Winter/Spring 2017 by Metta Center for Nonviolence

NONVIOLENCE RADIO THE BEAT OF AN UNSTOPPABLE MOVEMENT

* A MAGAZINE FOR PRACTICAL IDEALISTS

Winter/Spring 2017

climate protection

applying nonviolence to safeguard our earth

formerly Peace Paradigm Radio

Airs every other Friday at 1pm PST on KWMR. Find station info and show streams at kwmr.org. Podcasts available at: iTunes, Stitcher, AudioBoom

featured inside

Principle & Strategy

Person Power & Unity

26 Stepping Up Resistance

Nonviolence & the Earth Action-oriented nonviolence can be applied anywhere. As Michael N. Nagler notes, the place we most need it today is with climate protection.

10 Stop the Oil Trains

Dan Everhart, an activist with Chico 350, writes about efforts in his Butte County, California community to halt dangerous oil trains.

14 A Next Step for Climate Justice

Experts say the planet is warming faster than scientists expected. Li and Stellan Vinthagen propose a controversial movement strategy.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every [hu]man’s needs, but not every [hu]man’s greed. ~ Gandhi

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The climate justice movement is taking bold and creative action—and winning some victories. Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers illustrate a few actions.

58 Healing Ourselves & the World

Peace educator Stephanie Steiner looks at healing from the inside out. To help our Earth heal, she insists, we must take care of ourselves—we are the Earth.

Interviews & Insights

Scholarship & Culture

18 Q&A: Marissa Mommaerts

31 Inseparable Aims

36 Q&A: Rachel Marco-Havens

32 Who Do We Owe

46 Mother Earth Treaty

42 Going Local in Maine

Marissa Mommaerts is Director of Programs at Transition US. She spoke with Stephanie Van Hook about resilience and ecological preparedness.

In her role as Youth Engagement Coordinator for Earth Guardians, Rachel Marco-Havens supports youth empowerment in the climate justice movement.

“As Indigenous Women of the Americas, we understand the responsibilities toward the sacred system of life given to us by the Creator,” state Indigenous Rising.

Randall Amster, Director of the Program on Justice and Peace at Georgetown University, looks at the intersections of environmental and social issues.

In his piece, Abraham Entin turns the notion of debt upside down. He describes it as a social commitment rather than money owed to corporations.

Author and activist Rivera Sun grew up in a potato-farming family in Maine. She shares how small farmers there created a successful local food movement.

50 How to Create a Nature Reserve Poetry

13 Isle de Jean Charles by Ira Batra Garde

25 weather

by James Phoenix

Writing from the UK, Adrian Cooper provides a case study of starting and maintaining a community nature reserve. His tips include working with neighbors and local media.

54 The Power of Music

Music can be a catalyst for social change and revolution. Lukas Walsh highlights 10 contemporary songs to inspire social change.

56 Our Nonviolent Nature

Stephanie Van Hook connects the dots between ant baits and fighter jets, observing that understanding is the key to avoiding “us vs. them” antagonisms.

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nonviolence PUBLISHER The Metta Center for Nonviolence

EDITOR & CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kimberlyn David

WINTER/SPRING 2017 CONTRIBUTORS Designer Proofreader Writers

Poets Photographers

Miroslava Sobot Todd Diehl Randall Amster Adrian Cooper Abraham Entin Dan Everhart Margaret Flowers Indigenous Rising Michael N. Nagler Stephanie Steiner Rivera Sun Stephanie Van Hook Li Vinthagen Stellan Vinthagen Lukas Walsh Kevin Zeese Ira Batra Garde James Phoenix Backbone Campaign Dan Felix Karen Laslo Marian Stephens Transition US

HOW TO REACH US MAIN OFFICE The Metta Center for Nonviolence PO Box 98, Petaluma, CA, 94953 PHONE NUMBER 707-774-6299 WEBSITE www.mettacenter.org All contributors maintain the rights to their work as they choose, though the publisher generally uses Creative Commons licensing (CC BY-NC-ND). Please request permission to reproduce any part of Nonviolence, in whole or part. For info about permissions, advertising or submissions, email the editor: nonviolencemag@mettacenter.org.

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editor’s letter

Photo: Red squirrel, via Pexels

“It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility,” the noted marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson wrote in The Sense of Wonder. Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring is often credited with inspiring the contemporary global movement to protect the environment.

The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~ John Keats

Toward the end of September, Climate Central, an independent organization of scientists and journalists who research and report on climate issues, delivered an alarming finding: We’ve passed the 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold on carbon dioxide—and we’ll likely stay above that ppm “for the indefinite future,” as one Scripps Institute scientist put it. Which means that the emissions-reducing commitments government leaders made at last year’s climate talks in Paris, and that were ratified in early October, must be enacted immediately. It also means that the shift from extracting and burning fossil fuels must proceed swiftly. There’s no time to waste: even if we succeeded in making that transition 100 percent tomorrow, the existing carbon will remain in the atmosphere for several decades. By now, we’re familiar with the doomsday scenarios. So our editorial team, along with our contributors for this issue of Nonviolence, feel called to look at climate from little-discussed angles. How can we transcend collective paralysis to protect the environment, move away from the destructive system that led us here and grow into more peaceful human beings? What community actions, broad-scale strategies and personal-societal healing could get us there? Our Winter/Spring 2017 issue revolves around these and related questions. While we don’t necessarily agree with every position taken by our contributors, we believe that the realities we’re facing at this time call for multiple perspectives and diverse proposals, from which successful strategies can emerge. We find hope in the possibilities. Is your community developing resilience strategies or taking climate-protection actions? We’d love to hear about them: nonviolencemag@mettacenter.org.

KIMBERLYN DAVID Editor & Creative Director

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Scholarship & Culture

How Maine Small Farmers Spun Gandhiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wheel of Constructive Program by RIVERA SUN

Photo: Freshly harvested potatoes, via Pixabay

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Wearing mud-caked blue jeans and standing in a field with a dusty potato in my hands, I was 5,000 miles and 10 years away from the words climate justice, constructive program and Gandhian nonviolence. But, as a hard working girl on my family’s farm in Northern Maine, I was playing a small role in the local food movement. Every organic potato I harvested was helping transform the state of Maine. We didn’t set out to prepare Maine for the climate crisis and the rising need for a localized, regional, sustainable food system. We didn’t know that our small organic farm, along with others, would help replace mega-corporations in grocery store produce sections and bump California produce off Maine’s kitchen tables. At that point in time, we certainly never imagined that one day we’d grow big enough to kick industrial, toxic and unsustainable agriculture off the menus of some of Maine’s hospitals, public schools and universities. Yet in the fields of Northern Maine, my two parents and four siblings found ourselves in a parallel position to Gandhi’s spinning Indians: willing to work, ready to produce and no one to buy our local products. When my parents discovered that the large grocery store chains wouldn’t deal with small growers who couldn’t deliver mass quantities to dozens of lookalike box stores, they formed a cooperative of 10 small farms throughout Aroostook County who would pool inventory and split shipping costs. Then my father got on the phone to restaurateurs, natural food stores and buying clubs to start building a market for Maine’s small farmers. Bringing my siblings and I along with him, he went to one store after another serving hot-baked potato samples, talking about small farms and asking Maine customers to support Maine produce. It worked. After all, who can resist smiling teenage redheads handing you slices of rosemary-roasted potato and informing you that buying a bag of potatoes today means survival for the family? If I had known my nonviolent history back then, I would have recognized the similarities between my family’s efforts and how Gandhi launched the spinning program and went to the Indians who were buying imported British cloth, imploring them to give up the imports and support their countrymen

Local food is helping end the extractive relationship between box stores and local communities. and women as an act of resistance to the British Empire. The Indian Independence movement organized picketing campaigns outside cloth import shops. The charkha, or spinning wheel, revitalized an ancient Indian symbolism and became the icon of the independence movement. Just as the charkha evoked deep symbolism in the Indians, local food holds a powerful place in the psyche of people from Maine. Up until the 1940s, we produced most of our food in our backyards and on small farms. Throughout the state, the idea of a local food movement tapped into Mainers’ longstanding independence, self-reliance and stubborn pride. It also activated our historic rebelliousness and mischievous inclination to fight the powers-thatbe. By buying local food, many Mainers understood that we were snubbing mega-corporations, out-ofstate interests and the industrial agriculture giants that had destroyed our local food economy in the first place. Twenty years later, our family’s cooperative, Crown O’ Maine Organic Cooperative, supplies Maine-made produce and products throughout the state, serving a wide network of small and mid-sized farms; local restaurants; natural food stores; regular grocery stores; buying clubs; hospital and business cafeterias; the University of Maine dining halls and some public and private elementary, middle and high schools. We are part of a multi-stranded movement for local food that has steadily and profoundly transformed the culture and economy of Maine.

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A farmer‘s market customer selects an apple. Photo: Erik Scheel

Currently, local food is the fastest growing sector of the Maine economy—a fact that helped Maine citizens demand and pass GMO labeling laws through the state legislature. Local food is helping end the extractive relationship between box stores and local communities by returning the money to the local economy, instead of sending those dollars out of state to corporate giants and extremely wealthy individuals like the Walton family, who own Wal-Mart. Like Gandhi’s constructive programs, the most profound effects of Maine’s local food movement are within the hearts and minds of the people, increasing self-respect, dignity and appreciation of the values of cultural diversity. It revitalized communities, building connections between neighbors, residents and growers. Many tiny Maine towns have experienced a resurgence of arts, cultural events and even a resurrection of their downtowns. Young people are returning to Maine, often to become farmers, growers and producers. Being a farmer in Maine is turning into an honored profession, much loved among the communities there. Maine has become a place of increasing hope and opportunity for young people, older people and farming families. The constructive program of the local food movement played a vital role in this transformation. In a time of climate crisis, the groundwork of resilience, connection, community and caring for the land and water has had a profound impact. Today, nonviolent movements and campaigns are

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springing up throughout the state—to protect the land, water, air; to stand up for the treaty rights of our indigenous tribes; to stop water privatization and to halt fossil fuel infrastructure. Our renewed respect for our soil and water, fisheries, fields and forests plays a pivotal role in what propels people into action. One way to honor the work being done by the people of Maine to transform themselves and their communities is to replicate it where you live. Start to build local self-reliance, sustainability and a vibrant food-based economy. Start an urban farm in an abandoned lot; turn your parents’ suburban front lawn into a garden or set up a small farm cooperative in your own rural region. As with Gandhi’s salt and spinning wheel campaigns, the magic is in the making. It is the time spent spinning wool, or the taste of independence in a locally-foraged pinch of salt, that provides the transformation. We each must plant our seeds and harvest the change in our own lives—and in our own communities. The future of our planet and our species depends on it. n

Rivera Sun is an activist, poet and author of several novels, including The Dandelion Insurrection. She is also the co-host of Love (and Revolution) Radio and the programs coordinator for Campaign Nonviolence. Learn more about her at riverasun.com.

Photo: Potatoes, via Pixabay

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Interviews & Insights

Indigenous Women of the Americasâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Defenders of Mother Earth Treaty Compact 2015 by INDIGENOUS RISING

Indigenous women leaders of the North and South Americas signed a first-ever treaty last year declaring solidarity in the movement to protect Mother Earth from extractive industries. The full text of their treaty follows.

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For the purpose of perpetuating the friendship which heretofore existed, as also to remove all future cause of dissension, as it respects responsibilities, trade and friendship between Indigenous Women of the Americas. To further re-establish the undersignedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s desire to protect the territories, sovereignty and peaceful lifeways of each Indigenous Nation within the Natural Laws and Creative Principles of Mother Earth and Father Sky, Traditional Headwomen have agreed to the following articles:

As Indigenous Women of the Americas, we understand the responsibilities toward the sacred system of life given to us by the Creator to protect the territorial integrity of Mother Earth and Indigenous Peoples. These responsibilities include the safety, health and well-being of our children and those yet to come, as well as the children of all of our non-human relatives, the seeds of the plants and those unseen. These responsibilities demand that we act to ensure healthy air, water, soil, seeds and a safe climate so that life may continue.

