The Politics of Reparations

This week, Michael and Stephanie talk about reparations (and more) with UC Berkeley professor emeritus, Charles Henry, who is also the former president of the National Council for Black Studies and former chair of Amnesty International USA. In 2007, years ahead of his time, Professor Henry wrote a book on the issue of reparations, Long Overdue. The Politics of Racial Reparations. Reparation, Professor Henry reminds us, is about repairing and thus is far more than a financial transaction; it cannot be tidily achieved with a one-off check intended to close definitively the chapter on hundreds of years of slavery and discrimination. Rather, reparation is intimately linked to restorative justice -- the need to recognize a wrong done, to listen to voices expressing pain and anger and suffering, to atone and finally to find a sense of closure that all parties can feel. Ultimately, Professor Henry says, reparations can lead to rebuilding of community in such a way that the desire for vengeance is diminished and fear can be replaced by hope for a more just and loving community, one where people know they belong:

Instead of retribution what we want is restorative justice. It’s the kind of thing that Martin Luther King talked about when he was asked about violence, and when you’d have discussions of KAMU and others. Vengeance or retribution only leads to more violence. King, when he talked about colonialism, he would say, the objective of African Americans is not to separate in a separate colony or to kick whites out of the country as in colonial Africa, but to live in the same country. To reconcile with white Americans -- and to have that, you need restorative justice not retribution.

If we think, as Professor Henry suggests, of reparations as a process instead of a payment, it can become the basis for an ongoing, dynamic, harmonious relationship with our history and with each other. 

Transcript

Stephanie: Welcome everybody to another episode of Nonviolence Radio where we explore the power of active nonviolence worldwide. I’m your host, Stephanie Van Hook, and I’m here with my co-host and news anchor, Michael Nagler.  

Long Overdue

On today’s show, Michael Nagler speaks with Professor Charles Henry. He’s a professor emeritus from UC Berkeley of African American Studies. And he’s the former president of the National Council for Black Studies and former chair of Amnesty International USA.

His book Long Overdue. The Politics of Racial Reparations was published in 2007 and was ahead of the curve when it comes to discussing reparations in the United States. On the show we talk to him about the politics of reparations, what they are, how people can get involved, and also the politics behind restorative justice. Let’s tune in.

Michael: Greetings everyone and welcome to a new addition of Nonviolence Radio. I am here with a friend and colleague of mine this morning, Professor Charles Henry, who is a professor emeritus like myself. But he was in African American studies. And he’s a former president of the National Council for Black Studies, and former chair of Amnesty International, USA. So, his expertise is in race in America, Black identity in leadership, and he has been writing recently, have you not, Charles, about reparations?

Charles: I have. I have a 2007 book called, Long Overdue. At the time it came out there was a lot less interest in reparations than there is now. The presidential campaigns in 2000, 2004, 2008, none of the candidates wanted to talk about reparations. This last campaign, every Democratic candidate wanted to talk about reparations. So, there’s been a new spark of interest in the issue.

Michael: In other words, Charles, it sounds like you were ahead of the curve as usual.

Charles: Well, being ahead of the curve means your book doesn’t sell anything, Michael.

Michael: I know that one. 

Reparations, Reconciliation, and Restorative Justice

Well, tell me, for myself and for our listeners, what exactly is reparations? How do we go about it? What would it cost? And what would it accomplish?

Charles: I’m glad you asked that question because it’s often seen as, you know, somebody says, “Well, why should I write you a check?” It’s a bit more involved than that and doesn’t always involve a check. It’s a process. Someone called it “Truth and Reconciliation,” others have a term that involves three steps.

One is acknowledgment that a wrong has been committed, so, some recognition or admission on the part of perpetrators or beneficiaries of some injustice. As the first step, you need the acknowledgment. Then you need some sort of redress, and redress often takes a couple of forms. It might be restitution, or if we’re in a situation in which restitution is impossible, at least some sort of atonement.

