Stop your violence now !

Martin Luther King Jr

My Heroes

Gautama Buddha

Mahatma Gandhi

Morihei Ueshiba

Martin Luther King Jr.

it is possible to bring about peace

peace guard

Banksy

passive non-violent resistance

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience. King has become a national icon in the history of American progressivism.

With assistance from the Quaker group the American Friends Service Committee, and inspired by Gandhi's success with non-violent activism, King visited Gandhi's birthplace in India in 1959. The trip to India affected King in a profound way, deepening his understanding of non-violent resistance and his commitment to America's struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation."

African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin had studied Gandhi's teachings. Rustin counseled King to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence, served as King's main advisor and mentor throughout his early activism, and was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Rustin's open homosexuality, support of democratic socialism, and his former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself from Rustin. (read more)

Hunger Strike Los Alamos 2012

Hunger Strike Los Alamos 2012 - YouTube

Why do we still have nuclear weapons on high alert nearly 25 years after the end of the Cold War? Why are Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and seven other facilities in the nuclear weapons complex still engaged in research and production of nuclear weapons? Isn't it absurd? To protest our national investment in these genocidal weapons, Alaric Balibrera is staging a hunger strike beginning July 16th, (anniversary of the first detonation at Trinity site), through and beyond August 3-6, in concert with Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemorative events and direct action scheduled in Santa Fe in Los Alamos, New Mexico. For more info, go to www.nukefreenow.org . Also on FaceBook under "Hunger Strike Los Alamos August 2012".

A World Without Armies

"Advocating Practical Steps Towards a Lasting Peace"

A World Without Armies

From a series of workshops and a traveling exhibition featuring artwork from school children in Nepal, Poland, Germany, Italy, Costa Rica, the United States, and other countries.

What we must learn is how to deal with that conflict without resorting to violence. At this beginning of the twenty-first century, we are being called upon to face the needs of humanity, in all its tragic urgency. And we must, at the same time, face up to the requirements of the species: this century shall be peaceful or shall not be at all.

— Rodrigo Carazo, President of Costa Rica, 1978-1982

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A World Without Armies - Imagine a world without war

"We will bring forth clear and positive messages on demilitarization based on rigorous studies, political experiences, and individual witness and testimony."

A Letter to Participants of the Global Alliance Conference

August 2009
Dear Colleagues of Peace,

Greetings from the U.S. chapter of A World Without Armies! We deeply appreciate your work for peace in the world and peace with the earth. Together with three other organizations, we co-sponsored the First Conference of Women for the Abolition of Armies in Central America by 2020, which was held at the Costa Rican Ministry of Culture and the Universidad de Cooperacion Internacional in San José in 2007. In order to achieve our common goal, our next step is to develop academic studies on the demilitarization potential of every nation. We need to understand the positive elements, challenges, and obstacles for reducing and abolishing military forces in each nation. We need to develop strategies and build concrete processes. It would be effective if people and organizations that are committed to do the work were all connected and collaborating domestically and internationally. We want to see a surge of a movement for demilitarization worldwide.

Your ideas, suggestions, and action reports on demilitarization would be valuable to all those who are concerned. We would like to learn from you, collaborate with you, and share our experience with you. Also, we would like to post some of the communications and photographs from you on our website, www.aworldwithoutarmies.org. Please write to us and we will write to you.

With best wishes,
Kazuaki Tanahashi, Director (see below)
Edie Hartshorne, Co-director
Catherine Margerin, Representative to the Global Alliance Conference

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METHODS

• We organize and sponsor peace and reconciliation programs around the world.

• We fund scholars in political science, peace studies, and related fields who are undertaking research on the demilitarization potential of nations.

• We promote Courageous Conversations--friendly and non-polarized discussions that explore the need and steps for creating a world without war.

• We host the Costa Rica Initiative--a women’s initiative for A Central America Without Armies.

• PROJECTS IN PROGRESS SINCE 2002

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Gallery: Imagining Peace: International Children's Art Project

A series of workshops and a traveling exhibition featuring artwork from school children in Nepal, Poland, Germany, Italy, Costa Rica, the United States, and other countries.

