The Local Peace Economy

Jodie Evans, activist and co-founder of CODEPINK, talks with Stephanie and Michael about possibility of creating and sustaining the ‘peace economy’. More specifically, they explore concrete ways to reorient our distorted ‘war economy’ perspectives, to wean ourselves from destructive ‘addictions’ and provide concrete ways in which we can all – even recognizing the current political and environmental horrors – bring about real change and lasting peace.

"I want to go back to saying we are alive because of the peace economy. We are not alive because of the war economy. It is killing us, our community, and the planet. But in our minds, somehow, we think it's giving us life because it has convinced us of that. But really, the thing that is rich about life is the things we give each other, is the way we care for each other, is the way we create space of trust and care. That's where life thrives."

We forget that this peace economy is available to us by simply being present, by consciously being where we are right now, and responding with genuine attention to those around us. This moment we are in can be exactly where we can all start to build the peace economy – it is here where our true ‘potency arises from’ and it is where we can make a difference, together.

Transcript

Stephanie: Greetings and good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Nonviolence Radio. I'm your host, Stephanie Van Hook. And I'm here in the studio with my co-host and news anchor of the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler. And we're from the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma, California.

On today's show, we have the pleasure of speaking with Jodie Evans. She's co-founder of CODEPINK. As many of you in our audience would, would know that. And it's a great honor to have her here with us. We're going to be talking about the current moment, the work of nonviolence and small actions that people can take for really big changes, especially as it looks like in the peace economy. So welcome. Welcome to Nonviolence Radio, Jodie.

Jodie: Thank you so much for having me this morning.

Stephanie: You have such a broad and extensive background in peace work and politics and activism. So, it's a real pleasure to have you here.

So, let's just kind of catch up on this present moment that we're in. It seems like system collapse is all around us. There's a lot of anxiety. The elections coming up, not only in the United States, but I think 80 elections for democracy across the world. So, just getting a bit of the weather from you – how are you seeing this current moment?

Jodie: Well, a little bit through a glass, darkly. But you know what I've been saying with local peace economy and war economy for over a decade, it's like right now we are really face-to-face with what decisions of those in power and what those with too much money have been driving us towards.

Here we are with, I think it's like 14 southern states devastated by the effects of climate change and flooding. Over 100 people dead, whole towns washed away, while we watched Israel assassinate the leader of another country’s party with methods that make everyone's skin crawl, across the world. We watched Netanyahu come to the United States and be applauded. We watched him speak to the UN and everyone walk out. So, you know, it's a dark time.

We've watched almost a year now of a genocide unfolding on Gaza, spread to the West Bank. And now, you know, in the last few days, the bombing of Lebanon and now the bombing of Syria, and the bombing of Yemen. And really nothing in the way of the most violence that in a very short period of time has occurred, probably in the history of the world.

The war on Lebanon in 2006, where CODEPINK went to report back from, killed in a month, the same amount that was killed in a day. That time they assassinated another one of the leaders in Hezbollah and they killed seven innocent people when they assassinated him. George Bush said how horrible that was, you know, made a statement about how horrific that was that Israel did that.

And we just watched an assassination in ways that used technology, spying like that – an assassination that then killed hundreds of people, including many children. And Biden calls it just.

To be here on Nonviolence Radio, at this time when the violence of the war economy is so profound, more profound than most of our psyches can hold – how do we hold what just happened? How do we hold the blowing up of teachers, and pockets of doctors, and people who work in a government to serve other people? How do we deal with a storm that is so extreme, it's bigger than has ever been recorded in the places that it hit?

So that's the war economy. That's the extractive, destructive, oppressive economy that is killing you, our communities, and the planet. And we've been saying this at CODEPINK for almost 20 years. Because we can't end war until we end the war economy. Because war serves the war economy. It is what keeps it in place.

And you know, when you're watching a psychopathic madman have the entire world at his mercy and know it. That he could come and speak at the UN, have everyone walk out and just to, like, show how frickin’ powerful he is, from the UN, call an assassination of another party leader. That's dark.

And so, the thing we've been working on at CODEPINK is that, yeah, there's nothing we can do to stop this – what we call the tsunami. In cultures, everybody has their flood story with their ark. Well, global climate change, global inequality, fascism, and AI, all steal humanity. We talk about building an ark to get through it because there's no apocalypse. There's just a lot of damage on the way, as we can witness now every day, as we watch what's happening in Gaza. And now we watch the ground force moving into Lebanon to level it in the same way that it's been leveling Gaza.

