[E-rundbrief] Info 306 - Globalising Nonviolence
Matthias Reichl
mareichl at ping.at
Do Nov 3 22:26:34 CET 2005
E-Rundbrief - Info 306: Stellan Vinthagen (War Resisters
International/WRI): A Call for a Nonviolent Strategy of the Global Peace &
Justice Movement. International conference "Globalising Nonviolence" in
Germany, July 2006 (http://globalisingnonviolence.org).
Bad Ischl, 3.11.2005
Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
www.begegnungszentrum.at
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A Call for a Nonviolent Strategy of the Global Peace & Justice Movement
Stellan Vinthagen,
WRI Triennial Committee, and Department of Peace & Development Research
Göteborg University, Sweden.
E-mail: stellan.vinthagen at padrigu.gu.se
We live in a historical time of social change. While the economy, state
regimes and wars are being globalized, the social forces of people's
movements are as well. At least 15 millions demonstrated worldwide against
the war in Iraq 2003. The gathering of "the global movement of movements"
at the World Social Forum continues to grow, the latest in Brazil with 150
000 participants. This global peace & justice movement has drawn the
conclusions of earlier strategies of reform through national parties and
elections and revolution through armed rebellion, and is searching for a
nonviolent strategy of social change. We need to explore how to bring the
knowledge and experience of the more than one century old nonviolent
resistance tradition into the present global movement. War Resisters'
International is calling for a mobilization of nonviolent activists,
trainers, organizers and scholars in order to build a long term plan. A
major occasion to discuss this is the international conference "Globalising
Nonviolence" in Germany, July 2006 (http://globalisingnonviolence.org).
Since at least the early 1990ies there has been a growing global networking
among local uprisings in the south, international counter-conferences and
campaigns targeting the world regimes of the alphabet soup (WTO, WB, IMF
etc). With Seattle 1999 N30 a momentous symbolic movement victory was
created by the cooperation of "teamsters and turtles" and other critical
movements while using an elaborated nonviolent resistance strategy of
closing the WTO meeting. Since then an unparalleled global movement has
arisen. The protest of February 15 2003 against the Iraq war plans agreed
upon by participants of the European Social Forum in Florence, Italy was
arguably the biggest ever in world history. Somewhere between 15 and 30
million people protested in cooperation with each other through a
combination of existing networks and Internet, without any centralized
world coordination. The three latest World Social Forum gatherings
converged each astonishingly 100 000 participants: Brazil 2003, India 2004
and again Brazil 2005. More than a thousand different organizations and
movements from more than 120 countries interacted in more than a thousand
workshops and seminars at each of these latest gatherings of the network of
movements that are the closest ever to a truly global peace & justice
movement. And, importantly, there is no sign of decrease in the global
networking, only in media cover (of course). But on the other hand, there
is a political and strategic unclearity, which in the long run might make
this hopeful challenge to oppression, exploitation and violence dissolve.
Besides having problems in finding a common ground on political demands,
broad enough to mobilize globally, yet limited enough in order to allow
heterogeneity there is a lack of coherent strategy. Current global
confrontations like Prague (with the World Bank), Gothenburg (with EU) or
Genoa (with G8) exhibit a twin problem: violent riots and ineffective
nonviolent resistance. These and other protests have also failed to
organize effective nonviolent confrontations and new coherent strategies of
nonviolent engagement with global powers. The development of The Battle of
Seattle has not been possible since the police are learning new tactics
quicker than activists.
This twin problem: violent riots and ineffective nonviolent resistance is a
problem arising in part from a lack of skilled nonviolence within the
movement. Very few people with knowledge of nonviolent theory and movement
practice have taken an organizing part within the movement (with some
exceptions in USA). Within the International Council (which is the steering
body of WSF) there are more than 120 different movement organizations
participating, but not even one peace organization from a nonviolent
resistance tradition (e.g. War Resisters' International, Nonviolence
International, Network of Engaged Buddhism or International Fellowship of
Reconciliation) despite the global peace demonstration of 15 February 2003.
