A talk on Nonviolence at Albright College by Frida Berrigan
April 14, 2004
I am so honored to be here. I am also daunted by the task in front of me. To speak about nonviolence right now seems like such a hard job.
You must be having such an intense year: To be so focused on violence and aggression all year long-- exploring its different facets in the classroom and with your peers, while all around you, all around us, lessons in violence and aggression- its expediencies and attractions, its pitfalls and criminalities, its costs and consequences- are being played our in real time on a global scale by our leadership and our nation.
In the year you have been involved in Gateway, our nation has spent $32 billion dollars on war in Iraq and another $8 billion in the hunt for Al- Qaeda in Afghanistan . 407 Americans have been killed in Iraq since you entered college and this intensive program in September. ( U.S. soldiers are dying at a rate of more than 6 a day. April is the bloodiest month since November when 82 Americans where killed…in this month so far, 78 soldiers have been killed). Thousands more soldiers have returned home physically wounded and psychologically traumatized. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have buried their dead. And more are dying every day.
I begin here, with this bleak picture, because I need to underscore that what you have done this year is so important, and to ask that you keep doing it. This year of attention to violence and aggression- all the emotions that has brought up—is needed. The world needs hearts that bleed, eyes that weep, but also minds that think and analyze, and hopefully your time of study has allowed you to tap into some of that…. Stay with it, keep feeling it, and do not shut it down when you close your books a few weeks from now.
Why? Because the work of nonviolence, the work of social and political change starts here. It starts with an intimate knowledge and clear-eyed understanding of what is wrong. It starts with study and learning, It starts with practice and training. We cannot act without knowledge and awareness. We cannot act unless our actions are grounded in an understanding of suffering and power.
I was invited to Albright to try and answer these questions:
Where do we go from here?
How do we confront and transform the violence in the world- whether it is far away in Iraq or Afghanistan or New York City- or close- in the way we treat our friends, family, neighbors as well as those who are different from us?
How do we pursue and build a nonviolent life?
How do we muster the hope and strength to do that- against all the odds?
I feel really humbled to be asked to try and answer these questions—because I do not speak from a pinnacle of experience. I have not achieved a nonviolent apex. There are people much more qualified to address these questions, who could bring more decades and lessons and insights to bear on the questions.
I hope that what I have to offer brings up questions and that we can find answers together.
In lieu of answers or blueprints, I offer you stories. I'll start with my own story- who I am and where I come from. After that I will tell the stories of three people who profoundly challenge and inspire me. I offer them because the lives and actions of these three people point the way towards a nonviolent and human approach to war, aggression and injustice. They provide a road map for us as we seek to be peace makers and justice seekers.
I am 30. I am a new aunt. My parents- Elizabeth McAlister and Phil Berrigan- founded the Jonah House community in Baltimore , MD more than 30 years ago and raised my brother and sister and I there. It was- and remains- a Christian community where members live simply, own no property, refuse to pay the taxes that fund war, do physical labor to support themselves, eat, pray and study together, support one another in acts of civil disobedience.
Three members of the community are now in prison. Gary is finishing up a six month jail sentence for an action at the School of the Americas- a terrorist training camp in the heart of Georgia, and two nuns Ardeth and Carol are six months into three and two year jail sentences that resulted from their citizen's inspection of a weapons of mass destruction site in Colorado- where illegal first strike nuclear weapons are housed.
My mom lives there. My father died there a year and a half ago. The community was formed in 1973, and named Jonah House after someone remarked that is God could use Jonah, a grouchy coward, to do her work, then there was hope that the rest of us could also be useful. Jonah House is a training center for activism and a place where hope and meaning are restored. It was also my home. The place where I grew up. It was a loving and unique environment for my brother and sister and I.
At some points twelve or thirteen people lived in our narrow three-story row house. My brother and I would bring home friends from school and have to explain who all the people were. All our clothes were second hand, which in our style driven middle school was a big no no. At one point this boy in my class said to me, “you must be really rich to not care what you look like.”
We were not rich at all. Not in money at least, but in so much else we were. Rich in love, rich in relationships, rich in history and culture. One of the first books our dad read to us was the autobiography of Mother Jones , the labor organizer. I remember identifying with the children of the striking miners who were sent to stay with supporters in other towns because there was no food in the striking towns and the parents were all trying to change what was happening in the mines.