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Rally in September 2016 supporting indigenous solidarity against the Dakota Pipeline. Photo: Peg Hunter, via Flickr

There are those who have forgotten that we live in a natural system with natural laws that govern that system: the Laws of Mother Earth and Father Sky. These laws have been violated to such an extreme degree that the sacred system of life is now threatened and does not have the capacity for life to continue safely in the way in which it has existed for millions of years. We understand that violations of the Laws of Mother Earth are also violations against womenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;we are inseparable. These violations have led to the untold numbers of missing, murdered, raped and enslaved women. The violations of these Laws have led to ocean acidification and warming, sea level rise, devastating fires, floods, extreme heat, cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes, species extinction (because of what our species has done, Mother Earth has lost half of her species since 1960), epidemic rates of cancers and autoimmune diseases, the poisoning and privatization of fresh water in lakes, rivers, streams and aquifers as well as polluted air and soil. Additionally, genetically modified seeds and life forms have been created, which threaten to destroy the sacred system of life that has taken millions of years to achieve its present state. We understand that the system of laws in many governments around the world have been crafted to support an economic and corporate system that is destroying the ability of life to exist in the manner in which it has existed for millennia. The economic system of the world has exploited and abused nature, pushing Mother Earth to her limits, so much that the system has accelerated dangerous and fundamental changes in the climate. Mother Earth is the source of life which needs to be protected, not a resource to be exploited and commodified as â&#x20AC;&#x153;natural capital.â&#x20AC;? We are seeing the world expanding the commodification, financialization and privatization of the functions of Mother Earth that places a price on forests, air, soils, biodiversity and nature causing more inequality and destruction of nature and the environment. We cannot put the future of nature and humanity in the hands of financial speculative mechanisms like carbon trading and REDD. We understand that we do not have the time to change this system in the manner in which these systems are normally changed. We understand that we have run out of time.

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In light of these facts, we invite all women of the world to join us, your Indigenous Sisters of the Americas, to put a stop to the destruction. We are drawing the line and saying that the harms stop here and now. No more fossil fuel infrastructure or extraction, no more genetically modified organisms, no more toxins in our water, soil and air and no more commodifying and privatizing of the earth, air, water, soil and natural systems. Mother Earth and her natural resources cannot sustain the consumption and production needs of this modern industrialized society. There are times in history when it becomes necessary for the people to rise up to change the intolerable. There is nothing more intolerable than the destruction of thousands of species, including our own. There have never been more unjust laws than the ones that exist now which are allowing the destruction of the environment that we need to exist. For these reasons we invite our sisters and their allies around the world to join us in teach-ins and nonviolent direct actions at all of the facilities and seats of power that are causing the destruction. We invite you to do this calmly, without malice, and with the love in your hearts for everything you hold dear. As tribal women, our love is clear, unconditional and strong. Our traditional Indigenous ways of life instruct us that women hold the wisdom necessary to guide the leaders toward understanding the needs of children and the unborn. Through this treaty initiative we are raising our voices to give direction to government leaders and those holding seats of power to adjust the man-made laws in accordance with the natural laws.

We call upon our sisters and their allies around the world to gather together on each new moon to pray for the sacred system of life, guidance and wisdom, and, on every solstice and equinox to: ▪ Become educated concerning the harms to life and the environment ▪ Pledge to support the rights of Indigenous Peoples ▪ Inform yourself and join the circles of global resistance demanding a new system that seeks harmony between humans and the rights of Mother Earth ▪ Pledge to nonviolence and become trained in nonviolent direct action ▪ Nonviolently rise up with others in your communities and around the world to demand immediate changes in the laws that have created the destruction ▪ Commit nonviolent acts of civil disobedience where destruction is occurring until it is stopped ▪ Continue these acts until “business as usual” is halted and life on Mother Earth is safe for generations to come. We stand together. Signed on this Day, September 27, 2015, at the East Meadow of Central Park, Traditional Territory of the Lenape of Turtle Island n

We call upon all women, but especially the female elders in every community, to educate themselves on these issues and on nonviolent movements. We call upon you to take the lead and to be on the front lines of all nonviolent direct actions and to share this information with those who are younger on the power of love and nonviolence. We understand that love is the most powerful weapon we have. Love is not violent, is not harsh. Any violation of the power of love and the power of who we are when we stand in love, no matter what happens, is a violation of Mother Earth, this Treaty Initiative and a violation toward the women who have signed this Accord.

Indigenous Rising urges all humanity to join them in transforming the social structures, institutions and power relations that underpin deprivation, oppression and exploitation. Learn more at indigenousrising.org.

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A JUST & SUSTAINABLE WORLD We all want a more peaceful and equitable society. Imagine what we can accomplish by strategically building a movement of movements together. To facilitate that, Metta Center for Nonviolence created Roadmap, a set of tools to:

• Develop strategic thinking toward the realization of campaign goals • Connect with others • Train in nonviolence principles

Avoid the commercial mass media

Learn about nonviolence

Develop a spiritual practice

Share the New Story

Build personable relationships

Roadmap provides the unity, strategy and nonviolent power for an unstoppable movement. Organizations are endorsing Roadmap and helping build the movement of movements. For details on how your organization, community group or even yourself can collaborate, email Metta Center for Nonviolence: info@mettacenter.org.

Photo: Red Berries, via Pexels

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thankfulness The Metta Center for Nonviolence, publisher of Nonviolence, thanks all the volunteers who share their love and help spread the mission of creating a nonviolent future. This issue of Nonviolence was made possible, in part, by generous support from the following people: MARY ANDERSON BURNETT BRITTON TODD DIEHL MIKE GAJDA PAULA HUGGINS ANNA IKEDA JOHN LEWIS TRAVIS MELLOT RICH MEYER MICHAEL & VICKI MILLICAN MICHAEL NAGLER PRASHANT NEMA MARK PARNES LORIN PETERS JAMES PHOENIX DAWN RAYMOND BERT SACKS JEANINE SAPERSTEIN JIM SCHUYLER JOHN WADE SUSAN FISCHER WILHELM nonviolence

featured inside

Principle & Strategy

Person Power & Unity

26 Stepping Up Resistance

Nonviolence & the Earth Action-oriented nonviolence can be applied anywhere. As Michael N. Nagler notes, the place we most need it today is with climate protection.

10 Stop the Oil Trains

Dan Everhart, an activist with Chico 350, writes about efforts in his Butte County, California community to halt dangerous oil trains.

14 A Next Step for Climate Justice

Experts say the planet is warming faster than scientists expected. Li and Stellan Vinthagen propose a controversial movement strategy.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every [hu]man’s needs, but not every [hu]man’s greed. ~ Gandhi

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The climate justice movement is taking bold and creative action—and winning some victories. Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers illustrate a few actions.

58 Healing Ourselves & the World

Peace educator Stephanie Steiner looks at healing from the inside out. To help our Earth heal, she insists, we must take care of ourselves—we are the Earth.

Interviews & Insights

Scholarship & Culture

18 Q&A: Marissa Mommaerts

31 Inseparable Aims

36 Q&A: Rachel Marco-Havens

32 Who Do We Owe

46 Mother Earth Treaty

42 Going Local in Maine

Marissa Mommaerts is Director of Programs at Transition US. She spoke with Stephanie Van Hook about resilience and ecological preparedness.

In her role as Youth Engagement Coordinator for Earth Guardians, Rachel Marco-Havens supports youth empowerment in the climate justice movement.

“As Indigenous Women of the Americas, we understand the responsibilities toward the sacred system of life given to us by the Creator,” state Indigenous Rising.

Randall Amster, Director of the Program on Justice and Peace at Georgetown University, looks at the intersections of environmental and social issues.

In his piece, Abraham Entin turns the notion of debt upside down. He describes it as a social commitment rather than money owed to corporations.

Author and activist Rivera Sun grew up in a potato-farming family in Maine. She shares how small farmers there created a successful local food movement.

50 How to Create a Nature Reserve Poetry

13 Isle de Jean Charles by Ira Batra Garde

25 weather

by James Phoenix

Writing from the UK, Adrian Cooper provides a case study of starting and maintaining a community nature reserve. His tips include working with neighbors and local media.

54 The Power of Music

Music can be a catalyst for social change and revolution. Lukas Walsh highlights 10 contemporary songs to inspire social change.

56 Our Nonviolent Nature

Stephanie Van Hook connects the dots between ant baits and fighter jets, observing that understanding is the key to avoiding “us vs. them” antagonisms.

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nonviolence PUBLISHER The Metta Center for Nonviolence

EDITOR & CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kimberlyn David

WINTER/SPRING 2017 CONTRIBUTORS Designer Proofreader Writers

Poets Photographers

nonviolence

editor’s letter

Photo: Red squirrel, via Pexels

The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~ John Keats

KIMBERLYN DAVID Editor & Creative Director

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Principle & Strategy

Nonviolence & the Earth by MICHAEL N. NAGLER

It’s important to recognize the good news when it’s there. Nonviolence can be applied everywhere. The most urgent place we need it today is to overcome the unheard-of damage industrialism and greed are doing to our planet, euphemistically called “climate change” or “global warming.” This destruction is reversible. As Science has recently reported, the drastic thinning of the ozone layer that protects us and all other living beings from the harmful effects of ultraviolet solar radiation has begun to heal. According to UN scientists, we are on track to see a complete recovery of the ozone layer by 2050. How did we accomplish this feat? Under the Montreal Protocol of 1987, world leaders agreed to stop the release of chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) into the atmosphere. To do that, they went against the strenuous objections of DuPont, the main profiteer from CFC-propelled products. DuPont argued in the face of mounting scientific evidence and predicted dire results for the global economy, but science and sanity prevailed. In case you haven’t noticed, the lack of CFCs in your hairspray hasn’t damaged the global economy. Good news on the environment, especially climate disruption, is so rare that when I read that the Antarctic hole in the ozone layer was shrinking I at first thought, “Oh no, we’re losing more ozone!” As Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus argued in Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, nothing is more disempowering than gloom and despair, which are unfortunately the dominant mode of environmental writing. It produces nothing but paralysis, as my initial reaction showed.

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This is why it’s important to recognize the good news when it’s there: During this year’s US primaries, 350 Action challenged the presidential candidates with its “keep it in the ground” campaign, which helped get Hillary Clinton come out against the Keystone XL pipeline and to back keeping publicly owned fossil fuels in the ground. Now the tide is turning against fracking too, and the story of Exxon’s deception regarding climate change has become a defining political issue. These may seem like small steps, but in the words of a Sufi master, “When we take one step towards God, he takes seven steps toward us.” In other words, nature is resilient and as it were, just waiting for us to take restorative actions. Nevertheless, today we need to engage the full spectrum of nonviolent measures, from personal empowerment and constructive program to outright nonviolent resistance. There is a line in one of the ancient Vedic hymns that often comes to mind when I think about climate disruption: Mã gãm anãgam Aditim vadhishta!, or Do not injure the faultless one, Aditi, the (cosmic) cow! Aditi here stands for the divine feminine principle, the creative power of the universe in its active form, the origin of all forces of nature. That she is called a “cow” is highly honorific in an Indian context, where the cow was the symbol of wealth and of all innocent nature. “Cow protection” in modern India is meant to remind us not to injure the earth or any living thing. We are all involved in what Martin Luther King Jr. called “a single garment of destiny.” Because of “the fierce urgency of now” (King again) with climate change and the understandable anger it arouses—because this is clearly a case where, as Joanna Macy says, we have to “stop the worst of the damage”—some activists have sometimes resorted to violence. But violence, in one or another form, is how we caused the problem. It can never lead

Aurora lights over Bear Lake, Alaska in 2005. Photo: NASA, via Flickr

us to a solution. As Gandhi said (and showed), the nonviolent method “may appear to be long, perhaps too long, but I am convinced that it is the shortest.” The Handbook for Satyagrahis: A Manual for Volunteers of Total Revolution, compiled by Narayan Desai, who grew up in Gandhi’s ashram, recommends that activists “keep in touch with mother earth through working on it [her].” The nonviolent life, grounded in nature, gives us a sense of our inner resources. When we begin to sense that happiness lies within us, and in relationships of trust and service, we no longer need to exploit the resources of the earth; this, too, is a part of nonviolence, and this kind of example tends to spread. In time it could change the whole economy. The rest of our nonviolent approach is strategy. A long-term strategy should embrace working within the system when it responds, as it did with the Montreal Protocol and last year’s climate talks in Paris, where leaders agreed to limit warming and phase out fossil fuels by the next half of this century. It should include supporting constructive-program alternatives like resilient communities, electric

vehicle drivers and tireless efforts at educating the public. But it must not stop there. We must also make—and be prepared to make—judicious use of disruptive tactics like the kayaktivism blockades used in Seattle and San Francisco to halt drilling in the North Sea. It is important to keep up the educational “pressure.” Even though people (let alone corporations) may seem not to be listening, it’s important to continue explaining that we all share this beautiful planet that needs our good custodianship. When we’re speaking plain truth and not being insulting or overly threatening—and backing up our words with concrete actions based in the same nonviolent principles—our message gets through. Nature is resilient. The climate crisis can be solved. Nonviolence, from strategic vision to tactics, is the way to solve it. n

Michael N. Nagler is Founder of the Metta Center for Nonviolence and author of The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide to Practical Action.

