picture Productions on Vimeo.
David Hartsough Interview — Dedham, MA — Oct. 2014
A Quaker’s Ceaseless Quest for a World Without War
September 7, 2014 ( from Street Spirit)
During a long lifetime spent working for peace and social justice, David Hartsough has shown an uncanny instinct for being in the right place at the right time. One can almost trace the modern history of nonviolent movements in America by following the trail of his acts of resistance over the past 60 years.
His life has been an unbroken series of sit-ins for civil rights, seagoing blockades of munitions ships sailing for Vietnam, land blockades of trains carrying bombs to El Salvador, arrests at the Diablo nuclear reactor and the Livermore nuclear weapons lab, Occupy movement marches, and international acts of peacemaking in Russia, Nicaragua, Kosovo, Iran and Palestine.
It all began at the very dawn of the Freedom Movement when the teenaged Hartsough met Martin Luther King and Ralph David Abernathy at a church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956 as the ministers were organizing the bus boycott at the birth of the civil rights struggle. Read more…
Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist
Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist Available now.
Authors: David Hartsough with Joyce Hollyday • Foreword by John Dear • Introduction by George Lakey • Afterword by Ken Butigan Publisher: PM Press — ISBN: 978-1-62963-034-2 Paperback — $20.00
Signed copies available now from Peaceworkers (postage included) for a sliding-scale price of $20 to $25. Peaceworkers, 721 Shrader St., San Francisco, CA 94117
Free Chapters in PDF format:
CHAPTER 2: One Common Humanity: Meeting Dr. King and a Lunch Counter Showdown CHAPTER 7: Blockade: Standing in the Way of Bombs Headed for Nam CHAPTER 10: Assault on the Tracks: Facing Violence with Love and CourageFall 2014 Book Tour Public Events
David Hartsough knows how to get in the way! He has used his body to block Navy ships headed for Vietnam and trains loaded with munitions on their way to El Salvador and Nicaragua. He has crossed borders to meet “the enemy” in East Berlin, Castro’s Cuba, and present-day Iran. He has marched with mothers confronting a violent regime in Guatemala and stood with refugees threatened by death squads in the Philippines. Waging Peace is a testament to the difference one person can make. Hartsough’s stories inspire, educate, and encourage readers to find ways to work for a more just and peaceful world. Inspired by the examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Hartsough has spent his life experimenting with the power of active nonviolence. It is the story of one man’s effort to live as though we were all brothers and sisters. Continue reading
David Hartsough Interviewed on KPFK — June 2014
Dear Friends,
Thought you might be interested in my recent radio interview on KPFK about my trip to Vietnam, the World Beyond War movement and my book, Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist.
|
A U D I O P L A Y E R [ca_audio url=”https://peaceworkersus.org/media/kpfk_interview_with_david_hardsough_june_2014.mp3″ width=”500″ height=”27″ css_class=”codeart-google-mp3-player”] |
From Jeju and Afghanistan, an Asia Peace Pivot
By Dr Hakim
“Don’t you touch me!” declared Mi Ryang.
South Korean police were clamping down on a villager who was resisting the construction of a Korean/U.S. naval base at her village. Mi Ryang managed to turn the police away by taking off her blouse and, clad in her bra, walking toward them with her clear warning. Hands off! Mi Ryang is fondly referred to as “Gangjeong’s daughter” by villagers who highly regard her as the feisty descendant of legendary women sea divers. Her mother and grandmother were Haenyo divers who supported their families every day by diving for shellfish.
Since 2007, every day without fail, Mi Ryang has stood up to militarists destroying her land.
“Don’t you touch me!” declared Mi Ryang.
South Korean police were clamping down on a villager who was resisting the construction of a Korean/U.S. naval base at her village. Mi Ryang managed to turn the police away by taking off her blouse and, clad in her bra, walking toward them with her clear warning. Hands off! Mi Ryang is fondly referred to as “Gangjeong’s daughter” by villagers who highly regard her as the feisty descendant of legendary women sea divers. Her mother and grandmother were Haenyo divers who supported their families every day by diving for shellfish.
Since 2007, every day without fail, Mi Ryang has stood up to militarists destroying her land.
Mi Ryang, in white cap on the right, challenging a construction truck driver at the naval base gate
David Hartsough on a World Beyond War
War and Peace in Korea and Vietnam — 2014 Report
A Journey of Peace by David Hartsough in 2014
I have recently returned from three weeks in Korea and Vietnam, countries which have in the past and are still suffering from the ravages of war.
