Welcome to the VOV Blog! It is my sincere hope that this forum will bring together some of the most articulate voices of nonviolent activism worldwide and become a catalyzing source of inspiration and learning.

 

In this first post, I would like to explain some of the key points of the VOV initiative based on my own experiences on the frontline of this movement. 

 

First of all, I would like to emphasize that VOV is a movement of ordinary people. As an ordinary person, I naturally battle with feelings of doubt and hopelessness in the face of the great challenges facing global civilization. ‚ÄúWhat difference can I make,‚Äù I think to myself. However, I am also a person who like so many other people in this world genuinely yearns to live a life worth living‚Ķa life of passion and meaning.  I am a person who was so inspired by and never forgot Eleanor Roosevelt‚Äôs words when she wrote, ‚ÄúWe must do the things we think we cannot do.‚Äù  And in that spirit, when I decided to make a commitment to advance the VOV movement in the United States, I became an ordinary person determined to stand up and take responsibility for the violence in our world.

 

The VOV movement today is the result of many young people in the United States deciding to take action in response to growing concern over youth related violence such as the Columbine shootings in Littleton, Colorado. Through 1000‚Äôs of grassroots dialogues, school workshops, festivals and symposia, VOV has spread the values contained in the VOV Pledge for Nonviolence.  It is a simple pledge that over 1 million people have taken across America and embodies the spirit of this movement.  It reads as follows:

 

 

Based on the values contained in this pledge, our goal is to provide people with an opportunity to self-reflect on how violence has affected their lives and what they can personally do to begin to make a change for the better.  We want to empower young people with the mental tools necessary to help eliminate violence from their every day lives.

 

We do this by focusing on three main points:

The relationship between passive violence and physical violence.  Physical violence is pretty straight forward, right?  We‚Äôre talking about hitting, kicking, beatings, rapes, wars‚Ķall of these things that people do to one another that are easy to recognize because they physically hurt and we see them all the time either on television or in our own communities.  However, there is another type of violence that is more subtle and that is passive violence.  Passive violence is anything we do that undermines the fundamental dignity of another human being or ourselves.  Passive violence is verbal abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse, teasing, taunting, putting someone down, making someone feel bad about themselves‚Ķ again, anything we do that undermines that fundamental dignity.  Passive violence is also oppression and suppression of various types whether it is economic, political, cultural, religious, social, etc.  Typically, when we think of oppression, I think that most people think of it as something that happens on a national or international level.  But in reality, oppression can very much exists in our own homes, in our interpersonal relationships, schools, workplaces and communities.  Passive violence is also choosing to step back and do nothing when you see acts of violence in the environment around you.  Gandhi had a theory on the relationship between passive violence and physical violence.  He said, ‚ÄúPassive violence is the fuel that feeds the fire of physical violence.‚Äù  So if we want to put out the fire of physical violence, logically, we have to cut off the fuel supply of passive violence.  

 

One example of passive violence leading to physical violence that still resonates very clearly in the minds of many students is the 1999 Columbine shootings in Littleton, Colorado.  Researchers from across the country studied that case to try to understand why those two boys decided to go on a shooting rampage that killed 13 students, teachers and ultimately themselves as well.  The research suggests that these two boys were totally ostracized and outcast by their classmates.  Because a hierarchal pecking order was the culture of the school and they were among those at the bottom of it, they were the targets of verbal and other kinds of assault every single day ‚Ķ 6,7, or 8 times a day and nobody ever did anything to try to stop it.  Let me be very clear that I am in no way trying to justify their actions or suggesting that they are not fully responsible, but it follows that if you are constantly abused by passive violence ‚Ķ if you are put down, hated, teased, taunted, and humiliated again and again and again ‚Ķ you can start to feel utterly hopeless to change your circumstances and furthermore, start to view the people who are victimizing you as so different from you that you may begin to feel like you have absolutely nothing in common with them ‚Ķ that you cannot relate to them at all ‚Ķ that they‚Äôre not like you ‚Ķ but rather some kind of sub-human entity.  They are no longer a person in your eyes.  To the victim, they have lost their humanity.  Because you can‚Äôt see yourself in them, they‚Äôve become less than human ‚Ķ the value of their lives suddenly become less than yours ‚Ķ and it becomes much easier to commit an act of physical violence against them.  So, (1) feelings of hopelessness and (2) the inability to recognize the humanity in another person as a result of passive violence are the problems that VOV strives to address.

