"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Mohandas Gandhi was born 141 years ago today on October 2, 1869
Out of the horrors of the 20th Century in the midst of two World Wars, the dropping of two atomic bombs, the holocaust, genocides, and the gulag there was one man who led a nonviolent movement that gave independence to the largest democracy in the world: India.
Let us honor him by remembering some key ideas and listening to what he had to say as well as those who've followed in his footsteps and praised him in song.
"Violence breeds violence." - Mohandas Gandhi
"Pure goals can never justify impure or violent action." - Mohandas Gandhi
"They say the means are after all just means. I would say means are after all everything. As the means, so the end." - Mohandas Gandhi
"If we take care of the means we are bound of reach the end sooner or later." - Mohandas Gandhi
"Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak."- Mohandas K. Gandhi
Mohandas Gandhi, the middle class British educated Indian lawyer was transformed into a principled strategic non-violent activist in South Africa at the end of the 19th century struggling against racist laws and policies of the colonial authorities. The most important theoretical result of the South African campaign was the development of Satyagraha. Gandhi announced on September 11, 1906 in his newspaper Indian Opinion a contest to submit names to describe this movement. The final name was the fusion of two words as explained by Gandhi: “Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force…the Force which is born of Truth and love or nonviolence.”
Although Gandhi described himself as a socialist he rejected Marx’s theory of the class struggle as inherently violent and offered a profound critique stating: “The socialists and communists say, they can do nothing to bring about economic equality today. They will just carry on propaganda in its favor and to that end they believe in generating and accentuating hatred. They say, when they get control over the state, they will enforce equality. Under my plan the state will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or force them to do its will.”
Gandhi despite his successful revolution and the establishment of the largest democracy on the planet was felled, after repeated assassination attempts they gunned the old man down as he went to worship. They murdered him because they did not believe that India could survive with Gandhi promoting Satyagraha. Gopal Godse, a co-conspirator and brother of the assassinNathuram Godse, argued as late as February 2000 in a Time magazine interview that: “In politics you cannot follow nonviolence. You cannot follow honesty. Every moment you have to give a lie. Every moment you have to take a bullet in hand and kill someone.”
The choice is clear on one side the force which is born of truth and love or on the other the force that is born of lies and hatred. Satyagraha saved India and Pakistan from a genocidal civil war, and Gandhi’s death at the hands of Hindu radicals led to Indians rejecting the assassins toxic approach to exercising force. The ends justifying the means which was espoused by Niccolo Machiavelli in the 15th Century in his political treatise The Prince dealt with using amoral means to achieve "moral" ends such as destroying your adversary utilizing violence and lies. Gandhi took the opposite approach, his autobiography was subtitled "my experiments with truth" and he sought to convert the enemy into a friend using truth and nonviolence to reject injustice and oppression stating that, “real non-cooperation is non-cooperation with evil and not with the evil doer.”
Agent Rodney, or whatever the name is of the person I challenged to a verbal duel, lost by not showing up, but that is past history. The Nation lost by being discredited in the eyes of the world and, what is worse, the people lost, my poor people, whom they want to burden with the full weight of fanaticism that they themselves feed on.
According to Human Rights Watch the Cuban government "employs so-called repudiation meetings (mitines de repudio), or acts of repudiation, to humiliate and intimidate dissidents publicly, sometimes violently." The sad part is that some of the participants in these fascist attacks are probably taking part in this violent propaganda exercise in the Cuban dictatorship's version of Orwell's 2 minutes hate to avoid being on the receiving end of such an action themselves.
Yoani Sanchez in her latest blog entry says that Friday's act of repudiation reminded her of the ghost of 1980 and the appearance of fascist mobs on the streets of Cuba against Cubans who simply wanted to leave the country and were brutally attacked on their way to the port of Mariel. Nevertheless, Friday's events have more to do with the specter of 1989 that still haunts the regime. Non-violent change were the few lose their privileges, impunity and normality returns. It was out of fear for this possibility that in 1991 the Ministry of the Interior first organized the rapid response brigades to organize acts of repudiation with the aim of crushing any popular demonstrations with violence. Yoani twitted that "this is the para-militarization of Cuban society: arrests and beatings carried out by countrymen dressed as civilians that refuse to identify themselves. In another tweet she added that the government "wants to make people believe that it was the people enraged as if they had not nourished the hate and division among us." This is precisely what the Cuban government set out to do in 1980 during the Mariel boat lift and again in a systematic fashion in 1991: divide and conquer using terror and hatred.
Reinaldo's essay is titled: "To begin to forgive" and the last lines of the entry describe his return home:
When I got back to my house, I found it full of friends, among them Father José Conrado who gave me a hug, and counsel I will never forget: “Forgive them.”