And then finally, some sort of closure. In other words, there must be a mutual kind of reconciliation between the perpetrators and the victims so there can be a reconciliation and hopefully the prevention of any future injustice. So, it doesn’t always involve financial restitution.

For example, the whole notion of removing names of confederate leaders or colonialists or imperialists from buildings or schools. We have almost 2000 confederate monuments and statues in this country in the north as well as the south. Most of them were not put up immediately after the Civil War, but at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century as reminders that Blacks should keep their place.

The National African American History and Culture Museum in Washington D.C. which I pushed for for years, and mentioned in my book before it happened, the struggle to get this museum -- would be an example of reparations because you’re trying to teach people about the past, as the Holocaust Museum does in Washington D.C. But also educate people to prevent any repetition of the past in the future.

Michael: Boy, you know, as you’re describing that, Charles, it sounds so much to me like the general trajectory of restorative justice.

Charles: Exactly. Instead of retribution what we want is restorative justice. It’s the kind of thing that Martin Luther King talked about when he was asked about violence, and when you’d have discussions of KAMU and others. Vengeance or retribution only leads to more violence. King, when he talked about colonialism, he would say, the objective of African Americans is not to separate in a separate colony or to kick whites out of the country as in colonial Africa, but to live in the same country. To reconcile with white Americans -- and to have that, you need restorative justice not retribution.

Michael: Exactly. It makes me think of something that the extremists and white nationalists have been saying in their rallies. They would say, “You will not replace us.” In other words, the idea that we may want to join them doesn’t occur. Their thinking is it has to be either you or me. Whereas what you are working on, what you're saying is, “Can’t we be together?” Would that be a good paraphrase?

Charles: Right. It’s often occurred to me that one of the reasons there’s such objection to Black Power is that whites are afraid Blacks would use that power in the same way that they used the power, which was not restorative kinds of uses of power. Or women having power -- one of the reasons men fear it is that women bosses will be just like men bosses, which is not good.

It’s the notion of we’re all in this together and not this notion of “It’s our country, take it or leave.” You know, America, love it or leave it. Let’s make it a better America.

Michael: Oh boy, is that attractive. 

Restoration of the Human Image - Repairing Frayed Relationships

It sounds like from what you’re saying that an important part of the work leading up to the kind of reparations that you are talking about, where the perpetrators, mainly white folks, will enter into it voluntarily. A part of that work is reassurance that we're not going to abuse power the way you did.

Charles: Yeah. It’s ironic that a term that means to repair – reparations, to repair, to repair broken relationships -- I think across the board we can agree that relationships in the United States are frayed on a variety of fronts. A notion that means “to repair” would be a notion that there’s such visceral and emotional reaction to.

For years people said, “We don’t want to discuss it;” people on the right, but also on the left. You had people on the left saying to bring up the issue of reparations divides the working class and will pit whites against Blacks and so we can’t have talk of reparations. It’s kind of ironic that a term that’s meant to bring people together towards restorative justice and repair relationships has been seen as such a divisive kind of issue.

If you look at public opinion polling across a whole variety of issues, you’ll not find a greater divide on the question of whether Blacks should get reparations among whites and Blacks. When people like to bring up the issue of, “Well, it’s all about money,” I said, “How about an apology?”

In the 1980s, Representative Tony Hall of Dayton, a white representative introduced a resolution in congress to apologize as a kind of reparation. He said he got more hate mail around this issue of just an apology than any piece of legislation he introduced. 

One of the reasons that got me thinking about the book was that George Bush went to Goree Island off the coast of Senegal during his presidency and apologized to Africans for the African slave trade.Before that, Bill Clinton had gone to the same place, Goree Island, and apologized to Africans for the African slave trade. But neither one would go to Charleston or Savannah or New Orleans or New York City, which were all sites of slave marts and apologize to African Americans.

