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Vol. XX, No.2 Winter, 2006 Nonviolent Change Journal helps to network the peace community: providing dialoguing,
exchanges of ideas, articles, reviews, reports and announcements of the
activities of peace related groups and meetings, reviews of world
developments relating to nonviolent change and resource information
concerning the development of human relations on the basis of mutual respect.
Reviews, Notes, and Websites MEDIA REVIEWSReview of Paul R. Dekar, Creating the Beloved Community: A Journey
with the Fellowship of Reconciliation (
The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) began symbolically on the eve
of the First World War as Henry Hodgkin, a British Quaker, and Friedrick Siegmund-Schultze, the German pastor of In Hodgkin who had been a missionary doctor
in China had good contacts among American Quakers as well as among the YMCA
which had been active in China and with others such as Grace Hutchins, a
former principal of a school in Wuchang, China, who became the associate
editor of the FOR magazine. He drew upon these contacts to organize a branch
in the After the war in 1919 Christian peacemakers
met in At the end of the First World War, the
newly organized US-FOR turned its attention to economic injustice which had
been partly hidden by the war effort.
FOR leaders were active in defense of trade unions and cooperatives,
public ownership of important means of production, a universal minimum
wage. As Reinhold Niebuhr, the chair
of the national council in 1931 and 1932 wrote "A society which tries to
create truth, beauty and goodness while it rests upon untrue and unjust
foundations deserves to be convicted of hypocrisy and must inevitably lose
the good will of those who are victimized by its injustices. There can, therefore, be no health in the
cultural and spiritual life of Western society as long as its present
economic system is not seriously modified." Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party
candidate for Closely linked to the struggle against
economic injustice was the challenge to racism. Many African-Americans
were both poor and discriminated against in housing, employment,
transportation and education. FOR
activists helped to adopt techniques of Gandhian non-violence to challenge
racism. As Bayard Rustin, one time FOR
staff member wrote "At times freedom will demand that its followers go
into situations where even death is to be faced. Resistance on the buses would, for example,
mean humiliation, mistreatment by police, arrest, and some physical violence
inflicted on the participants. "But if anyone at this date in
history believes that the 'white problem' which is one of privilege, can be
settled without some violence, he is mistaken and fails to realize the ends
to which men can be driven to hold on to what they consider privileges. "This is
why Negroes and whites who participate in direct action must pledge
themselves to non-violence in word and deed.
For in this way alone can the inevitable violence be reduced to a
minimum." The title of the book "Creating the
Beloved Community" comes from an oft-used phrase of Martin Luther King
Jr. in describing the aim of overcoming the tripartite personal, economic,
and political oppression. As James
Lawson, who later became FOR chairperson, wrote in 1959 " Only if the
Negro is strong enough to love and forgive, while pressing on for a new
society, will the end to segregation and racial hatred arrive." As Dekar points out "FOR members
have not typically held a narrow view of peacemaking. FOR members have sought not only to oppose
war, but also to identify and alleviate causes of war." As Alfred
Hassler, FOR Executive Secretary from 1958 to 1974, wrote " Those of us
who believe in the ability of non-violent methods to deal effectively with
this problem of social change and revolution must consider whether it is
enough to apply the tactics of non-violence to individual circumstances in
isolated places, or whether we must not now seek a total strategy that
envisions a non-violently organized total world community in which the well-being
of all is the responsibility of all."
He went on to stress the necessity for individuals of all countries to
identify as world citizens and to shape a wider vision of the world at peace. He saw the need to provide concrete,
visible, and simple means by which greater numbers of people might contribute
to shaping life on earth in different ways and to use new technologies in
more appropriate ways. Dai Dong, a Vietnamese term for "a
world of great togetherness" was such a transnational effort linking
war, ecology, poverty and other social issues, especially at the time of the
1st UN Conference on the Human Environment in As we look over the history of FOR, we
are reminded of a talk in 1967 of Martin Luther King Jr. "The past is
prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving
out peaceful tomorrows. One day we
must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a
means by which we arrive at that goal." MEDIA NOTES Vandana Shiva, Earth
Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace is $15.00 paper, $40.00
cloth, from South End Press, email to: southend@southendpress.org or
visit their website: www.southendpress.org Elizabeth
Boardman, Taking A Stand: A Guide to Peace Teams and Accompaniment Projects
is available from Northwest Society Publishers. The
Non-Profit Directory 2005, containing more than 85,000 Non-Profit organizations and
Foundations located in the United States and Canada, is available for $149.95
from Canada Books, 26 Bellevue, St-Anne-des-Lacs, Qc, Canada, J0R 1B0
(450)224-9275. Recent
publications from the Open Society
Institute and Soros Foundation, which can be downloaded from its website:
http://www.soros.org , include: Open
Society News: The Decade of Roma Inclusion; OSI's EUMAP and Media
Program, Television Across Europe: Regulation, Policy, and Independence,
indicting the pivotal role of television in supporting democracy in Europe is
under threat; OSI, Report of the Second European Forum on
Access to Justice; and OSI, Covering Oil: A Reporter’s Guide to
Energy and Development. World Watch Institute produces a number of publications
including State of the World published annually at the beginning of
each year as a resource "for those who understand the importance of
nurturing a safe, sane, and healthy global environment through both policy
and action"; Vital Signs an annual providing comprehensive, user-friendly
information on key trends and includes tables and graphs that help readers
assess the developments that are changing their lives for better or for worse. Worldwatch
Global Trends, an
annual CD with instant access to each of Worldwatch's 220 global indicators.
Each trend contains a PowerPoint slide and an Excel spreadsheet containing
graphs, charts and raw data. The spreadsheets are easily manipulated to
include one’s own data for research comparisons or for use in presentations; World Watch Magazine, a bi-monthly
ed on the latest developments in population growth, climate change, species
extinction, and the rise of new forms of human behavior and governance; and
an ongoing series of Worldwatch Papers by the same team
that produces State of the World
and Vital Signs. Each 50-70 page
Paper provides cutting-edge analysis on an environmental topic that is
making—or is about to make—headlines worldwide. These
publications are available separately or together in a subscription to State
of the World Library. For details go to: http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/,
or contact Worldwatch Institute, P.O. Box 188, Williamsport, PA 17703,
(888)544-2303 or (570)320-2076, wwpub@worldwatch.org SOME USEFUL WEBSITES
Global Beat, has been an excellent source of information and
further sources for Nonviolent Change,
at: http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat Global Beat also has an E-mail list
serve. The
International Crisis Group (IGC)
carries regular reports and sets of recommendations about difficult
developing situations around the globe, and has been an extremely helpful
source of information and ideas for this journal: http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm IGC also has a regular E-mail report
circulation sercvice that can be subscribed to on its web site. Europa World Plus: Europa World/Regional Surveys of the World On Line
is at: www.europaworld.com Association for Conflict
Resolution (ACR): http://www.acr.net Peace Media publishes a monthly web magazine at: http://peacejournalism.com/ReadArticle.asp?ArticleID=6086 The Open society
Institute and the Soros Foundation: http://www.soros.org The inaugural issue of the
Culture of Peace Online Journal
has been posted at: http://www.copoj.ca
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