Popular movements have changed significantly since earlier decades -- and I'm not talking about the 60's. In the 30's and 40's and before, the labor movement was a significant power in the United States, and their marches and strikes from the 1800's to the 1950's wrought change in our society, bringing us institutions such as workers' compensation for on the job injuries and the institutions of the eight hour day (down from twelve and more in the 1800's) and the five day work week (down from seven in the 1800's and six well into this century).
Regardless of your opinion of modern unions, the labor movement achieved power by three basic strengths: pooled resources, unanimous consent, and negotiation.
In the 60's, a young preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. elaborated on the nonviolent philosophy of Mohandas Gandhi of India to create a more populist and distributed model of nonviolent organizing. Today, these innovations have been so well buried, so sadly lost with Dr. King, that most people think that "nonviolence" means "not hitting people."
By ignoring the lessons of negotiation and nonviolence from these populist movements of our American history, we set aside wisdom that our forebears died to discover. "Don't mourn, organize!" cried out our grandmothers and grandfathers in the labor movement. "I have a dream!" cried out Dr. King. We can achieve those dreams, if we organize well.
POOLING OUR RESOURCES
We have many groups organizing for peace. A brief search on the web will find dozens. Yet the interactions among these groups seem factional. Is more energy spent on raising money for each group, to be able to poorly pay dozens of nonprofit administrators, when the money could be productively pool to gain greater message, greater education, and greater reach? What is it that prevents each group from coming to peaceable coalition with the others?
UNANIMOUS CONSENT
I'd posit that the barrier is unanimous consent. We work so hard to pull in factious peace interests: these are mothers of servicemen and -women, these others are against all war, yet others oppose our involvement in Iraq but not elsewhere. Where a march brings these people together, they will never all share resources beyond a marching presence with one another, without realizing the power of coalitions.
NEGOTIATION
Which brings me to the final item we're missing -- negotiation. In the 40's, the unions negotiated with their own memberships and then with management in those smoke filled rooms. It was only when the rank-and-file's and management's demands could not be met in public or private negotiation that the unions took to the streets.
Since the anti-war movement of the 60's, we march as first recourse, because marching requires invitation but does not require unanimous consent or the pooling of resources. In the 60's, disdain for the establishment led to a culture of protest, rather than negotiation. This change in culture from previous decades has led to a disdain of the establishment for protest.
Until we learn to pool resources, unite, and negotiate, there will be no real "teeth" to the anti-war movement here, nor in other countries.
Remember, antiviolence doesn't mean inaction.
It takes research. It takes educating yourself and others. It takes a stubborn adherence to one's ideals, yoked with the flexibility to work with others. It takes negotiating among friends and enemies. It takes planning and execution of nonviolent action in the public eye. And it takes working with respect and love toward the Loving Community -- a reconciled society where those who favor peace are content to live alongside those who favor war, each coming to understand the other.
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Comments: 6
Perhaps unfortunately, the attainment of unanimous consent can only be achieved on the most basic level. Today's environment offers too many variables when trying to form a position that conforms unanimously in the wide arena of ideas and possibilities that surround us.
Take the anti-war rally in Washington D.C. this past weekend. I heard there were hundreds of different groups that had come together for the rally and march. The views of each group undoubtedly varied widely across the national mall. Yet - the unanimous consent of one ideal - to end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home now - brought all those people together. More important, it brought that idea to Washington, D.C. where the administration and the media would have to take notice. I doubt that each group could have garnered as much attention on its own.
So I agree that unanimous consent is crucial - but to expect unanimous consent of too much would be a mistake.
That is when negotiation could first benefit the cause, that is, negotiation amongst the various smaller groups to work for the greater good. Do you think the smaller groups are able to negotiate with each other enough to get to the next level [and pool their resources and have a larger impact]?
I have to footnote that this is a plague of modern liberals in general, and is the endemic "Democrats eat their young" syndrome -- we fracture and attack each other in public, instead of hammering things out in internal diplomacy. Of course, part of that (even in the peace movement) is the dog-in-the-manger old machine politics of long established players, whether a peace organization or a state Democratic committee.
And TJ, nonviolent movements have prevailed all over the world in the face of violence, partly by assuming that ultimately we are all on the same side if we talk. Whether it's the Salt March facing down the British or the Salem-Montgomery march facing down the state troopers, people committed to nonviolence have prevailed and reconciled with the forces of violence.
Give peace (with balls) a chance! :)