Based on Reinaldo's actions thus far he is following Mahatma Gandhi's dictum: "To forgive is not to forget. The merit lies in loving in spite ofthe vivid knowledge that the one that must be loved is not a friend." Video of the entire affair is already beginning to be uploaded to youtube. The victims and witnesses to the events are describing what they saw. Below is the first video just prior to the beginning of the attack. As new ones are added they'll be added to this blog entry.
Miami based artist Ferdie Pacheco Designed Mahatma Gandhi stamp for United Nations
United Nations, Oct 3 (IANS) The United Nations has released a one-dollar colourful postal stamp of Mahatma Gandhi to commemorate the 140th birth anniversary of the apostle of peace observed Friday as the International Day of Non-violence.
The stamp, released here Friday by the UN Postal Administration, the world body’s postal agency, has been designed by Miami-based artist Ferdie Pacheco, with the Father of the Nation in red, blue and gold.
A long time Miami resident Dr. Pacheco arrived here "as a young doctor, transplanted from his native Ybor City in Tampa , he set up his practice on South West Eighth Street the year the early Cuban exiles began streaming into the city. In their stories, he found echoes of his own family's immigrant roots, as his father was the Cuban-born son of a Spanish consul on the island."
Ferdie Pacheco , MD has been called a Renaissance Man because of his prolific career. He has been successful as a pharmacist, medical doctor, Fight Doctor in boxing, including working as a corner man for twelve world champions, including Muhammad Ali for seventeen years.
Gandhi's 140th Birthday and the International Day of Non-violence
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born 140 years ago on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, a coastal town in present-day Gujarat, India. Around the world in the birthplaces of western civilization both Italy and Greece.Gandhi's birth is being observed and the significance of his non-violent philosophy satyagraha is being analyzed. Around the world from Reykjavik and on the other side of the globe in the most peaceful country in the world New Zealand many nations will take part in observing the International Day of Nonviolence. This observance in New Zealand will begin a world march that will last 90 days from October 2, 2009 ending on January 2, 2010 in Argentina.
Within Cuba's prisons there are individuals who follow Gandhi's teachings such as Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and their courage and example terrify the dictatorship because even they recognize the power of nonviolence.
You have heard that it was said, 'Love (agape) your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love (agape) your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? —Matthew 5:42-44
Opus solidaritatis pax - Ioannes Paulus PP. II
The power of non-violence is often underestimated while violence is often overestimated. I recently attended a fundraiser for a documentary that is still being produced called Oscar’s Cuba, and at the fundraiser I sat with a Cuban dissident who practiced non-violence while on the island, but now more than a decade later in exile had come to have second thoughts on the matter. We had a lengthy and passionate, although mutually respectful, discussion.
What I realized was that he believed that violence could accomplish more than non-violence against a totalitarian regime. He cited the Nazis in Germany and the necessity of WWII. I pointed out those German housewives who as late as 1943 had successfully stopped their Jewish husbands from being deported to concentration (death) camps by organizing a non-violent demonstration and work stoppage at Rosenstrasse. Civic non-violence had been shown in at least one instance to have worked even against the Nazis and it was shown to have worked in the East bloc against the Communists which have a body count of 100 million dead then there is a good argument that it is powerful and requires much less effort than that of the Allied powers in WWII without the horrendous war crimes: Dresden and Hiroshima just to name two of the many cities where civilian populations were devastated.
I found the whole discussion ironic considering that we were both attending a fundraiser for a man who has committed his life to principled nonviolence and knew what sacrifice it would entail. This past summer in a letter smuggled out of prison he described his early days of activism and the foreknowledge of the suffering it would entail:
"I remember when I started preaching of Gandhi and Thoreau some said Dr. Biscet testimonials from cell 123 would walk through the streets of Havana with a loin cloth like Gandhi, when I became aware of these words spoken in a derogatory fashion about me I just smiled knowing I would be in these conditions but not in the streets of Havana but in endless captivity that I would have to suffer." (1)
When Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet in 1999 said "I recognize that I only have adversaries and I have acquired the capacity to love them because in this way we do away with violence, wrath, vengeance, hatred and substitute them with justice and forgiveness," he was not speaking from weakness but strength. He was not talking about an affectionate or sentimental love but of the Christian variety known as agape. (2)
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while visiting St. Augustine in the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights struggle spoke of this kind of love and the impracticality of violence:
"Its difficult advice and in some quarters it isn't too popular to say it...Let us recognize that violence is not the answer. I must say to you tonight that violence is impractical...We have another method that is much more powerful and much more effective than the weapon of violence...Hate isn't our weapon either...I am not talking now about a weak love it would be nonsense for an oppressed people to love their oppressor in an affectionate sense I'm not talking about that too many people confuse the meaning of love when they go to criticizing the love ethic. ...I am talking about a love that is so strong that it becomes a demanding love. A love that is so strong that it organizes itself into a mass movement and says somehow I am my brothers keeper and he is so wrong that I am willing to suffer and die to get him right and to see that he is on the wrong road."
