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Excerpts from
How to Hang In There for the Long Haul
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Don Irish, W A M M
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Young people who are committed to peace and justice sometimes ask their elders how they have been able to continue such efforts for so long. We need to gain and retain the talents, energies, and early commitment of these youth. What guidance can be given them?
Here are some suggestions.
1) Recognize that those who plant trees may not live to enjoy the fruit. Others have preceded us; we can likewise serve those yet to come. Always take the long look, not expecting quick results.
2) Everybody/everything is connected to everybody/everything. A holistic approach to life is more effective, comprehensible, and satisfying.
3) You can’t do everything — but you always can do something. Do what you can, where you are, with what energies and talents you have.
4) Remember that the world does not depend upon you alone for needed changes. That’s a burden lifted from your shoulders! Avoid burnout: find respites from continual, unceasing pressures.
5) Redefine success in your endeavors for societal change. To prevent a situation from becoming worse is success. To gain a portion of what is attempted, without retreat from one’s goal, is success.
6) Develop a faith that can sustain you. Avoid succumbing to despair or disseminating it, for that will immobilize you and others.
7) Adopt a nonviolent philosophy as a thoroughgoing way of life. Try to make it applicable to all your behaviors and attitudes, not a temporary tactic.
8) Focus your challenges on issues and problems. Avoid demonizing opponents, for hate will not resolve conflicts or reconcile the parties. People are what they are for reasons that need to be understood, though not necessarily excused.
9) Know that a majority is not needed to bring significant changes. A “critical mass,” a minority of committed, informed, relentlessly persistent individuals, can accomplish wonders.
10) Know that there are many ways and means to bring change nonviolently. Beware of those who argue either/or alternatives, or who contend that “we have no choice.”
11) Remember that means and ends are inextricably linked. The means used predetermine the ends attained. “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”
12) Respond to those who question the efficacy of nonviolence. Turn the question around: “How effective have violence and war been?”
13) Observe that serious structural problems will not be resolved by “middle-of-the-road” measures. Radical changes may be needed for such conditions - dealing with the root causes.
14) Learn from the long experience of others. For instance, indigenous peoples have much to teach and demonstrate to us about the nature of sustainable societies.
15) Retain a sense of humor. Events often turn out better than you feared, though less well than you hoped. Humor can be a tool in struggles, as well as an antidote to despair.
16) Don’t expect leadership for major, structural societal changes to come from the top. Political courage is rare and tends to follow growing grassroots sentiment.
17) Seek diversity in personal relationships, enabling you to understand different perspectives held by those of other cultures/experiences.
18) Discern the humanity within your opponents, the person in military uniform, perspectives of corporate functionaries, rationales of government officials, experience of police.
19) Avoid the either/or, black/white, good/evil, sanctifying/demonizing polarizing approaches to discussions. There are always alternatives.
20) Each of us needs to risk for peace, as others risk for war.
21) Recognize that even when one has done all he or she has felt able to do, the human race may still collectively fail to change its ways sufficiently and in time to avoid its own created catastrophes.
Success is not guaranteed, but faithfulness is expected. However, one can still live with integrity, work for justice and peace, and feel secure with whatever reckoning the greater cosmos may render. If you, I, and others persist, we may even find that we have helped bring about a new, more humane, sustainable society!
Don Irish, professor emeritus, Hamline University has been an activist since high school and was a conscientious objector during WWII. He and his family participated in the civil rights movement. He has worked with students in Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Uruguay, and Canada. He has been active opposing nuclear weaponry, the Vietnam War and the Gulf wars. He served as a long-term team member with Witness for Peace in Nicaragua monitoring an election, observing the demobilization of the Contras, and leading delegations. He also served with Peace Brigades International in Guatemala. He’s been arrested several times and jailed for his peace activities, participated in the School of Americas demonstrations six times. Don was the recipient of the Twin Cities International Citizen Award (1998) and Vincent L. Hawkins Peace and Justice Award (2004). w |
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Word Up
“The only kind of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.”
- I.F. Stone, now-deceased muckraker who exposed corruption at the highest levels of government during his lifetime.
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© 2004 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete November 2004 Index - click here
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