Afleveringen
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On this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael welcome Leandro Uochas, founder and director of Shanti Brazil, an organization dedicated to education in nonviolence and nonviolent action. Leandro spent time studying nonviolence in India at the university set up by Gandhi and was so inspired that he returned to Brazil to further Gandhian principles on the ground there. This episode explores the exciting work of Shanti Brazil, and more, it brings to light the way in which there is an existing and increasingly expanding global network of nonviolent organizations and institutions. Leandro, Stephanie and Michael discuss the ways in which a dedication to nonviolence can bring together local communities from far corners of the globe. Whether in Brazil or the US, India or Finland, nonviolence is a practice and its methods and strategies can – and should! – be shared.
"…we must, at this moment, reimagine how we build our democratic institutions, how they are built. And maybe this must come not from the top. This must come from us, from civil society. And we should be organized and discussing this, about these new institutions and how to reorganize society."
From Leandro we can see how nonviolent activity is thriving even amidst some of the distressing political turns the world is now taking. Sometimes we need to look harder to see nonviolence in action for it grows under a light distinct from the glaring spotlight of mainstream/social media. This is the light of truth and love.
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"We should be thinking about our individual preparation. And if you are familiar with the Roadmap model, that we have on Metta Center’s website, it will kind of display this in a clear way. There's plenty of room and time for us to strengthen ourselves individually by learning, by spiritual practice, by bracing ourselves for self-sacrifice and suffering. That's one thing we should be doing, and I think it's the most important one."
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Pat Humphries and Sandy O. from the band, Emma’s Revolution, come to Nonviolence Radio to talk to Michael and Stephanie about music and its central role in nonviolent activism – and to perform the radio debut of their song, “You Are Not God”. Recognizing that current politics are leading many into a paralyzing sense of powerlessness and despair, Pat and Sandy remind us that singing can infuse us with joy, can bring us into community with others and can remind us that hope is always available. The music of Emma’s Revolution reveals that hope does not necessarily come through words and persuasive argument. Pat and Sandy encourage us to come together to challenge injustice by engaging in creative action, through making art, through singing and dancing together.
"[Pete Seeger] would always call for harmony and if the audience didn't respond, he would toss out some lines of harmony to teach people how to do that. In doing so, he got us listening to one another and then making our unique contribution that was still harmonious with the larger whole and creating that beautiful metaphor.
It's a big lesson, because that sense of togetherness and that sense of unity, it's part of what drives the hope. And the hope is what drives our ability to move forward."
When we expand our sense of the ways we might try to bring about change, we see that the effort required, however urgent and demanding, can still be infused with beauty and fun.
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Given the inexplicable and distressing rise of authoritarianism happening around the world today, including conspicuously here in these United States, I thought it would be a good idea to look at some of the movements of resistance that took place against the rise of the iconic authoritarian movement of our era, which was, of course, the rise of the Nazis.
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During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, we hear from Mike Tinoco, public school teacher, author and committed nonviolence educator. Stephanie, Michael and Mike discuss some of the key themes of Mike’s new book, Heart at the Center: An Educator's Guide to Sustaining Love, Hope, and Community Through Nonviolence Pedagogy. Mike explores a radically holistic approach to education, one that not only teaches nonviolence content but embodies it in method as well. Mike tries to level some of the hierarchy often found in traditional classrooms which establish teachers firmly as the authorities over students. To develop an alternative way to organize a classroom, he shifts the aim of education: instead of an instrumental means of getting a good job and ensuring financial success, he sees the goal of education, in part at least, as oriented towards ‘becoming more fully human’:
I think the role of teachers and administrators is to just reflect on how we can create cultures that are really humanizing our students and ourselves and allowing us to use our power in service of the kids so that we're not having power over them…my interest is not to have any sort of control over [students], but is really to be in community with them and to use my privilege and power in service of creating conditions that maximize learning and maximize like our community strength. They respond really well to that.
This model of teaching – where learning is as much a part of the teacher’s job as the students’, where service and community are as important as individual success – allows for education to become an effective form of nonviolent resistance within a culture sometimes lost in selfishness and struggling to find meaning and purpose. -
When we want to restore peace and nonviolence and sanity, we're talking about re-humanization.
