End U.S. Addiction to Killing!
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 5 Mar 2018
James Albertini | Malu ‘Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action – TRANSCEND Media Service
27 Feb 2018 – The latest school shooting in Parkland, Florida is not unrelated to U.S. ongoing wars in multiple countries and the increasing threat of global nuclear annihilation. The U.S. is a killing society that glamorizes violence and appears to put more value on the right to own an assault weapon than the lives of children.
NO MORE
The U.S. empire has become a culture of mass violence that has been building layer upon layer, from the massacres of Native Americans, the killing of unarmed African Americans, to the millions killed in wars for resources disguised as freedom and democracy. Now the chickens are coming home to roost with the killing of our own children. More killing and more weapons of war are put forward as the solution to killing. The U.S. has become a completely militarized society. Look at the size of the U.S. military budget. Look at our militarized police foreces. Look at U.S. gun ownership compared to the rest of the world. Signs of military worship are everywhere – at every sporting event, special discounts at stores, even in places of worship and prayer. All of this reflects a very deep societal mental illness – an addiction to killing.
It’s time that we adults listen to the grieving children of Parkland and the world. They are showing us a way forward. Together, we need to join our voices to stop the killing, at home and abroad. Never underestimate the power of nonviolent action. Draw from movements for social change all over the world. Stand with our youth and give each other encouragement to continue and never give up. That’s how we build a world of justice, peace, and security for all. Stand up and keep standing!
Love One Another!
- Mourn all victims of violence
- Reject war as a solution
- Defend civil liberties.
- Ground the Drones! Say No to War!
- Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hawaiian, etc.
- Seek peace by peaceful means through justice in Hawai’i and around the world.
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James Albertini is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment, and director of Malu ‘Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action – P.O. Box 489 Kurtistown, Hawai’i 96760. Phone (+ 808) 966-7622 Email: ja@malu-aina.org Website: http://www.malu-aina.org/
March 9, 2018 Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet — 859th week – Fridays 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office
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Reading James Albertini I have tjhe impression news of the UK don’t reach him. I’d like to suggest he spends a couple of months in London (even just a couple of weeks) and reads the Police news, crime news every single day of his stay.
Americans are the same as people of other nationalities. Crimes are more frequent in the US because weapons are easier to buy than in other countries. When an American politicians – usually the Mayor of New York – decides to decrease crime in America, crime increases in the UK, Mexico, Peru, Spain, etc. Why? because the politicians will njever oppose his supporters, the arms lobby, so, instead of closing down weapon factories, he arranges expoort deals for them.
The world will get more and more violent until the day comes when people realize that it is weapons that kill. If the UN voted for the abolition of Armed Forces, (or Legal Killing) weapon manufacturers will cease existing and there would be no need to sell the surplus product to civilians. As it is, weapon manufacturers have no option other than look for business wherever they can.
Politicians also have no option than abet the Arms Trade, by promoting the love of violence, via toys, books, magazines, films, video games, real games (Pain Ball), etc. If they didn’t do this, where will they fing young men and women willing to become paid assassins by joining the Armed Forces?
NOn-MILITARIZATION of the planert is the ONLY solution.
Dear Alberto,
Yes! Put arms manufacturers out of business. You made it very clear. Arms manufacturers plus governments and gun lobbyists = the killing machine. Please see my response to James Albertini.
I was happy an inspired to read James Albertini’s very important article. I would only add that the addiction to killing (although deeply American) is more an addiction of the power brokers than of the average American citizen. And the power brokers are more addicted to power, so they delegate the killing to the military. I completely embrace Abertini’s points for breaking the addiction and would add that we need to directly engage with the power brokers in our one common denominator, our humanity.
I’m including an article about Daryl Davis, a unique individual who has befriended members of the KKK and persuaded dozens of them to terminate their memberships. Its an extraordinary story and a very powerful approach a world of non-violence.
DARYL DAVIS
Dispatch
An African American Confronts the Klan in Accidental Courtesy
Daryl Davis has a startling method for converting racists: he befriends them.
Kenneth R. Morefield| March 24, 2016
Image: Courtesy of Sound & Vision
When someone Daryl Davis has befriended leaves the Ku Klux Klan, he often gives Davis the robe he wore as a member of that group. Over the years, Davis, by his own account, has amassed dozens of these retired jerseys of hate. Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America, which premiered this week at SXSW, chronicles Davis’s attempts to impact America by changing the hearts and minds of one racist at a time.
Davis goes to Klan rallies. He has invited Klansmen to his home and visited them. He calls some of them “friend” even as they call him inferior. In one moving segment, the film recounts how Davis met the daughters of an incarcerated Klan member at the airport and drove them to the prison so that they could visit their father. Eventually the family noticed that none of the man’s Klan colleagues were serving or loving them as much as Davis was. Their ideology of hate collapsed in the face of undeserved compassion.
“When something bothers me, I try to learn about it,” “I never set out to convert anyone,” he says in the film. Through a mix of diplomacy and Socratic questioning, he will sometimes see a racist begin to think about his ideology rather than simply proclaim it. Eventually, “they end up converting themselves.”
Davis asked the man why, as a Christian, he burnt the cross. Wasn’t that sacrilegious? “Sometimes, at a rally, it was a symbol of purity and meant to light the way for Jesus’ return. “My God lights the way for me, not the other way around,” Davis replied. Not everyone admires Davis’s methodology. In one of Accidental Courtesy’s most complex scenes, Davis is confronted by a trio of African American community activists at a Baltimore establishment. They denigrate his work, questioning whether it does anything to confront the infrastructure of racism or help those who are suffering under it. In a rare instance of escalating rhetorical provocation, Davis calls them “ignorant.” Their leader refuses to shake hands.
Davis was challenged about his treatment of the Baltimore activists at the premiere’s Q&A session, but he refused to back down or be conciliatory. In response to an accusation that he showed more deference to members of the KKK than to the African Americans who challenged his methods, he said, “You have to admit, I sat down there, I listened to Tom Robb, I listened to Frank Ancona, I listened to the head of the National Nazi party, Jeff Schoep. I let them talk and make all their ignorant statements before I said anything. I let [the African American activists in the film] make all their ignorant statements, also. I sat there, and I listened. But when it was my turn to talk, who got up and walked away? It wasn’t me.”
To be fair, it should be stressed that Davis did not denigrate the work of those whose methodology differs from his own, even if they dismiss his accomplishments. “They have their role to play,” he said of the Baltimore activists. In our interview, Davis also conceded that not everyone can do what he does. God hasn’t given him a magic formula or directed his words so much as provided him with the opportunity to be educated and informed, which has helped make him highly intuitive about people. Listen to enough people, and you become more adept at reading the signs of who is truly engaging with you. “If you allow [people] to express their views” he says in the film, “there is an excellent chance that people will reciprocate.”
Is it really that simple? Can we earn the privilege of talking to people (rather than at them) by being willing to listen to them? If we do, are we willing to take the longer, harder path of softening racism or bigotry or prejudice by holding out the hand of friendship to those who despise us without yet knowing us? From whence comes the power and the patience and the perseverance to see the potential in those whose outer shell shows only hatred and disdain?
Talking TO and not AT is surely the key. And that really requires eye contact – even if fleeting by the other. Offering gentle, consistent eye contact is a really positive and encouraging act.
No ‘staring’, or ‘glaring’ but just – calmly – looking. Yeah. Connection. Hard to beat.
I appreciate the insights provided in the comments of Alberto and David. Solidarity in our common struggle.