It is already clear that this global movement is not a simple spontaneous
outburst of mobilization, but an ongoing mobilization. It might even be a
similar historic mobilization as the modern movements of peace,
anti-slavery, feminism and workers 150 years ago which profoundly changed
our societies. Like the rebellions of 1968 it develops from a fundamental
criticism of electoral politics of nation states, but unlike radicals of
the 70ies it is not looking for a solution by "new" left parties or
"peoples'" armed struggles. The WSF is explicitly searching for a non-armed
and non-electoral politics (see the WSF charter at
www.forumsocialmundial.org ) a kind of "non-violent social
resistance" while not outlining what that really means.
On 18. January 2004, when the fourth World Social Forum started in India,
the world famous author and Narmada anti-dam activist Arundhati Roy in an
article (simultaneously published in several countries, see
www.infochangeindia.org ) calls for a nonviolent resistance that goes
further than "holiday protests [which] don't stop wars". "We must not allow
non-violent resistance to atrophy into ineffectual, feel-good, political
theatre", she says. She calls on us to understand that we are part of a war
and that our resistance needs to make a difference, even materially, for
the political economic elite. "What we need urgently to discuss is
strategies of resistance" which is exactly the call War Resisters'
International want to answer. On that line WRI has already launched a
Campaign against War Profiteers which will be developed further during the
Triennial.
The present global movement is in my understanding a movement ready for
adopting nonviolent resistance strategy as its approach to politics and
social change. The language of nonviolence already exists within numerous
workshops, declarations and organizations: affinity groups, disobedience,
peaceful, dialogue, guidelines etc.
But since no nonviolent strategy has been adopted so far there is now an
ongoing discussion on moving away from global confrontations. The
confrontations are seen as unproductive and too much of symbolic bashing of
the logos of present world order (Bush, WTO, G8 etc.) in favor of making
alternatives visible and creating local resistance. Naomi Klein the author
of "No Logo" is one of the opponents of present "McProtest". The emphasis
on constructive alternatives is great as a matter of fact a central part
of the kind of nonviolent strategy Gandhi did suggest while the problem is
a lack of resistance approach.
In my understanding what obviously lacks is the knowledge and skills
developed by historic nonviolent movements and its relevance for the
present resistance. In the movement and WSF leadership there does not seem
to exist enough understanding what it means to choose a non-party and
non-armed political struggle which challenge power relations.
The wheel is invented once again since we fail to learn from each other.
E.g. the emphasis on affinity groups was not invented in Seattle but grew
out of a frustration with the power hierarchies of the civil rights
movement, a need to encourage grassroots' participation and to control riot
makers. The break through came with Seabrook 1976 (inspired by site
occupations in Germany) when thousands made creative actions together based
on a decentralized network of affinity groups and guidelines. This
experience is all forgotten within the new global movement except in
Seattle 1999, which is why we want to reclaim Seattle! Seattle was a
victory of a confrontative and pragmatic nonviolent strategy, not of legal
demonstrations or violent riot making. When nonviolence is tried as in
Prague 2000 it is done without the people that have learnt the lessons
from experimenting with the action form since 1976, and the result is
violent riots with the images of burning cars and police cabled all over
the world
The Role of Nonviolent Resistance: The strength of any global movement of
radical social change is arguably the truly interlinked cooperation between
a multitude of local everyday struggles around the world. In my
understanding there exist not a choice between either converging global
confrontations of power relations or local alternative building; instead it
is a difficult matter of a necessary combination of the NO and the YES of
the movements, locally and globally. The unique contribution of nonviolent
resistance is as Barbara Deming and others have framed it the two hands of
nonviolence the respectful care of the opponent as a person and the
absolute rejection of the evil acts of that very same opponent. We can only
comprehend of such a truly transformative movement through the application
of a strategic blend of nonviolent resistance of some sort; but likely not
the specific kinds of nonviolence we ourselves have been practicing in our
previous local, national or partially transnational struggles around single
issues. This time we are engaging a movement of movements, one which is
transcending not only the local/global levels of politics, but as well the
very idea of politics confined into areas of certain areas (e.g.
militarism, economics, cultural or environmental) or subjects (e.g. nuclear
weapons, conscription, genetically modified crops and agribusiness or
thousands of other subjects of the evil effects of present world systems).