Our neighborhood was poor. The community did a food distribution twice a week, dry goods from the food bank one day and fruits and vegetables and fish that we got from the wholesale food terminal another day. My sister and brother and I helped out-- Giving out the food, washing the fruits and veggies that we kept for our own use. We both spent summers at Catholic Workers and worked in homeless shelters.
When we were a little older, we would study the bible with Dad once a week. All the other night he would read to us, Oliver Twist , the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the Narnia Chronicles. We always tried to convince him to skip the Bible study, whatever book we were reading was much more interesting and we never had to work when we listened to stories. During the Bible study he would have one of us read the passage and then he would lead us in a half-hour discussion. What do you think Jesus meant by that? How can we- as little kids- live like Jesus lived? And we would struggle to wrap our young minds around whatever lesson he was trying to get across.
It was not until I was in college and writing a paper on Liberation Theology and the community of Soletiname in Nicaragua , where peasants engaged in heavy duty biblical scholarship and discussion asking each other those same questions, did I realize that dad had opened the Bible up to us. He contemporized it, politicized it, helped us see it as our own, when so many people are accustomed to just being told what it means and seeing it as the chronicle of the short and extraordinary life of an exceptional superhuman man to marvel at, worship and keep far away. We were challenged to answer questions, to put ourselves in the place of the bible characters and bring the stories to life in our own world today. All my biblical knowledge is drawn from the well of those hours of study with Dad.
Through all of these lessons, through conversation and study, through service and solidarity with the poor, we learned how U.S. addiction to militarism impoverishes the world and holds us hostage to the whims of the nuclear gang. But we also saw our parents and those we loved wrestling with it, trying to change it. They talked to us, solicited our opinions and thoughts, explained things to us, entertained our endless questions, and gave us the space to figure things out on our own. And it also helped that it was not just our parents, there were many other people available to us, who would share their perspectives, ideas, stories and lives with us.
When I hear the politicians and the pundits talk about how war is the only way, violence is the only response, I know they are wrong. I know that there is always another way. I was brought up in a community of people whose lives are dedicated to living that other way. Finding it, enacting it, living it, requires a daily exercise of will and imagination and faith and patience.
I learned early on that war is a failure of the imagination. Our imagination, our creativity and ability to will what is possible into the fullness of being—that is what makes us human. And humanity is the antidote to war.
No one embodies that humanity and that imagination more fully or beautifully than Amber Amundson , whose husband Craig- along with 183 others- were killed on 9/11 when American Airlines Boeing 757 plowed into the West Side of the Pentagon.
Amber was left a widow and the single mother of two children at 28 years old.
As you remember, the weeks following September 11 th were a time of national and international mourning, a time for an incredible outpouring of support and love for the victims and their families, the celebration of the heroism of firefighters, police officers and normal people who sacrificed their own lives to save others.
The weeks following September 11 th were also a time when our leaders began preparing for war. A nebulous, premature and ill-conceived war against a state that was open to diplomacy and not directly responsible for the attacks. A war of vengeance, pure and simple.
In response to this, Amber Amundson sat down with pen and paper and wrote a letter to President Bush .
My anguish [over my husband's death] is compounded exponentially by fear that his death will be used to justify new violence against other innocent victims.
I have heard angry rhetoric by some Americans, including many of our nation's leaders, who advise a heavy dose of revenge and punishment. To those leaders, I would like to make clear that my family and I take no comfort in your words of rage. If you choose to respond to this incomprehensible brutality by perpetuating violence against other innocent human beings, you may not do so in the name of justice for my husband. Your words and imminent acts of revenge only amplify our family's suffering, deny us the dignity of remembering our loved one in a way that would have made him proud, and mock his vision of America as a peacemaker in the world community.
We will no longer be able to see that we hold the light of Liberty if we ourselves are blinded by vengeance, anger, and fear. I ask our nation's leaders not to take the path that leads to more widespread hatreds - that make my husband's death just one more in an unending spiral of killing.
I call on our national leaders to find the courage to respond to this incomprehensible tragedy by breaking the cycle of violence. I call on them to marshal this great nation's skills and resources to lead a worldwide dialogue on freedom from terror and hate. I call on them to focus our strength to work for justice and peace around the globe. I ask them to unleash our country's immense energy to create a world in which compassion and forgiveness are possible.
I do not know how to begin making a better world: I do believe it must be done, and I believe it is our leaders' responsibility to find a way. I urge them to take up this challenge and respond to our nation's and my personal tragedy with a new beginning that gives us hope for a peaceful global community.
