What i'm Thinkin Bout Activism and Peace ...

Above: My sister Katie and I at an Anti-war protest in the Fall of 2006.

I am helping to organize a peace ceremony called Prostrations for Peace that will be held on Sunday, July 15 on North Shore Beach. People are invited to come and physically work through the suffering that is created by this horrible Iraq war. There will be a bell rung every thirty seconds, from sunrise to sunset, for a total of 1579 rings—designating the number of days we have been at war.

I have been sending information to my friends, family, yoga studios, cafes, and everyone who I think will be remotely interested, have linked it to my blog, my MySpace, my Facebook, and invite you to please do the same.

In one of my e-mails to my friends, I wrote, “I'm inviting you all to be activists. And it's not the normal abrasive, in-your-face, violent activism that we have seen and grown weary of. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty turned off by the ANTI-war protests, because much of the time, people are so angry that it makes me lose hope that anything will actually get done—some of the protesters are just as violent as those they are protesting against. I don't think it's the answer. Prostrations for Peace is an event that not only opposes war, it actively engages people in a peaceful activity. Those of us who are active on any level know that engaging in a physical act helps us to work through our emotions. Here is a chance to dedicate your physical self to Peace in the Middle East!”

One of my friends wrote me back asking “Jessie, I’m curious when and where the last time was that you saw violent anti-war protesters?”

I probably should have used a word like “angry” instead of “violent,” as my friend later pointed out. Calling protests violent is first of all a misuse of the word because violent acts are not what I meant in my email. Also, it is an invitation to polarize people, or at least views of what activism is, allowing some to latch onto the violent idea and create for themselves and others a negative image of activism, thus remaining stagnant and hopeless.

It got me to really thinking about the nature of protests, activism, and change.

Are protests always fueled by anger? Is anger inherent in activism? Can change happen without anger?

I tend to get really anxious at anti-war rallies. I went to one a year and a half ago where there were people shouting into a microphone about “We gotta end this fucking war” and “Fuck Bush!” The crowd would roar and raise clenched fists into the air, waving their “No blood for oil” signs. I agree with these ideas, that the war is unfounded and a horrible atrocity, but the way people were expressing themselves didn't sit well with me.

I didn’t stay long because I became frustrated that we were yelling about the problems, The Problems, THE PROBLEMS!, creating all these negative emotions and not necessarily offering solutions. I was ready to punch somebody by the time I left, because I had all this energy stirred up and nowhere for it to go. I hadn't been to another protest since.

Our culture is permeated with violence, as we know. Any attempt to eradicate a problem is deemed a War On Something. It’s everywhere, so even when we’re rising up against it, often we are still communicating with violence--violence in communication as opposed to compassionate communication. I feel that in this world where "reality" shows, CSI, and American Idol are twisting our sense of what is real and how to communicate with one another, and we go numb seeing all the homicide stories and war coverage on the news, it’s sometimes impossible to deal with frustration and anger, so we just push it away, deny it exists. It’s easy to feel that change cannot happen unless provoked to the point of desperate anger and outrage. I had stopped watching TV and stopped reading newspapers. But that didn't help the problems to go away, either.

The other day, I was speaking with a woman from UIC who is a peace activist. We were talking about my generation, and I said that I had noticed a lot of my peers who are afraid to even talk about politics, saying "I'm just not sure what I think yet," getting out of the conversation before it even started. Then she said to me, "The other response [to the violence and injustice in the world] that I think is so dangerous is people who will say Oh, I don’t watch the news, I don’t read the newspaper, it’s just too overwhelming. What kind of a response is that to the suffering in the world? For people who are dealing with suffering on a moment-by moment basis to think that there are other people who are living very comfortably and simply find that all too depressing and don’t want to deal with it. That’s appalling indifference. I would have more respect for people who have thought about things and have taken a very pro-military or aggressive type stance than I would to people who just don’t want it to infiltrate their world."

