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spirituality
June 2007 
America Has No Peace Movement...But It Can Grow One
Posted on Jun 25th, 2007
by 
Nichola
Nichola
The United States does have a substantial antiwar movement, and in fact, I spent the weekend representing NSP at the general assembly of the largest antiwar coalition in the country, United for Peace and Justice. Anyone who has spent time in a room with 300 progressives knows what kind of task the UFPJ organizers faced in trying to run that decision-making assembly, a task much like trying to get a jar of fireflies to fly in formation. They absolutely rose to the occasion. The conference was well-organized, the facilitation adept, the presiding committee both decisive and fair. We owe a debt of gratitude to the staff, steering committee, and volunteers who made the assembly happen, and the issues I raise below are not their fault but rather the fault of an American culture that offers virtually no models for making common cause.
Many diverse plans were made for fall mobilizations and for the next 18 months of the movement. In every plenary and breakout session, the same question came up: How do we move the silent majority that opposes this war to voice that opposition? Many activists cited as the most formidable obstacle to getting people to take action a pervasive doubt about the effectiveness of demonstrations and even Congressional advocacy. How do we overcome that doubt, especially now that the Democrats have disregarded the clear mandate of the 2006 elections by funding the war anyway? Others pointed out that demonstrations appeal to only a subsection of the population, most of whom have already been mobilized. How do we overcome the “culture of marginality,” as Tom Hayden put it, of the antiwar movement?
That culture of marginality was glaringly obvious at the assembly. T-shirts and tables touted socialism, a term that is (perhaps wrongly) anathema to middle America. Religion and spirituality were almost entirely absent from the assembly even though 80% of Americans consider themselves religious, and spiritual traditions offer our most powerful condemnations of war and violence. (In fairness, when I introduced an amendment to UFPJ’s strategic framework so that it included a commitment to reaching out to faith communities and avoiding anti-religious rhetoric, that amendment was embraced as friendly. The omission is unconscious, but it still needs to be remedied.) The antiwar movement is still out of touch with the mainstream.
Beyond that, though, there was little evidence of a positive vision around which assembly participants, as well as the rest of the country, could rally. The message of the assembly was pure opposition to the current state of affairs, with no attention paid to describing, much less modeling, a shared alternative. There was no attention to participants’ spiritual needs for connection to each other and to a unified, positive larger mission. In other words, there was no peace movement in evidence.
The result is that we remained a gathering of 300 individuals, each committed to our own organization’s agendas above our common cause. The amendments offered, arguments initiated, attempts to resist the leadership of the facilitators—most were motivated by efforts to advance an individual organization’s or individual’s agenda. The tension that resulted—a tension with which our whole culture is suffused—was evident in the guarded faces and postures of the participants and the anger that arose as people tried to exercise their right to shape the movement’s agenda.
It was hard to excite people about the Strategy of Generosity and the Global Marshall Plan in this environment. The spirit of that campaign was too far afield from the experience participants were living through. It seemed to them like a beautiful but unrealistic dream.
One brief but profound comment pointed me toward an alternative. In a Sunday morning breakout session, a UFPJ steering committee member related an experience she’d had the night before. She and another steering committee member had been talking with a delegation of Iranian cyclists who stopped by as part of their peace tour, and they discovered that all of them had been deeply moved by a YouTube video of scenes conveying the beauty of the Iranian people and their country. Suddenly, everyone in the conversation was crying and hugging, having discovered their shared humanity.
That is the spirit of a peace movement. That is the spirit that will bring us together into a real coalition. That is the spirit that will move the silent majority to action.
How would an assembly of the peace movement be different than this one of the antiwar movement? These are just a few ideas designed to spark a conversation. Please comment with your own ideas!
King's message, and the only real hope I see for changing America’s course, is to love this country and its people into changing. We need to build a movement that is so loving, so filled with joy, and so deeply rooted that it draws people, not because they think it will “work,” but because it’s simply the most deeply satisfying, meaningful, joyful place to be. In that movement, which the NSP is committed to building, the Strategy of Generosity and the Global Marshall Plan will be embraced as the centerpieces of a new foreign policy. This is the New Bottom Line for the antiwar movement.