 

When I speak to classes of high school students, I typically start off by asking them to raise their hands if they‚Äôve committed an act of violence in the past week.  Typically, in a class of 35 students, 2 or 3 students will raise their hands.  I‚Äôll ask them what kinds of violent acts they‚Äôve committed and they‚Äôll say things like: ‚ÄúI got in fight with this guy,‚Äù or ‚ÄúI pushed my little brother because he was in my way,‚Äù etc.  I‚Äôll then respond by saying, yes, these are all forms of physical violence and then define physical violence with them.  I‚Äôll follow-up by explaining that there is another form of violence called passive violence.  After explaining what passive violence is, I‚Äôll ask them again to please raise their hands if they‚Äôve committed an act of violence in the past week.  Armed with their new understanding of passive violence, nearly every hand goes up.  I don‚Äôt think that this would come as a surprise to anyone who has gone through high school.  

 

One high school student wrote me a letter that said that she wished that her boyfriend had gone through a VOV workshop and learned about passive violence before he threw some racial slurs at a group of Mexican football players after a high school football game.  As a result, they assaulted him and put him in the hospital.  Other students identified spreading rumors, road rage, stereotyping, grouping into ‚Äúcliques,‚Äù not believing in yourself, making other students feel like outcasts, etc. as other forms of passive violence that they deal with on a daily basis and that can all lead to physical violence.  Students have even looked at history and discussed how the propaganda campaign used by Nazi Germany was a form of passive violence because it dehumanized Blacks, Gypsies, Jews and others and therefore made it easier for the German people to accept their extermination.  Inevitably, this discussion leads to another discussion about what we can do to stop passive violence from leading to physical violence in our schools, country and world.  This brings me to my next point: The value of dialogue.

 

VOV uses dialogue as the means to help people learn about one another and find common ground by sharing universal human experiences.  Through this process, people begin to see through all of the superficial differences that can divide people whether it be race, color, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, etc., and begin to recognize the common humanity that we all share.  When you can recognize that human bond ‚Ķwhen you can see yourself in another person, it becomes much more difficult to commit an act of physical violence against him or her.  Furthermore, I believe this recognition represents the first critical step towards the creation of a Culture of Peace in our daily lives and in our broader world.

 

One high school student said that after going through the dialogue activity, she realized that she had stereotyped so many people in her class and that her perceptions were incorrect.  Another student said that because of the workshop, she spoke to a friend that she hadn‚Äôt spoken to in four years‚Ķand for no other reason than the barriers to communication in high school can be so strong.  During one workshop, a teacher participated in the dialogue activity with her students.  Later, she told me over the phone that it totally changed the dynamic of her relationship with her students.  Because they learned more about one another, they started to view each other as more complete human beings with lives outside of the classroom and were able to find common ground.  She said that since then, it was much easier for her to communicate with her class.  So dialogue is the key ‚Ķ but it only works if you make the effort to engage in it. Which brings me to my final point: The need for each of us to stand up and take full responsibility for the violence in our environment.

 

One point that I try to stress is that peace and security are not the mere absence of war or violence.  Rather, peace is an active process in which we make ceaseless efforts on a daily basis to work for the uplift of human dignity.  I encourage students to proactively reach out to people‚Ķespecially those people that you might not normally associate with and try to get to know them‚Ķengage in dialogue.  I encourage them to challenge themselves to find common ground with anyone despite any kind of superficial difference that may divide them.  

 

I also try to explain that reaching out to others is in their own best interests.  When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a killing spree at Columbine High School, they didn‚Äôt just kill themselves, they killed 13 other people as well.  I think this helps us understand how fundamentally interconnected our lives are.  If WE want to live in a peaceful environment, free of violence, we must actively reach out to OTHERS.  We cannot afford to live in isolation thinking only of our own concerns.  When those around us succumb to feelings of isolation and hopelessness, it doesn‚Äôt just affect them, it affects everyone around them including you and me.  By reaching out to others with dialogue, we have an opportunity to form bonds of trust, understanding and friendship that can help prevent those feelings of isolation and hopelessness from eventually transforming into physical violence.