There's something amazing and enlivening about figuring out how you feel about an issue and being active about change. For some reason, I feel like a lot of my generation doesn't know how to do that.

That’s why I love this Prostrations for Peace idea so much. It provides an outlet for the anger, frustration, rage, and despair. Be the change you wish to see in the world, right? I don’t want to see pissed-off people who are full of negativity and have no outlet for their anger. I want to see people who are dealing with their shit actively without fucking anyone else over. If you want to eradicate the world of violence, being pissed off isn’t going to cut it.

More than one ways to skin a cat:

I was in Revolution Books last week putting up fliers about Prostrations for Peace. I was saying how I want to get the word out to more young people, because I feel that there’s a tremendous amount of anger and helplessness that people feel, and that young people are burnt out from protests. The man asked if I’d contacted The World Can’t Wait, and honestly, it almost frightened me to think about getting that organization involved. My only experience with World Can’t Wait was through a group at Columbia called On The Ground, and we were getting ready for this big march and protest that was geared around “Driving out the Bush Regime.” It was a great idea, but at the time, I was unclear about my focus and my role as an activist. There was a plan to get Bush out of office, but the whole thing seemed so radical that it was really excluding a lot of people. I was intimidated by the rhetoric. To me, it was the same “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” feeling as with Bush.

So when Revolution Books Man said to me that day that I should contact The World Can't Wait, I got this vision of the pier covered in yoga mats, people breathing through their sun salutations, peace flags fluttering in the breeze, the lake water lapping against the sand, the bell gonging every thirty seconds for each day we’ve been at war, and suddenly in the distance, growing louder as they approach, the sound of people screaming over a bullhorn “THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT! DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME, THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT …” as they tramp through the sand, stamping out candles and knocking over incense, drowning out the sound of the bell with their cries.

But I was happy to exchange some ideas with the man at Rev Books. He was much more open than I'd expected--for some reason I had pigeonholed the WCW people into this idea of radical, militant crazies. They are not. We had a great conversation about there being a need for multiple ways to approach a solution. It’s like the saying that I will probably butcher: “There are many paths to God, and all lead to the same place. Don’t waste time figuring out which one is the best, just pick one and go.” God, in our case, is peace. So: just do it, however you feel is right and however you can.

Michael McColly recommended me a book called Hope In The Dark by Rebecca Solnit. I am getting a lot of answers to my questions in it. I’m going to quote some from it because I feel like it helps to clarify my thoughts, and I believe that it would help others. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of and future of protest and activism.

“Perfection is a stick with which to beat the possible. Perfectionists can find fault with anything, and no one has higher standards in this regard than radicals. In January 2003, when Governor Ryan of Illinois overturned 167 death sentences, reprieving everyone on death row, there were radical commentators who found fault with the details, carped when we should have been pouring champagne over our heads like football chams. But there’s an increasing gap between this new movement, with its capacity for joy and carnival, and the old figureheads. Their grumpiness is often the grumpiness of perfectionists who hold that anything less than total victory is failure, a premise that makes it easy to give up at the start or disparage the victories that are possible. This is earth. It will never be heaven. There will always be cruelty, always be violence, always be destruction. There is tremendous devastation now. In the time it takes you to read this book, acres of rain forest will vanish, a species will go extinct, people will be raped, killed, dispossessed, die of easily preventable causes. We cannot eliminate all devastation for all time, but we can reduce it, outlaw it, undermine its sources and foundations: these are victories. A better world, yes; a perfect world, never” (81-2).

Here is a quote by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano: “Utopia is on the horizon. When I walk two steps, it takes two steps back. I walk ten steps and it is ten steps further away. What is utopia for? It is for this, for walking” (83).