Bush and the leadership in Washington have not been listening. Two weeks after Amber sat down and wrote that letter, President Bush began dropping bombs on Afghanistan .
Since October 7 th the bombs have continued to fall in Afghanistan . Thousands of innocent civilians have been killed; tens of thousands have had to flee their homes. Osama bin Laden has not been captured, the drug trade is flourishing, Hamid Karzai, the handpicked president cannot leave the capital of Kabul for fear of attack, more than 10,000 U.S. troops continue to occupy the country, and the promised democracy and stability are far from being achieved.
But in December of 2001, Amber took foreign policy into her own hands. With other family members of 9/11 victims, she went to Afghanistan to be in solidarity with grieving families there, to mourn together, and to seek a path out of violence and revenge.
It is called imagination, it is called action, and it has born fruit.
With others who lost friends and family members of September 11 th , Amber helped form 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. The name was inspired by Martin Luther King's observation that “wars are poor chisels for carving peaceful tomorrows.” They assert that, “our grief is not a cry for war,” and are weaving community and change from their grief.
The organization is fashioning new chisels with which to carve peaceful tomorrows, pushing for alternatives to violence and vengeance. When our leaders do not hear them, they build the alternatives on their own. They have established a fund for civilian victims of the war in Afghanistan and taken many other concrete steps towards breaking the cycle of violence.
We see that same spirit of imagination, courage and forgiveness coming together in opposition to this brutal war in Iraq. As with the families of 9/11 victims, some of the strongest anti-war voices are those who have lost sons and daughters in this useless and costly military adventure.
Fernando Suarez de Solar has paid the highest price for “regime change” in Iraq. His son- Jesus Alberto Suarez de Solar Navarro was a Marine. Growing up, Jesus wanted to be a Marine so badly that his family moved from Mexico to California, so he could have the chance to join up.
Jesus was one of the first killed at the beginning of the war last year. He was killed not by the dreaded Republican guard or Saddam loyalists. He was killed by a U.S. cluster bomb.
Mr. Suarez de Solar is mourning the death of his son in a war he knows is wrong. It makes it even harder. He writes:
“The war began without the support of the UN, without the support of the American people, without the support of the world community—a war started by Mr Bush who lied to the American people and to the world community. Mr Bush insisted that Iraq was a threat to the US and the whole world and unfortunately many believed him and so the deaths began.
“And on March 27 a young Mexican boy fell, full of hopes and dreams, deceived by the government, a good boy who had more important work ahead, a son to love, raise and educate.
“Yes, Jesus Alberto Suarez de Solar Navarro, the Aztec Warrior, died because of the negligence of the US military command in Iraq. A US cluster bomb had been dropped the night before but Delta Company was not advised and so the tragedy took place and two hours passed before helicopters could evacuate him.
Before Christmas of last year Mr. Suarez de Solar took his grief to Iraq, on a delegation with other military families who opposed the war. He went to see where his son died:
“On December 4 th I found myself in the exact place where my Aztec Warrior fell. I placed a crucifix, said a prayer, and gathered the earth where his blood ran.”
But he also went to understand the people his son thought he was coming to liberate. He visited schools and hospitals and spent time with Iraqis living in the community where Jesus died.
“During my time in Iraq I could… witness as I visited the hospitals and shortages of medicine the lack of economic assistance provided by the Bush administration.
“And in the schools I could see that the children are eager to learn but do not have what they need to get ahead and the Bush administration offers them nothing. I could feel it in the streets of Baghdad where shoeless children whose parents died in the war offered me a smile in exchange for a friendly word, a kiss in exchange for letters from American children.
“In short, I could see that the liberation of the Iraqi people has cost them a great deal and it has cost the US as well.
Fernando Suarez de Solar sees his family and Iraqi families tied together by mourning, by the scars of war which heal so slowly, by hopes for a different future. He is now committed to bridging the divide between Iraqi and American, between solider and civilian, between war hero and war victim. Like the 9/11 families for peaceful tomorrows, he is transforming his grief into constructive action- seeking to ensure that his grandson will grow up in a different world, and not see his manhood and pride tied to the marine uniform. Fernando Suarez de Solar has formed an organization called Proyecto Guerrero Azteca (Aztec Warrior Project) with a two fold mission: raising money for medical supplies for Iraqi hospitals and educating high-school age Latino/as to the lies told by military recruiters and helping them find alternatives ways to fund college educations.
