New Clear Vision

Preparing to Sail to Gaza

by Kathy Kelly

Last week, newly-arrived in Athens as part of the US Boat to Gaza project, our team of activists gathered for nonviolence training.  We are here to sail to Gaza, in defiance of an Israeli naval blockade, in our ship, “The Audacity of Hope.” Our team, and nine other ships’ crews from countries around the world, want Israel to end its lethal blockade of Gaza by letting our crews through to shore to meet with Gazans.  The US ship will bring over 3,000 letters of support to a population suffering its fifth continuous decade of de facto occupation, now in the form of a military blockade controlling Gaza’s sea and sky, punctuated by frequent deadly military incursions, that has starved Gaza’s economy and people to the exact level of cruelty considered acceptable to the domestic population of our own United States, Israel’s staunchest ally. (more…)

Building Trust and Community Through Theatrical Programs

by Diane Lefer

“Theatre Festival!” said the taxi driver. “Spending money on theatre when people don’t have food to eat! What for?”

That’s what I hoped to find out from May 20-30 in Barrancabermeja, Colombia where I would offer a series of writing workshops and seek to answer questions of my own: How could theatre contribute to peace in a country where the armed conflict has gone on for six decades? How did the violence come to an end in this particular city — center of the country’s oil industry, once the site of battles pitting guerrilla forces against the Colombian army, and paramilitary death squads against civilians?

What did it mean to hold an International Theatre Festival for Peace when till 2010, during the eight years of the Uribe administration, anyone who talked about peace or a political solution to the country’s woes risked being called a terrorist — a label that could target you for assassination? (more…)

What Nuclear Weapons Teach Us About Ourselves

by David Krieger

Nuclear weapons are the most fearsome and destructive killing devices yet created by the human species.  They have the capacity to destroy cities, countries, and civilization.  Yet, although these weapons give rise to some concern and worry, most humans on the planet are complacent about the inherent dangers of these weapons.

It is worth exploring what our seeming indifference toward these weapons of mass annihilation teaches us about ourselves, and how we might remedy our malaise. (more…)

Sowing the Seeds of Planetary Nonviolence

by Winslow Myers

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” — Rumi, circa 1250 A.D.

Keeping the biggest possible picture in mind, paradoxically, may give us the best lens through which to focus clearly upon the messy details of our lives at every level — internationally, nationally, locally, even personally.

How big a picture? Try: the whole earth and everything and everyone on it, through hundreds of millions of years of time.

What can this abstract immensity have to do with our own lives? More than we think, because we really are a product of the changes the earth has undergone over eons and we are totally subject to the rules that dictated those changes. By rules we mean big processes, ones we are still trying to fully understand. Processes like evolution itself. (more…)

Finding a Path to Cultural, Ecological, and Economic Transformation

by Jan Lundberg

Popular protest against rulers in many parts of Africa and Asia has spread faster than most anyone would have dared hope. Ferment in other countries may well materialize and mount, including the U.S. However, while the recent uprisings have potential and are well stoked by rampant oppression and greed, we are no longer in a 19th or 20th century set of social or ecological conditions. The attainment of peace and prosperity can no longer be fully addressed with revolutions or social movements. The decades of economic growth from cheap oil — producing wealth for some, not bringing peace — cannot be replicated.

The common people have always just wanted peace and prosperity, but are pushed beyond a certain point by relentless opportunists seizing greater power. This results in eventual revolt, but new immutable factors in social change include the deteriorating health of the biosphere, cultural breakdown, and economic collapse. (more…)

The Evolution Will Not Be Scientized

by Michael N. Nagler

The outbreak of democratic aspirations in Egypt, which was relatively nonviolent — and successful — was something of a triumph of the human spirit. We could use the boost. The human spirit is under attack not just in despotic regimes from Burma to Bahrain but right here in our own society. Our way of doing it may be subtler, but it’s no less dangerous for that reason. Possibly more so. Think of last year’s 5-4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court (Citizens United v. FEC) that granted corporations the status of human persons.

We should be very glad that citizens’ groups are organizing to reverse this decision, like the Environmental and Social Rights Amendment, now before the House of Representatives as House Res. 156. But that decision did not come from nowhere (any more than the Egyptian uprising, for that matter). It was the logical, inevitable outcome of a deep cultural trend that has been pushing its way into our consciousness and taking over our worldview at least since the industrial revolution. (more…)

The More Things Change…

by Randall Amster

I recently found some old writings of mine from the 1990s. When I began to look through them, I had a sudden sense of foreshadowing — or, perhaps more to the point — postshadowing. While my capacity to express certain ideas has (hopefully) evolved in the ensuing years, I was struck by how similar today’s issues remain to those uppermost in my mind in those halcyon days before 9/11, perpetual war, climatic catastrophes, economic meltdown, and the rest of the “new normal” that has taken hold in the past decade.

To illustrate, I’d like to share one of these prior pieces, this one from 1999. I’ve resisted the temptation to clean up the writing or reword things to sound more sophisticated or up-to-date, instead leaving the text as it was produced a dozen years ago. (more…)