The Role of Violence in Nonviolence Movements

I have been thinking a lot lately about the role that violence plays in nonviolence movements. It is difficult to look at nonviolence as being a separate entity from violence and from looking at all of the examples of nonviolent movements around the world. Violence actually plays a huge role in helping make nonviolence successful. The reason I have been thinking about this a lot lately is something that a friend of my grandmother said about nonviolence. This was that nonviolence movements actually rely on violence to be successful and would not work if there was not some violence involved. This statement is quite surprising but I can understand the rationality behind it. Indeed, it is difficult to find an example of nonviolence working on its own without some supplemental work from violence to help push it to success.

Often violence plays a few key roles in making a nonviolence movement successful. One is that it gives the opposition an opportunity to look seriously at the nonviolent practitioners as a more legitimate and civil entity, which gives them much more power. For example, one of the reasons that Martin Luther King and other leaders of the Civil Rights movement were taken seriously is because of other civil rights organizers such as Malcolm X who were advocating violent means. For many people, Martin Luther King would seem a little crazy and radical were it not for these groups of violent people who were even more radical. In many ways, the violence movements helped convince whites to support the nonviolence movement because it seemed like a much better option.

This example, while valid, is not really what my grandmother's friend was talking about. She mentioned that nonviolence movements often provoke violence reactions from opposition. In many ways we can see examples of how this happens in a variety of movements. Gandhi in some ways provoked violence through taking the salt mine, and the violence done with the school children being beaten in Montgomery. All of these actions of violence were used by nonviolence movements to help gain empowerment and motivation among members who feel as though they are being wronged and have common suffering to share. Is this violence necessary for the nonviolence movement? I would say that it isn't but it does make it much easier for bystanders to make up their mind and empower sympathizers to join the movement. I think it is a lot more difficult for nonviolence social movements to function when the opposition is also using nonviolent tactics. It is certainly not necessary but a lot of movements in nonviolence may not have had the same success if otherwise.

Human Rights Witnesses

I found the movie that we watched in class about the Juniata alumni that are acting as human rights witnesses on the border where the Israeli government has erected a wall between Palestinian and Israeli communities. The concept of a human rights witness is very interesting because it is utilizing certain status and privileges. For these witnesses, to walk around with a camera as though they were tourists is to utilize the fact that they are Americans and therefore have privilege as a foreigner. Since Israel relies on massive support from the United States and know that a lot of this support is based on a good public perception. Therefore, human rights witnesses who are carrying cameras have a certain privilege as Americans because the Israeli soldiers know that these individuals have the ability to get them in trouble because solely of their privilege. I wonder though the attitudes that human rights witnesses get from the people that they are protecting. In the case of the video that we watched in class, it seems like these individuals were well received but I can understand how some people may be offended by the idea of others using their status like that. It may especially be problematic in areas where maybe being an American doesn't carry as much weight. Perhaps in countries like Iran which already has a bad reputation with America would be less inclined to respect such an international body. Maybe my reasoning is flawed. After all, if an American is hurt even in Iran who was not actively participating in anything illegal, it can garner a lot of international pressure on countries that may need to watch their footing with the United States or other countries least avoid a confrontation.

The notion of human rights witnesses is actually very fascinating. The whole concept is a form of nonviolence being used as an intervention. When talking about international politics, in this country we create what I believe is a false dichotomy between having to be aggressive and violent or passive and weak. The notion of nonviolent intervention indicates that practitioners of nonviolence have certain power . This in a way comes back to Gandhi with the notion that nonviolence is a tactic of the strong. However, with human rights witnessing, how much of this pressure comes from an actual threat of violence. If you use "citizens of the world" as a physical barrier to stop a particular government from violating human rights, how much of this barrier is going to be respected because the government fears violence if these individuals are harmed? It seems in a lot of nonviolence movements that the treat of violence is a way that nonviolence practitioners can convince an opponent. For example, we can see how repeated human rights abuses that attract international attention has been shown to perhaps make a nation or government vulnerable for invasion. Iraq would be an interesting example. Saddam Hussein's human rights abuses was one of the explicit reasons for the U.S. invasion. Therefore, governments may not be so eager to announce human rights violations in a world where the international community feels inclined to use violence to intervene.

Civilian Peacekeeping

In class we talked about the notion of civilian peacekeeping as existing in several applications of nonviolence. There is nonviolence for social change, nonviolence for social defense, and nonviolent intervention. In the spirit of civilian peacekeeping, we seem to focus primarily on the notion of nonviolence for civil defense, where the people keep order and peace.

This strongly reflects an interesting podcast that I remember listening to several weeks ago about how governments function. They mentioned the notion of a monopoly on violence, and stated that governments work solely on a shared notion that they are the only ones allowed to use violence. This actually makes a lot of sense. After all, it really takes a degree of violence in order for any government to be able to enforce any law. The notions of prisons reflect this theme, we accept socially that governments have the right and ability to put people in cages for an indefinite amount of time even though if this were to happen outside of our legal system, it would be considered unacceptable. Therefore, it is violence that maintains social order. I find this view somewhat problematic, while I agree that it is violence that governments use to maintain laws and prevent anarchy, I argue whether or not this is necessary in the maintenance of social order. This is where the notion of civilian peacekeeping comes into play. How can peace be maintained by civilians nonviolently, when we accept that violence is necessary when the government uses it? Is the fact that there is one group of people who are accepted as being able to legitimately use violence truly necessary for civilization?

Civilian peacekeeping is a very interesting notion because it requires a great deal of cooperation among willing citizens. While often civilian peacekeeping movements have leadership, I do not believe that this is akin to a government. From what we have talked about and learned from civilian peacekeeping movements, often these movements are encouraged socially by custom. It is interesting to see how civilian peacekeeping can maintain nonviolent and still enforce social order.