Many diverse plans were made for fall mobilizations and for the next 18 months of the movement. In every plenary and breakout session, the same question came up: How do we move the silent majority that opposes this war to voice that opposition? Many activists cited as the most formidable obstacle to getting people to take action a pervasive doubt about the effectiveness of demonstrations and even Congressional advocacy. How do we overcome that doubt, especially now that the Democrats have disregarded the clear mandate of the 2006 elections by funding the war anyway? Others pointed out that demonstrations appeal to only a subsection of the population, most of whom have already been mobilized. How do we overcome the “culture of marginality,” as Tom Hayden put it, of the antiwar movement?
That culture of marginality was glaringly obvious at the assembly. T-shirts and tables touted socialism, a term that is (perhaps wrongly) anathema to middle America. Religion and spirituality were almost entirely absent from the assembly even though 80% of Americans consider themselves religious, and spiritual traditions offer our most powerful condemnations of war and violence. (In fairness, when I introduced an amendment to UFPJ’s strategic framework so that it included a commitment to reaching out to faith communities and avoiding anti-religious rhetoric, that amendment was embraced as friendly. The omission is unconscious, but it still needs to be remedied.) The antiwar movement is still out of touch with the mainstream.
Beyond that, though, there was little evidence of a positive vision around which assembly participants, as well as the rest of the country, could rally. The message of the assembly was pure opposition to the current state of affairs, with no attention paid to describing, much less modeling, a shared alternative. There was no attention to participants’ spiritual needs for connection to each other and to a unified, positive larger mission. In other words, there was no peace movement in evidence.
The result is that we remained a gathering of 300 individuals, each committed to our own organization’s agendas above our common cause. The amendments offered, arguments initiated, attempts to resist the leadership of the facilitators—most were motivated by efforts to advance an individual organization’s or individual’s agenda. The tension that resulted—a tension with which our whole culture is suffused—was evident in the guarded faces and postures of the participants and the anger that arose as people tried to exercise their right to shape the movement’s agenda.
It was hard to excite people about the Strategy of Generosity and the Global Marshall Plan in this environment. The spirit of that campaign was too far afield from the experience participants were living through. It seemed to them like a beautiful but unrealistic dream.
One brief but profound comment pointed me toward an alternative. In a Sunday morning breakout session, a UFPJ steering committee member related an experience she’d had the night before. She and another steering committee member had been talking with a delegation of Iranian cyclists who stopped by as part of their peace tour, and they discovered that all of them had been deeply moved by a YouTube video of scenes conveying the beauty of the Iranian people and their country. Suddenly, everyone in the conversation was crying and hugging, having discovered their shared humanity.
That is the spirit of a peace movement. That is the spirit that will bring us together into a real coalition. That is the spirit that will move the silent majority to action.
How would an assembly of the peace movement be different than this one of the antiwar movement? These are just a few ideas designed to spark a conversation. Please comment with your own ideas!
- Before the assembly began, participants would be asked to come in a spirit of openness, to try to overcome their shyness and fear of other people and really try to connect with and understand the other human beings who would be meeting with them.
- The assembly might begin with a guided meditation like Joanna Macy’s “Learning to See Each Other,” in which people pair up, silently look each other in the eye, and imagine the strengths, skills, brilliance, love, and courage that the other person possesses. People would then be asked to imagine how good it would feel to work in common cause with this person.
- The first speakers in the assembly would be chosen for their ability to evoke a compelling vision of a future in which love, compassion, generosity, and nonviolence are valued more highly than domination, power, money, and control. These talks might be followed by small group conversations further elaborating that vision.
- Time would be allotted for participants to sing, pray, meditate, make art, and dance together according to their own traditions and preferences.
- Training would be offered in nonviolence and in the facilitation of nonviolence trainings so that people could offer them back in their own communities.
- Participants would be encouraged to form small groups, or cells, to provide ongoing support after the assembly ended.
King's message, and the only real hope I see for changing America’s course, is to love this country and its people into changing. We need to build a movement that is so loving, so filled with joy, and so deeply rooted that it draws people, not because they think it will “work,” but because it’s simply the most deeply satisfying, meaningful, joyful place to be. In that movement, which the NSP is committed to building, the Strategy of Generosity and the Global Marshall Plan will be embraced as the centerpieces of a new foreign policy. This is the New Bottom Line for the antiwar movement.
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