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Principle & Strategy

Stop Oil Trains: A Community Campaign by DAN EVERHART

Members of Chico350. Photo: Karen Laslo

The planet can neither endure nor sustain our assault much longer, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s up to us to determine the quality of what follows.

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Rarely a day passes lately when we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t learn of some new, or worsening, ecological calamity. Among the litany of bad news: millions of starfish dying along the western coast of the United States, increasing frequency of extreme storms, dying coral reefs, species extinctions 1,000 times over the background rate, glacial and Arctic ice melting far faster than at any other time in human history, entire mountains leveled for coal, shale basin regions plagued with poisoned groundwater and earthquakes caused by fracking and record-breaking temperatures every month.

These add up to more than just bad news; they are symptoms of an unhealthy economy dependent on extracting and burning fossil fuels. We rely on distant, low-paid labor to grow, process and manufacture many necessities (and most luxuries), because cheap fuel makes long-haul shipping a more profitable option than local alternatives. The planet can neither endure nor sustain our assault much longer, and it’s up to us to determine the quality of what follows. Will we descend further into insanity, until cascading failures of food chains cause widespread famine and worse? Or will we take the great turn toward redefining our relationships with nature and learning to live modestly, within its means? Quickly phasing out fossil fuels would be consistent with Gandhi’s brilliant and simple advice to forgo depending on structures that are oppressing us. Constructive-program approaches to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels might include a radical localization of producing and distributing basic needs. We could then create meaningful local jobs, facilitate broader and deeper relationships within our communities and offer viable alternatives to a centralized and impersonal “market.” Obstructive action is required too, as we can’t count on the fossil fuels industry to voluntarily go along with the abrupt and ubiquitous shift we need. With that in mind, we at Chico 350 began recognizing the devastating risks that oil trains pose to our community in Butte County, California—and started doing something about it. Trains carrying Bakken crude and diluted Canadian tar sands travel the Union Pacific rails down the Feather River Canyon for over 50 miles, across at least one 100 year-old bridge and through mountainous terrain that makes emergency response very difficult. The Feather River feeds into Lake Oroville, a key component of the State Water Project that provides water to more than 20 million people and 1 million acres of farmland. In addition to the risk of contaminating an essential regional water source is the threat of fire. Because burning oil trains are nearly impossible to extinguish, even under ideal circumstances, it is standard practice to secure a one-mile perimeter around an ignited oil train and let it burn until the the fuel is exhausted. There have been 14 burning oil trains derailed during the last three years in the US and Canada, and the US government predicts that number of oil

train derailments per year for the next several years once prices again approach previous heights. Earlier this year, a derailment in Oregon spilled only a small amount of oil into the Columbia River, thanks to extraordinary luck. We believe there is no safe way to transport crudeby-rail through our community, maybe anywhere. The older DOT-111 railcars, which make up most of the current inventory, weren’t designed for flammable liquids and puncture easily even at low speed. The newer CPC-1232 compliant railcars being slowly phased in are only slightly safer and have already been punctured during burning derailments in West Virginia and Mosier, Oregon. Despite the jeopardy that oil trains pose to communities and sensitive habitats along their routes, there has been little success in stopping them so far. Only federal regulators have sufficient legal authority to halt them, and we doubt that these regulators will defy their corporate donors anytime soon. After concluding that oil trains pose an immediate and unacceptable risk to our region, we launched the Oil Trains Committee in April, so we’re still early in the campaign. Right now, we are working to educate ourselves and the broader community about the dangers of crude-by-rail. We are organizing volunteers to ascertain the quantity of oil passing through, since that information is otherwise unavailable. It is our intention to continue escalating in nonviolence until oil is no longer shipped by rail through Butte County. If education, demonstrations and negotiations ultimately fail to achieve our goals, we will seek to change our opponents’ hearts by willingly taking suffering on ourselves, persuaded by Michael Nagler’s observation that “the more we are prepared to suffer voluntarily, the less we will have to suffer involuntarily.” We understand that could mean incarceration and other serious consequences, but with the safety of our communities and the health of our entire planet at stake, we can’t afford to risk any less. n

Dan Everhart is a former social worker and software engineer who now spends his time cultivating respect, compassion, equality and truth while trying to pitch in where he can. He can be reached at dan@chico350.org.

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Poetry

Photo: New Orleans, following Hurricane Katrina, via Pixabay

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Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana New York Times, May 3, 2016 When my little girl sits on her great-grandfather’s native land for the last time barefoot on familiar soil, wearing a light cotton shift her grandmother sewed moist air warming her baby skin, bare shoulders taking the bright day’s heat She soaks up our island from morning’s light until each sun sets over the mainland When there are no tears left in me, who will weep when she is moved? She is too young to worry At three, she is carefree But, I wonder what else the weather will bring more mud over the threshold through our front door on a stormy night seeping up the stairs while we sleep When the water laps at our doorstep what will we do? When the rain leaves soggy mud in the entryway what should we do? When salt waves swallow my grandfather’s island, sweeping it into its boggy grave what can we do? When the wooden planks of the pathway to our home have warped twisting this way and that, rising and falling and the old wooden steps in the foyer are weak, creaking from the water rising what can they do? We tell stories it wasn’t this way before, it came with her birth so, we called her “Carefree” so we wouldn’t forget how it felt Once upon a time

Poem by Ira Batra Garde. Ira is a physician, poet, wife and mother. She lives with her family in California’s San Francisco Bay Area and is currently at work on a book.

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Principle & Strategy

A Next Step for the Climate Justice Movement by LI VINTHAGEN and STELLAN VINTHAGEN Paris marches for climate justice as COP21 concludes. Photo: Takver, via Flickr

After 21 years with climate summits two things are clear. First, we finally have a global climate justice movement. During last year’s climate change conference, 10,000 activists from various parts of the world gathered in Paris. Many traveled there even though the shootings and bombings in Paris and St. Denis resulted in French president François Hollande calling for a state of emergency and banning protest organizing. Since commercial activities and sports events were allowed to continue, climate campaigners saw the ban as a repressive attempt to squelch dissent. Despite the circumstances, activists were prepared to carry out civil disobedience. Second, we now know that the world’s politicians are not prepared to take responsibility for preventing climate change. Climate negotiations have been going on since 1992, leading to ambitious goals but no binding agreement with firm measures against violating parties. Even Sweden, which has long been regarded as a pioneer in the environmental field and today has a green-labor government, has chosen to sell one of the largest coal mines in Europe to a venture capitalist rather than allow the carbon to remain in the ground. We must conclude that our politicians have abdicated. The UN’s expert panel on climate warns that climate change is happening faster than scientists previously

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expected. We have only a few years in which to implement the global transformation needed to create a society that functions sustainably. Climate change is not a theoretical threat, but a reality here and now, created by the fossil industry in the most industrialized countries. Our starting point is that we are in an emergency situation where, according to Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum, 300,000 people die every year and millions are forced to flee due to the consequences of climate change, such as drought. There is a moral responsibility to act, and with strong measures. The question is what the climate justice movement should do now. Since its founding in the 1980s, neoliberalism has given rise to a new stage of market fundamentalism: naked greed. Everywhere, our elected politicians have increasingly shifted their loyalty from people to economic powers. This shift changes the playing field for grassroots movements and their ability to lobby politicians. Currently, most movement actions are designed as symbolic dramas aimed to sway public opinion, brand-sensitive companies and politicians concerned about voter flight. But between corporate lobbying and one heightened political scandal after another, marches and other forms of symbolic activism are

A November 2015 climate protest in Paris. Photo: Till Westermayer, via Flickr

far less effective than they were in the late twentieth century, when public opinion could still influence policy frameworks.

Climate change is not a theoretical threat, but a reality here and now, created by the fossil industry in the most industrialized countries.

How should the political battle strategies be designed in a context where democracy is rapidly shrinking and economic power is emboldened? The answer seems clear: We who understand this emergency situation must step up our resistance and affect the economy directly. Here’s what we propose strategy-wise: a focus on dismantling the fossil industry, literally—as in material infrastructure. This would be a kind of “incapacitating” of the biggest threat to climate protection. This could be called “sabotage,” but it is not conventional sabotage that we propose. We do not believe that the climate movement could win a fight that is reduced to economy. Companies can always defend themselves with increased surveillance and get the state’s help with repression. Plus, if the measures by activists are perceived as threatening, citizens could end up supporting the fossil fuel industry. What we’re suggesting is to creatively design the dismantling so that we achieve a combination of economic effect and political crisis. The key problem is how this dismantling can be done in such a way that it is perceived as both legitimate and necessary.

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Photo: Grafittied remnants of the Berlin Wall, via Pixabay

A practical dismantling of fossil fuel infrastructure would directly affect the industry’s economic activity and possibly its profit. We assume that this form of action initially leads to polarization, increased repression and rejections. But if the dismantling were perceived as legitimate by a substantial number of people, it would become difficult to label it a threat to society. To win an increasing share of public opinion, the dismantling would need to be done not only creatively, but peacefully and in an organized way, with many participants taking an open accountability for their actions. With seniors and young people, professors and workers, students and parents purposefully dismantling climate-destroying factories and plants, the actions would be tough to characterize as “extreme.” The decisive factor is that such dismantling actions do not threaten human life or safety, but instead appear clearly as a defense of our society, our lives and our future. We’ve seen this type of mass disobedience succeed before, most notably when hundreds of people equipped with sledgehammers smashed the Berlin Wall in 1989. Describing it in 1992, CIA Director

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Vernon Walters said that “ultimately, it was not the Soviet Government which leveled the wall, it was the citizens of Berlin themselves—ordinary people, taking into their own hands hammers and chisels—battering the wall.” Just as the purpose of demolishing the Berlin Wall was to achieve a tangible impact, a dismantling would also show that people are ready to step up and take the necessary measures to stop the climate destruction that threatens the existence of humankind. We realize that our proposal is controversial. While not everyone will agree with it, we hope that we have nevertheless offered a contribution to the debate on what the global climate justice movement could do next. n

Li Vinthagen is a sociologist, activist and painter. Stellan Vinthagen is Professor and Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Courage, complemented by the knowledge of skillful nonviolence, as provided in this handbook, is a recipe for a world of peace and justice. ~ Ann Wright, Col. US Army (ret) and recipient of the US State Department Award for Heroism

Support your local bookseller with your purchase of a print copy.

Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action is also available as Amazon Audible and Kindle books.

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Interviews & Insights

Q&A: Marissa Mommaerts by STEPHANIE VAN HOOK

Transition is about preparing for a world that drastically reduces its reliance on fossil fuels, building local renewable energy sources and localizing economies.

Photo: A fence decorated with gardening tools, via Pixabay

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As an early childhood educator as well as a meditator, I am aware that the most challenging moments of the day are during transitions—when we are in the midst of shifting our mind and focus from one thing to the next. We need to pay attention to transition moments and prepare for them with constructive skills that will help us move to where we want to go. What about transitions on the mass scale, from one worldview to another? From one way of operating a community or an economy to another, one that’s more just, healthier and nonviolent? The Transition movement comprises communities around the world and is dedicated to moving away from dependence on fossil fuels and towards resilience: personal, political and ecological preparedness. To glean insights on this movement, I spoke with Marissa Mommaerts, who is Director of Programs at Transition US, a nonprofit that supports Transition Initiatives across the United States and works in partnership with the UKbased Transition Network, which supports the international Transition movement as a whole. What is the mission of Transition US, and when did this work begin? Transition US is a national nonprofit hub for the international Transition movement, a network of communities that are re-imagining and rebuilding our future, moving away from dependence on fossil fuels toward local resilience. Our mission is to catalyze and strengthen a national network of citizen-powered groups who are building local resilience through community action. Transition started in Kinsale, Ireland in 2005, when a British permaculture educator, Rob Hopkins, was teaching a two-year permaculture course at a community college. Permaculture is an ecological design methodology based on how natural ecosystems work. For their final project, Rob and his students came up with an “Energy Descent Action Plan” to transition their entire community off fossil fuels, emphasizing localization, renewable energy, reducing consumption, eliminating waste, etc. What emerged was a model for healthier, more connected and resilient communities that use less energy than we currently consume. The concept began to spread organically, and the Transition Towns Movement was born.

Since 2005, Transition has spread to more than 50 countries around the world, and in 2009, Transition US was formed to support and nurture the grassroots movement in the US. More than 150 Transition Initiatives have formed in communities across the US, from Maine to Texas to Washington and everywhere in between. We are a bottom-up, decentralized movement. Transition looks different in every community, based on local context and the strengths and interests of local organizers. Let’s consider some inspiration. If you could think of a song that would be the anthem of the Transition US movement, what would it be? What immediately came to mind for me was REM’s “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” I was at the Transition Network conference in the UK last fall, and we had an amazing international dance party with Transitioners from around the world. When this song came on I thought, “Yes, this is our anthem!” and really let loose. Right now our civilization is powered by fossil fuels. Transition is about preparing for a world that drastically reduces its reliance on fossil fuels and relies instead on reducing energy consumption, building local renewable energy sources and localized economies. We believe this transition is both necessary and inevitable, because we cannot continue with an infinite growth model on a planet with finite resources. We know the future will look very different than the present. But we believe it will be a healthier, more connected, abundant, joyful and fulfilling future—one that works for humanity and for the planet. How did you get involved personally and why? When I started college, I was on a mission to learn how to solve the world’s greatest problems: poverty, war, hunger, environmental destruction, etc. Five years later I had a master’s degree in International Public Affairs and had traveled, studied and volunteered in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Peru and throughout Central America. My first job out of college was at a think-tank in Washington, DC, staffing world leaders on a project to increase global access to family planning by educating policymakers about the link between women’s health, population growth, global

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sustainability and national security. After less than two years I was very frustrated. I saw how many resources are poured into global summits like the international climate change negotiations and Rio+20, without having much of an impact. I wasn’t sure what the alternative was, but I knew in my heart there must be a better way. So I quit my job, began traveling and ended up in Northern California on a friend’s permaculture farm. I realized permaculture was a bottom-up strategy for feeding people while healing the natural environment and our societies. I began looking for opportunities to get more involved in this work, and found Transition. If I wanted to start a Transition town, what would I have to do? Do I have to start an entire town? Can it be a household? There are many ways to get involved in Transition. First, find out if there is already a Transition Initiative in your area (see transitionus.org/ initiatives-map). If there isn’t already an active Initiative in your area, I suggest starting small and building relationships. There’s a permaculture saying: “Start where you are, with what you have.” That could be your home or neighborhood. One thing I love about Transition folks is that most of us really “walk the talk.” We embody a low-carbon lifestyle in our homes and personal lives, and can draw from that experience as we teach others in our community. Transition Initiatives can form at whatever scale is most appropriate for your group and community (that’s why we’ve changed the name from “Transition Town” to “Transition Initiative”)—a neighborhood, town, city, island, valley, etc. The neighborhood is an important scale for building community resilience, because we’re only as resilient as those around us! We have a great project called Transition Streets (transitionstreets.org) that helps people make changes to their own homes, meet their neighbors and start organizing on a neighborhood scale. We also recommend building a small team of committed individuals who represent various parts of the community. Then as the effort grows, it will find a foothold and grow naturally within these circles as well as connect these circles to each other.

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After this “initiating group” or “core team” has solidly formed and begun to spread within the community, register with Transition US to become an Official Transition Initiative, which means your group will be listed as part of the US Transition network and receive extra support from Transition US. What are some of the key skill sets that help people in the Transition US movement feel most effective and inspired in their daily labors? Great question! Becoming an effective, inspired Transitioner is a constant process—this is challenging, cutting-edge work. We have a huge mission and a small budget, so we have to be very resourceful and conscious of avoiding overwhelm. Here are some of the skills I see as especially important: 1. Systemic thinking: understanding the interconnectedness of the systems we depend on. Since most of our civilization depends on fossil fuels to function, getting off fossil fuels requires much more than putting up solar panels. We need to redesign our food, water and sanitation, transportation, housing, healthcare and manufacturing systems and so much more. We need to think long-term and understand the impacts our choices as consumers and citizens have on the big picture. 2. Community organizing: convening people around an important issue, inviting real participation, designing and executing a campaign or project and creating a sense of community ownership over the process and outcome. This does not come naturally to everyone, but there are many resources and trainings you can draw from to learn and practice. 3. Good social and collaboration skills: selfawareness, conscious communication, conflict resolution, etc. The hardest thing about working with people is the people! This is especially true in a collaborative, egalitarian, post-hierarchical setting (like most Transition Initiatives). In order to work effectively as a group, you need to be very aware of the way you yourself are showing up and participating, and be well-equipped to navigate interpersonal challenges with other members of your group. Transition US provides a lot of resources to support Transitioners in developing these skills, like our “Effective Groups” and “Power of Conflict for Building Community” trainings.

Marissa Mommaerts’ permaculture-style medicinal herb garden in Sebastopol, CA. Photo: Marissa Mommaerts, Transition US

4. Permaculture/homesteading/DIY/renewable energy, etc: hands-on, concrete skills that you can use to build resilience in your own life and share with others. Teaching hands-on skills is a fun, empowering way to engage people in Transition, and it tends to be more successful than preaching about what people should or shouldn’t be doing. We call this type of hands-on learning “reskilling.” Hands-on skills also provide a balance to the community organizing and advocacy work, where you don’t always see the direct results of your efforts. I know many Transitioners who relax by getting their hands in the dirt and growing things. 5. Inner resilience: personal practices to help you avoid burnout and be able to face the realities of the world we live in without being paralyzed by anger, grief or fear. I think this is part of what the Metta Center for Nonviolence would call “person power.” An important piece of Transition is our “Inner Transition” work, which helps us build inner resilience through positive visioning. Our Western culture (especially in the US) tends to be more action-oriented than contemplative, so we

also strive for a sense of balance between being and doing. 6. Movement-building: collaboration with other community groups and local governments in order to expand our base and grow our impact, as well as collaboration with the broader Transition movement to craft a shared narrative and strategy. Gandhi created models of Transition Towns during his campaigns, but he called them ashrams, or spiritual communities. How do you see the Transition movement fitting into the nonviolent revolution—building the world that works for everyone? Much of the violence in our society is the result of an economic system based on exploitation and extraction and an accompanying culture of disconnection and isolation. Racial injustice, extreme wealth inequality and even terrorism are all tied to the violent and oppressive methods the dominant economy utilizes to extract resources, exploit labor and consolidate wealth.

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Transition founder Rob Hopkins (turning compost) and members of Transition Milwaukee. Photo: Dan Felix, Transition Milwaukee

Transition was created to be a model for empowering individuals to take constructive action in creating a world free from dependence on fossil fuels and a violent economic system, while at the same time reweaving the fabric of community and connection. Transition communities are re-imagining and redesigning the vital systems upon which we depend (food, water, energy, transport, housing, healthcare, etc.) to be community-oriented and ecologically regenerative. Like Gandhi’s cotton campaign, Transition—and countless other organizations and movements around the world—are building an alternative economy from the bottom up, an economy that will someday either displace the dominant extractive economy or serve as a lifeboat when the dominant economy collapses. Look at what has happened in places like Greece and Spain, where economic collapse has led to the rise of solidarity, gift and sharing economies. People are coming together and helping each other meet their basic needs. The Metta Center for Nonviolence encourages people in the nonviolent movement to personalize their relationships. How do Transition communities build supportive, nurturing systems that undermine separation and competition? Transition is all about relationships and mutual support: we believe connected communities are the foundation of the social change and ecological resilience we need in order to survive as humanity on this planet.

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We strive to create localized communities where people know their neighbors and see each other as friends and resources; where the economy is based on relationships, and businesses exist to serve the community rather than extract wealth and resources; where elders are valued and integrated into society; where diversity is seen as beneficial and where fewer people are marginalized, vulnerable or isolated. As much as we can, we embody these ideals in our daily lives, and we know at a visceral level what kind of societal transformation will be possible once this fabric of community and connection really spreads and permeates our culture. One of the most inspiring and unique things about Transition is the type of people it attracts: folks who are warm, open-hearted, welcoming, tolerant, caring, generous.They share a positive vision of the future (despite being all too aware of the realities of the world in which we live). I know I can visit any Transition Initiative in the US and meet people who feel like family, who will open up their homes and share meals with me. And I will return the hospitality. What community guidelines might people consider adopting, based on the experiences of those in the Transition US movement? We don’t have any official guidelines, but rather a collective culture or ethos. Here are a few informal guidelines for developing a more resilient community:

1. Get to know your neighbors—by more than just their first names. 2. Reduce consumption—buy less “stuff ” and use less energy. 3. Support local food producers and resilient regional food systems. 4. Know your watershed, and use water wisely. 5. Support local, independent and resiliencebuilding businesses. 6. Switch to community-scale, renewable energy sources. 7. Walk, bike, carpool or use public transportation when possible, rather than driving a personal vehicle. Avoid flying, especially long distances.

Photo: Radishes, via Pixabay

8. Reduce waste, recycle and start composting. 9. Build resilience on your street and in your neighborhood by using Transition Streets, facilitating an emergency preparedness plan or holding block parties. 10. Collaborate with community groups, schools, libraries and more. 11. Get involved in local government. Show up to city council meetings, hold your elected officials accountable, collaborate with local government agencies or run for office. Develop your own person power—your inner strength, resilience and self-awareness. 12. Hone your skills in effective collaboration and conflict resolution. To learn more about each of these guidelines and tips for implementing them into your daily life, visit transitionstreets.org. You can also find a list of principles and ingredients for Transition Initiatives at www.transitionus.org. In three words, what is the REAL transition you are trying to manifest? Thriving resilient communities. Describe a joyous moment in your work. “Work parties” are a staple of Transition. It’s a way to build community while getting our hands dirty and creating concrete manifestations of the positive future we envision. The saying “many hands make light work” really rings true—it always surprises me that we seem to accomplish exponentially more work at work parties.

A couple of months before I moved out of my last rental house, we hosted a garden work party to help get our garden in good shape for the next tenants. We hoped that if the garden was attractive enough, future tenants would put as much love into it as we did. In the three years we’d lived there, our backyard had grown from a barren patch of earth into a lush habitat for birds, bees and humans, with lots of food and medicinal herbs. We wanted it to continue thriving. I had expected a couple of people to show up for the work party and help us pull some weeds, but we had so many eager helpers that we were able to not only tidy up our backyard garden but also install a beautiful front yard garden with raised beds and a raspberry patch. It was an intergenerational, multicultural affair. My friend’s elderly father from Ecuador, formerly a carpenter, was having a blast building raised beds with help from a few younger folks. Neighbors drove by slowly, some of them taking photos of us. Everyone was just thrilled to be enjoying a beautiful day together, “paying it forward” by creating this beautiful garden for whoever would be lucky enough to move in next. Looking around and seeing those happy faces—and how the front yard had been transformed—I was filled with joy. n

Stephanie Van Hook is Executive Director of Metta Center for Nonviolence, Co-host of Nonviolence Radio and author of Gandhi Searches for Truth: A Practical Biography for Children.

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Poetry

Photo: Lightning storm, via Pixabay

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weather in all our solar system this thin shell of weather is all there is for us: an aura of viability, a halo of life, its breezes our breath, storms our cleansing. it surrounds our â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;pale blue dotâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (as seen from Saturn, so minute in the vast vacuum of space) not as an eggshell which cracks to birth, but as a wisp of air without a second, once violated, lost or poisoned desolate like Mars deadly like Venus, and as a corona: a breathing, spherical, sustaining raiment: a crown for life as we know it.

Poem by James Phoenix. James is Vice President of the Metta Center for Nonviolence and a program officer with Fenwick Foundation. See more of his poetry: jamesphoenix.com.

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Person Power & Unity

Climate Justice Advocates Step Up Their Resistance by KEVIN ZEESE and MARGARET FLOWERS

A March 2015 TPP protest in Dallas, Texas. Photo: Backbone Campaign, via Flickr

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A broad popular movement advocating for economic, racial and environmental justice is resisting on many fronts of struggle. One front, the climate justice movement, is taking bold and creative action—and winning some victories. Worldwide, there have been amazing protests in recent years against coal, tar sands, offshore oil, pipelines, fracking and nuclear power, not to mention last year’s climate meetings in Paris. There are too many actions to describe in one short article, so we will highlight climate justice campaigns in the United States that stood out in the daily movement news we cover on Popular Resistance. We do not focus on one protest, because no single protest is ever successful alone. It always takes a campaign of persistent protests to win.