There is a peace economy, which we call the ark, and that is the giving, sharing, caring, thriving, relational, resilient economy without which none of us would be alive.

I mean, we start out living in a peace economy. That's what parenting is. That's what the care of our community is. And the war economy has tried to disrupt, disregard, privatize, make irrelevant, the peace economy for decades and decades. So much so that too many of us are addicted to patterns that hold the war economy in place. And Indigenous peoples have lived for millennia practicing peace economy habits. And we've been unacculturated from them.

It's why having these radio shows is so important, because we've literally been unacculturated from being human. And the lies that we’re told – I mean, the fact that Netanyahu got to get up in front of the world and lie – every word, every sentence out of this mouth was a lie, you know, sounding much like Hitler. Those lies have been embedded in us because that's the information we get.

We get lies about, you know, what is creating the devastation to the planet, instead of making the changes necessary to stop this insanity that gets worse every year. It gets worse every year, and yet we continue to behave the same way from the war economy habits. Well, I call them addictions.

Stephanie: And it seems that part of those lies that we're living in and living under is that we can't do anything about what's going on. So, we can get inundated with disasters and violence and feel like there's absolutely nothing meaningful we can do about these things. And all we can do is stand back and watch, or just vote so that our politicians fix it for us.

And I know that you have a bit of a political background. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that lie, that – whether you agree with that. Is that we're being made to be held powerless so that the war economy can thrive?

Jodie: Wow. So, you said a lot right there. Let's just say the intention of the war economy is to overwhelm, to make powerless. You know, one of the things it's meant to do is make you feel lonely. And loneliness is the soil on which fascism is built.

So, yes, the war economy wants you to just turn into sheep and puppets for their needs. And that that's done on purpose. So, the first thing is, you should just be outraged at the system that is using you.

And then let's move to vote. We do not live in a democracy. Yes. I ran three presidential campaigns and learned a lot about politics. And one of them is that your vote doesn't matter. And anybody that's been voting can see your vote doesn't matter. But I think it is, Princeton just did a study that proves that politicians do not listen to the will of the people. They take your vote. They lie to you. They take your vote, get elected, and then ignore you.

And we know that from right now, when 80% of the country wants to stop sending weapons to Israel and 8 billion just left yesterday. Or there's a $20 billion sale of weapons to Israel when the country does not want that. The country doesn't want 65% of their tax dollars going to war. They want the money invested in their communities, in the needs of their communities.

The infrastructure of the United States is unraveling while we are destroying the planet. I mean, there's no greater contribution to climate change than war. And that is escalating. When they say they're doing something about the climate, it's all a lie. But we continue to take the lies, and we continue to pretend that our votes matter.

This time, the only way your votes matter is if you don't vote for one of the two parties, because both of them will do much the same thing. It'll look different, but it will continue to erode. First of all, the global view of the United States has plummeted under Biden. Plummeted. So, if we think there's two different parties, at the core of it – yeah, there's little things that they'll do differently. But this isn't a democracy, either. The people call the United States a democracy – or the even bigger, like we just used to the word ‘democracy’, to call Israel a democracy. An apartheid state is the opposite of a democracy. It is an apartheid state that imprisons an entire population and violates it, dehumanizes it. That's not democracy. But see, here's an example of how we get used. We get so used by these words that we believe them without questioning them, without understanding them.

You can't have a democracy when the rich own the media you're listening to, and the rich buy the elections. If somebody, like AIPAC – $20 million on a congressionary to get someone who's telling the truth out of office. The truth is dead. So also, when people say, “Oh, Trump, he's going to bring in fascism,” are you not paying attention? We live in fascism. Have you not paid attention to how many people have been shut up telling the truth in the last year?

Or even, let's just go back to Ukraine. You know, you're not allowed to tell the truth in this country, you will be shut up – they will figure out ways to do it, they will use the media they own to do it. 

So, let's go back to the core of your question. What can I do? And that's the question we started to answer a long time ago at CODEPINK. We understand we're not going to end war. But what we are going to do, we are going to continue to scratch at power, we’re going to make them uncomfortable for what they do. We're going to shine a light on them. And we are going to stand like tuning forks for peace in front of violence. And that's nonviolence, right? The power of nonviolence.