And continuing to quote from Hope in the Dark: “Recent strains of activism proceed on the realization that victory is not some absolute state far away but the achieving of it, not the moon landing but the flight … The term ‘politics of prefiguration’ has long been used to describe the idea that if you embody what you aspire to, you have already succeeded. That is to say, if your activism is already democratic, peaceful, creative, then in one small corner of the world these things have triumphed. Activism, in this model, is not only a toolbox to change things but a home in which to take up residence and live according to your beliefs—even if it’s a temporary and local place, this paradise of participating, this vale where souls get made” (86-7).

John Jordan, writer and activist in the global justice movement says, “When we are asked how we are building a new world, our answer is ‘We don’t know, but let’s build it together.’ In effect we are saying the end is not as important as the means, we are turning hundreds of years of political form and content on its head by putting the means before the ends, by putting context in front of ideology, by rejecting purity and perfection, in fact, we are turning our backs on the future.

“It’s an enormous challenge, because in a chaotic world people need something to hold onto and something to hold them … For them, hope is often found in certainty. Not necessarily certainty rooted in a predictable future, but certainty that they are doing the right thing with their lives … we are building movements which believe that to ‘let go’ is the most powerful thing we can do—to let go, walk away from power and freedom. Giving people back their creative agency, reactivating their potential for a direct intervention to the world is at the heart of the process … In that moment of creation, the need for certainty is subsumed by the joy of doing, and the doing is filled with meaning” (106-7).

I feel that these passages really help to guide me in my own quest for direction and action.

So, I wish to again extend the invitation to everyone who is interested—no matter your persuasion or means—come to the pier and create some good energy for peace. I hope to see you there.

WHAT is PROSTRATIONS FOR PEACE?

WAR ALL THE TIME?

For 1,579 days since the start of the war in Iraq we have witnessed the destruction of a land and its people in the name of peace and security.

Billions of our dollars, millions of hours of human effort, the sacrifice of thousands of lives, the torture and maiming of soldiers and civilians -- and we are no safer.

The people of Iraq live in a hellish, escalating civil war that is spilling over its borders, and the world looks at our government with fear, distrust, and bitter disrespect.

Speeches, commissions, images, news reports, punditry, fear-mongering, and false patriotism have only distanced us from the horror and suffering that permeates our world because of this war.

HOW CAN WE RESPOND?

We sense a need for a different response -- a response from the heart and the body.

We sense a need for people from every community, spiritual practice, and political stance to set aside time to come to Chicago's lakefront and join others in a practice used by all cultures in times of insurmountable suffering: the bowing or prostration of the body to the earth.

WHAT WILL WE DO?

This ceremony has no sponsors. It is an organic response of people from across the city and suburbs of Chicago.

It will begin at sunrise and end at sunset on July 15, 2007.

It will take place on the pier of North Shore Beach in Rogers Park.

We seek only your participation by either performing basic sun salutations as practiced in Hatha yoga, bows or prostrations as practiced by Buddhists and Muslims, offerings of prayer while kneeling on the sand as practiced by Jewish or Christians, or simply bowing and kneeling to the earth in an act of awareness of the great need of our world for healing and peace.

We ask that you perform as many as you feel able as we count off each day that the war has continued. We suggest that you try to do 108, which is a sacred number for Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians, symbolizing a measurement of sacrifice and sustained reverence.

To prepare for the event, one may wish to practice sun salutations every morning, dedicating a month-long practice to peace.

WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?

We also seek volunteers to ring a bell and announce each day as we move through the 1,579 days since the war began on March 19, 2003.

These volunteers may sign up for one of the 40 months of the war.

Prayer flags, candles, poems, incense, offerings of flowers to be placed on the pier or on the shore are encouraged. Bring drums, music, voices. This is to be a collective altar for peace--express your peace however you wish.

Donations will be accepted for Emergency (www.emergencyusa.org), a humanitarian, neutral, non-profit organization that provides high-quality treatment, surgery, and rehabilitation to civilians in war and post-war areas around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Emergency also trains medical and non-medical personnel in these areas.