Korea – North and South are caught in the tragic cold war mentality with a divided country imposed on them by the United States (and not opposed by the Soviet Union) back in 1945 and solidified in 1948. Ten million families were separated by the division of North and South. People in South Korea cannot phone, write or visit relatives or friends in North Korea and vice versa. One Catholic Priest from South Korea I met spent three and a half years in prison in South Korea for visiting North Korea on a peace mission. The border between North and South Korea is a battle zone where hot war could break out at any moment. The US and South Korean military regularly do full scale live fire war games invoking up to 300,000 troops simulating both defensive and offensive war including armed war planes right up to the border of North Korea. North Korea regularly makes threats of war as well. The Soviet Union is no more and it is time for the United States to ask forgiveness of the people of South and North Korea for imposing this state of war on the two countries, sign a peace agreement with North Korea to officially end the Korean war,recognize the government of North Korea and agree to negotiate all differences at the conference table, not on the battlefield.
read more…
Peace Paradigm Radio interviews Gilda Bettencourt about Nonviolence Peaceforce
Peace Paradigm Radio, October 18, 2013:
[ca_audio url=”https://2sa2zt2l6d6o225boe3ff2xc1247.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Gilda-peace_paradigm_2013-10-18.mp3″ width=”400″ height=”35″ css_class=”codeart-google-mp3-player”]
…
Randy Kehler: Personal Reflections on the State of the World
Talk by Randy Kehler at the Nipponzan Myohoji Peace Pagoda, 27th Anniversary Celebration, Leverett, Massachusetts, September 29, 2012 (PDF version)
INTRODUCTION Greetings, friends. It’s wonderful, as always, to be here with all of you, and an honor to have been invited to share some thoughts with you. The title of my talk (“Personal Reflections on the State of the World”) was meant to be general enough to give me plenty of leeway to talk about almost anything, because, frankly, when I was asked what the title would be, I hadn’t yet had much time to think about what I wanted to say. At this point, having given it more thought, I think I would at least amend the title by adding this subtitle: “Randy’s Ongoing Meditation on Fear.” I think you’ll see what I mean. FIVE CRISES But let me start with the state of the world and a brief recap of what appear to me to be 5 of the most serious, most threatening, most daunting crises we face – crises that many of us here have devoted significant portions of our lives attempting to address – and few, if any, with more faithfulness, perseverance, and equanimity than the monks and nuns of Nipponzan Myohoji. First, the crisis of nuclear power. This is from The Economist, of March 10, 2012 (one year after Fukushima): “The triple meltdown at Fukushima was the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. The damage extends far beyond a lost power station, a stricken operator (the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO), and an intense debate about the future of the nation’s nuclear power plants. It goes beyond the trillions of yen that will be needed for a decade-long effort to decommission the reactors and remove their wrecked cores, if indeed that proves possible, and the even greater sums that may be required for decontamination (which one [Tokyo University expert] thinks could cost as much as 50 trillion yen, or $623 billion). It reaches into the lives of the displaced, and of those further afield who know they have been exposed to the fallout from the disaster….For parallels that do justice to the disaster, the Japanese find themselves reaching back to the second world war, otherwise seldom discussed….And, of course, to Hiroshima.” There are roughly [400-?] operating operating nuclear power plants in the world today. 104 of them are in the U.S., most of them old and approaching, or already having exceeded, their 40-year design life. Many of them, including the Vermont Yankee nuke, on the Conn. River 20 miles north of here and the Pilgrim nuke in Plymouth, 40 miles south of Boston, have been given permission by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate for an additional 20 years, and at 120% of the power output they were designed to produce. 23 of the U.S. reactors, including both Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim, are of almost the identical make and flawed design (courtesy of General Electric) as the nukes still melting down in Fukushima. Continue reading January 2013 — Peaceworkers Report from the Front Lines
Palestine West Bank / Bahrain / Burma / MST / Iraq
By Nicholas Sismil, Peaceworkers Intern – PeaceWorkersUS.org
Palestine, West Bank
In recent news, Palestinian actions in the West Bank have moved more towards
constructive programme in the last month or two. Palestinians and international activists
have built a total of three protest villages thus far. Two have been destroyed but the
recent village is still standing.
The first camp was constructed on Friday, January 11th. By noon, the Palestinians
announced to the world that the village of Bab-al Shams (Gateway to the Sun) had been
established. A day later, there were approximately 250 residents, a village council, a
health clinic, a media center, a communal kitchen, and the beginnings of a library. The
majority of the residents were students, activists, and popular committee leaders.
However, residents of various locations in Palestine and even those from 1948 were
living there as well.