I would say the power of nonviolence is something that Iran was doing. I know everybody thinks it's a terrorist country, and it's got a government that is very questionable. But instead of taking the poking of Netanyahu, they continue to try to work for a ceasefire, to work for peace. And they were lied to. They didn't revenge the deaths. They instead worked on a ceasefire agreement that Netanyahu has violated. But, you know, he lies all the time. So why someone would believe him, I don't understand.

But in the process of them acting out of nonviolence, acting in a way that wanted to get to a peace agreement, wanted to get to a ceasefire, what did it expose? It exposed more violence.

I always remind people that the exercise of nonviolence exposes the violence of what we live inside of. And if that is not clear to everyone right now, I don't know – let's please hope we don't have to see more. We live in an empire. And we kind of think that an empire isn't a good thing. Star Wars taught us empires are stupid.

We were led to believe, by the conditioning of the structure we live inside of, that we should be able to fix those big problems. But none of us have our fingers on them. And instead, it takes us away from where we're supposed to be grounded, where we can affect things, where we can be healthy and robust and think well, and not be overwhelmed and not be undermined and not feel useless and powerless.

And so, we're like, convinced that we can fix that thing way up there. But what we can do is we can build local peace economies that reground us in the commons, that reground us in what gives life, and reground us where we are, where our relationships are. Because we live in these bad habits of being transactional instead of relational, where relational is where we will have the most power.

Relational is where we will find our roots. And that's what we all have to do. And I know it's so counterintuitive for everyone. But at the same time, we have been intentionally unrooted. And so, the first thing we have to do is go back to rooting, go back to building local relational communities that we are part of where we build trust and where we learn who we are because that's going to matter.

Like right now, those resilient communities that have been built in the South are going to be the ones that will fare the best in that tragedy. Our capacity to get through this time of fascism and violence and power – outrageous power – will be how we can hold each other and not be separated from each other because power wins when it can separate us from each other.

So, being in community – and community is the place where there is conflict. If there is no conflict, that's a cult. Conflict is one of the other things they try to make you pretend shouldn't exist. That uncertainty that's like, you know, let's be safe and secure with weapons. Nothing makes us more unsafe than more weapons.

When they were sending weapons to Ukraine, I was like, “Don't you care about the Ukrainian people? They're the ones that are going to die. Being used for proxy war by the United States on Russia.”

So, being grounded, being relational, learning. People don't even understand how narrow the boxes they are being forced to live in. Once you start to break out of that box, you can think better, you're going to be healthier, you're going to be happier, and you're going to be able to move between engagement to the grief that we have to feel every day as we look out at the world, to where we need to care for each other and what that looks like, to enjoy and celebrate life again.

That all the things that Indigenous peoples knew about how to live and how to be and how to be in peace together, we have to relearn together and practice together. And those are new habits because we've been indoctrinated to some very, very bad addictions. And I call them addictions because you think you need to do it because you've been made so empty.

And I think a lot of that is because so much of our life is proxy instead of the real thing, like the menu and not the meal. And we've been taken away from the richness of life. And once you get close to that again, once you recognize your own creativity against – once you're kind of out of the box – there is an understanding that you have, and they can't use you anymore.

The people that have their hand on the lever of a ceasefire are few. But what we each have our hands on is the possibility for peace. And that has to be built. That has to be created. We have to recondition ourselves to actually what kind of soil that thrives in. Because the soil's been destroyed, the soil of peace. And the soil of violence against everything, against life, against our psyches, against even who we are as human beings and what we're capable of, has been really co-opted. Like power needs to do, to have power.

And the other reminder is that the only thing that has ever changed the world is the people. And we've been convinced that if we put our vote on somebody that’s able to change the world. But right now, in this moment, in 2024, you can no longer believe that if you really pay attention.

Stephanie: For those of you just tuning in, you're here at Nonviolence Radio, and we're speaking with Jodie Evans. She's co-founder of CODEPINK, and we are discussing – sort of taking a temperature of humanity right now and the systems collapse, and looking at big questions such as the war economy, and what is it? And what are the shifts that need to take place in our understanding in order to build a more humane, just, and nonviolent world. Thank you so much, Jodie.