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This week, Stephanie and Michael talk with Dr. John Kirk, professor at Dalhousie University and expert on Cuba’s innovative and inspirational approach to public health and its dedication to ‘medical internationalism’. Medical internationalism – the practice of offering healthcare to those in need, wherever they might be – embodies Cuba’s commitment to healthcare as a human right, an idea that is enshrined in its constitution: “the preamble to [the Cuban constitution] says we have an obligation to share what we have. Not to give our leftovers, but to share what we have.”
This policy of what might seem like radical generosity to those entrenched in healthcare systems fueled by the capitalist prioritization of profit, in fact works:
"Cuba’s also got a surplus of doctors. The ratio of patients to doctors in Cuba is three times that of what is found in the US. So, Cuba has a tremendous human potential. And Castro saw that and that's why he was the person who sort of directed medical personnel to work in the developing world."
Since 1960, Cuba has played a significant and effective role in emergencies worldwide, from Chernobyl to Haiti. In addition to collaborating with countries who have acute needs due to natural disaster, war or other misfortune, Cuba educates aspiring doctors from all over the world – and medical school in Cuba is free. Additionally, doctors in Cuba are trained to understand patients as “bio-psycho-social beings,” that is, holistically, with lives and contexts that dramatically impact their health.
This interview does more than highlight an isolated and particular case study, a close look at public health in Cuba, which has a 65 year history of success, offers a possible alternative to the broken healthcare systems in the US and elsewhere.
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"One of my favorite authors from the ancient world – that I used to be a classic scholar – is Saint Augustine, who had a sentence, a very portentous, what we used to call in the field a gnomic sentence in his great work, “The City of God.” Two different loves, as he calls them, result in two different world orders. He calls the city of man, which is a city of selfishness and greed and, of course, violence, and the city of God, which hasn't yet been realized on Earth except, in sprinklings here and there. Which would mean peace and nonviolence and mutual support for all. So, those are the two struggles which today I think bear the most convenient and most effective labels are violence and nonviolence."
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During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Michael and Stephanie welcome Reverend John Dear: activist, author, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and passionate advocate for nonviolence for over 45 years. This rich conversation covers a lot of ground, with a focus on one of the most significant roots of active nonviolence: The Sermon on the Mount. Noting the way this profound text influenced both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., this interview dives below the surface of its inspiring words and reveals it to be profoundly practical, a “how to be a human being manual.”
Jesus, for the first time in history, I think you could argue, presents Gandhian-Kingian methodology of nonviolent resistance, saying, “You stand your ground, but you don't use the means of your opponent, but you deal with your opponent head on with love and truth and say, ‘I'm a human being. Why are you hurting me?’ Even to the point that you accept violence without retaliating until you wear them down, and you reconcile, and he repents.”
Thus we see how Jesus – and through him later leaders in nonviolence – empowers all of us who “are merciful and pure in heart and peacemakers and persecuted for justice” to “get up and get moving” With its base in universal love, nonviolence can be harnessed into effective action in the world.
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During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Michael and Stephanie welcome Reverend John Dear: activist, author, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and passionate advocate for nonviolence for over 45 years. This rich conversation covers a lot of ground, with a focus on one of the most significant roots of active nonviolence: The Sermon on the Mount. Noting the way this profound text influenced both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., this interview dives below the surface of its inspiring words and reveals it to be profoundly practical, a “how to be a human being manual."
"Jesus, for the first time in history, I think you could argue, presents Gandhian-Kingian methodology of nonviolent resistance, saying, “You stand your ground, but you don't use the means of your opponent, but you deal with your opponent head on with love and truth and say, ‘I'm a human being. Why are you hurting me?’ Even to the point that you accept violence without retaliating until you wear them down, and you reconcile, and he repents.”
Thus we see how Jesus – and through him later leaders in nonviolence – empowers all of us who “are merciful and pure in heart and peacemakers and persecuted for justice” to “get up and get moving” With its base in universal love, nonviolence can be harnessed into effective action in the world.