Digital Age Technology and Nonviolence

This is an older blog post that I wrote on Microsoft Word because my Internet connection was acting funny at the time. It regards the talk we had with Sarah Worley about the "information age" and its implications on nonviolence.

One of the things that I found most striking about Sarah Worley's talk with the class on nonviolence in an information age was the fact that our toolbox for creating nonviolence has dramatically expanded. With this surge in the amount of information that can be transmitted and in the time that it takes to send it, there is a whole new medium for which activists can use to bring about nonviolence.

One of the strategies that we were talking about as a form of civil disobedience is hacking. Often times activists will hack onto a website and either change its content, disable it altogether, or redirect traffic to a different website. This is certainly a form of civil disobedience because it primarily uses the tactic of using extra-legal tactics to bring about social change. There is a facet of this form of activism that needs to be addressed in comparing it to other forms of civil disobedience. While to tools of hacking may be available to anyone willing to bring about change, the ability to hack is only centered in a small percentage of the population. Hacking is an art and a skill, and to be able to successfully bring about change through a tactic of hacking, an individual truly must have the skills in order to make the work meaningful. The vast majority of Internet users do not have the skills needed to participate in hacking as a form of activism. This seems in someway to violate some of Gandhi's notions that civil disobedience is accessible to anyone willing to accept to consequences. Clearly, hacking is not a tool for the masses but rather for a few small groups.

A huge problem with the Internet is the ability of those in control to stop any movement before it happens. While governments can do this too with other forms of nonviolence movements through arrests, executions, and torture, those in control on the Internet fully have the ability to just kick an agitator off of their website, forums, or network. This can be combatted using the fact that many websites on the Internet are companies, and the people have the ability to just stop using a website if it is not appeasing them. The capitalist nature of the Internet can give a special opportunity for activists to bring about social change, simply through boycotts of websites, it is shown to be able to convince the power structure on the Internet to change.

Sharps Nonviolence Tactics and Controlling the Amount of Agitation

I know that we talked about different nonviolence tactics available in our toolbox a while ago, but there is something that I am reminded of now that we are beginning to look at nonviolence movements strategically. Since my group is working on changing the nondiscrimination policy at Juniata to include gender identity and expression, I have found many of the tactics in the toolbox irrelevant to our struggle. There are some useful tactics in there such as protests and other items that although effective, I believe are best saved for a last resort. The difficulty of this movement nonviolently is that our opponents seem thus far to be sympathetic to our claims. The president, the cabinet, and a few trustees and alumni have already given support of the notion but the problem now is that there are no steps being put in place to actually begin the process of writing an inclusive nondiscrimination policy. Therefore, a lot of the nonviolence tactics that we have learned about is focused on the people seizing control rather than using the power structures in place to create social change. I believe the usefulness of civil disobedience is very limited when working on this scale. It becomes problematic because as we increase agitation, the less likely we are to be able to keep the administration on our side. If we lose support the movement is hopeless again. There has to be nonviolence tools that can be used that help gain the respect of the target audience. As students, actions for change be met with respect by the administration, especially because we are trying to foster world citizens here at Juniata, and to see students concerned about the college is a good way to win the respect of some administrators. The trick though is how to keep them from writing us off as young students with a "good job, we are so proud" pat on the back and whatnot.

Right now, I believe that before we ask the administration to change, we have to make sure that they see us making a difference on a small and unrelated scale. If we start small projects that are sure not to fail such as getting more LGBT minded Beyond Tolerance Events, and other proactive steps towards bringing about change that does not bring agitation. When the administrators can look at us and all the change we are already in the process of brining to Juniata, it will be a bit more difficult to ignore our power.

Using Nonviolence in Our Own Conflicts

In class, we talked about different issues on campus that we can apply nonviolence to. I find myself the kind of person that can get passionate about a wide variety of issues. Here on campus I am concerned about issues of food, non-discrimination, LGBT rights, accessibility, and many others. In all the aspects of life that I am concerned with changing. Through what I have learned about nonviolence, I do believe that nonviolence principles and strategies can be employed to bring this change to real causes in my life. The difficulty that I find through the use of nonviolence is how to employ it as a last resort. Through all of the examples that we have seen, nonviolence has been used as an extra-governmental force, primarily focused on people taking power to either convince or coerce those in power. At first, in a college setting, it seems hard to find a way for the student body to take power over the administration seeing that it is easy for administration to write students off.

In my own struggle for gender neutral housing and an inclusive non-discrimination policy with protections for gender identity and expression, I have found many struggles that I feel make it impossible for the students to take power over policy. One primary reason is that our role here at Juniata as students is only really limited to 4 years. With only about 2 years here at Juniata, I am at a sever disadvantage when it comes to figuring out changes in college policy.

Through the examples we have looked at however, it seems as though people have held the ability to take power despite these setbacks. The difficulty is finding the use of it practically. We have a whole arsenic of tools that we learned in class that can be used nonviolently. There are sit-ins, boycotts, protests, and numerous other campaigns that can be utilized to promote social change. What I find difficult is understand how to use these tactics strategically. There are really no formulas available that show exactly how to apply these tools. Nor do we know much about how to garner enough support to give a cause a lasting impact. Right now, the group working on non-discrimination is quite small, and likely not large enough to get attention from the administration to make the issue a priority.

I feel compelled enough by the issue right now to hold a protest right outside President Kepple's house, but I do not feel as though such a tactic will actually be a good idea at this point. When to escalate the conflict to a level that would call for a rally, sit-in, protest, etc is a bit more difficult. It requires truly knowing the opposition and truly understanding how to effectively use these tools.

Right now, I feel like to movement for non-discrimination is moving forward, but we are not sure how to use all of the tools available to us.