These are my notes and quotes from Part II of Healing Resistance by Kazu Haga. I wrote my key takeaways from the book for the subscribers of my Future of Conflict series.
Part II
Chapter 8
The Six Principles of Nonviolence
- Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
- The Beloved Community is the framework for the future.
- Attack forces of evil, not persons doing evil.
- Accept suffering for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal.
- Avoid internal violence of the spirit as well as external physical violence.
- The universe is on the side of justice.
Chapter 9: Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
With the first principle, Kingian Nonviolence firmly plants a flag on the side of a principled approach to nonviolence, as opposed to a simply tactical commitment. It is not just an effective strategy for political change—it is a moral imperative for social transformation.
We commit to practicing nonviolence in every interaction, in every moment, as best we can, because our goal is so much broader than passing a new law or winning a political campaign. Our goal is to repair harm, reconcile relationships, and move ever so slightly closer to Beloved Community.
Chapter 10: The Beloved Community is the framework for the future.
One of the hardest concepts to fully commit to is the idea that there is no one outside of Beloved Community. No one. Not the person who dresses differently than us, not the person who has hurt us the most, not the person who believes in a different God, or the person with different political beliefs.
Beloved Community includes the privileged and the marginalized, the oppressor and the oppressed—the prisoner and the prison guard, the rich and the poor. People of all genders and sexual orientations. In order for us to begin moving toward that world, we need to stop attacking any people as if they are the problem.
Chapter 11: Attack forces of evil, not persons doing evil.
I have a theory: when we understand people’s stories, then all of their actions—including the ways in which they hurt others—begin to make sense. This doesn’t justify their behavior; it doesn’t condone their actions. But when we can see why they did what they did, we can begin to empathize. I have heard countless stories from countless people—many of whom have committed gross acts of violence—and so far, this theory has held up 100 percent of the time.
Or take the case of Eric Casebolt, an officer in McKinney, Texas. In 2015, residents of an upper-middle-class neighborhood in McKinney called the police to complain about a pool party involving dozens of teenagers, many of them Black. When Casebolt showed up on the scene, all hell broke loose as he started yelling obscenities at the teens and ordering them around while pointing his baton at them. At one point, Casebolt grabbed a fifteen-year-old girl by her braids and threw her down on the ground and pulled out his gun and aimed it at another group of teenagers.
While nothing justifies his actions, again when you understand more of the backstory, it begins to make sense. The pool party was the third call that Casebolt received that day. His first call was to the scene of a suicide, where he had to console the widow of a man who had just killed himself by shooting himself in his head in front of his own children. Right after having to take photographs of the man’s body, Casebolt was called to another incident where he had to talk a girl down from killing herself in front of her family by jumping off a ledge. Those two incidents took an emotional toll, as they should. No one would want our police officers to be so disconnected from human emotion that witnessing such tragedies would have no impact on them. However, instead of being given counseling or time to take care of himself, Casebolt went right on to his next call of the day.
Who is really at fault here? Officer Casebolt, for letting his humanity get the best of him, or the institution of policing, which didn’t care enough about Casebolt’s mental health to even give him the rest of the day off? Do we blame Casebolt for acting outrageously after witnessing two tragedies, or do we blame the system of policing that instructs employees to “suck it up” and move on to the next case?
None of this is to say that there isn’t plenty of room for personal accountability. Not just room for it, but a necessity for it. If we are going to build Beloved Community, personal accountability for harm must be a part of that process. If you truly love someone, you would hold them accountable for the harm that they are causing. When people are acting out with violence, they are not at their best, and you would hold them accountable for the ways in which they are not showing up with full authenticity. You would work to bring out the best in that person. At its best, accountability is an act of love.
I believe that the process toward true accountability can only begin when the person who caused the harm can understand what brought them to the point in their lives where they did what they did and understand, own, and feel genuine remorse for the impact that their actions had on everyone that they touched. That remorse and ownership is a prerequisite for genuine accountability.
If I hurt somebody, then I lose a part of my humanity in that process. In order for me to heal that wound in myself, I need to understand the impact of my actions and feel the remorse. That remorse, as painful as it might be to feel, is like medicine—a necessary component in my own healing. Creating space for me to understand that is an act of loving accountability. It reminds me of the law of interdependence—that I cannot harm another without it somehow affecting me.