Michael: Jodie, I think the very last thing that you said is the key to all of it, namely, who are we? Who are we as conscious beings? Who are we in relation to one another and in relation to the planet that we live on?

And all the things that you just listed, every single one of which is, unfortunately, spot on, quite correct. I see one hope in all of this, that perhaps the damage is reaching a point of being homeopathic. That is, it gets so bad that people can no longer maintain their passivity, that it kind of breaks through to them. When that is going to happen, I don't know.

But I agree with you that our job is to uphold the living future and have it be ready so that when a sufficient number of people see that they're going over a cliff, that they want to put the brakes on, and they can see another road.

And it's not like they won't know what to do at that point, because CODEPINK is offering alternatives, economic – the new – I'm just reading a book called The Next Economy MBA is offering an alternative, and of course, here on our radio show, which we cannot be bought, by the way – on our radio show, what we often explore are the alternatives listed by Gandhi.

So, what do you think of what I just said? Do you think that there's some avenues for change in that kind of thinking?

Jodie: Oh, I think you're spot on. I mean, for sure. It's like, so blatant. You know, usually it hides under a rock or in the shadows or, you know, it's all been happening for a long time, but it isn't hiding right now. Everything is so easy to see.

And yes, people can see it, and they're pulling themselves away. And, you know, the pulling away caused the sitting President of the United States to have to not be the candidate for his party because too many people were pulling away. So, yes, people can see it. And as you said, “Who are we?” If we are rooted, if we are grounded, if we are practicing peace, we will be able to serve our communities because you've also got to have patience. Everybody's been unacculturated to what that is, and it's going to feel upside down. And there's a lot of grief that's going to have to be felt and cared for.

The vanguard of being able to hold that is a way that actually you kind of take responsibility for peace, but also it's how you don't get swept into these moments that could take us away by just our psyches not being able to grasp it or feeling that sense of powerlessness.

I always say, when you're feeling powerless, just pick up my bookmark and start practicing any one of those peace habits. Because as soon as you start practicing it, it regrounds you in life.

And yes, what is happening is overwhelming, but your hand is not on it. And when you put your hand on it, and you think you have the power to change it, it takes you away from what you actually have the power to do, which is to create the peace ark wherever you are and help people practice some way, their way back out of the war economy. So, that is always available at every moment.

And a way to help stop the overwhelm, I also call it the folly of fretting, life is right here, right now. It's to remember that the war economy takes away the future and tells you stories and makes up stories, but if you can be present with where you are, what is happening there, what is needed there, your potency as a human is going to increase 100-fold because of the wisdom you'll have, the information will have, the relationship, the life you will have. And that's where the potency arises from.

Stephanie: That's beautiful. And I want to make sure that people know about the Peace Economy website. It's PeaceEconomy.org. And there's a workbook that people can download there or buy. I think it's worth buying it so that you have it to work with and write in it and everything.

But it goes through very constructively how to pivot away from a war economy into a peace economy. As an individual, and then you can study it with a group or with your community and think about ways of implementing it into your local community, in your local relationships, in your life.

In this workbook, you discuss these pivots to peace. And I was wondering if you could explain that a little bit for our listeners. What is this paradigm shift that is moving away from one set of values to another?

Jodie: So, as I was mentioning earlier, there are addictions that are forced on us to succeed in the war economy. And the opposite of them are the tenants underlying a peace economy.

So, we’re made to believe that we're alienated, that we're other. You know, we're taken away from connection. That sense of alienation and feeling other is really just not noticing every day that I'm connected. I'm connected to the Earth. I’m connected – all these people that show up for you. You miss what's showing up for you when you live in the idea of alienation.

I mentioned earlier, one of the hardest ones to break and to understand how the war economy uses us is transactional. We have all become so transactional and life thrives on relational. And the giving, sharing, caring, thriving, relational community that used to be what it was, was in a commons. Where we would show up for each other, where we help raise each other's children – where there would be, you know, not like who gave me what and I can't give you anything because you don't have anything to give me. The earth didn't say, “Well, you haven't given me anything. I'm not going to give you anything,” or the air or, you know.

It's this taking away of our self to the abundance that is available to us. So, I would say transactional to relational is one of the ones that everybody has to constantly practice, because we have no clue how deeply we've been affected by that. And transactional – I say it's an addiction because it's always empty underneath, because it's not how life thrives. It's how life – where life goes to die in the transaction, because life flows.