I don’t think you can – and I say this in the context of a year in which fake news has become a big item -- but I don’t think you’re going to make any progress on reparations until there’s an acknowledgment that a wrong was done, that a harm has been done, and is present today.

As I said, it’s kind of ironic that a term that means to repair has drawn so much fire. And until there’s an acknowledgment that a harm was done, I don’t think we can talk about any kind of restitution. There has to be an acknowledgment of slavery and illegal segregation and current discrimination. Mitch McConnell is one of the people I cite because he was talking about this during Obama’s term, that he doesn’t believe he should be writing checks for slavery committed in the south 100 and some years ago.

I can cite all kinds of discrimination against African Americans during my lifetime, including not being able to marry who I wanted, not being able to live in the neighborhoods I wanted to live in, not being able to go to school where I wanted to go to school. It’s not talking about something in the distant past, it’s talking about contemporary discrimination.

If anything has come out over the last year, we can see that the Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted many gaps, including the feelings that Black life is worth less in the United States.

Michael: You know, it sounds to me like what you’ve identified and what you’re talking about right now is the real sticking point. You may remember that when the destroyer, USS Vincennes, got some faulty information and shot down an Iranian liner carrying 270 passengers, George H.W. Bush who was the vice president at that time said – and this is something that’s been ringing in my ears ever since and I think now I’m beginning to understand why -- he said, “I don’t care what the facts are, I will never apologize for the American people.”

Charles: Yeah. Yeah.

Importance of Acknowledgement of Wrongdoing

Michael: So, it’s enabling people to have constraints to stand up and say, “I did something wrong,” and then be able to add, “but that’s not who I am.”

Charles: Yeah. We see it, or we're going to see it today in terms of the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, just a refusal to acknowledge facts and hide behind all kinds of subterfuge. Until we can agree on a common set of facts -- and this often leads to a discussion of social media and all of that. Where are the Walter Cronkites of today that we kind of had an agreement on the right and left that, yeah this is the situation? We might have different solutions to that situation, but these are the facts on the ground. Now we can’t agree to the facts on the ground.

If you can’t agree to that, then you can’t really discuss multiple solutions and say, “Well, my solution to the situation is better than yours and this is why,” because we don’t have an agreement on what the problem is.

Michael: Oh my gosh. What do we do about that?

Charles: Well, we have to bring some scientists in here to talk about the devaluation of science. I’ve been reading a lot of stuff recently and one sees a real lack of focus on moral values, overriding moral values in discussions around the free market, for example, which has sort of driven our economy since – well, forever, but particularly from the Reagan administration on. We’ve abandoned any kind of planning and sort of the Great Society kind of programs to say, “Let the free market decide.”

We're not going to make a decision about child poverty. The free market is going to make those decisions for us. And that combined with a sort of Christian nationalism in terms of evangelicalism that doesn’t rely on facts, but relies on faith and is looking for somehow a savior or redemption, etc., has brought about a kind of toxic combination where we don’t have a rational discussion about moral values and what the government can and can’t do.

Instead of talking about small government as Bill Clinton started to do, we're talking about anti-government now. We're talking about anarchy and libertarianism and all kinds of QAnon sorts of theories. I know it’s something you’ve talked about in terms of moral values and, as I keep saying in terms of watching the discussions on television reminding me of one of my favorite movies, “Brother, Where art Thou?” where they're talking about moral fiber. Where are some Republicans with moral fiber? There used to be a few of them out there, you know?

When you’re cheering for Liz Cheney, you know things have really shifted in the Republican party. And you’re looking at George Schultz as a guy who would be considered way too liberal to be in the Republican party these days. I think there’s a real question around moral values that this country is searching for, and you don’t get moral values through playing video games or shopping on the shoppers’ network, whatever that shoppers’ network is called.