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Kazuaki Tanahashi

Kazuaki Tanahashi, Director of A World Without Armies, born and trained in Japan and active in the United States since 1977, has had solo exhibitions of his calligraphic paintings internationally. He has taught East Asian calligraphy at eight international conferences of calligraphy and lettering arts. Also a peace and environmental worker for decades, he is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science.

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i met the walrus

Non Violent Direct Action

Many years ago in the days of the Reagan presidency in the United States. When Thatcher was the Prime Minister here in the UK. Reagan began talking about fighting a “limited nuclear war in Europe” arrangements began to be made to site cruise weapons, with nuclear warheads in the 141 US military installations in the UK. These weapons were highly mobile and could be launched from a truck.

Many of us in the UK were appalled, there could never be a limited nuclear attack, the fall out would surely pollute many areas of Europe besides which if the weapons were launched from the UK where would the Russians direct their counter attack? Was Britain really going to be used as a missile carrier for the US? Did we in the UK want weapons that we had no control over deployed here?

My answer was Hell No! Not if I could do anything about it! I joined CND and quickly became secretary for my local group, we demonstrated, marched and sang, a group set up a peace camp at Greenham Common, which was not far from where I lived, the camp, for various reasons quickly became a women only camp and I decided that I wanted to take my protest against US cruise weapons being deployed in the UK a stage further. With the support of my local CND group I took my eighteen month old son to live at Greenham Common Peace camp.

I was here that I learned about Non Violent Direct Action, we broke into the base regularly, held picnics on the silos that were built and ready for the weapons, we held a full exorcism ceremony in the base one night, common land was once open to all, to gather firewood or to put animals to graze but was fenced off and sold in the 1820’s and is said to be cursed because of this:

They hang the man and flog the woman

That steals the goose from the common

But let the greater criminal loose

That steals the common from the goose

We held a Dragon Festival, each CND group made a section of the dragons tail and I can remember watching as the very long dragons tail, with messages of hope and peace was carried past. That day the women who lived at the camp wandered through the demonstrators and, as we chatted, invited women who we thought could be trusted to a meeting in the huge tent we had hired.

At the meeting women were asked if they wanted to come into the base, were told that they would be arrested, of the rough handling they could expect from the police if they were to come in with us. The point that we were making was that the bases were not secure and that if we as a bunch of housewives could get in, what could trained and equipped people do there? Women who decided they did want to be involved could identify the peace camp women who would take them in – we would be carrying a bucket and a pair of marigolds!

Thatcher’s government were determined not to be embarrassed by a group of women so they bought in the West Highland Regiment and posted soldiers every twenty feet on the inside of the perimeter fence, there was concern as to whether the soldiers would actually shoot at us, So it had been one of my tasks, previously, to talk to the soldiers and see which way the wind blew, I had great fun walking the perimeter fence chatting to the soldiers and was enormously relieved that the answer to my question “Will you shoot at us?” had always been that a British soldier would never shoot at a British woman on British soil.

A place had been chosen to enter the camp, it was several miles away but as the break in to the camp was to be late at night we had time to make our way there. We left the meeting with our buckets and marigolds and women followed us out and into the sunshine. A helicopter buzzed us but we were just women on latrine duty, having a clean up, as women do, the soldiers were still there but relaxed, the festival atmosphere of the day, colourful banners, singing and the sunshine had left a mellowness in the air.

We made our way around the fence to the blue gate where we were to gather and wait until dark. The camp at the blue gate was more secluded, further into the woods than the other gates and less easy for the police or soldiers to watch.

It grew dark and quiet; women around the campfire sang peace songs and blessings to Mother Earth. Finally, it was time I was to bring my group, quietly we were guided to our waiting place in the wood, very close to the fence, the aim was to take as many women in as we could that night so we waited again as other women were brought in.

Four women who each had a pair of bolt cutters were given the task of cutting a line in the fence, to make a square hole as quickly as possible. As soon as they emerged from the woods the soldier there raised the alarm.

Razor wire had been laid on the ground inside the fence so women had to clamber through the fence up through the razor wire and out into the air base. I climbed through the hole and was helped through the razor wire and turned to help other women through. Pinkie, a woman who lived at the camp was heavily pregnant, her belly filled the circle of razor wire and she froze, without thinking I turned to the soldier and said “Help her she’s pregnant” and to my amazement he lifted her out of the wire into the base. Many more women followed her through.