Apathy to engagement – it’s like we were saying earlier, all of this overwhelm makes you apathetic because you feel like, I don't know what to do. I'm powerless. It's overwhelming. And instead of engaging, which is where you experience life, where you experience your own liveliness. When you're living in apathy, it's dark, it's lonely and again, just a reminder that in Germany, as in – currently – it is loneliness that fascism thrives on. It's loneliness that fascism is built on.

And so, when someone is trying to make you afraid of fascism, the thing to do is ask, where can I find the lonely ones and bring them into community? Where can I build community to take care of those that feel like they're outside of it?

Another one is distraction to attention. This has really happened at an accelerated pace with social media. But as I said earlier, life is right here, right now. But we're all living in these ethers of nothingness. And so, when you find yourself in distraction, it's like, what is happening right here? Even to yourself, what are you feeling? Even if you just stopped and started breathing and being present with yourself. So, we're not present with ourselves enough. And then from that place, there's the other. There's the air, there's the light, there's nature, that we also aren't connected to enough.

Control is another big one that kind of reflects the other, you know, like, I can control the thing way out there. Instead of control, it's empowerment. That was that process I was talking about; where you go from trying to control everything, where we've been made to think that there's something that's certain in the world, instead of finding the way that we are empowered to meet the world, to not be reactive to it, to be responding to it, to be in relationship with it.

Certainly, scarcity to abundance is one of the big ones I watch people go through. So many times, I've had people come back and say, “Wow, there's this field of generosity I didn't even know was present.” We don't even notice that when the peace economy is operating, we're not even aware of it. We ourselves have been taught not to value it, to not value the giving, sharing that is happening in our every day.

And I want to go back to saying we are alive because of the peace economy. We are not alive because of the war economy. It is killing us, our community, and the planet. But in our minds, somehow, we think it's giving us life because it has convinced us of that. But really, the thing that is rich about life is the things we give each other, is the way we care for each other, is the way we create space of trust and care. That's where life thrives.

Another one is urgency to wisdom. We miss all the wisdom. We miss learning. We're so full of judgment about how things should be and how we assume they should – that, and what our expectations are. We're running around trying to make it all happen instead of really being present.

Like, really, like right now, it's being able to talk about what's happening without having it shut us down and close us up and make us want to run away. That nature thrives in conflict. Conflict, not trauma.

So, what is happening now when we watch it can move our psyches to some sense of trauma because it's so unbelievable. Imagine yourself being that vulnerable, right? Where you're at home with your family and a bomb is just going to drop on you, and your psyche takes that in.

So, it's to pull yourself back from that moment of trauma. Land yourself where you are, breathe and remember where you are, and then what needs to happen to be in relationship, that can pull you back into where you can witness. I can know what I want to do. And this is the moment of growth.

We are in a time, yes, the homeopathic moment where the pivot is possible. Where, you know, [Galliano] and his poem, that we live on the edge of a razor blade. Well, here we are on the edge of the razor blade. And probably more than ever, how you pull yourself away from the war economy, how you center yourself in the peace economy – yes, it's going to have a huge effect because you're not alone. You've got a wave of people wanting to come because we’re at the edge of the cliff, and that can be seen, and people want to turn around.

So, every time you're practicing, you're going to have a bigger community than ever because more people are seeing, and that homeopathy moment is pulling wellness forward at the same time.

Individualism is a disease in the United States. And when you're in other countries, you see how horrible a disease it is, because it's not what other people in other countries are quite indoctrinated to. But, you know, what really is missing is that sense of self-responsibility to the community and how we build community together, how we build life together.

And that takes us back to, who am I responsible for? I don't think anybody here listening is dropping bombs on Lebanon. So, it's like that moment where you pull yourself away and say, “I am not responsible for that. I am responsible for this moment, for my community.” And that, again, pulls you back into that space of empowerment.

There are 23 pivots that you can download from the website. And also, they each go into more, so you can understand them to work with them. Again, whenever you are feeling stressed, disempowered, frightened, it’s a really, really good thing to just pick it up and practice one. Just the practice of something will take you away from the clutches of the war economy and what it wants you to feel.

And also, the book is free to download so you don't have to buy it. You can go to the website and just sign up and you'll get a downloadable copy that you could print out, or you can work on it online. I had written a book and the publisher said, “Oh, we'll publish it in a year and a half.” And I was like, “Oh, things are going to change too fast.”