If we are attacking the person who caused the harm, it usually puts them on the defensive and actually does the opposite of what I just described. If we are busy accusing the person who caused the harm of being evil, of being monsters, of being criminals and murderers, there is a natural tendency for that person to build up a wall and defend themselves from those attacks. And in doing that, they are moving farther away from sitting with the harm that they caused and feeling remorse.
You can’t shame someone into transformation.
When people talk about “holding someone accountable,” the key word should not be accountable, but holding. What does it mean to hold someone? When people talk about holding people accountable, does that person feel held, or do they feel attacked and judged? Are they feeling opened up, or are they getting defensive?
Chapter 12: Accept suffering for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal.
This principle is about choosing to accept the risk that comes with putting ourselves in danger. If we stand up to oppression, chances are, we will have to suffer along the way. Accepting suffering at the onset gives us a different relation to those inevitable struggles and challenges. It gives us choices about how we experience the inevitable.
If we go into this work thinking that it will be easy, then when we experience suffering, we may resist it. The more we resist the suffering, the more we will internalize and resent it. Combating violence from external forces while cultivating internal violence from within our own hearts is fighting on too many fronts at once.
From the fall of 2011 to late spring of 2012, the Occupy movement was my whole life; it was all I did, all I thought about. I was in Occupy-related meetings almost every night. I was part of almost every major mobilization during Occupy Oakland. I saw its rise and fall and watched its swells and declines in momentum.
From what I witnessed, every time there was property destruction, every time the media had an opportunity to paint the movement as violent, the number of people who participated in our next mobilization decreased. Every. Single. Time.
I have seen this dynamic play out multiple times throughout the course of several movements. When nonviolent activists are attacked and are able to accept that suffering, the movement grows. When people use violent tactics to fight back, the movement shrinks.
Chapter 13: Avoid internal violence of the spirit as well as external physical violence.
“Internalized oppression” is when messages from oppressive systems and worldviews about our inferiority take root inside our own minds until we start believing in our inferiority. I’m never gonna be anything more than a criminal and a thug. Internal violence.
In addition to harmful beliefs, internal violence also manifests as negative self-talk.
- “I’m not good enough.”
- “I’m not pretty enough.”
- “I’m always going to be alone.”
- “I’m never going to be successful.”
- It manifests as emotions like despair and hopelessness.
- “Things are never going to get better.”
- “The world is only getting worse.”
- “We will never be able to create change.”
These things are usually rooted in unhealed trauma. So the work of nonviolence isn’t only about combating the violence “out there.” It is equally about doing the work of healing “in here,” so that we can release the spirit of violence that we have embodied in our own hearts.
Unknown origin:
Hating someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
From bell hooks The Will To Change:
The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead, patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.
Chapter 14 : The universe is on the side of justice.
from Theodore Parker, a nineteenth-century abolitionist and Unitarian minister:
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
Dr. King wrote, “Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of [people] willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.”
Years ago, [a] friend and fellow trainer told me he heard that Japanese companies build five-hundred-year business plans. He later met a Japanese businessman at a conference and asked him if this was true. Hearing this, the businessman laughed in his face. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “I’ve never heard of a business plan longer than 250 years!”
I sit back and watch the investments that our society makes into systems of violence. We invest in war, broken school systems, a broken prison system, guns, violent media, economic policies that perpetuate poverty, fossil fuels—a culture that isolates us and moves us further away from our true selves. We invest in all of these systems of violence, and when the universe gives us the return on those investments, and we see violence in our communities, we act like something is wrong with the universe.
Every time a young person is killed in the streets that is evidence that the universe is just. Every time a new war breaks out, there is another school shooting, a new species goes extinct, a hate crime is perpetrated, or there is another case of police violence, I see evidence that the universe is, indeed, just.
Violence doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. Everything we live with is nothing but a series of causes and conditions. Everything in this world exists because of something that came before it that gave rise to it. That is the history of conflict. As long as we invest in systems of violence, it is just that we get violent returns. That is the balance and order of the universe doing its thing.
What will happen when we invest in systems of peace? When we invest in our communities and invest in right relationships with each other and the earth? I believe the same balance and order of the universe will begin to give us those returns instead.
Nonviolence is an exploration of the impact of violence and compassion on the human experience and an attempt to understand the laws that govern them. If we invest in systems that harm human beings, cultures that isolate people, and worldviews that divide communities, we will move away from Beloved Community.
The universe doesn’t care if we reach Beloved Community or not. The universe doesn’t care if we fulfill our potential as a species.
It is up to us, as a species, to understand these laws so we can move toward Beloved Community.
Ankur Shah Delight: Community and Conflict 