Click here to read the entire report in pdf format. which will take you to:
https://www.peaceworkers.us/peaceworkers-report-january-2013.pdf
How can you resist the age of drones?
by Ken Butigan | January 10, 2013
On Monday President Obama nominated his counterterrorism chief, John O. Brennan, to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Though some civil liberties groups and other critics have raised questions about Brennan’s involvement in the CIA’s practice of torture during the Bush administration, relatively less has been said about his primarily responsibility during President Obama’s first term: accelerating and institutionalizing the U.S. drones program and its “disposition matrix” — as the government’s sanitizing parlance puts it — which has included setting weekly drone kill lists.
Click here to read more.
A protest outside of the arraignment of the Beale 5 on January 8, 2013. (WNV/Guarionex Delgado)
David Hartsough interviewed on Talk Nation Radio 12-25-2012
|
A U D I O P L A Y E R [ca_audio url=”https://peaceworkersus.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/talknationradio_20121226.mp3″ width=”500″ height=”27″ css_class=”codeart-google-mp3-player”] |
David Hartsough has been a peace activist since the 1950s, a conscientious objector, a civil disobedient, arrested over 100 times. In 2002 he cofounded the Nonviolent Peace Force ( nonviolentpeaceforce.org ). Hartsough is the executive director of Peace Workers ( peaceworkersus.org ). He discusses the current status of war and peace in our culture.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Engineer: Christiane Brown.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download or get embed code from Archive or AudioPort or LetsTryDemocracy .
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
Israeli forces fire on Gaza Farmers and Internationals in Khuza’a
December 12th, 2012
By International Solidarity Activists
Gaza- Israeli forces fired live ammunition and tear gas at unarmed farmers and international solidarity activists working in Khuza’a, a small village outside of Khan Younis located near the Israeli border. At 10:30 AM, the farmers arrived and began to plough approximately 100 meters from the separation fence while internationals lined up in between the border and the farmers. They were quickly met by an Israeli military jeep and transport vehicle. An Israeli soldier issued a warning in Arabic to leave the area and then fired two rounds into the air. The farmers and internationals remained calm and continued their work and the Israeli soldiers left the area.
Israeli soldier aiming
Following the UN vote, the Dalu family calls for the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel
Dalu home in Gaza obliterated
David Hartsough’s Statement Protesting Drone Attacks
from the Positive Peace Warrior Network (PPWN) web site , November 2012
David Hartsough
The Batman Massacre: A Response — by Michael Nagler, Metta Center
Mirrored from www.mettacenter.org — July, 2012
I want to make an offer to my fellow Americans who are, like myself, reeling from the worst “random” shooting the country has ever seen. My question: Have you had enough? Because if you have, I can tell you how to stop this kind of madness. I know that’s a bold claim, but this is not a time for small measures.
We cannot fix this tomorrow, because we didn’t cause it yesterday. We have been building up to this domestic holocaust since – to take one milestone – television was made available to the general public at the conclusion of World War Two.
If you are still with me, you are prepared to believe that it was not a coincidence that this massacre took place at the scene of an extremely violent, “long-awaited” movie. Psychologists have proved over and over again that – guess what – exposure to violent imagery produces disturbances in the mind that must, in course of time, take form in outward behavior. The imagery can be in anymedium, nor does it matter whether on the surface of our minds we think what we’re seeing is real or made up. This is a natural, scientific law. Exactly who will crack next and in what setting is nearly impossible to predict, and in any case it’s ridiculous to try to run around stopping the resulting violence from being acted out after the mental damage has been done. The only sane approach is not to do it in the first place.
As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman pointed out in his book, Let’s Stop Killing Our Kids, the video games that the Army uses to prepare ordinary men and women for combat, in other words to wipe out the normal empathy and inhibitions against hurting others that we’ve built up over millennia – a process known as civilization – are the very same games our young people buy across the counter throughout the country.
Of course, there are other factors. At some point we will have to talk about readily available weapons; at some point we’ll have to realize that a nation that engages in heartless drone warfare, torture, and extrajudicial killings cannot expect to live in peace. But until we liberate our minds from the endless pounding of violent imagery I fear we won’t be able to think clearly about those factors (or for that matter anything else).
With rare exceptions, film and video game producers will not stop turning out these dehumanizing products as long as there is profit to be made from them – and not enough sophistication about culture or the human mind to warn us about their dangers. But there is a way, one that has worked well on the small scales on which it has so far been tried: don’t watch them. Captain Boycott had the right approach.
Right now police have been posted at theaters where this same movie is being shown – still. But ask yourself, what are they protecting? Is it perhaps the belief that violence is just entertaining? People, tell me when you’ve had enough.
If you are moved by this article, please pass it along. If you are a member of the press and would like to interview the Metta Center for our perspective on this tragedy, you can contact us at 707.774.6299 or by email: info@mettacenter.org.