I think as people sit at home during the pandemic and don’t have the opportunity to go to the mall and shop -- I know Amazon’s business is going up -- and I'm sure you've thought about this too, sitting at home gives you a chance to reflect, maybe to think with your family through some things. I know some people want to get out of their houses because they are forced to be with their families, but to think about family relationships and to think about relationships outside the family that are important to you that you miss because you can’t have that kind of contact. It’s long past time that we have that kind of reflection about our moral values.

Michael: It’s a learning experience for sure, but we have to be willing to take it as such. So you see this very sharp divide happening where some families are doing exactly what you were just describing, getting closer together, thinking about where they’re going in life and about things that really matter, but others are just at one another’s throats.

Charles: Yeah. And we talk about this in our own family in terms of adult children moving back in and so forth and so on, and people not having childcare so they can’t go to work. But, you know, historically, it’s been just a very short period of time since, and only in developed countries, or maybe not so developed because we don’t have professional childcare here, that you had multigenerational families.

You had grandparents and parents and adult children living together, and those families were functional and had seniors passing along wisdom to the folks that are younger, etc., etc. When you live in a country where people move every three or four years and you don’t know the neighbors around you and you're a single parent or something, we really lose that experience and those values and those relationships.

Historical Precedents for Reparations

Michael: Boy Charles, there’s a lot to think about here, but I want to get back to reparations for a second, reparations specifically because I had a question to ask you about that. I had a vague recollection -- and maybe you can help me fill it in -- that there have been in this country some small scale successful examples of reparations, specifically with regard to Native Americans. Do you know anything about that? Or if not, are their other precedents for reparations that were done right and worked out?

Charles: Yeah, there have been. The Obama administration settled some reparations claims which had been very long-standing with Native Americans. There was also a settlement in the Pigford case – Pigford versus the Department of Agriculture around Black farmers who had been denied farm loans by the agriculture administration. That case had dragged on and was settled in the early 2000s. It was a 1997 case.

At the turn of the 20th century Black landowners owned several million acres of land. It was reduced dramatically in the 20th century and part of the reason was the failure of the government to grant loans to Black farmers. But there have been more recent examples at the local level: Chicago gave reparations to victims of police torture in Chicago within the last five to six years. The Chicago City council did that. Six states have passed apologies for slavery. Virginia gave, with the help of a private donor, reparations to people who were impacted by Virginia – especially Prince Edward County closing its public schools to prevent integrating after the Brown Decision.

The public schools in Prince Edward County were shut down. Private white academies were created. You can imagine that Black students had nowhere to go for high school which impacted them dramatically. And 30, 40 years later at least there’s a fund there for their children and grandchildren to draw on to go to college, etc. So, there are examples like that.

I talk in my book about the example of Tulsa, Oklahoma and Rosewood, Florida. There were incidents – a lot of people are hearing about Tulsa now, but actually, Rosewood had a Hollywood film made about it maybe 15 years ago and a fairly popular book that came out. The people in – you know, we don’t have time to go greatly into the cases. They revolve around Blacks being accused of attacking a white woman in each case. The cases were never tried and there’s a great deal of evidence that the charges were false. But it led to Blacks being driven out of Rosewood, Florida, being driven out of Tulsa.

In the case of Tulsa, the current estimates are maybe 300 people killed and thousands wounded. The numbers were smaller in Rosewood, but it was similar.

And there were reparations granted in the case and Rosewood by the Florida State legislature. Not so in Tulsa. I talk about some of the reasons why, even though I think there’s a better case for reparations in Tulsa.

One of the things that I focus on in the book is that the more successful cases have come through the legislative process and not the legal process. I mention the Chicago case,  Rosewood, etc. I could mention other cases, but there are some very difficult obstacles in terms of pursuing the legal course.