ARCTIC DRILLING STOPPED BY SHELL NO! CAMPAIGN Who can forget the images of hundreds of kayaktivists in Seattle and Portland blocking massive oil drilling rigs, protesters repelling off a bridge in Portland or six Greenpeace activists hanging on an oil-drilling rig in the ocean for days? The inspiring sHell No! campaign in 2015 demanded “Climate Justice Now” and helped stop Shell Oil’s drilling in the Arctic. This persistent, well-organized nonviolent direct action campaign, highlighted by spectacle protests, was key to stopping arctic drilling. In the Northwest, the protests involved the creativity of the Backbone campaign and the ethical leadership of indigenous peoples, along with 350.org, Climate Action Coalition, Rising Tide, Greenpeace and others. Activists not only put forward picturesque spectacles, but also lobbied the Port of Seattle Commissioners with three hours of public comment and 74 witnesses, pushing the commissioners to bow to public pressure. They urged Shell to delay coming into the Seattle port, pending legal review. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray applauded the Port’s request: “I now hope Shell will respect the wishes of the

Port, the City and the community at large, and not bring an offshore drilling rig into Elliott Bay.” Shell arrogantly ignored the commissioners, the mayor and the people, proceeding before the legal review. Advocates trained hundreds of people in kayaktivism; a dozen of them met the oil rig in the Port of Everett in a test for larger conflicts. Last May, when the rig came to Seattle, it was met by hundreds of kayactivists. The drama, a David and Goliath conflict of small kayaks facing a massive oil rig, created images that damaged Shell’s reputation. The leadership of indigenous descendants of Chief Seattle in the Lummi Youth Canoe highlighted the history of the Duwamish people who inhabited the bay for thousands of years. While the kayactivists ultimately failed to stop the rig from leaving Seattle, the campaign continued. July 20 of last year brought a national day of action: from California to Alaska and from Florida to Massachusetts, hundreds of citizens participated in the “sHell No” Day of Action, with more than 20 events in 15 states. The next big conflict in Portland on July 30, was a two day kayactivist and bridge-hanging action, creating a human blockade on and over the water to delay the exit of a Shell ice breaker. Sheriffs’ boats reacted aggressively, including running over a kayak. As kayaks were removed by police, more canoes and kayaks joined. In the end, a massive fine of $2,500 per hour imposed by a court made it impossible to continue the blockade and the ice breaker was able to leave port. At the end of September, Shell announced it would end drilling in the arctic. One test well failed, and the company admitted privately that it was taken aback by the public protests against the drilling, which threatened to seriously damage Shell’s reputation. Shell spent $7 billion on arctic drilling and took a $4 billion loss. During the three-year campaign the stock of Shell dropped, its public image took a major hit and the company knew an escalation of protest was likely.

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The 2015 Paddle in Seattle to to protest Shell Oil’s plans to drill in the Arctic. Photo: Backbone Campaign, via Flickr

The drama, a David and Goliath conflict of small kayaks facing a massive oil rig, created images that damaged Shell’s reputation.

EXPOSING FERC’S RUBBER-STAMPING OF CARBON INFRASTRUCTURE The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has operated without public accountability for years. FERC is not funded by tax dollars but by revenues from oil and gas permits and fees. FERC rubber stamps almost every request for oil and gas infrastructure, without considering the effects on public health and safety—or the cumulative impact of the thousands of miles of pipelines, compressor stations and export terminals on climate change. It actually defines the public interest as what is good for the market, which is another way of saying profits for the oil and gas industry. An ongoing, multi-year campaign to expose FERC by Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) has shined a public spotlight on FERC and its commissioners. The agency has never experienced pressure like this, leading a former chair of FERC, Cheryl LaFleur, to exclaim about the protests, “We have a situation here.” The goals of BXE are to keep carbon energy in the ground, stop new permits for carbon infrastructure and shift rapidly to clean, renewable energy. BXE’s first major action was a march and blockade of FERC in July, 2014. BXE highlights communities impacted by FERC permits so the action featured people from Cove Point, Maryland, where an export terminal is being protested; Louisiana, where pipelines are being fought; Myersville, Maryland, where a compressor station is opposed and communities in Pennsylvania being destroyed

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by fracking and pipelines. The blockade at FERC resulted in more than two dozen arrests. From there, BXE escalated its protests. In November 2014, BXE organized a weeklong FERC blockade. They were joined by some participants from the cross-country Great Climate March. The blockade included amazing artwork by Kim Fraczek of The People’s Puppets that served as blockade tools. Ten-foot-tall signs showed photographs of people whose lives were being destroyed by FERC, large banners had clear messages and a three-D model of communities impacted by FERC permits was glued to the sidewalk, forcing police to destroy them. BXE calls the destruction of communities “communicide.” They also used hard block tactics with lockboxes connecting half a dozen protesters together across the driveway of the FERC garage. They organized a silent die-in at FERC emphasizing the climate pollution of the Pentagon. And the doors and garage of FERC were blockaded every day of the work week. There were more than 70 arrests. The November action included a protest at the Democratic National Committee, where specific Democratic politicians were called out for their industry ties, at National Public Radio for airing false pro-gas advertisements, on Capitol Hill protesting the Trans-Pacific Partnership and at Cove Point against the export terminal, where 11 were arrested for stopping construction by climbing a hill on the work site. BXE showed how all issues are connected. BXE continues to escalate their tactics. They disrupt FERC’s monthly public meetings with interruptions

by residents of front-line communities. They occupied the sidewalk in front of FERC for a week, held an 18-day fast, blocked streets around FERC with banners and a tripod and cooked and served pancakes with the last syrup from a maple farm that FERC destroyed. They have visited the homes of FERC commissioners, first to deliver Valentines urging protection of people and the planet and then visiting again to provide a meal and information to neighbors about their FERC commissioner neighbors’ role in destroying the planet.

COMMUNITY-BASED PIPELINE PROTESTS Protests by BXE are synergistic with scores of communities that are protesting pipelines and carbon infrastructure. Protests have a significant impact by delaying, increasing costs and stopping pipelines. The engineering consultants Black and Veatch recently published a report that said the most significant barrier to building new pipeline capacity was “delay from opposition groups.” There are so many excellent protests, but we can only highlight a handful in this space. Vermont Rising Tide has used blockades, lock downs, tree-sits and protests at the homes of government officials to delay the Vermont Gas Pipeline. Fighting Against Natural Gas (FANG) has run a series of protests against a fracked-gas power plant in Burrillville, Rhode Island and Spectra’s AIM Pipeline. The Cowboy and Indian Alliance and indigenous groups are protesting pipelines across their lands in the midwest by building structures and camps to block the path.

The multi-state AIM pipeline is being protested in a coordinated way across the Northeast. Activists dropped banners in Spectra’s headquarters and in state regulatory agencies, sat in at the offices of National Grid, an energy corporation, and protested speeches of elected officials; more than 155 have been arrested attempting to delay the AIM pipeline. In New York, where the governor and both senators oppose the pipeline, which goes a few hundred feet from a nuclear power plant, a recent creative protest was placing a remodeled shipping container, a sustainable living space for two people, on the pipeline path. In West Roxbury, Massachusetts, waves of protests by business people, faith leaders, community leaders and climate activists have stopped construction for the year. FANG also protested at the offices of State Street Corporation, a major AIM pipeline funder. Spectra’s profits have declined for the last five quarters, ranging from 12 percent to 80 percent in each quarter. Whistleblowers have come forward to describe workplace safety violations that risk a catastrophic accident.

NO MORE OIL AND GAS LEASES BY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT A series of protests against oil and gas leases have shut down efforts to lease land and offshore areas for extraction of oil and gas. As a result of these protests, the government is moving towards online auctions for leases of public lands. No doubt this will be met with new kinds of protests to stop leasing online.

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On March 24, 2016, hundreds of protesters in New Orleans occupied the Superdome, where an auction of 43 million acres of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico was to take place. Courageous activists overwhelmed the auction with a resounding “NO” to further oil extraction by the same people that brought the Gulf BP Oil Disaster in 2010, which continues to decimate communities and ecosystems along the Gulf Coast. The auction was canceled.

DC, marches through cities and other spectacle actions. The pressure from the movement forced the government to release the text, which has resulted in more opposition. As of this writing, the agreement is stalled in Congress, preventing its ratification, and the movement was building a #NoLameDuck rebellion to halt a vote this fall.

On May 17 of this year, dozens of people disrupted a Bureau of Land Management oil and gas lease sale in Salt Lake City, Utah. This action followed on the heels of weeks of worldwide protests and disruptions calling for an immediate end to all fossil fuel development. As soon as the auction began, members of the audience erupted into song. The police quickly told everyone that they would be asked to leave if they continued to sing. The audience continued, and the police started removing people by force. A small group linked arms and sat down. Wave after wave of people continued the song in rounds.

These campaigns achieved various levels of success and provide important lessons. They are campaigns that can last months or years. Here are some key features:

STOPPING THE GLOBAL CORPORATE COUP: THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will have an impact on many issues, including climate change. Like all trade agreements, it will be a binding agreement and enforceable, unlike the climate agreement in Paris. The TPP will drive more extreme extraction for carbon and nuclear energy and export of oil and gas. There has been a multiyear campaign to stop the TPP, building the largest and most diverse movement to stop rigged corporate trade agreements in history. The climate movement has been an active participant in the campaign to stop the TPP by bringing anti-TPP messaging into their actions and by bringing their direct action skills to target the TPP. The messages are: “TPP equals climate catastrophe” and “There is no climate justice without trade justice.” A huge challenge in the TPP fight is making the public aware of its existence and its threats. The government negotiated the TPP in secret and prevented the public, media and US Congress from knowing what was in it. Protests exposed secret negotiations using massive weather balloons flying over the meeting sites, multiple banners covering the US Trade Representative building in Washington,

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LESSONS FOR NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION

▪ Persistence is critical. Activists are always told that they are not having an impact, even though they are. And activists never know how close they are to success. It often comes as a surprise. ▪ Clear messaging and bold action to gain attention are important. Campaigns used grand spectacle actions that could not be ignored that provided dramatic images with simple messages that were shared on social media and by corporate media. ▪ Protests focused not only on the corporations but also on their funders and decision-makers. The strategic aggressiveness of these protests angered regulatory agencies, elected officials and investors. Protests also held decision-makers personally responsible by interrupting public events and taking actions to their homes so their family, friends and neighbors were made aware of their decisions. Escalation of protests kept their targets off guard, not knowing what to expect. ▪ Linking the climate crisis to other issues broadened the movement and nurtured its power. These protests ultimately show that nonviolent direct action is effective. As more people learn about and are inspired to join the movement, people power grows. The climate justice movement is expanding, achieving victories at a critical time in human history. n

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct PopularResistance.org.

Scholarship & Culture

Climate Justice & Nonviolence: Inseparable Aims by RANDALL AMSTER Teaching at the intersection of peace/nonviolence and environment/climate, I’ve found it increasingly evident that meaningful progress in either sphere is impossible without paying attention to both. The arc of peace studies as an interdisciplinary, holistic school of thought has been moving in this direction for decades, and likewise environmental studies has long recognized the centrality of social and political concerns. Students today readily grasp the realization that “wicked” problems require “kind” solutions. At the same time, it would be an overstatement to suggest that an environmentally sustainable society is automatically a peaceful one, or that the absence of hostilities directly yields greater ecological wisdom. The spheres are interconnected, but not necessarily in a linear causal manner. Rather, it might be said that the same policies and practices that enable the potential for a peaceful world—including the absence of systemic violence and the presence of social justice, the capacity to manage conflicts in a healthy way and the embrace of nonviolence as not merely a set of tactics but as a way of life—are also part and parcel of achieving justice when it comes to environmental and climate-related issues. For instance, mitigating systemic (or structural) violence entails addressing profound inequalities at all levels, which have been found to correlate with poor environmental outcomes and climate change alike. Simply put, people and their environments fare better when greater opportunities and equities are present. Similarly, the capacity to prevent conflicts from escalating to violence applies not only in human-human interactions, but to the humannature interface as well; this can serve to avert not only escalating “resource wars” with other nations but also associated “scorched earth” practices. And when we apply the tenets of nonviolence at

Photo: Kids play with water, via Pexels

all of these points, we come to see other people as connected to ourselves—and all of us together as intimately interconnected with the habitat itself. These are merely some of the ways that environmental and social issues intersect. The silver lining of this era of profound crisis is that it amplifies this nexus in a clear and compelling manner, bringing us to a recognition that our collective future will only be ensured through action in concert and wise policy-making at every level of governance. In the end, the stark choice before us indicates that we can have both peace and sustainability, or neither. More succinctly, we might say (as those before us have) that the ultimate choice is between nonviolence and nonexistence. This is our generational crucible. n

Randall Amster, JD, PhD, is Director of the Program on Justice and Peace at Georgetown University. He is also the editor-in-chief of Contemporary Justice Review and author of Peace Ecology (Routledge, 2015).