An emerging force for peace — Article by Ken Butigan
December 15, 2011, 9:41 am — Mirrored from wagingnonviolence.org
“Building a Rainbow” is the title of an old poster I picked up somewhere along the way. The rainbow’s swath of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet layers is dazzling—and only half finished. In the picture, this symbol of peace is not an idealistic dream but something real. It is under construction, with a troupe of cranes carefully maneuvering sections into place, countless trucks and overworked paint wagons, scaffolding everywhere, and a flotilla of helicopters lumbering across the sky, each with its own precarious splotch of color dangling below.
We live in a violent world. But we also live in a world where a growing number of people everywhere are determined to confound the assumption that there is nothing we can do about this. They gamble that violence need not have the final word. They wager that there are options. They assert that we needn’t be victims of a cycle of violent history; rather, we can dare to be active subjects of a more nonviolent history that engages and transforms the violence around us. For them, violent history isn’t a given, it is made. So, too, is a nonviolent one.
New forms of Nonviolence and Leadership emerging??
Mirrored from Tom Atlee’s transformational thinkpad
By Tom Atlee — November 24, 2011
Something remarkable has been going on out there – especially at UC Davis. I have a hard time figuring out how to articulate it. I haven’t yet seen anyone talk about quite what I’m seeing, so I’ll give it a try.
Here’s what it looks like to me: Nonviolent activism is evolving rapidly right before our eyes. The level of spot-on – and often spontaneous – nonviolent creativity that’s showing up exceeds what I’ve seen before, to an extent that I wonder if a fundamentally new and more powerful form of nonviolent action is emerging.
Occupy Wall Street’s commitment to nonviolence
by Nathan Schneider | November 13, 2011, 4:19 pm
I’ve noted before that Occupy Wall Street has had trouble coming to consensus on a statement of nonviolence (as opposed to, say, the October 2011 movement in DC, which publicized one at the outset). This was an issue both in the planning process and in the early days of the occupation. In my essay on the notion of “diversity of tactics” for Occupy Wall Street, I wrote:
Continue readingSince the early stages of the movement, it is true, those taking part have been in a deadlock on the question of making a commitment to nonviolence. At a planning meeting in Tompkins Square Park prior to September 17, I recall one young man in dark sunglasses saying, knowingly, “There is a danger of fetishizing nonviolence to the point that it becomes a dogma.” In response, a woman added a “point of information,” despite being in contradiction to what Gandhi or King might say: “Nonviolence just means not initiating violence.” The question of nonviolence was ultimately tabled that night and thereafter. “This discussion is a complete waste of time,” someone concluded.
Stop the Machine! Create a New World: the Occupation in Freedom Plaza in Washington DC.
by David Hartsough — November 7, 2011
The Occupation in Freedom Plaza in Washington DC (two blocks from the White House) and the occupations around the country and the world give me more hope than anything which I have experienced since the civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960’s.
Hundreds of thousands or millions of people from all walks of life and all ages, races and religious backgrounds– and especially young people- are waking up and saying with their bodies “We aren’t going to take it any more. We will not put up with a society where the government does not represent the people, but too often represents the corporations and the wealthy. We will not put up with a government which gives unlimited hundreds of billions of dollars to fight foreign wars, create more nuclear weapons and build military bases around the world while making drastic cuts across the board to programs for education and health and welfare of the American people.
Continue reading
How to Destroy the OCCUPY Movement and How to Prevent It From Failing
by Paul K. Chappell
October 31, 2011
Mirrored from Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
I graduated from West Point in 2002, served in the army for seven years, and was deployed to Baghdad in 2006. I left active duty in 2009 as a captain, and I am currently serving as the Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, where I work to empower people with the skills and ideals that allow us to effectively wage peace.
If we compare how much the average twenty-two-year-old army officer knows about waging war and how much the average twenty-two-year-old activist knows about waging peace, there is a big difference. Although I admire their deep commitment to waging peace, many activists have not had enough training in the nonviolent methods that lead to positive change. Many activists have not thoroughly studied the brilliant techniques of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, and other peace warriors.
10 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement — From YES Magazine
by Sarah van Gelder — YES! Magazine — Oct 14, 2011
There are many things you can do to be part of this growing movement—and only some of them involve sleeping outside.
In Westlake Park, Seattle, shortly before police removed the tent and
arrested occupiers. Sign reads: 250,000 Homeless Vets Is
Unacceptable. (Photo by Sarah van Gelder.)
The OccupyWallStreet movement continues to spread with more than 1,500 sites. More and more people are speaking up for a society that works for the 99 percent, not just the 1 percent.
Here are 10 recommendations from the YES! Magazine staff for ways to build the power and momentum of this movement. Only two of them involve sleeping outside: