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violence
In the US, Violence Has Always Been the Answer
From guns to militarism, the national religion is the religion of us vs. them.
Jul 21, 2024
Every bullet fired into a crowd penetrates the national soul—or so it seems to me, as I continue to grapple emotionally with the Trump rally shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, which left one attendee murdered, several others wounded, and the shooter himself dead.
As with all such shootings, this goes beyond “motive” into a collective nethersphere of uncertainty. For God’s sake, what is life? Why is it so, shall we say, cheap? Why are we organized—politically, socially—primarily around its elimination? Why are guns so damn sacred... not to mention fighter jets, nuclear weapons, our annual military budget? Why do the following words make me cringe:
“We cannot—must not—go down this road in America, Violence has never been the answer.”
The power to obliterate opposition—the power to kill—has long been sacred, both collectively and personally.
This is U.S. President Joe Biden, blathering a heart-stabbing lie—also known as the thing most politicians mean the least when they say it—to clueless America in the wake of the latest mass shooting. We are deeply, deeply down this road! We have a trillion-dollar annual military budget and maintain around 750 military bases around the world. We are, under Joe’s watch, bleeding billions of dollars to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu so Israel can inflict genocide on Palestine. Indeed, an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza on the same day as the Trump rally assassination attempt killed nearly 100 Palestinians.
“We cannot—must not—go down this road in America... ” Yeah, sure. This is the road we’ve chosen: the road to hell. The job most presidents have chosen, at least in my lifetime, has been that of public relations director in chief, softening our militarism with the platitudes of state.
As Phil Wilson writes at Common Dreams: “Until 1949, the federal agency responsible for the U.S. military was simply called The Department of War—a rather nondescript, generic title that tells us nothing about intent. But with the advent of the Cold War and the new mandate to unleash military might against leftist regimes in every corner of the globe, our military needed a brand new identity. In 1949, just in time for decades of war in Southeast Asia, we decided to call our military The Department of Defense. This made it clear that bombing, defoliating, and reducing civilian populations to ash thousands of miles from U.S. borders—in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—were acts of ‘defense.’”
Wilson also notes, cogently: “I have always suspected that the Republicans control the American narrative and the Democrats lip sync to the latest MAGA tunes.”
In other words, this is a “unified” nation, despite the anger, despite the hatred, volleying back and forth between the two primary political parties. The nation is unified in its militarism, unified in its refusal to acknowledge that war always comes home and that humanity must evolve beyond it or we will surely destroy ourselves.
America, guns—the two entities seem to be linked... religiously. This link very much predates our founding. Think of the Crusades. Think of the sheer emergence of empires across the planet throughout history. Our god is better than your god! The power to obliterate opposition—the power to kill—has long been sacred, both collectively and personally.
The irony of this is soul twisting, especially as it exists in present-day America, where personal weapon use, aka, self-defense, is ever more glorified, leading us into the current social structure. Guns are the essential symbol of freedom; they are increasingly available to almost everyone and legal to possess almost everywhere. Hence, the irony:
“Thanks to Wisconsin state law, guns will be allowed in the outer perimeter of the Republican National Convention even after Saturday’s assassination attempt against Donald Trump.”
Thus reports The New Republic, adding: “People can open-carry guns and conceal-carry with a permit in a less strict perimeter surrounding a ‘hard’ perimeter controlled by the Secret Service around the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee as the RNC begins tonight. A Milwaukee city ordinance, however, bans tennis balls and paintball guns in the outer perimeter. Effectively, an AR-15 can be carried within walking distance of the RNC hall, but a paintball gun can’t, and it’s all thanks to Wisconsin’s open-carry laws.”
Declaring the situation “utterly ridiculous,” Milwaukee alderman Robert Bauman put it this way to ABC News: “I mean, I could just picture this image of somebody coming up to the entry point with, you know, an AR-15 strapped over one shoulder, a long rifle over another, and two pistols in his belt, and the cops asking him, ‘You got any tennis balls?’”
Yeah, the irony! I definitely do not expect this matter to be resolved politically. Tougher and saner gun laws have been shot and killed, but it’s bigger than that anyway. The USA has adorned itself in military cammies. It has a holster and a six-gun on its belt. This is who we are, and we’re always on the lookout for enemies, which are everywhere (particularly at the southern border). The national religion is us vs. them—the simplest religion available.
And it’s also the most profitable.
Nonetheless, many, many Americans—many citizens of the world—are devoting their lives to the long, complex trek beyond the religion of guns and violence and militarism. Power is a matter of connection with the whole universe.
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Record 76 Million Internally Displaced in 2023, Largely Due to Violence
"We have never, ever recorded so many people forced away from their homes and communities," one expert said. "It is a damning verdict on the failures of conflict prevention and peacemaking."
May 14, 2024
War, conflict, and environmental disasters displaced a record 75.9 million people from their homes at the end of 2023, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reported Tuesday.
The vast majority of the displaced—68.3 million—were forced from their homes due to conflicts, the highest number since data became available 15 years ago.
"Millions of families are having their lives torn apart by conflict and violence," Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council—which houses IDMC—said in a statement. "We have never, ever recorded so many people forced away from their homes and communities. It is a damning verdict on the failures of conflict prevention and peacemaking."