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Scholarship & Culture

Who Do We Owe? by ABRAHAM ENTIN

Illustration: Graphic representing economy and taxes, via Pixabay

The question of debt has emerged as the defining issue of our era. Whether it is students entering their lives burdened by unpayable loans or countries being called upon to adopt “austerity” policies that cripple their populations, we all seem to be sharing the plight of the coal miner described in the song “Sixteen Tons”—to work hard all our lives and die in debt.

This debt is often couched in moral terms: We owe because we lack impulse control, and our “bad behavior” catches up with us. Yet, putting aside the fact that our whole economic system is based on convincing people they “need” whatever is being sold to them, most of today’s debt has little to do with our inability to control our impulses.

There is much more debt in the world than there is money and, in our system, money is created by debt. What this means is that, even if we as a world wanted to get out of debt, it is impossible under the current system. And, since the power in a creditor-debtor relationship seems to lie with the creditor, we feel stuck.

Young people are told that their future depends on getting a good education, and they take on debt to get that education. When they graduate, the good jobs are not there. Instead, trillions of dollars in student debt is weighing down a generation.

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St. Peter don’t you call me ’Cause I can’t go I owe my soul To the Company Store ~ “Sixteen Tons” by Merle Travis (1947) Similarly, we haven’t put into place a health care system that covers everyone and removes the profit motive from medicine. The result is that the principal reason for personal bankruptcy is medical emergency. We didn’t let daddy die—is that really a moral failing (as a dad, I hope not!)? The next largest source of these personal bankruptcies is mortgages that cannot be paid, and the events of the last 10 years have shown the institutional responsibilities associated with these filings. Our economic system utilizes monetary debt as an organizing principle, leaving us no funds to replace our crumbling infrastructure, educate our people or generally serve human needs. The most important institution in our existing economic system is the corporation, which holds our political system hostage and defines what is important in our culture. The United States Supreme Court has established, through a long series of decisions, that the rights formerly associated and belonging to human beings extend to these artificial economic “beings” as well. “Corporate personhood” is the term most often associated with this phenomenon, and it has aided and abetted this process by allowing corporations to buy elections and have the same free-speech rights as individual human beings. Since 2012, Citizens United has symbolized elevating the rights of money over the rights of people. Of equal importance was the 1919 decision in Dodge vs. Ford, which established the “fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders” as the most important activity of a corporation. Making money, in other words, became the primary goal of a public corporation. This goal leads, inexorably, to the statement by Shell Oil’s CEO that “moving too soon

to renewables would imperil the dividends” and doing so should therefore be opposed. The fact that continued reliance on fossil fuels imperils the planet is of secondary concern. Indeed, the revealed history that the entire fossil fuel industry was aware of and covered up the effects of its policies for decades calls into question whether it is a concern at all. These decisions have created a legal and cultural environment that calls for new and creative ways to oppose corporate power over our lives and our planet. An essay by Ronnie Cummings, the director of the Organic Consumers Association, asks “What would Gandhi do?” in response to the signing of the DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act, which voided Vermont’s mandatory law for labeling GMO food and therefore makes it even harder to learn what is in the food we eat. On the one hand Cummings points to political and economic tactics (boycotts, etc), and on the other the support of alternative sources of food that are more in keeping with the values we hold (organic, sustainable, etc). His piece indicates a larger movement and phenomenon that is closely allied with a nonviolent and positive response to the issues facing us as a world today. It is the recognition of karma (the principle of cause and effect) as a reality that is deeply embedded in human existence. People understand karma as a form of debt. This is correct. It is the debt that we owe to each other, to the planet and to the cosmos for our existence and continued evolution. It is a recognition of our interdependence and of our need for each other. When we say “I owe you one” to a friend who has done something for us, or to make up for a hurt we have done to another, it is an acknowledgment of this reality.

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Photo: Children walking down a gravel lane, via Pixabay

The most significant place that this principle is being recognized today is within recent economic experiments. One is the emergence of Benefit Corporations, also known as B Corps, legal entities that specifically repudiate the single-minded attention to profitability built into the C Corp described above. Benefit Corporations incorporate the “triple bottom line” into their structure, emphasizing that a commitment to People and Planet are equal in importance to Profit. The second and, to my mind, more significant development is the fantastic growth of the Fair Trade movement as a replacement to the “freetrade” agreements that leave money free to race to the bottom in terms of labor and environmental regulation. Fair Trade is built upon the recognition that the people who grow and pick our food and other crops, who sew our garments and work in our factories, are our partners in these enterprises and that we must act in ways that are mutually beneficial. Fair Trade recognizes the “high cost of cheap goods” to the planet and the people who produce these goods. When we recognize that we who purchase and use these products are also paying a steep price, then we are acting on the principle of karma.

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This recognition elevates us as human/spiritual beings. It is a crucial step in the development of an economic system based upon love, which has its roots in sharing and concern for the other. This is the “next system,” the one that replaces the monetary debt that chokes and degrades us, with the debt that leads us into work in service to each other. It is happening now, being born in community gardens and worker co-ops, in alternative currencies based upon service and in the many social, cultural and economic experiments and institutions coming into being around the world. We are establishing a worldwide web of conscious interdependence that appreciates the value of everyone. We are building the nonviolent future, even in the midst of the chaos around us. n

Abraham Entin is a lifelong activist for nonviolent social transformation as well as a singer, songwriter and dancer. He lives in Sonoma County, California with his wife of 41 years.

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Interviews & Insights

Q&A: Rachel Marco-Havens by STEPHANIE VAN HOOK

All photos courtesy of Earth Guardians

As a gifted “solutionary artivist,” Rachel Marco-Havens maintains a strong focus on women’s leadership, youth empowerment and intergenerational connections. She serves as New York Chapter Director and Youth Engagement Coordinator for Earth Guardians, an organization working to empower youth leadership in the climate justice movement. Rachel also hosts The Same Boat Radio, a two-hour show that airs Monday evenings on WIOF, a community station in Woodstock, NY. How did you become involved with Earth Guardians? In the autumn of 2014, I went to a Harvest Gathering in upper Michigan produced by an incredible music collective called EarthWorks. It was a rich and active artisan community, where people fused music, social justice, farm justice, native tradition and art and spirituality in quite an elegant way. I was inspired to the point of tears. I cried the entire 17-hour drive back to Woodstock. The closer I got to “home,” the more real it became that I was driving to a place that felt far from an activated community. When I landed and checked back into social media I was made aware of a corporate water

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grab right in my backyard. A small and cherished lake was up for grabs by Niagara Bottling Company and the deal was well in the works. Historically, the NIMBY [not in my backyard] attitude of my local community wasn’t one for winning in situations like this, and I expected the tapping of 1.75 million gallons per day would become a reality. Fortunately, in another town affected by this proposal, a group of powerful women was forming and I joined them. It was a crash course in policy, economic development, state environmental quality review and general water protection. Governmental transparency through civic engagement at it’s finest. I was thirsty to learn, and my novice approach to the work had me asking questions and a willingness to make risky moves that more experienced activists weren’t taking. When I called my team to go after economic development grants, it was from a place of sheer guts and in some respects, naïveté. I felt like a driven, tenacious kid. We blocked the granting of consolidated funding (what we later heard to the tune of $10 million or so), turning Niagara’s project on its heels.

To be an earth guardian is to recognize the importance of taking local action for global regeneration.

Soon after, we stepped up our efforts to stop tax abatements through StartUpNY, a program our governor was pushing. This program pushed industry into communities using state colleges as the gateway, offering the youth “opportunity” through internships. The students resisted the idea of a bottling company in the community much less the “opportunity” to serve millions of plastic bottles to our oceans. At the forefront of the student resistance to StartUpNY was a young woman named Aidan Ferris. She was newly working with Earth Guardians. My entry into social and environmental justice work, and a natural calling for the youth perspective, led me to reach out to her. We started the Earth Guardians New York Crew—it’s a volunteer effort that now supports new crews as they pop up around the state. Aidan and I both work for the Boulder, Colorado organization remotely from our storefront office in Woodstock. What does it mean to be an Earth Guardian? Earth Guardians is a youth-led intergenerational organization working to protect the earth, air, water

and atmosphere for a just and healthy planet. To be an earth guardian is to recognize the importance of taking local action for global regeneration. At least that’s how I see it. Earth guardians focus on bringing your creative input to a bigger mission. If we all work in our local communities however we can, we naturally give back to the greater whole. That could mean making art, marching in rallies and taking direct action (always nonviolent, of course), learning about urban planning or making music to bring awareness about what’s happening in our communities and around the world. This planet isn’t going anywhere, but if we are going to remain on it and survive with any comfort, we need to be selfish enough to protect the only Mother Earth we know. There is room and opportunity for anyone to join this movement. Engaging intergenerational equity allows us all to learn from each other as we grow to protect the planet and the people on it. None of us has room to turn away from protecting the planet, and what motivates me is to see and support more and more young people taking leadership and speaking truth to power.

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You use the term “solutionary activation.” What does this mean, and how do we access it in ourselves? One of the things that turned me off about “activism” was that I would look around and see people protesting, pushing against systems that seemed to grow in strength as the resistance grew. I have a strong belief that our focus is power. So it was my inclination to keep my focus on prayer and positive visualization. But eventually you have to get off the cushion and take action. In doing so, it is very clear to me that moving toward a solution rather than pushing against a perceived reality, or worstcase scenario, is far more effective when put into practice. We must hold the vision of solutions when we do this work, or we will burn out before we see the results we seek. So it may be your way to plant a garden that sequesters carbon, regenerates the soil and feeds the community; write music that inspires people to wake up or make art or hold your elected officials accountable. The Hopi prophecies point to these days we are in, and they have said time and time again, the state of the world will depend on the mindset of the people on the planet. We can look into the darkness ahead and mine the worst-case scenarios, or we can turn a light on and assess a pathway forward, into illumination and positive change. I choose the latter. There are answers to these climate disasters. What are three life lessons that fuel your creative action? Trust the creative process. Intuition does not manifest as fear, but rather offers direction toward a positive outcome.

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We are always more powerful when we operate with love and compassion. How does your experience as an artist overlap and intersect with your work in the climate justice movement? I am a writer, a designer and a thinker. I cannot survive on numbers and policy. Once I started prioritizing this work, I had to find ways to express my creativity within the work. I sometimes wish I had more time to be immersed in my art, so I have to make everything I do be that art. So, I make short films about the work we do. Or I make the memes and the flyers for events we host. Most of my work with Earth Guardians is volunteer-based, so it is imperative that I keep my entrepreneurial endeavors alive. Check out my poetry card deck at haikuforthought.com. My most recent project is “Vocal Cords” (vocalcordsinspire.com), which are single beads on hemp string that have been prayed upon, to support the fifth chakra in expressing pointed messages. Life is art! You were in North Dakota when I asked you to do this interview, as a spokesperson for Earth Guardians. Can you share a bit of what you experienced there, to emphasize what is emerging in this movement of #NoDAPL protectors? A quiet storm is brewing at Standing Rock—one of of connection, intention and inspiration rising out of turmoil. The young people of North and South Dakota called a movement to rise, and the response has been immense. Indigenous tribes the world over, along with their allies and supporters, are galvanizing to support a movement representative of the vulnerability of all of our futures.