Amber Amundson and Fernando Suarez de Solar are ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary loss and displayed extraordinary courage, love, imagination and solidarity. Our history is full of people just like them. But their stories are curiously absent from our history books.
We learn war. The war of the roses. The war of 1812. The war between the states. The war to end all wars. The explanation of each war follows a set formula.
a problem arose between two groups. They had a war, problem solved.
No discussion of how wars build and feed on one another. No discussion of how each war comes with a set of costs, and fail to deliver the promised solution.
How we learn our history is important. Why we learn our history is important. There is an old saying,” a people who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.” And that is what the United States has done throughout its history.
Our history- the history of the United States- is more than a collection of dates that must be regurgitated for the big final exam. Our history is the story of struggle between people and power, and if we look back, we find that the people have won lots of times. We can mine our history for strategies and lessons for confronting and changing power, nonviolently….. But we have to know it first.
The story of Rosa Parks is a good example. What do we know about her? She was Black. She lived in Montgomery, Alabama. One day she was tired and sat in the white section of the bus on the way home from work. She was arrested. They changed the law and integrated the buses. Hurray from tired Rosa Parks- the mother of the civil rights movement.
This is not history. This is a story. The way I learned about Rosa Parks—her decision to act is portrayed as an isolated and spontaneous whim that catalyzed great change. The lesson seems to be that if any of us suddenly got the urge to do something equally heroic, at the magical right moment, that would be great. But we could wait our whole lives for that ideal moment.
The real Rosa Parks story can be taught as a classic social change story. We do not have to be black and living in Jim Crow Alabama to lean something applicable and empowering here.
Who was Rosa Parks?
She was part of a movement and a community.
Before refusing to give up her bus seat, Parks had spent twelve years helping lead the local NAACP chapter, along with union activist E.D. Nixon, from the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
She was a trained and schooled activist.
The summer before, Parks had attended a ten-day training session at the Highlander Center- an important labor and civil rights organizing school in Tennessee. There she met an older generation of civil rights activists and discussed the recent Supreme Court decision banning "separate-but-equal" schools.
She was educated in the context and history of the struggle for civil rights.
During this period of involvement and education, Parks had become familiar with previous challenges to segregation:
• Another Montgomery bus boycott, fifty years earlier, successfully eased some restrictions;
• a bus boycott in Baton Rouge won limited gains two years before Parks was arrested;
• and the previous spring, a young Montgomery woman had also refused to move to the back of the bus, causing the NAACP to consider a legal challenge until it turned out that she was unmarried and pregnant, and therefore a poor symbol for a campaign.
So when she sat down in the front of the city bus, she sat down with all this knowledge and training, and with an understanding that she was part of a continuum of action and struggle, and part of a community dedicated to equal rights for black Americans.
This does not diminish the power and historical importance of her refusal to give up her seat. In fact it amplifies the power and important of her actions, by reminding us that this tremendously consequential act might never have taken place without all the humble and frustrating work that she and others did earlier on. And that her initial step of getting involved was just as courageous and critical as her choice on the bus that all of us have heard about. And knowing that can inspire all of us- to take those initial steps, become part of a movement and community, become a trained and schooled activist, educated in the context and history of the struggle for change.
While her action was spontaneous, it was not random. Nor was what happened afterwards. The Montgomery bus boycott that followed Rosa Parks' arrest went on for almost a year. Almost a full year of walking and carpooling and bicycling by tens of thousands of black Montgomerians. The boycott cost the city millions of dollars and demonstrated the unity and discipline and tenacity of the black community. They could not not change the law.
We learn from the story of Rosa Parks that change does not come all at once. It does not happen out of a single isolated action. It comes out of community and solidarity. It builds over time. It lasts and it works.
The injustice, the violence, the suffering in the world is huge. Each of us is small, but we are called to right injustice, end violence, alleviate suffering. No one of us can do that alone, and even all together we cannot accomplish it tomorrow. But, together our small, human scale efforts build and coalesce into something meaningful and transformative. It is not a task, it is a life's work. It is not a job, it is what it means to be human. Let us continue it.
I want to end with a poem by Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet. It is from The Cure at Troy:
Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.
The innocent in gaols
Beat their bars together.
A hunger-strikers father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.
History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then once in a lifetime
The longed for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self revealing
Double take of feeling
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.