This is a movement of the full fledged heterogeneity that social life is
about, and the diversity of tactics needed in protecting that life. What
that means for nonviolent resistance is difficult to comprehend, but
clearly something different. We are in need of a comprehensive strategic
framework which is adoptable for various contexts and needs.
So, the global movements need a nonviolent strategy and the historical
nonviolent movements have that knowledge and skills, but not the
appropriate global repertoire needed. This is a challenge for nonviolent
activists and scholars to develop something new from past experiences.
Power critical approaches (as feminism or anarchism) and nonviolent
resistance have normally been marginal to "mainstream oppositional
politics", today it does not seem necessarily so. At least it seems like
there is a greater need for approaches that not only critically engage with
oppression and violence of all kinds, but that also have the practical
tools built from centuries of experiences. It is my firm belief that the
global movements need to be offered the choice of a comprehensive
alternative to the usual political traditions present. If the coming
struggles of global confrontations are not built on the (limited but yet
well founded) historical experiences of nonviolent movements, then this
fragile movement of movements in the making might be less effective and
even might loose its momentum of mobilization and its capacity for lasting
change.
There are already of course major attempts by various other political
traditions, prominently Trotskyism, Black Bloc (militant and violence
prepared anarchists) and social democrat parties, all trying to influence
the development of global movement politics.
But it is not only the global movement that lacks understanding of
nonviolent strategy, we that are since long time working with nonviolence,
are lacking a global understanding of nonviolence.
Globalization and new conditions of nonviolent action: Earlier and present
understanding of nonviolent action is suffering from two major flaws: the
focus on state/national-regime change, despite living in an increasing
global and market-dominated world, and the focus on state organized wars,
despite that this kind of war is disappearing. None of these areas are
unimportant, but they are less important problems in our contemporary
world. The globalization of the nation state changes the conditions of
nonviolent action in all states of the world, in some more than in others.
The new wars are tormenting only some states but are on some level present
in most states in their political-economical marginalized areas - e.g. in
poor areas of New York, London or Berlin. This one-sided kind of focus on
the state arises from problems dominating societies during early modernity
and suits older theories developed in accordance with these problems.
Contemporary power relations and violence dynamics calls for the
development of a new set of questions, theories and methodologies which
take into account the specific possibilities and constraints of
transnational and local nonviolent action directed against various
non-state actors, e.g. transnational companies.
Basically globalization is shown by among others Manuel Castells to
fundamentally change the role of the nation state and the capitalist
market. The state is since the creation of the international system in the
mid 1700-century based on mutual recognition of the sovereignty of each
individual state. States makes since then international agreements, i.e.
between independent states. Now transnational processes of a
multidimensional kind (ecological, financial, criminal, informational,
trade, technical, political, tourism, refugees etc) pass borders beyond the
sovereign control of the state. The state is not necessary
disappearing some collapse while others find an amplified role as a broker
within global power networks but its role is definitely changing. Much
will depend on the relative economical, administrative and cultural
strength of the individual state. But even the global superpower USA show
frustration because of its lacking control of global processes.