The indigenous communities joining this work are in grave danger. And it is not just this pipeline seeking to run the dirtiest oil on the planet through native country and across the planet; there are several other pipelines being revealed, and they are all connected to the systemic attack on indigenous communities since the white man arrived on Turtle Island. When you try to strip a community of their language, their traditions, their history, you fail the greater whole and find that you can’t completely waste a people without repercussions. It is clear that one pipeline feeds another, and we can see the methods in place. The pipeline to drug and alcohol addiction: Just about every native nation, globally, is in defense of land, rights, tradition and culture. It is not difficult to understand how the drugs being pumped onto reservations are being consumed and consuming lives daily. The pipeline to the US military: Strip a community of promise and then send in military recruiters to swoop in with promise of a “future.” The veteran cemetery on the edge of the reservation is heartbreaking to see. Row after row after row of native-filled graves. Young, hopeful people who bought the lie and came home in a body bag. The pipeline to disease: The native communities are so impoverished that the flood of processed white flour and industrial foods is killing our people. Diabetes is rampant across the US and triple the rate in native country. The pipeline to prison: The drugs, the disconnection from tradition and sacred ceremony leaves little to live for. For white America just now finding yoga

and meditation, it is easy to rest in a desensitized mode. But for Native people, who have to be stripped of their heritage and pummeled into removing their heart from the song, this is not a natural way to be. The pipeline to missing native women and girls: When a land is being stripped of its resources, “jobs” are “created.” Men from all over the country come to cash in. When you put thousands of men in dormitory-style living, you can imagine how the rates of human trafficking, prostitution and missing women and girls goes up. One of the biggest questions I came away with is two-fold: How can we, the older generation, release our jaded beliefs that we know what is best and offer the guidance the youth are asking for in a way that is fluid enough to allow ceremony to reveal solutions that use both innovation and centuries-old traditions? Youth, elders, allies, supporters, activators, storytellers, seers, thinkers, doers—we need each other. And we had all better be praying. There is immense prayer happening at Standing Rock. And from that prayer it is becoming more and more apparent to the movement that the young people are the ones with the balance to see us out of this mess. We need to work with them. We must support them. We cannot leave the mess we made for them to clean up. What is rising out of the Standing Rock #NoDAPL movement? The youth. The youth are the new elders, and they are taking the lead in an intergenerational evolution as they call for the guidance of ancient tradition. They see all of the pipelines I’ve just described.

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without fresh water. In Bhutan, their crew focuses on litter removal and being civically engaged in environmental policy. Just about every Earth Guardian crew manifests out of an environmentally or socially challenged front line.

And most certainly awareness. About the Dakota Access Pipeline, about pipelines in general—fracked gas, Bakken crude—and the others I mentioned, all of which threaten native lives every day. An incredible phenomena that I see arising is rather fascinating. While it is usually a NIMBY attitude that brings people to take action, this is happening in reverse. People are being moved by the movement to support the Native People of the Sioux Nations in the Dakotas, and that is causing them to turn back and notice that this, and similar affronts to our health safety and that of the planet’s, is happening all over the land some call the United States. Now, people are turning to see the CPV plant, the pipeline or bomb train going through their own neighborhoods. We need to remember that the work we are doing to shift this fossil foolery in every community is supporting that of Standing Rock and vice-versa. It is time for our collective evolvement, and the Standing Rock movement, started by young people, is a clear indicator that we may be moving in the right direction. What are some Earth Guardian successes? What kinds of tools are the youth using to organize and mobilize earth protection? The organization is a success in itself as we organically grow, crew by crew. Each chapter celebrates different successes in their local community. Some are stopping gas or oil pipelines, some are planting gardens and learning how to grow food and medicine. In Togo, Africa, their crew has planted thousands of trees and is now working to provide filtration systems to communities

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Earth Guardians is growing, transforming and nurturing partnerships to support youth empowerment and regeneration for the health and safety of future generations. One of our most inspiring partnerships is with Our Children’s Trust, an organization supporting young people in taking legal action toward climate justice. Currently, Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh Martinez, Earth Guardians’ youth director, and four of our RYSE Youth Council members, are plaintiffs in the landmark case of 21 kids suing the federal government for the exponential buildout of fossil fuel infrastructure and knowingly breaching their responsibility to protect the public trust. Young kids everywhere are stepping up to take leadership and are making waves. Meditation, yoga, prayer, spiritual practice... How do they fit into the picture for you? I have been a student of Tibetan Buddhism for the last 25 years. My teachers have given me the gift of meditation-in-action. When our focus is upon mindfulness and lovingkindness and compassion, we grow to share that with ourselves and others in practice, and we can take it anywhere. All that I have learned in the first half of my life, I apply in this stage, where I went from praying for the movement to flowing within the movement. The water calls us to be fluid and shows us that paddling upstream and pushing against the system is not the way to change what is happening on shore. I must always remember to take the path of least resistance, as my inclination is to fiercely protect what I find to be sacred, whether that is our children, our elders, the voiceless, disabled or disenfranchised. It is a striving to find and choose the nurturing, healing and loving methods of change. The Vajrayana, or Tantric tradition, is one of transformation, so I am constantly working to transform energy, and in this work, there are a lot of lotuses to bloom from a murky and muddy

landscape. We must be able to see the desired outcome, or our work is for naught. Meditation, in action or on the cushion, is our greatest asset in prioritizing social and environmental work, because without something to calm, center and cleanse the mind, heart and spirit, we would never be able to sustain the energy to continue forward. There are far too many adverse energies working against our efforts for us to be counteracting ourselves as well. Nonviolence is… The only way that we are going to balance the violent acts of degradation and desecration of our Mother Earth. We cannot fight violence with more violence. We continue to prove that we cannot be successful when we push against the systems that bind us. We must recreate them with open hearts and open arms, for these are the only tactics we have not committed to trying as a collective conscience. It is time to try nonviolent acts of transformation. The funny part is that it will be less work to do so. Do you have a theme song right now? Alex Schein’s acoustic version of “Rise Up.” The message is this: It’s time for the women to rise up It’s time for the man to take a stand It’s time for the child to realize It’s all on our hands It’s time if you know what’s right It’s time if you feel it inside It’s time Let it go and let your love Rise up, rise up What about a personal mission statement?

fight for the space for them to express themselves among other adults. It’s not always easy, because the entitlement is something we think we earn with age. I am constantly checking myself, and reminding young people to challenge my opinion. To practice taking their space with me while they can. I do a lot of different things with and for Earth Guardians, but my most cherished work is supporting the RYSE Youth Council, which is made up of 18 members who are working around North America to bring regenerative change in their own communities. Encouraging their work is the most rewarding way that I can be spending my time. When you give opportunities to young people, they take off running. Worlds are being changed because of their efforts. It is all about them, and they are teaching me new ways of considering this life. Past or present, whom would you like to have dinner with? You can pick more than one person. Miriam Makeba, the first South African musician to “make it” in the West and a powerhouse who overcame more adversity and hardship than any of us in America could imagine. She died on stage while in performance at 76 years old. She was one of the greatest voices of our time, and her life was an inspiration. Grace Lee Boggs began her path of action as a fiercely militant civil rights activist who, with age, found that conversation and reflective communication could turn Revolution to Evolution. Her mission came out of the turbulent and extremely violent environment of Detroit in the 1960s. If there is anyone who could share the value of nonviolence with us, it would be her. n

“The bucket is smaller than it appears, think every drop.” What insights can you share about effectively empowering and working with youth? I was raised to use my voice and to believe in myself as a viable member of society. But outside of the confines of my home and close community, it was clear that the voices of young people were not held in the same regard. Since I began working to empower young people, I find myself having to

Stephanie Van Hook is Executive Director of Metta Center for Nonviolence, Co-host of Nonviolence Radio and author of Gandhi Searches for Truth: A Practical Biography for Children.

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Scholarship & Culture

How Maine Small Farmers Spun Gandhiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wheel of Constructive Program by RIVERA SUN

Photo: Freshly harvested potatoes, via Pixabay

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A farmer‘s market customer selects an apple. Photo: Erik Scheel

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Photo: Potatoes, via Pixabay

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Interviews & Insights

Indigenous Women of the Americasâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Defenders of Mother Earth Treaty Compact 2015 by INDIGENOUS RISING

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Rally in September 2016 supporting indigenous solidarity against the Dakota Pipeline. Photo: Peg Hunter, via Flickr

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Scholarship & Culture

How to Create a Community Nature Reserve by ADRIAN COOPER

The most powerful force for change in modern society comes from we, the people. We have a collective talent and a body of passion for our communities, which far surpasses the will of government or giant corporporations. It is people power that will prevail when our communities are in greatest need. In this Age of the Internet, small communities can have vast international impact. In a small coastal town in the southeast of England, I started a conservation group called Felixstoweâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Community Nature Reserve with my partner, Dawn Holden. The project began in the months before the UK government elections in May 2015. More recently, Dawn and I have been joined by a wide group of friends and supporters who have helped and encouraged each other. When most people think of a nature reserve, they imagine wide open spaces such as Yosemite or Yellowstone. However, for an independent voluntary organization working at the community level, it simply is not practical to buy such a large area of land. So, I had to re-think what our community nature reserve could be. Instead of it being one single area of land, I decided that it could be composed of many small pieces of private gardens, back yards and window boxes. For birds, bees and other wildlife, that patchwork collection of small private green spaces presents a wonderful new set of habitats in which they can find shelter. Felixstoweâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Community Nature Reserve is therefore a network of these small green spaces, where local people can grow wildlife-friendly plants, and where they can also create ponds, insect lodges and bird nesting boxesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; all with the ultimate aim of stopping the decline in wildlife populations. Our work is therefore relevant to many other communities all over the world.

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A Painted Lady butterfly settles on lavender. Photo: Marian Stephens

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A home garden turned community nature reserve. Photo: Marian Stephens

Our social media presence attracted the attion of the TV presenter Chris Packham, whose tweets about our project to his 145,000 Twitter followers produced a small avalanche of inquiries about our work and achievements.

STEP 3: TURN TO LOCAL MEDIA

STEP 1: TALK WITH PEOPLE AND LEADERS IN YOUR COMMUNITY Immediately after the UK elections in May 2015, I started meeting with local government leaders as well as community members. For about six months, I listened to people’s ideas, learned what might be possible, and gathered a small team of volunteers. Most people understood that wildlife populations in our neighborhood were declining, and they wanted to help, but they simply did not know how. It was clear that getting hold of a single plot of land for any kind of nature reserve project in our area would take too long and be too complicated. I therefore decided to make participation in this initiative as simple as possible. All I asked of neighbors was for them to allocate at least three square yards of their gardens and/or backyards for wildlife-friendly plants, ponds, nesting boxes and insect lodges. We then set ourselves the goal, over the next five years, to encourage 1,666 people to take part in the project. That combination of people, each allocating at least three square yards of their land, would give us a total area of 5,000 square yards, which is the size of a soccer field an image which everyone can imagine.

STEP 2: GET ACTIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA By the end of October 2015, enough people supported our initiative. We therefore started a Facebook page to keep them advised about wildlife-friendly plants (facebook.com/ FelixstoweCommunityNatureReserve). Three times each week, a new plant was introduced to our rapidly growing readership. The plants we recommended included: rowan, barberry, firethorn, foxgloves, thyme, sunflowers, lavender, honeysuckle, ice plant, buddleia, evening primrose and purple loosestrife. There was something for everyone to enjoy.

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I wrote an article for one of our local advertiser magazines. I also did interviews for our community TV station and BBC Radio Suffolk. One of our volunteers printed informational posters about our work and aims. Those posters ended up on just about every community notice board in town. By the end of 2015, Felixstowe’s Community Nature Reserve had become well-known. We received messages from nearly 100 locals who said they had bought and planted at least one of the plants we had recommended. We were thrilled with that early takeup of our ideas. Our work continued by highlighting plants that grow berries and other seasonal fruit. Here the plant list comprised hawthorn, yew, alder buckthorn, elder, berberis, holly, rowan, spindle, dogwood and wild privet.

STEP 4: INVOLVE YOUNG PEOPLE Felixstowe’s Community Nature Reserve is a longterm project. Consequently, it was essential to involve local youth, the next generation of wildlifefriendly gardeners and conservationists. We enlisted a highly intelligent and communityinspired student as our Youth Representative. Luke Smout was only 18 when we first met him, however his maturity, environmental awareness and motivation were far beyond his years. Luke therefore championed our work amongst his peers. He also helped us create our “Dawn of Spring” video series, to further promote our work on television and YouTube. Luke introduced us to other young people who wanted to express their creativity and help promote our work. Among this new group of young supporters, Harriet Rackham, Vicki Walsh, Amy Turlington and Luke Penning produced a wonderful short documentary, again with a view to promoting our work to an ever wider group of locals. (You can see that documentary at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2FNFt7DGVE0).

