Practicing Nonviolence, Joining the Movement

By Rev. John Dear

Beginning on September 21st, International Peace Day, a week of protests, rallies and marches called “Campaign Nonviolence” will start across the nation making the connections between the climate crisis, war, poverty, and the epidemic of violence.

There will be over 160 public marches and actions in every state, as thousands of ordinary Americans speak out against environmental destruction, ongoing war, military spending, and poverty, and call for a new culture of peace with justice based on Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of active and powerful nonviolence.

This is historic! For the first time in decades, people are connecting the dots, making the links between the pressing issues of our time, taking to the streets in a groundswell of coalitions, demanding change on all fronts and invoking the visionary nonviolence of Dr. King as a way forward for our country and the world.

In Salt Lake City, they’re gathering to rally for nuclear disarmament and the use of those funds for environmental cleanup. In Sarasota, they’re marching for immigrants, low-wage workers, and an end to U.S. war-making. In Chicago and Wilmington, they’re marching against gun violence in our inner cities. In Bangor, Maine, they’re hosting an “End the Violence” rally.

In Santa Fe, a thousand people will march against climate change and for new just environmental policies. In Wisconsin, they’ll be vigiling against U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen. Peace vigils will be held from Honolulu to Boise to New Orleans to Buffalo to Washington, D.C. demanding an end to our war-making and the waste of billions of dollars for weapons instead of human needs.

The list of events is too long to mention. At www.campaignnonviolence.org, you can see for yourself the groundswell of action.

Most people agree, as one government official put it recently, that “the world is a mess.” But most Americans also believe that the government is broken, that our leaders are failing us. Knowing that change comes historically from bottom up grassroots movements, ordinary Americans are taking to the streets to demand a more just and nonviolent society. They represent the millions of Americans across every walk of life who are fed up—from Los Angeles to Ferguson to New York—who want something better.

With Campaign Nonviolence, people are calling for deep cuts in the bloated U.S. military budget and the abolition of nuclear weapons and drones, and the reallocation of those enormous funds for food, housing, jobs, and better schools.  They are marching for fair wages, new immigration policies, reforms for our criminal justice and prison systems.  They are taking to the streets for an aggressive fight against catastrophic climate change by funding renewable alternatives to fossil fuels, such as solar and wind, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, cleaning up of our water, land and air, and signing an international treaty for rapid, verifiable action to reverse climate change.

Most of all, they want to build a culture of peace and nonviolence.  As we move closer to the brink of global catastrophe through ongoing war, extreme poverty and climate change, creative nonviolence is becoming the only sane, rational, intelligent choice. As I wrote in my new book, The Nonviolent Life, nonviolence is our future, and it’s time we all become people of nonviolence. (Please get a copy of The Nonviolent Life and deepen your own journey of nonviolence!)

Around the nation, people are on the move. They are meeting, organizing, demonstrating, speaking out against U.S. violence, corporate greed, war-making and destructive environmental policies with the power of active nonviolence in pursuit of a wiser, more humane country and world.

We want a more just and nonviolent nation, Dr. King said throughout his life. More and more Americans agree, and are about to take to the streets to say so. It’s time our politicians sit up and join them.

Nobel Peace Prize nominee Rev. John Dear is a coordinator of www.campaignnonviolence.org and the author of 30 books including most recently, The Nonviolent Life. See: www.johndear.org