And really, everybody knows all this. We all know all this. This is rooted in religion. It is rooted in dogmas, you know, across the board. This is about life. We've been taught about life for millennia. We know. The thing is, we know.

So, the book is really about practicing your way back to what life is. As life is being threatened by all these other things, and you're watching that. But right now, it's like I'm serving life. I am creating conditions conducive for life. And when you find yourself not doing that, if the question is why, and the question is how do I change that? With patience. Have the same patience for yourself you're going to need for others.

This takes time. It's not about urgency. Because nature slows down to speed up. When you really root yourself in the change, in the patience, in the willingness to be present with all of it and the unknowing, because there is no certainty. There is the unknowing. But the one thing you can know is if you are creating healthy soil, if you are creating the soil for peace, peace can emerge. But we've all abandoned the soil for peace. Not everyone, I think probably if you're listening to this radio show, you're closer to making beautiful soil than most people.

But you also can't tell other people how to be. You can only lead. Any parent knows that no matter what your words are, people are going to follow your actions. So, when you find your community is about what are you doing that attracts others, not going to tell people how they should be. That doesn't work.

Stephanie: And one thing that I love about this approach to the peace economy, and how it ties into everything else in our lives, our relationships, is just seeing peace and nonviolence as practice.

And this is something that we have to disengage ourselves from, a way that we have been programmed. The way that our brains have created neural pathways to believe that pain is pleasure, and that happiness is consumption and relationships are burdensome. To recondition ourselves and our neural networks into remembering and practicing that these things are lies and there's other ways is quite beautiful.

Michael: Jodie, I'd like to get your opinion on this analysis: I believe that we are living in an incomplete democracy. What's missing is, in fact, nonviolence. And what the people who are listening to this wonderful programming – thank you for giving them a pat on the back – is that they want to complete it. Whereas other people feel that, “Oh, it's not working. We need a different system.” And that's the dilemma. That's the division that we find ourselves in. What do you think?

Jodie: Well, I think that the system is definitely broken, and it's run by money, and that's been for a very long time – and it's run for the rich. So, I guess it depends on what you're looking for.

But I mean, it's not democracy. It's incomplete. It can't be a functioning democracy because democracy is about one person having a voice. And when the only voice is money and when money is what is the media, it's not a democracy. Different people with money will use you to believe that and then use you to do whatever it wants to do, which it does.

But democracy can be practiced. So, I think it's like not to start with the system, but to start practicing democracy locally in your communities. What is it to be – to humanize everyone? What is it when everyone has a voice? What does that feel like? How does that happen? What can be created out of that? Because all things can be co-opted. To notice when, even in the smallest thing, someone tries to co-opt the whole thing for themselves instead of all voices heard. And what are the values we're working towards?

Even to be able to think about what are the values we are working towards, creating conditions conducive for life. The humanization of everyone. I mean, let’s just start practicing what those things are and not really worrying about the corruption of the system we live inside of. It's going to collapse on its own weight, it's creating its own death. I mean, we are in its death spiral.

The empire is dying. It doesn't know how to do anything but violence, and the whole world is pulling away. All that's happening, like a storm. Like as much as you can't affect that hurricane, you can affect the storm that has been created over, you know, a few hundred years of practice. And now all the money focused on the structure that is not – look, it's not creating. Hate and violence don't create.

And what we know through history is that these moments of where all that’s left of a dying empire is violence, what do you do? You create the ark of beauty that is going to survive. And the more ark you actually create, the more you're creating a beautiful future. But a structure like what we're looking at, I mean, it's been dying for a while, but it's in the death throes.

Stephanie: Well, I love how you're tying this in, the practice of democracy into starting in our own relationships and in our local communities. Because that's really where we can see a lot of changes, I think, in our personal relationships and in our local communities. So, I think that's quite beautiful to start there because those are within our spheres of empowerment, very much so. And they can grow.

Jodie: I also want to just say I have a few friends that are in Congress, and they’ve spent their life working for the needs of the people, like, really corely. And they have said to me, “I came here to make a difference, and it is impossible.” And they're smart. They're rooted.