By this time there were helicopters, lights, shouting and the Ministry of Defence police arrived. However, in this confusion our plan was clear and we had another roll of razor wire to get through. We ran to it and threw a piece of carpet over, women helped others over as quickly as we could and we ran again, to the runway our destination. Paint and brushes were produced women painted the runway with signs and symbols as evidence of our entry.

Eighty women broke into Greenham Common air base that night, most of whom had never done anything remotely criminal in their lives before, we were rounded up by the MOD police and taken to their station where our names were taken and questions were asked, finally as it was getting light we were taken to a remote gate at the air base and released.

This incident was never reported in the press.

Times have moved on, and oh how innocent those far off days now seem, now we are more fragmented, there is so much to protest about, sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin, true we have the internet now, however people are more brainwashed, happier to close themselves off, stay at home and watch the TV.

Here in the UK the government are about to bring in all sorts of measures that will affect peoples lives, we are in huge debt because the government gave all our money to the banks. Inflation is high, food and energy prices, already high are set to rise again. Wages are frozen and redundancies threatened. Perhaps it is time for people to stand up, we are certainly being pushed and pushed again.

Non Violent Direct Action is not peaceful protest; it is about taking our protest to our own individual limitations what ever they may be. Non Violent yes, but realising that the forces you may come against will not be non violent, they will be aggressive, armed this time with pepper spray, tazers and guns and we will be taking them along with ourselves to the limit where ever that may be.

It’s not time for action yet, but it is time to think about what actions we are prepared to take, what our own personal limits are. How far we will go?

For action there must be………….

Give...and ye shall receive

(say this and become powerful)


"I want to help you...

you just tell me what you need...

and I'll be happy to do it"

joker

A buddhist walks up to a

hot dog vendor and says...

make me one with everything

Hair

"Long Beautiful Hair"

Burning Man

Let's be Peace-Makers

In these past ten years or so we in Ireland, North and South, have been enjoying a stable and hopefully lasting peace. The thirty years of conflict, bloodshed and loss of life are more or less over. (It ended in the early to mid-nineties of the last century) Yet, as peace-makers we can never become too complacent, because there is much hatred and bitterness North of our border. Now, I am not saying for a minute that our brothers and sisters in the North of Ireland have a monopoly of these two vices - far from it. I readily admit that there is not a little hatred and bitterness in the hearts of some South of the border. However, statistics show that the North of Ireland is an extremely racist country. A report recently declared that some 20 or so Romanian people of the Roma ethnic minority had to flee back to their homeland because they had literally been burnt out of their homes. I am old enough to remember such happening in the Catholic areas of the North of Ireland in the early to mid 1960s. So, all people of good will, North and South of the border, and, indeed, all people of good will everywhere must be peace-makers with a deep compassion for all our fellow human beings! There is too much conflict in the world today - and there probably always was - but in these more enlightened days let's be conflict breakers or conflict busters.

Sadly religions of all hues have been more often than not repositories, and indeed often promoters, of hate and bitterness. Anywhere in the world where there is inter-national and indeed intra-national war oftentimes religion or interpretations of that phenomenon lie at its heart. We have to go beyond religion and find a spiritual ground or baseline - the only solid foundation for intra and inter-national peace. With these thoughts in mind I offer here some words from the wonderful Dalai Lama on the matter of the difference between Religion and Spirituality:

I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. Religion I take to be concerned with belief in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another--an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of meta-physical or philosophical reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or hell. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual, prayers and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit--such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, which bring happiness to both self and others.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
From "The Pocket Dalai Lama," edited by Mary Craig, 2002. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Boston, www.shambhala.com.

Be Here Now

Do not dwell in the past

do not dream of the future

concentrate the mind on the present moment

...Buddha...

A Little Bit of Wisdom

The right time to show your good character is when you are pestered by somebody weaker than you.

-Buddha

The real power

Your salvation rests in.......

Non-violent.......non-participation..........non-cooperation.

It's time to change the world

I know how to change the world.

Mahatma Gandhi changed the world...........
..............with non-violent, non-cooperation, non-participation.

It could work for us too.