Ponds and pond plants are vital to creating sustainable biodiversity. Photo: Marian Stephens

STEP 5: CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES At the time of writing (August 2016), we’ve received 453 messages from friends and neighbors telling us that they have bought and planted at least one of the recommended plants. All those individual pieces of land transformed into conservation spaces add up to an impressive 1,350 square yards, or a quarter of an acre—not bad for a grassroots voluntary organization! But the good news hasn’t stopped there. In another part of the UK, the Leicestershire villages of Cosby and Burbage decided to copy our model to develop their own community nature reserves. So now, there is the Cosby Community Nature Reserve and the Burbage Community Nature Reserve. People all over the world have been asking how we set ourselves up and how the initiative has developed.

STEP 6: CONTINUE TO ENGAGE YOUR COMMUNITY In the overall development of Felixstowe’s Community Nature Reserve, we have always listened to our local community, through small group meetings in people’s homes (coffee and cake, pizza and ice cream have helped those meetings go well!). During these meetings, we have met new supporters and received wonderful new ideas, such as swaps where local people can exchange wildlife-friendly plants and plant pots.

Through these meetings, we’ve met all kinds of people who contribute in unique ways. A local poet, for example, shares some of his work on our Facebook page to enrich our project. No one is excluded from contributing to our community reserve, whether they own land or not. Even window box owners are encouraged to take part. After all, they can grow herbs, crocus, snow drops and much else.

STEP 7: HELP OTHER COMMUNITY RESERVES Felixstowe’s Community Nature Reserve always enjoys offering help to new community reserves as they spring up all over the world. Among the most frequently offered pieces of advice is the need for group leaders to spend time listening to their community. If the community isn’t ready to support the group, then project leaders must be patient. All that listening and persuading takes time and effort, but the results will be worth the wait. I wish all new community nature reserves every success with your vitally important conservation work. n

Adrian Cooper is a geographer and conservationist. He is also a consultant to BBC Television and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in the UK.

nonviolence

Scholarship & Culture

The Power of Music by LUKAS WALSH

Photo: Banjo musician, via Pixabay

nonviolence

ASALAM SHALOM* (AYLA ANERYO) Israel and Palestine is a region torn by violence, yet both cultures use the word “peace” to greet each other. This song gives hope for the possibility of both sides coming together peacefully.

NO WAY AS THE WAY* (DEAD PREZ) Underground hip-hop has always had strong revolutionary themes, and Dead Prez has been leading the way for decades. Their last album, Information Age, showed a great amount of evolution in their style and thought. This song shares the message that there is not just one way to truth and celebrates diversity of belief.

SAME AS IT EVER WAS* (MICHAEL FRANTI) Michael Franti was inspired to write this song after the police killing of Eric Garner. Franti recently posted this on social media: “Right now I’m calling out to all of us who care about peace, nonviolence, human rights and equality to raise our voices for justice, empathy and humanity during this time of great pain on our planet.”

HEALING THE BODY* (JEN MYZEL) Jen Myzel’s latest album, Silence Speak, is inspired by Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects, which leads you on a journey of gratitude, honoring our pain, seeing with new eyes and going forth. This song is a reminder that we need to take time to heal our own physical bodies as well as the body of the Earth.

COURAGEOUS (MAMUSE) The beauty of these women’s vocal harmony is in itself inspiring. Add an ode to Martin Luther King, Jr. and you have one potent song that will surely give you courage to create social change.

Photo: Piano keys, via Pixabay

MEDICINE* (RISING APPALACHIA) This song’s lyrics remind us how much nature and the Earth offer us. It provides the medicine we need to heal our own bodies, which in return encourages us to work to heal the Earth and preserve nature.

MOTHER (TREVOR HALL) If we remember that Earth is our mother, maybe we will not allow for her destruction. If we remember we all share this one mother, maybe we will see that we are all brothers and sisters and not allow for so much violence to prevail.

WARRIOR (XAVIER RUDD & THE UNITED NATIONS) This song is for all the peaceful warriors who are fighting for racial, environmental and economic justice. There is no enemy in this fight—only a system of division, fear and greed that must be overturned with love and unity.

WE ARE THE PEOPLE* (ZIGGY MARLEY)

SAN QUENTIN* (NAHKO AND MEDICINE FOR THE PEOPLE)

Reggae music has its foundation in social change, and Ziggy Marley is carrying the musical torch that his father, Bob Marley, brought to the world. In “We Are The People,” power lies with the people, as long as we don’t live in a divided manner. n

This band’s mission is to use music as a means of cultural healing. I chose this song because it conveys forgiveness and restorative justice. It is inspired by a trip Nahko took to San Quentin, to visit the man who murdered his birth father.

Lukas Walsh is a composition of condensed starstuff and cultural creative working to be a catalyst for the paradigm shift.

nonviolence

Scholarship & Culture

Working With Our Nonviolent Nature by STEPHANIE VAN HOOK

Photo: Ant, via Pixabay

nonviolence

The essence of the nonviolent technique is that it seeks to liquidate antagonisms but not the antagonists themselves. ~ Gandhi, Harijan, April 29, 1939 On a recent trip to the store, I couldn’t help noticing a shelf with boxes of ant bait. According to the box copy, this product DESTROYS ant colonies. The ants find the bait delicious, so they bring it to their queen and share it with the rest of their colony. Since the bait is laced with poison, the entire colony eventually dies. While the poison will wipe out ant populations, it doesn’t address the conditions that attract ants to begin with, therefore setting up an us vs. them relationship with nature. Why does the company selling these baits choose to tell such a violent narrative about their product? What are they really selling—ant bait or violence? There are effective, nonviolent ways to deal with insects that come indoors, including sprinkling turmeric around the areas where they enter or rerouting them outside with a trail of something sweet. Even a major manufacturer of ant bait acknowledges on its website that the best “weapons” in preventing ant invasions are keeping a tidy kitchen and sealing food in air-tight containers. Imagine what a nonviolent ant bait package would say. “WHY do you want to get rid of ants? They play a useful role to play in our ecosystems. Have you ever learned about the wonders of the ant, to understand their behavior? Do you keep your kitchen clean?” And so forth. Maybe that bait brand would be harder to sell. Nonviolence applies on all levels, from the way we think about insects to the way we handle largescale conflict. If we could only shift our vision to understanding the conditions we create that encourage “us vs. them” antagonisms, we wouldn’t need to concern ourselves with trying to change—or obliterate—our so-called antagonists.

Photo: Queen ant, via Pixabay

EXPERIMENT IN NONVIOLENCE: Notice how we use violence to sell innumerable products. Next, consider how this fear-based, DESTROY mindset extends from a seemingly insignificant product like ant bait to drones and fighter jets. This piece is an edited version of a Daily Metta published by the Metta Center for Nonviolence. Daily Metta provides inspirational emails for your nonviolence path and covers topics such as wise action, heart unity and human dignity. Want to see more Daily Metta? Sign up to receive the free emails: bit.ly/DailyMetta. n

Stephanie Van Hook is Executive Director of Metta Center for Nonviolence, Co-host of Nonviolence Radio and author of Gandhi Searches for Truth: A Practical Biography for Children.

nonviolence

Person Power & Unity

Healing Ourselves, Healing Our World by STEPHANIE STEINER

Photo: Reed, via Pixabay

nonviolence

By cleaning up our inner pollution, we can transform the outer pollution that we have created.

To heal the world, says Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, we need to heal ourselves. He teaches that our greatest hope for addressing issues like climate change is in falling in love with the earth, and in realizing that we and Earth are one. He means this in a literal way: we are made of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the same minerals found in soil. We are not separate from the planet we call home; we are the planet. Therefore, taking care of ourselves is taking care of our Earth. We have a lot of healing work to do, individually and societally. The toxic levels of pollution choking our planet’s life force reflects the very same toxicity brewing in our hearts and minds. This past year was noted for its continuous stream of familiar tragedies. Another person of color killed by police. Another mass shooting. Another bombing in a country that receives less media attention than it should. More lives lost to the culture of violence we are swimming in. Drowning in. On my bedside table sit books that I turn to for inspiration. Hope in the Dark: Untold Stories, Wild Possibilities, by Rebecca Solnit. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, by bell hooks. But on some mornings, when my news feed is crammed with horrendous violence, books with powerful messages do not feel like enough. Hope is hard to grasp for on days like this, when in my core I know humanity can do so much better, but we are failing ourselves and each other again and again. The hope is there underneath the agony, but the pain dominates. So I turn to my meditation cushion, where I sit with the despair and a deep desire to transform the world, knowing that any transformation must begin with myself. My heart is crying loudly for the world these days, yet I recognize the anger, hatred, greed

and ignorance that lie within my own consciousness. The best thing that I can do now is sit with these strong emotions and hold them like a mother holds a crying baby, gently and with compassion. To deny my inner pollution or engage in negative self-talk about it would only prevent healing. I vow to sit still and observe, realizing that by practicing non-reactivity to my heart-mind pollution, I stop feeding it. By cleaning up our inner pollution, we can transform the outer pollution that we have created. Earlier this year, I participated in the Earth Holder Retreat at Deer Park Monastery, an affinity sangha of the Plum Village community following the mindfulness and meditation teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. Our practice of engaged Buddhism includes protecting the earth, in response to climate change and the grave environmental issues we face. At the retreat, we talked about Buddhist teachings on the three roots of all suffering: hatred, greed and ignorance. We can recognize these roots at the individual level, in our own consciousness, and we can also see them manifest at the societal level, where we have institutionalized these drives through our systems. There’s hatred through the war system, greed through our economic system and delusion through our mass media. Because these roots run wide and deep, it makes the suffering they cause harder to see, as if they’re normal. This normalizing of direct (physical) and structural (institutional, systematized) violence is what peace scholar Johan Galtung calls cultural violence—it’s aspects of our culture that portray violence as a part of everyday life, as the only option. It’s our culture that perpetuates the story that humans are greedy and violent, and that’s just the way it is. What an unacceptable, false story.

nonviolence

of my textbooks spoke of transforming anger and frustration into loving nonviolent action. In my classes, I make space for feelings to arise. I encourage my students to practice what Macy refers to as “active hope,” or loving action. When we build our hope around loving action, we can forgo our concern with achieving set outcomes, which can make us feel defeated when setbacks arise. Another way to think about active hope is taking steps to create a world, to paraphrase Paulo Freire, where it will be easier to love. Yet another is through the words of Sister Mai Nghiem: “Joyful, loving action is an antidote to despair.”

Singing bowl and meditation cushion. Photo: Ben Askins, via Flickr

I tell my Peace Studies students at the beginning of each semester that if they want to get a rise out of me, saying “that’s just the way it is” would probably the best way to do it. Such a verbal shrug of the shoulders is never an acceptable response to any problem—especially ones proposing violence as a solution. “Do you have hope for the future?” a student recently asked me. He’s a non-traditional student in his 60s, so he has seen his fair share of individual and collective suffering. I told him that teaching is an inherently hopeful profession, that the act of teaching implies that one has hope for a better future. Through teaching, I want to effect positive change in the world by empowering people, young or old, to reach towards their highest potential. On some days, hope is easier to find than others. Confronting the structural violence can lead to despair—the systems and institutions can seem insurmountable. I remember learning about climate change as an undergraduate student in the late 90s and feeling utter hopelessness. My courses taught me about how climate change occurs and what is causing it, but they didn’t give me tools to deal with my feelings about it. No statistic or other bit of information told me how anger and despair are natural responses to the inconceivable and overwhelming. There was no lecture on how to “honor my pain for the world,” as environmental activists and author Joanna Macy suggests. None

nonviolence

Joyful, loving action includes transforming our mind-heart pollution. It is work that we can do at all times, irrespective of outer circumstances. By addressing the toxicity within ourselves, we learn to channel the anger and sadness we feel about the violence and injustices in the world into hopeful action. Along the way, we strengthen our capacity to overhaul our systems. One of the monks at the Deer Park retreat said, “If we don’t address our own awakening, we can’t wake up at a societal level.” It’s not an either/or situation—we don’t need to wait until we are fully enlightened to take action. Rather, it is both/and: we must clean up our own inner messes while we take action to evolve institutionalized suffering. Each of us must take responsibility for our own healing while at the same time working to create a healthy system that thrives on love, compassion and togetherness. We must also change the story we tell about who we are and our place on Earth. As Thich Nhat Hanh said in a 2012 interview with The Guardian, “Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment. You are in the center and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing. So to breathe in and be aware of your body and look deeply into it and realize you are the Earth and your consciousness is also the consciousness of the earth. Not to cut the tree; not to pollute the water, that is not enough.” n

Stephanie Steiner is a peace educator, a yoga teacher and the director of education at the Metta Center for Nonviolence. She is also currently a graduate student at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she’s specializing in Community, Liberation and Ecopsychology.