Nonviolence 101; An Experience-based Manual

for Approaches, Methods, and Outcomes in Academic & Activist Organization

(Word version hyperlinked; pdf); Provisional Table of Contents — Suggestions Welcome.

In the hope that interchange of the growing number of course syllabi and study outlines on nonviolence might be of mutual benefit to activists and academics — encouraging university-level-competence in nonviolence classes & courses, we offer the following.  We see, grasp, and touch “nonviolence” as differing from “peace” — as ways to “peace”— and hope to enable and strengthen persons or people actively writing on nonviolent campaigns.  Our planetary challenge remains one of a widening poverty gap, despite liberation struggle for peace and justice, through Nonviolence words in all language; See below.  With this web site, we are also asking, as before concerning the International Journal of Nonviolence, for writers to freely email articles for potential inclusion in a college-entry-level (grad–undergrad) Nonviolence 101 Text Project.

Nonviolence means using force, power, and coercion to co-create cooperation responsibly, so as to heal and overcome damage from violence. In nonviolent contexts, power becomes an ability to effect mutual change for mutual benefit and responsibility, through nonviolent action and interdependence.  Nonviolent force prompts and facilitates power toward sustainable or self-reliant security and development.  Nonviolent power channels force and coercion toward reconciliation or a higher balance.  Nonviolent coercion combines conflictive use of force and power, for example, to facilitate access to housing, health, education, and employment opportunities — means or methods being consonant with ends for mutually-beneficial steadfast change.

Apartheid means discrimination, exercised in racial, religious, or state power, to hurt, maim, kill, exile, and torture.  The South African word apartheid, (pronounced “apart–hate” in English), describes discrimination rooted in British Commonwealth law; (as precedents for Ameri–Canadian–U.S.–Native Indian laws that virtually exterminated Ameri-Indians).  “Nonviolence” — a Jainist–Dravidian concept — arose chronologically from Southern African struggles led, e.g., by “Ba” & “Mo” Gandhi, living in a Judeo-Christian body politic, while employed by Muslims, in ashrams or communities guided by Jain, Buddhist, & Hindu cultural customs.  In other words, South African “nonviolence” surfaced etymologically during the early 1900s, historically, in struggle against apartheid in the planet’s polar source of gold, diamonds, and other heavy metals like uranium — “Nonviolence” symbolizing struggle against polarizing world poverty. 

Inspirational insights herein stem from near death experiences/NDEs, since early childhood; Even if blind from birth, humans share analogous NDEs — transcending belief or perspective.  On planetary levels, NDEs offer a common hope needed to overcome, as it were, collateral damage of “friendly fire” while energizing individual needs & rights.

For further options as to nonviolence in theory & action, locally and globally, (as well as a potential intro–college or university–level text), for what those such as Martin Luther King, Jr., have suggested should be required for all international insight, inquiry & practice — Please see also http://home.comcast.net/~apartheid101.

Nonviolence in World Languages