When Oswaldo Paya in 2002 said that “we can rebuild our society with love for all, as brothers, and as children of God” he was speaking of the kind of love described in the gospels and highlighted by Dr. King above.(3) The movement that brought about the end of the Soviet Union emerged in Gdansk at the ship docks and was called Solidarnosc – Solidarity. It was a movement that took its name from a word which encompasses Paya’s conception rebuilding society. Pope John Paul II in his 1987 encyclical letter Sollicitudo rei socialis describes it in greater detail:
"Solidarity is undoubtedly a Christian virtue. In what has been said so far it has been possible to identify many points of contact between solidarity and charity (agape), which is the distinguishing mark of Christ's disciples (cf. Jn 13:35). In the light of faith, solidarity seeks to go beyond itself, to take on the specifically Christian dimension of total gratuity, forgiveness and reconciliation. One's neighbor is then not only a human being with his or her own rights and a fundamental equality with everyone else, but becomes the living image of God the Father, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and placed under the permanent action of the Holy Spirit. One's neighbor must therefore be loved, even if an enemy, with the same love with which the Lord loves him or her; and for that person's sake one must be ready for sacrifice, even the ultimate one: to lay down one's life for the brethren (cf. 1 Jn 3:16)." (4)
World War I which Woodrow Wilson described as the war to make the world safe for democracy led to 16 million deaths and gave rise to a communist state in Russia and the formation of the Soviet Union and the Nazis in Germany. Within twenty one years the war to end all wars would be dwarfed by WWII with estimates of between 50 to 70 million deaths with the number of civilians killed ranging between 40 to 52 million. One byproduct of this war was nuclear weapons that for the first time in human history have the firepower to wipeout the entire human race. It is still an open question whether or not the West will survive the consequences of WWI. Now contrast that with the nonviolent struggle waged by the Polish Solidarity movement. Dozens of workers were killed and thousands wounded, in 1970 prior to the founding of solidarity, and a Roman Catholic priest Father Jerzy Popieluszko, aged 37, was kidnapped on 19 October 1984 by the secret police and murdered.(5)
Within the Cuban context armed peasant guerillas fought Castro’s troops in the hills of the Escambray in Cuba between 1959 and the mid 1960s and thousands died while entire populations where “resettled” and placed under surveillance. Yet the greatest shock to the system that forced the dictatorship in Cuba to change its constitution in 2002 was the Varela Project a citizen initiative within the legal framework of the 1992 communist Constitution that demonstrated that over 25,000 Cubans wanted democratic reforms and their human rights respected and where willing to sign their name, give their identity number, and home address. This led to a crackdown on the opposition, show trials, lengthy prison sentences, and having the constitution changed. Meanwhile the world became aware of the desire of tens of thousands of Cubans for change and of the men and women standing up courageously for this change.
If Cuba is to survive as a nation then it needs solidarity which offers both freedom and justice and out of this will emerge peace the fruit of solidarity.
The image of Che Guevara hanging in the College dorms of student radicals in 2009 may be cliché, but his message is not. In his Message to the Tricontinental Guevara argued that hatred was something to be harnessed and used: "Not only as an element to struggle against injustice,” but to be used to perpetrate new injustices. Guevara describes the utilization of hatred or as he put it “relentless hatred” to “impel us over and beyond the natural limitations of man.” This use of hatred to encourage the dehumanization of an adversary is but another manifestation of the doctrine found throughout the centuries to justify mass murder and torture.
If hate was the solution to all problems then the heroes of the 20th century would have been: Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Guevara. Instead they are viewed in most quarters as mass murderers and criminals except for those who are blinded by their "relentless hatred" of their fellow human and/or their political ideology. History has demonstrated two fundamental approaches to change the face of the world. One way views hatred of the other as an element of the struggle in which the ends justify whatever means and has been the way for the individuals listed above.
Guevara had been executed on October 9, 1967 and just months before his own assassination Martin Luther King Jr. called on his staff to combat the “romantic illusion” of guerilla warfare in the style of Che Guevara among young radicals concluding: “We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at nonviolence now.”
Forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. an African American took the oath of office and became President of the United States in a country that has profoundly changed. What of the rest of Latin America? Guevara’s call to action in a hemisphere with too many military juntas led to new military juntas in countries that had not known them before in their history: Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, and Uruguay all had their longest military juntas following the Castro regime exporting guerillas to violently overthrow governments in 1959 along with promoting Guevarist ideology. On January 3-15, 1966the Tricontinental Conference hosted by the Cuban government and the explicit announcement of their goals in Guevara’s Message to the Tricontinental. Other countries such as Chile, who had last known a military junta between 1924 and 1931, in reaction to communist threats in 1973 embraced Augusto Pinochet who remained in power for seventeen years.
Posts