So, you know, I don't just project that. I try to get information that I can ground myself in, that helps me know where to trim tabs and navigate from. And so, when you hear something like that, it's also liberating. It's like, “Oh, so then I never have to put anything in that direction except to shine a light on, expose, and scratch a little,” you know, making sure they know that the things they're doing are very shameful and not okay.

Like the stuff you hear members of Congress saying is shameful. Full on shameful. And so, basically, our task at CODEPINK is to let people see what that is. Really, you want to be attached to this thing, to these people that are hateful and violent and narcissistic and destructive? That's, you know, that's your Congress that the world is seeing.

And I mean, look, the UN, they walked out on Netanyahu. And then you have the picture of members of Congress clapping for this horrible, psychopathic warmonger that is so destructive that the world can't really imagine who we are in the United States. And I think that's another thing that we – in an empire, you get very – the narcissism of the empire and the hubris of the empire, we also adopt instead of seeing ourselves as 3.5% of a globe that we have – first of all, we're the most responsible for climate change and the violence of our extractive war economy has subjugated a lot of people for a very, very long time.

And so, having some humility as to who we are in the world, not needing to – you can't redo the past, but you can, in the moment, choose to live in a different way.

Stephanie: That's really impactful and empowering to hear as we are wrapping up our time together, Jodie. I'd love to have you again point people to any resources that you feel that – you've said so much in this interview, so many important insights into who we are and how to make this shift. And it's just been wonderful.

Jodie: Well, you can go to PeaceEconomy.org to go through the questions. Find the ecosystems, find the tools of care that we have for you. But also, there's CODEPINK.org.  So, both are necessary, both shining a light on and scratching power, so other people have the confidence to stand with you in saying, “No, I don't agree with that.” And then cultivating the conditions for peace.

And as in this transition moment and as we're sitting on the edge of the razor blade, it takes both. And so, at CODEPINK.org, you can sign up. We give you something to do every week to be engaging and exposing what's happening. Also, to just be smarter. You know, I’m so grateful for Pacifica and these radio shows because we are manipulated every day with mainstream media that is full of lies and propaganda that distort how we think. And that distortion is a distortion towards a violence that you don't want to be ingesting. It's our task to be lights in a violent world in all the ways that we can and to be standing as nonviolence, in nonviolence, because that is how we're going to have a future.

Stephanie: Thank you so much, Jodie Evans.

Everybody, you're here at Nonviolence Radio. We were just speaking with Jodie Evans. She's co-founder of CODEPINK, and she was here today to talk about the work of the peace movement and the peace economy. And she gave some wonderful insights and resources, especially going to PeaceEconomy.org and finding the Peace Economy Workbook, also exploring the work of CODEPINK and getting involved in any way possible.

Nonviolence Report

So, we're going to turn next to the Nonviolence Report with our very own Michael Nagler.

Michael, welcome back.

Michael: Thank you so much, Stephanie. I'm still kind of trying to absorb everything that Jodie shared with us. But on the way in to reporting on some news, I'd like to mention a resource and an event.

The resource is something called the Teach-In Network. It's a new initiative, and it's aimed at providing resources to support activism both on and off campuses. They're educating and organizing, to challenge what Martin Luther King called, “The madness of militarism,” which we are staring in the face of right now.

And this resource appealed to me because, I remembered back when we were desperately trying to mobilize some kind of effort against the Vietnam War, one of the real new institutions that came into being were these campus teach-ins. That they were a little bit like the base communities who we thought so highly of down in Central America. So, I'm really glad that we now have a network, the Teach-In Network.

And the event I wanted to mention is going to take place on October 5th, up in Canada, in Hamilton, Ontario. And it's a Gandhi Festival. And the interesting thing about it, it is the 32nd annual Gandhi Festival. So that is a venerable and valuable institution.

Now, here in the US, of course, many, many people are preoccupied with the horror that is unfolding in the Middle East and people who have cited over and over again the danger of a much, much wider conflagration being unleashed. But I don't really see anybody doing anything cogent to stop that development. But some people are.

And just last Thursday, on the 26th, two dozen activists were arrested in New York City. And the interesting thing is that they were both Palestinian and Jewish. And that is kind of the way of the future, to have Palestinian and Jewish people, acting together, risking together and so forth.