In this global social change we have received new institutions of politics,
so called "global regimes" (WTO, IMF, The World Bank, The International
Criminal Court) which together makes up a patch-work of non-elected
"governance without government". We have also got a new kind of capitalism,
flexible network capitalism as Castells says, a kind of borderless market
expansion. This market expansion is of course geographical in using the new
possibilities created by the disappearance of the Cold War, but the
expansion is a lot more borderless than so it happens within the former
contained and bureaucratic mega companies, within the former private areas
of the family, within the former public areas of civil society and even
within the socialization of personality (through the entertainment industry
and needs-constructing media factories). The precarious conditions of work
through wide spread flexibility of production creates a new social category
of the "precariat" as Hardt & Negri says, replacing the central role of the
industrial proletariat. We become part of a consumer culture and temporary
employed servants of the exploiting social factory called "society", or
kept grounded in the wasteland, the not yet profitable deserts, e.g. in
sub-Saharan Africa. The new capitalism is basically the opposite to the
earlier mass production industry of mega-companies like Ford, which
produced for the mass consumption where everyone where supposed to buy the
same car, fridge and TV as everyone else. Now the creativity of production
is targeting individual/group choice and temporary consumer trends of
today, even within e.g. oppositional cultures of youth in black suburbs or
anti-consumer cultures in global movements. Today the protest of Seattle is
answered by fashion shows in Paris displaying the chic riot-gear and Che
Guevara t-shirts. Karl Marx would have been astonished to learn of the
limitlessness of contemporary profit-creativity. Today the profits are made
from immaterial production, knowledge and communication networks,
and importantly the limitless exploitation of our identities and personal
needs. Drink Revolution Soda and Just Do It!
But globalization also creates new kinds of social movements of contention.
Today movements using nonviolent action are less preoccupied with the
national state politics of political parties or trade unions. They are
increasingly focusing on transnational relations, individual life-style and
social life forms of local context. They have recognized that the
contemporary battles are happening on new arenas and in new front-lines.
The parliament is no longer the central place of politics.
We can't afford to miss the new kinds of global/local nonviolent action
being done, just because we are looking for actions against the national
state apparatus. We need to try to understand both contemporary
transnational and anti-capitalist nonviolent actions. The transnational
movements orient their politics towards other regimes than the national
state (global, regional, and local). The contemporary anti-neo-liberal
actors and methods are different than the classic national trade unions and
political parties, with their (in liberal democracies) now well established
workers strikes and citizens voting.
New wars and new conditions of nonviolent action: Mary Kaldor has shown
that "new wars" are not organized by the centralized state bureaucracy but
rather is a result of "collapsing states". The new wars are basically the
opposite of the traditional kind of professional, public and hierarchal
"politics by other means" of the state organized military. The new wars are
driven by a privatization of the military and the target of the identity
driven violence is the civilian population. Instead of trying to get
legitimacy from the people they get control through a politics of fear and
difference. The "war economy" these actors develop makes former illegal
activity as drugs, smuggling, prostitution, protection fees and theft the
main sources of income, both for the sustained war, the creation of
war-lords and for the daily livelihood of poor soldiers. Early important
differences between war and peace or legitimacy/legality and criminality
are systematically blurred. War/peace zones overlap and change constantly,
well organized warlords becomes a kind of semi-authority even "after" war
is ended, through their power politics and by being included in so called
peace negotiations.
This has disturbing consequences for both research and praxis of nonviolent
action, since most of the nonviolence research being done have focused on
civilian-based defense, nonviolent action/movement or social defense in
national settings and in relation to a central power administration which
needs legitimacy. If this foundation of nonviolent action is changed it
means that we need to look for new openings. But before we are able to work
really creatively exploring avenues for new nonviolent action against
contemporary wars, we need to learn more of the problems these kinds of
wars are posing. The problems facing nonviolent action will sometimes be
radically different from before. E.g. what point will there be to break
state laws in doing nonviolent civil disobedience when the state is not the
one conducting the war anyhow? Is there other power relations which the new
warlords are dependent on that nonviolent activist might use in order to
create pressure?
What we aim to do: War Resisters' International is calling to this
gathering of nonviolent resistance trainers, scholars, activists and
organizers in order to explore together on how to do adopt strategic
nonviolent resistance in global networks. We do not think we already have
the answers of how to go about this mildly speaking gigantic task, but we
know that we have to try, history is drafting us. We are all called upon to
make an attempt to contribute. I do not even think that the goal is to
reach an agreement among a nonviolent group of expertise and I definitely
do not think that our ultimate goal is to facilitate an agreement among the
whole WSF or the global movement.
