The DEI of nonviolence (aka offering what we have in community)
Bring yourself, as you are – there's a place for you
This is the fifth part in a series on Planning our Way (Strategically!) Toward Nonviolent Social Change. To read part four on refusing to obey in advance, click here.
Fiercely Beloved Soulful Revolutionary,
On Sunday, my church participated in a food drive. We collected staples like corn and beans, cooking oil and rice. The abundance was beautiful to behold, as our little community stacked high a generous offering of food to bless our vulnerable neighbors.
The most poignant moment for me was when one of our littlest ones, who has only recently learned to walk, came toddling up with a single can. I don’t know if there was a dry eye in the place.
This child brought what she could carry, and we got a glimpse of the kingdom of God.
Her offering immediately conjured up the widow in Luke who gives her two coins — all she had to live on — and is praised by Jesus as giving more than the rich could ever hope to give.
Such examples serve as a vital reminder that each of us, from our place of particularity, has a unique gift to offer the movement for justice, the Beloved community, the kingdom of God.
Small things with great love
One of the greatest tactical victories of empire has been to convince so many of us that our contribution is only significant or worthwhile if it will get us written about in the history books.
We may feel helpless in the fearsome face of empire because we feel so small. What we have to give can feel so inconsequential, that we just give up on trying, falling further into hopelessness and despair.
I am writing to remind you that what you have to give:
not only is lifesaving when combined with the contributions of many beautiful people humbly offering what they have,
it has eternal ripple effects.
I frequently write here about nonviolence as both a strategic and spiritual practice. I want to start by saying a word about the spiritual — these mysterious, metaphysical waves of change that last beyond our lifetimes.
It is my most deeply held conviction that it is the very nature of Love to overcome evil — that in fact the only thing that can conquer evil is Love in action.
As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in Strength to Love:
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
This remains true amidst what Norma Wong calls the “timeplace of collapse.” In fact, it is in this moment that we need love most, to lift us up above the despair of our current circumstances to imagine new horizons — even if we do not live to see them.
Our love for one another, for the trees and whales, the oceans and air, the guinea pigs and cacti, for the Divine whom we meet in all these people and non-human beings is our most potent tool. Love is the reason for being, the ground under our feet, the rhyme and rhythm of the cosmos. It connects us to the ancestors who came before us, to the generations that will come after us, to every atom of every thing that ever was.
Those who know love know this interconnectedness in the depths of their soul.
That’s why our love, friends, is more powerful than the powers that be will ever know or understand. And that scares the living daylights out of them.
This Love has also vested us each with gifts that we uniquely bring to the work. And this too is a terrifying thing for those who rely on narcissistic claims of being self-made. Madeleine L'Engle reminds us in A Wrinkle in Time: “We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.” Love allows us to set visions of grandeur aside in favor of the humility of connection and the faith in a future beyond our lifetimes. As Mother Teresa wisely taught, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
If this spiritual side of things feels altogether woo woo to you, stay with me. Turns out that each of us bringing our unique ways of loving, our gifts from Source, to the work for justice isn’t just spiritually grounded — it’s strategic.
The DEI of Nonviolence
Showing up to do small things with great love is borne out by the data as highly effective in realizing change. It specifically helps when these small things are acts of noncooperation and intervention, as I wrote about last week. But the primary reason nonviolent movements are twice as successful as violent ones is because of what researchers Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan call the “participation advantage.”
The key factor to success is the power that mass, broad-based participation provides for a movement. It turns out that, on average, nonviolent campaigns tend to attract far more participants than their violent counterparts. This allows nonviolent campaigns to create or exploit cracks within the regime’s pillars of support (economic elites, business elites, security forces, state media and civilian bureaucrats). Such cracks are difficult to create without mass mobilization with unarmed civilians, who simultaneously demonstrate their commitment, their noncooperation with the exiting order and their disinterest in physically harming those whom they oppose. In addition to imposing serious economic, political and social costs on those who resist the movement’s demands, civil resistance is also a form of psychological warfare — and a rather effective one at that.
When we can each bring our full selves, with all our gifts, to the movement for justice, the movement benefits. Every single one of us grows that participation advantage through our commitment to doing something, and doing it with all the love, energy and strategy we can muster.
In other words, nonviolence is all about that DEI life:
Diversity: Nonviolent movement provide many ways for a diverse group of people to get involved, and this group in turn can produce a wide array of tactics more likely to elicit surprise in the opposition. This becomes a mutually reinforcing mechanism, as tactical diversity in turn invites more participation, and an increasingly diverse coalition yields more creativity.
Equity: Nonviolence is also more likely to produce an equitable, democratic outcome because the tools used along the way have been anti-authoritarian in nature. Chenoweth and Stephan’s research concluded that nonviolent movements are much more likely than violent ones to produce democratic governance that observes human rights. In nonviolent movement, our acts of love in action are about practicing our way toward the equitable society where everyone belongs on the basis of true justice.
Inclusion: Nonviolence includes people whom armed struggle generally leaves behind: kids and the elderly, folks with disabilities, people of very different political persuasions but shared primary goals. There is a role for everyone in this work for a better world.
Your gifts, your presence, your practice of nonviolence are uniquely needed in this moment, dear Soulful Revolutionary. Thank you for showing up with your one can. I’ll bring mine.
Tell me, what does bringing your one can look like today? What is a gift, passion, skill, connection that you uniquely bring to the work for justice?