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“We, as to our own particulars, do utterly deny with all outward wars and strife, and fightings, with outward weapons for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world.”
-George Fox -
How Co-Op Cincy is shining a light on the humanizing power of worker-owned cooperatives and building the Beloved Community.
Challenging capitalism requires constructive, workable alternatives. Are worker-owned co-ops a viable solution? In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael speak with Kristen Barker, co-founder of Co-Op Cincy, an organization that nurtures and supports a network of worker-owned co-ops in the Greater Cincinnati area. Applying principles from the Mondragon cooperative in Spain, Co-Op Cincy’s network reinforces that cooperatives are not just good for people and the planet, they are good for business. And nonviolence is at its heart: being together in constructive solution-building requires both the vision and skills of nonviolence. -
"A lot of positive constructive things can be done, a lot of collaboration can happen."
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During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael discuss a new resource offered by the Metta Center called, Seven Challenges: nonviolence, new story, third harmony, compassion, constructive program, unity in diversity and from chaos to creativity. Their conversation offers some advice as to how to incorporate them into our daily lives so that over time, they become rooted in us, an active part of who we are. Nonviolence, for instance, can be strengthened in each of us by the simple (yet not always easy) practice of cultivating the habit to pause before we react to a perceived aggression, remembering that a “person's anger is not the core inflexible being of that person. That is what makes nonviolence possible.”
All of the challenges encourage us to recognize that we can choose – again and again – to exercise nonviolence in our lives. We can choose to see the world not as a fixed external entity that often seems out to harm us, but rather as an ongoing dynamic process which we actively co-create. Though these seven terms are aptly called challenges, ultimately they can be a tremendous source of inspiration and empowerment. And they are available to each and every one of us right now.
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"In a nonviolent struggle, it's not a, ‘me against you’. It's how do we join forces together to make things better, to back away from unnecessary suffering? And if there's going to be any suffering in this situation, we're going to embrace it ourselves."
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"If your movement has a long-term goal of complete replacement of regime, then you can strategically graduate from issues which are the easiest to succeed at, to issues which are the hardest, gathering strength as you go along."
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On this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Dr. Afra Jalabi draws a parallel between the ongoing conflict in Syria, where more than half a million people have been killed, and the ongoing crisis in Israel-Palestine. She warns against media propaganda around the conflicts, encouraging listeners to do better research about the powers at play in the Middle East and warning us to be wary of the willingness of any side to spill blood for their goals. Drawing from the spiritual and political legacy of her late uncle, Syrian nonviolence scholar Jawdat Saïd, she doubles down on the necessity of nonviolence as the way forward.
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There's no question that art plays a role. It can affect our imagination and our way of seeing the world.
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Jodie Evans, activist and co-founder of CODEPINK, talks with Stephanie and Michael about possibility of creating and sustaining the ‘peace economy’. More specifically, they explore concrete ways to reorient our distorted ‘war economy’ perspectives, to wean ourselves from destructive ‘addictions’ and provide concrete ways in which we can all – even recognizing the current political and environmental horrors – bring about real change and lasting peace.
"I want to go back to saying we are alive because of the peace economy. We are not alive because of the war economy. It is killing us, our community, and the planet. But in our minds, somehow, we think it's giving us life because it has convinced us of that. But really, the thing that is rich about life is the things we give each other, is the way we care for each other, is the way we create space of trust and care. That's where life thrives."
We forget that this peace economy is available to us by simply being present, by consciously being where we are right now, and responding with genuine attention to those around us. This moment we are in can be exactly where we can all start to build the peace economy – it is here where our true ‘potency arises from’ and it is where we can make a difference, together.
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"Because Gandhi, after all, called nonviolence not only a force, but the greatest power mankind has been endowed with. And I think that this is true. And I think it's true because nonviolence is in some way the core of our nature. It's a core of what makes us human.
It's what the philosopher Aristotle would have called our built-in telos. That a telos means an end goal, but it's an end goal which is embedded within us and needs to be unpacked and understood and developed. So, you can, in this sense, look at evolution and, of course, our human evolution, as a drive towards manifesting that telos, that nonviolent capacity within us. And that, I believe, is why nonviolence is so powerful."
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