I only think, that what could and what should be done is to create a
process of knowledge diffusion and experience interaction between those who
have theoretical and practical know-how of nonviolent resistance and those
who have not (but are open minded and interested). We believe that after a
while with this dialogue and with practical engagement with struggle
within the movements a clearer understanding will develop, and some action
networks will adopt nonviolent resistance as their approach to politics,
and when they do they will do it from skilful, creative and beautiful
knowledge.
Basic Action Plan so far: The basic idea is that since this nonviolent
globalization clearly is needed and yet it has not happened the hindrances
for us is to find enough skilled organizers/thinkers to commit to the
project and to find the logistic solutions on resources (money, organizing,
communication etc.). Thus it is logical to start of with a gathering of
those feeling concerned: that is the idea behind the Triennial in Germany
in July 2006. During that gathering we will find out what the problems and
possibilities of globalizing nonviolence are.
My own suggestion is to make a Global Call for Nonviolent Resistance where
we ask people to sign up to commit themselves for a common project of
intervention into the global movement. We need a critical number of skilled
people committed for a certain period of time.
There are a number of possible gatherings in where nonviolent strategy
could be explored: European Social Forum, Asian SF, American SF, African
SF, WSF and the same forums in coming years. There will as well be
opportunities during other gatherings, e.g. the nonviolent direct action
oriented network Peoples Global Action (PGA) is having their own world and
continental gatherings.
It would be good if we where able to run both documentation of nonviolent
resistance and research of key issues we need to address in future. A book
project is already launched on case studies from nonviolent resistance
against corporations as well as a new handbook on nonviolent training which
will acknowledge the global conditions of the various struggles. There is
also a discussion to set up a network of movement researchers & activist
writers.
And as always, there will be a need for trainings, educational workshops
and organizing support for those movement organizations that show interest
in strategic nonviolent resistance during these coming years.
Some also need to try to get on the International Council of WSF in order
to promote nonviolence there as well.
But most importantly it is a matter of recognizing that current nonviolent
knowledge, training forms, strategy, organizational forms and action forms
(i.e. our nonviolent repertoire) need to be developed in accordance with
global conditions. What specific development is needed is not yet clear but
my main point is that we do recognize that we are in a new situation. The
global movements will make us understand the new situation and, hopefully,
we will then learn and contribute with our understanding of nonviolent
strategy, making the global movement of movements not only challenging the
present world order but effectively changing it.
Another and nonviolent world is possible!
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Web addresses (a partial & small selection of the old & new nonviolence):
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br (World Social Forum)
http://www.fse-esf.org/ (European Social Forum)
http://ruckus.org/ (The Ruckus Society)
http://www.starhawk.org/activism/activism.html (Starhawk)
http://www.agp.org/ PGA Peoples Global Action
(Alternative: http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/ )
http://www.indymedia.org Independent Media Center (IMC)
http://www.agitprop.org/artandrevolution/ (Art & Revolution)
http://www.nonviolence.org/~nvweb/wrl/ (War Resisters' League)
http://www.nonviolence.org/~nvweb/for/ (Fellowship of reconciliation, IFOR)
http://www.peacebrigades.org/index.html (Peace Brigades, PBI)
http://www.cais.com/agf/cwindex.htm (Catholic Workers)
http://www.monde-solidaire.org/larzac-2003/uk/index.html (Larzac gathering
against globalization, 2003)
Registration information
War Resisters' International, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX, Britain
+44 20 72784040
registration at globalisingnonviolence.org
globalisingnonviolence.org
Globalising Nonviolence, War Resisters' International conference, 23-27
July 2006, Paderborn, Germany
Globalising Nonviolence, 5 Caledonian Rd, London N1 9DX, Britain, email:
registration at globalisingnonviolence.org, http://globalisingnonviolence.org
Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
Wolfgangerstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
Impressum in: http://www.begegnungszentrum.at
Spenden-Konto Nr. 0600-970305 (Blz. 20314) Sparkasse Bad Ischl,
Geschäftsstelle Pfandl
IBAN: AT922031400600970305 BIC: SKBIAT21XXX
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