I refer to them as, “The Three S’s.” One is standing: you have to prove that you have been harmed by a particular action, and of course, in the case of slave reparations, that’s impossible today. Another is the statute of limitations which limits you in many cases to bringing a case. If you were harmed over seven years ago by this in some cases. And the third is sovereign immunity: it’s very difficult to sue cities, states, counties, or the federal government. Often, you have to have their permission in order to sue them. In fact, that’s what happened in Florida. They have a process where you can bring a case against the state and an ombudsperson. All of that helped in the case of Florida. They don’t have that in Oklahoma.

So those are difficult hurdles to overcome, and the more successful cases have been through legislatures. And of course, now there is a bill in Congress, HR 40, that’s been there since 1989 when John Conyers introduced it. 

Incidentally, you mentioned successful cases. Really, the current movement for Black reparations was sparked by the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which granted reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned during WWII. This bill was signed by Ronald Reagan and financial reparations as well as an apology were given to, I think, as I recall, 110,000 Japanese Americans. I don’t want to be quoted exactly, but that’s sort of in the ballpark.

And it was very – it called for a study commission and then that commission made recommendations for various kinds of education and redress. The African American bill was based on that by Conyers. Even though he was a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, he was never able to get hearings on this bill until 2019, and that summer, we had hearings on the bill. Then we got into the election season and those have kind of been backed up now. But you can see it was picked up again by the presidential candidates, and indeed, all the Democratic senators who were candidates for president had endorsed the senate version of HR 40 which Cory Booker was a sponsor of. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren and the rest had signed onto this, and Biden had also said he’d favor the study commission.

The final thing I’ll mention about the impact of the Civil Liberties Act and why I think hearings are important was that you had – when you had hearings in Japanese American communities across the country on this -- you had families, grandfathers and grandmothers coming out and talking about how they had been harmed by being interned. Children and grandchildren said, “You know, my parents, my grandparents have never talked about this. They had always held it in.” Many had felt ashamed of this and wouldn't bring it out.

And so these hearings really brought about some reconciliation, brought about family healing. They let children know how their parents had felt about this and been hurt. It was restorative. We’ve never had a kind of truth and reconciliation around slavery in the United States, or around Jim Crow for example.

So it’s important for us, in terms of the healing process, to hear from people and hear how they’ve harmed if we’re to have any kind of meaningful redress or restitution.

The Element of Forgiveness in Repairing Relationships

Michael: Boy, yeah. I’m really glad to hear more about these precedents because that makes a lot of difference to people. People are not going to have the courage to leap out into the unknown. But if you can show them, “Look, you actually did apologize here, there and everywhere. And you’re still okay.” That would be a very important stepping stone.

Charles: Yeah. Well, I mean you see examples. I was just reading recently about Dylan Roof and the people that were killed in the church in Charleston, and people forgiving him. That was very powerful. People have said, “How can you do this?” And people talk about it. You can’t live in bitterness. It destroys you internally. This notion of forgiveness has been very important to them.

It’s one of the reasons I think it’s such an important component to reparations. We've had a couple of journalists – I think Charles Krauthammer was one of the first, and then more recently, Ross Douthat of the New York Times. They said, “Well, let’s just write a check for $5000 and give it to every African American adult and say we’re done with it, you know? We don’t want to hear about this anymore.” 

That misses the whole idea or spirit of reparations. It sounds like a very American thing to do, however. Let’s just write a check and you take that -- I don’t want to hear anymore about it. That’s kind of the conservative solution to this. But, you know, it misses the whole point of reparations and restorative justice.

Michael: Because like everything else in nonviolence, it’s about repairing relationships, not just about getting injustices corrected.

Charles: I think it’s a serious discussion. Most recently I’ve been reading about it in terms of the movement to abolish prisons, in terms of Black Lives Matter and parts of that movement. One of the things they talk about in terms of defunding the police is defunding prisons and eliminating prisons and talking about other forms of punishment. But there’s a real split in that movement between people that say, “Well, we don’t want drug offenders in prison. There are other ways to deal with that.” 

But what about the policeman that chokes Eric Gardner to death, for example? Should we just say, “Well we’ll find some other way to deal with him or should he be put in prison?” It’s really split the movement because some people say, “Police who behave violently and don’t uphold their oath should be punished with prison.” And others have said, “The whole purpose of our movement is to do away with prisons.” I think it’s a serious question. I don’t have an answer to that.

And obviously, some of the most effective sort of advocates are people who’ve engaged in these acts, like former gang members who may have robbed and killed and so forth and so on. But then they come back and they have so much credibility among gang members because they've been there and they’ve been in the big house and they've done all this. And people will listen to them. But you send Professor Henry out there to talk his face blue and they’d say, “Oh, what does he know about it on the ground? He’s read some books.” 

So I would have to take it on a case-by-case basis, I think. That’s the only way you can deal with it – because there are certainly people that exploit their “fame” or popularity and profit from it. And then there are others who become great advocates because they know all the games and tricks and excuses that people tell themselves and can counter that in very effective ways.

It’s difficult to see some of these people that have done some terrible things, sort of lauded and paraded around -- and in some cases, profited from. One of the laws I really agree with is that if you’re a serial killer and write a popular book that’s a best seller about this, you shouldn't get the money from that. You shouldn't get the royalties from that. That needs to go to the victims families or something like that.

Michael: Charles, we are, unfortunately, coming to an end. You mentioned closure before and I don’t feel we have it. I want to talk to you some more. So, we may continue this, but before we completely close out, please remind us about your book because people who have been hearing this program may well want to get it.

Charles: Yeah. The book is entitled, Long Overdue. The Politics of Racial Reparations. It was published by New York University Press, and it was published in 2007. I will mention a more recent book that really focuses on the economics. People want to know how this would work and how you could calculate the wages from slavery and so forth and so on. This is written by a couple of economists, William Dougherty and A Kristen Mullen, and it’s called, From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century. They deal with some of the discussion of Black wealth, for example, where the average – the median income for a Black head of household with a college of education -- is less than that for a white head of household without a high school diploma.

So, when one talks about programs for redistribution of wealth, checks don’t get it. We're really talking about a wealth gap, you know, home ownership, education funds. These kinds of things get at wealth because wealth is intergenerational, it’s passed on. I think Dougherty and Mullen estimate that a quarter of Americans can trace their wealthy back to the Homestead Acts which gave essentially 10% of the land in the United States to settlers who would go and improve that land. There have been several, but the important acts were in 1862 and 1866 -- and for many reasons Blacks were generally denied that homeownership.

At the same time, we were talking about Sherman’s 40 acres and a mule, the government is passing out land grants of 160 acres to settlers. And we can see that reflected in current wealth statistics of Blacks having essentially 10% of the wealth of white families on the average.

Michael: There you go again: poverty, racism, and militarism.

Charles: Yeah. I’ve heard that phrase somewhere before.

Michael: The three horsemen of the American apocalypse.

Charles: Yeah.

Michael: Well, Charles, thank you very, very much. We’re really grateful for you, for this insider information and so well documented. Hope to talk to you soon.

Charles: It’s always a pleasure talking with you, Michael, and thank you for having me on.

Michael: Very welcome, Charles.

Stephanie: You're at Nonviolence Radio. I'm Stephanie Van Hook, and you've just been listening to Charles Henry on the Politics of Reparations. Let's turn now to the Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler.

Michael: Thank you, Stephanie. I'd like to start off by memorializing a very dear friend of ours. His name was Jawdat Said. He just passed away last week at the age of 91, in Istanbul. He was  in a kind of self-imposed exile from his native Syria, and was one of the very, very few people who was an eloquent exponent of the nonviolence of the Koran. In other words, if you spoke with Jawdat, he could make you believe in no time that Islam is, in fact, like all of the major religions, a religion of peace. 

So, we have a brief notice on our blog memorializing Jawdat and you can look to his own site for more information.

Well, I'm going to list off only some of the very rich panoply of resources and movements that seem to be going on. An impressive movement or organization I'd like to start off with is Indigenous Resistance Against Carbon. They have stopped or stalled greenhouse gas pollution, which is the equivalent to almost a quarter of the annual U.S. and Canadian emissions. And so, here's a quote from them.

“Indigenous Peoples have developed highly effective campaigns that utilize a blended mix of non-violent direct action, political lobbying, multimedia divestment, and other tactics to accomplish victories in the fight against neoliberal projects that seek,” as they put it, “to destroy our world via extraction.”

So, this is a very good example I’m wanting to lift up here, of using different techniques and different strategies. And if you use them in the right order, it really adds up to a very powerful campaign.

Now, for a number of those rich resources that I talked about, and we'll close with one action item, there's another exciting new organization – and I'm now moving into an area that Metta really likes to deal with, a general term of which is Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping. 

So, this group is called Creating Safer Space. And they have a café. And they say, quote again, “UCP, civil resistance, and human rights defense.” So, these are three related fields of nonviolent action. Their aim is to enable people in different parts of the world to exchange knowledge and to help build a community of unarmed civilian protection researchers and practitioners. 

So, in the café that was held last month, January, a very good friend of ours, Dr. Christine Schweitzer from Germany, gave us input for a discussion on the topic: what is unarmed civilian protection? How does it relate to or differ from civil resistance and human rights defense?

I am particularly pleased to share this because of their emphasis on exchanging knowledge, which had seemed to me for quite a while until recently, actually, one of the really weak links in the anti-war movement. So, they held a session back on January 20th – haha, which happens to be my birthday – that was held in English and Spanish with some simultaneous translation at the café.

So, another UCP organization that we are in contact with is called Operazione Colombia. As you may tell from the name, it's an Italian based group. It started in 1992 during the war in former Yugoslavia, which of course is right across the Adriatic from them, and their goal was to put nonviolence into these armed conflict areas. Really a bold, confrontational, very effective move.

And since then, more than 2500 volunteers have been operating under their auspices in Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, in Latin America, the Middle East, the Far East. And now they are present in Colombia and Palestine, accompanying local nonviolent communities.

They're also in Lebanon alongside the Syrian refugees there. And on the migrant routes that are crossing Europe. A terrific problem that we must look into more deeply one of these days. And I'll be getting back to Palestine in just a second.

But Sunday, January 30th. Marked the first day of the Season for Nonviolence. If you remember, it’s a 64-day period that stretches between the anniversaries of the deaths of Mahatma Gandhi, which was on January 30th, and Martin Luther King, which was on an April 4th.

So, this year's season for Nonviolence was co-founded by Arun and Sunanda Gandhi back in 1998 – Arun being a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. And they offer us an opportunity to pause, question and transform what we've been taught about violence, conflict and how we relate to one another and the Earth.

Another really interesting organization to watch recently turned six years old. It's called the Democracy in Europe Manifesto 25. And it has some superstars. Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varoufakis, and others. The motto of D.M. is carpe diem, “seize the day.” So, their mission is, quote, “A coordinated effort everywhere in Europe to unite like-minded citizens and create enough power to save the EU from itself.” They say, “The EU will unite, or it will perish, and they must act quickly before it is too late.” Hence, the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025.

Coming up very soon. On February 25th and 26th, there will be a conference called, “Satyagraha: Nonviolence in the Gandhi-King Tradition”. If you are a listener, you will know that Satyagraha literally clinging to truth was the term that Gandhi invented because nonviolence was misunderstood as a negative protest kind of thing. So, this is a multidisciplinary conference, to be held, as I say, on February 25 and 26, coming out of Ashland, Ohio – the Ashland University.

Meanwhile, every week, a group called the Peace Alliance has inspiring programs that we can join and interact with are their peace-building community. So, I'd like to greet with particular enthusiasm what Margaret Flowers is doing with that group. And you can find these listed in PopularResistance.org. 

So, one of her articles is, and this is a real issue, in my view. Quote, “The anti-war movement must not go back to sleep during the Biden presidency.”

She's referring to this paradox that when you have ‘a war president’ to quote George W Bush said about himself, the peace movement rises up in resistance. When you have a relatively less warlike president, there's a tendency to lose vigilance and say, “Okay, it's taken care of.” And it's much more important to act then than simply in reaction.

You know, I said we would get back to Palestine with our last organization, and I want to draw your attention to. This one is called Eyewitness Palestine. They are a partner. This is a collaborative style of today in building solidarity in the Palestinian world. They are beginning to organize delegations to Palestine, and the first one will take place in March.

So, these delegations are one of the very few that are audited by the Palestinian national side. Palestinian Boycott National Committee. And it follows a call from the Palestinian civil society itself to advance the Palestinian nonviolent struggle for their rights under international law.

Now let me give you a kind, empathetic story of how, in a way, small things can make a big difference. They just furnished a cell phone for a student who is part of a group called, “Youth of Sumud.” Sumud, literally, Arabic word for patience, being one of their words for nonviolence. So, this young guy from Youth of Sumud has to walk past settlers to get to school, and they provided him with a cell phone so that he can make emergency calls.

Another very interesting development is that there are some 100 organizations now organized by Code Pink, which are speaking out against the expansion of NATO on one side, as well as against the Russian aggression on the other side. This is really a scary development, reminder of the Cold War all over again. And these groups are calling for diplomacy and so forth as alternatives to military confrontation.

Right now, there is a fragile and increasingly brutal regime in Uganda. The dictator, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba  is the son of the previous dictator whose name you will be more familiar with, Yoweri Museveni So, Kainerugaba is attempting to inherit the presidency from his elderly father, which was not a very nice presidency.

And one of the things that they're doing is they arrested and killed a writer by the name of  Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, who back in 2021 was a winner of the PEN Pinter International Writer of Courage Award back on December 28th of last year. And so, he had a post on Facebook where he said, “Men with guns are breaking my door. They say they're policemen, but they are not in uniform. I have locked myself inside.”

And within minutes of posting that, they broke in and abducted him. And it is not Mr. Nice Guy. When that happens to you. So here we have the so-called world's friendliest people in Uganda, and they're finding power in vulgarity because the dictator arrested this man for using not really a vulgar but a rather disrespectful comment about the son.

And it's, in one way, a reminder of what happened in Rwanda. It's not. I don't think it is at all. So, they are defying the dictator with what they're calling radical rudeness, because since he, this writer, was arrested on the pretext, he used a rude word, they're now flooding social media in the streets with radical rudeness to show that they will not be silenced for doing such a thing.

So, that is a very useful purpose, though it does remind me of what happened at Berkeley after the Free Speech Movement, when FSM2 suddenly took the podium and the microphone and FSM2 didn’t stand for free speech movement. It stood for a filthy speech movement. And again, It was this idea that you could use vulgarity to protest obstruction and oppression.

And I don't deny that that can be an effective protest. I kind of feel that it's a short term solution because in the long term, everything that we do – I'm here –  I'm on my soapbox with you now – everything that we do should be aimed at enhancing human dignity. And that will be like a stealth opportunity to overcome a lot of the oppression that we are opposed to.

So, let's hear it for human dignity, and I hope to talk with you more in a couple of weeks about events in the Ukraine and elsewhere. Thanks very much for listening.

Stephanie: Hey everyone, you’ve been listening to Nonviolence Radio. We want to thank our mother station KWMR as well as all of the stations that syndicate the show afterward. Thank you so much. You can find us at Waging Nonviolence.org. If you want to learn more about the Metta Center’s work in promoting nonviolence worldwide, visit us at MettaCenter.org. Until the next time, let’s take care of one another.