They were trying to – they blocked, actually, the route of Prime Minister Netanyahu's motorcade that Jodie Evans was just referring to. And the organizer for this event was a very good institution, organization, that we like very much, and that is Jewish Voice for Peace. And they said that the 25 people, who included a well-known actor, Rowan Blanchard, were arrested outside the UN headquarters in midtown Manhattan. Next door to which I used to work as a lab technician, but I guess that's kind of irrelevant.

So, they again have a very nice statement, and I'd like to share it with you. Quote, “As Jewish New Yorkers,” which was once my demographic, “As Jewish New Yorkers we vehemently condemn, Prime Minister Netanyahu's assault on Lebanon and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.” This is a statement from Jay Saper of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Continuing, “We will continue to raise our voices in dissent until the United States government stops arming Israel, and Palestinians are able to live with the full freedom and dignity they deserve. Our world leaders have done nothing to stop this genocidal administration.” This is a quote from Munir Marwan, who was a co-organizer of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

He goes on to say, “As plans to escalate the slaughter, as he,” (that is Netanyahu plans to escalate the slaughter), which he has done, “we must be the ones to stop him.” And even the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said – this is something we should all take to heart. He said, “When Gaza dies, all of humanity will die.” One hopes that that's an exaggeration, but I think that there's more than a kernel of truth.

If the world, with all its institutions that were supposed to be the buttresses of peace, if they fail to stop this blatant destruction of human life, and entire buildings, and neighborhoods, and communities, then what kind of power will we have to stop this onslaught?

Gustavo Petro goes on to say, “Those of us who have the power to sustain life speak without being paid attention to.” Well, I'm not sure that's entirely true. I think on some level, when the truth is uttered, when life is upheld on some level, everybody recognizes it. And something inside of us salutes it. So, that is what we need to identify and expand.

It's easy to point out the contrary. For example, on NPR, they recently pointed out that 20 years of war and untold deaths have not stopped the Taliban. In fact, I would say it's done the exact opposite.

Stephanie: So, one piece of news that I know of because I have, we both have a friend from Canada. And today, the day that we're recording this show, September 30th is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. And it's also called Orange Shirt Day.

So, all Canadians are called to wear orange shirts in remembrance of stripping away of the culture, freedom, and self-esteem experience by Indigenous children over generations. And it's a sign of humility and awareness and efforts at truth and reconciliation in Canada. And I think that those forces for truth and reconciliation can do a lot of good in our world. So, it is important to note when it's happening.

Now, back to you.

Michael: Thank you, Stephanie. I might just point out, listeners, you can't see this, but Stephanie has a good bit of orange on her shirt. It's the latest, nonviolence t-shirt, which is quite a beautiful one.

So, I was going on to quote some words by way of closing from, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem. His name is Munther Isaac. He’s a Palestinian and Christian. And about 20% of Palestine was Christian, I think, at one point. But that has now declined a lot.

But he was interviewed in a journal called The Christian Century, and he said the following. You'll see immediately why I'm using this as our closing quote. “Right now, my energy is focused on how we can end this apartheid using creative and nonviolent resistance. It may sound naive and out of touch to talk about nonviolence today as a Palestinian, given the intensity of violence we are subjected to. But I can't give up on my belief that the Jesus way is that of nonviolence.”

This reminds me of one of my favorite books by Keith Akers, “Nonviolence and Vegetarianism in early Christianity.” He goes on to say, antisemitism is real. And I want to leave us with his final observation.

“The Western world, or most of it, has not dealt with the problem of racism and supremacy, with confession, with humility. The West hasn't paid for it. We Palestinians paid for it instead. And we're still paying for the redemption, for the guilt, if you will, of antisemitism in Europe.” Let's address this.

Stephanie: Well, thank you so much for that report, Michael Nagler.

Michael: You’re very welcome. Stephanie.

Stephanie: So, you've been here listening to Nonviolence Radio. I'm Stephanie, that's Michael. We're from the Metta Center.

We want to thank our guest Jodie Evans, today, from CODEPINK. And PeaceEconomy.org. To Matt Watrous, Robin Watrous, Annie Hewitt, Sophia Pechaty, to Bryan Farrell over at Waging Nonviolence who helped syndicate the show. You can also find the show at NonviolenceRadio.org. To the stations that host us and play us, including KPCA, KWMR, and the Pacifica Network.

Thank you so much, to you, all of our listeners. Learn more about nonviolence at MettaCenter.org. And just anywhere you can find information about nonviolence, go for it. And until the next time, please take care of one another.