"This report is a stark reminder of the urgent and coordinated need to expand disaster risk reduction, support peacebuilding, ensure the protection of human rights, and, whenever possible, prevent the displacement before it happens."
The IDMC publishes its Global Report on Internal Displacement every year, which is considered the definitive source for data on internal displacements worldwide. This year's report notes that the number of people displaced within their own countries increased by 51% in the last five years while the number displaced by conflict alone swelled by 49%, spiking in 2022 and 2023. The uptick was primarily due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as well as renewed or ongoing conflicts in Congo, Ethiopia, and Sudan.
"Over the past two years, we've seen alarming new levels of people having to flee their homes due to conflict and violence, even in regions where the trend had been improving," said IDMC director Alexandra Bilak. "Conflict, and the devastation it leaves behind, is keeping millions from re-building their lives, often for years on end."
In addition to tracking the number of displaced people, the IDMC also looked at the total number of new displacements in 2023. It recorded 46.9 million new movements—20.5 million due to war and conflict and 26.4 million due to natural disasters.
"As the planet grapples with conflicts and disasters, the staggering numbers of 47 million new internal displacements tells a harrowing tale," International Organization for Migration Deputy Director General Ugochi Daniels said in a statement. "This report is a stark reminder of the urgent and coordinated need to expand disaster risk reduction, support peacebuilding, ensure the protection of human rights, and, whenever possible, prevent the displacement before it happens."
Of the 20.5 million conflict-driven displacements last year, nearly two-thirds were due to violence in Sudan, Congo, and Palestine.
In Sudan, renewed hostilities between government and paramilitary forces ignited in April of last year, forcing 6 million new movements and leaving 9.1 million displaced.
"This figure is the highest ever reported for a single country globally since 2008," the report authors wrote.
All told, conflict forced 13.5 million displacements in sub-Saharan Africa, the highest number for the region in 15 years.
Nearly 17% of total conflict displacements in 2023 were forced in Gaza, even though Israel only began its war on the enclave during the last quarter of the year. Although it was only home to around 2.3 million people at the start of the war, Gaza saw 3.4 million displacements, as many people were forced to move multiple times.
"This figure should be considered conservative, because many people were displaced within governorates before moving across them, but such movements were unaccounted for," the report authors explained.
By the end of 2023, around 1.7 million people in Gaza—or 83% of the population— were displaced, "all of them facing acute humanitarian needs," the authors wrote.
The report also says that 7.7 million people were living outside their homes by the end of 2023 due to disasters such as extreme weather and geological events such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The 26.4 million disaster-driven displacements were the third-highest amount in the last 10 years.
Displacing disasters in 2023 included climate change-fueled events like cyclone Freddy—which caused 1.4 million displacements in southeast Africa—and Canada's record wildfire season, which fueled 185,000 displacements, the highest number for Canada on record.
"No country is immune to disaster displacement," Bilak said. "But we can see a difference in how displacement affects people in countries that prepare and plan for its impacts and those that don't. Those that look at the data and make prevention, response, and long-term development plans that consider displacement fare far better."
Egeland called for more attention to the plight of displaced people after the initial trigger fades from the headlines.
"The suffering and the displacement last far beyond the news cycle," Egeland said. "Too often their fate ends up in silence and neglect. The lack of protection and assistance that millions endure cannot be allowed to continue."
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A Ribbon of Love Against Sexist Violence
On International Women’s Day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 600 people came together to take a stand against violence against women and to call for education, not the penal system, as the primary way to eradicate it.
Mar 27, 2024
On March 8, the 50th anniversary of International Women’s Day, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, I participated in the Lazo de Amor Contra la Violencia Machista—the Ribbon of Love Against Sexist Violence. Six hundred people came together to take a loving stand against violence against women and against all forms of violence based in the traditional “machista” masculine gender role. Together, we called for the promotion of education, not the penal system, as the primary way to eradicate it.
The demonstration was organized by a team of seasoned activists, and sponsored by the Teachers’ Association of Puerto Rico (AMPR), the main teachers’ union. It took place on the grounds of the historic El Morro fort, symbol of Spanish colonization. We listened to a series of impassioned speeches from educators, activists, and students, decrying the epidemic of sexist violence in all its forms; calling out the failures of the penal system to rehabilitate offenders and to address the roots of violence; and calling on educators, the school system, and each of us, to take up the challenge of ending sexist violence.
Then we donned purple Lazo de Amor T-shirts, provided by the organizers, and formed the shape of a bow, similar to the ribbons people wear to represent commitment to a cause like AIDS awareness, MIA’s, and cancer survivors. We were photographed from the sky, taking our stand together. The organizers’ announced goal, represented by the Lazo, was to create an ongoing campaign for educating against sexist violence in the schools, to be expressed in yearly demonstrations.
The demonstration provided one of a multitude of potential answers to the core question that we progressive activists face as we work to shift the paradigm from fear to love: How can we use the power of love to transform our violent, fear-based practices and institutions?
Participating in the Lazo was a powerful experience for me. As an elder anti-racist, leftist feminist who has attended many demonstrations organized by many types of progressive movement over the past 50 years, I found it to be unusually empowering, uplifting, and inspiring. A demonstration against violence on the grounds of an historic colonial fort. The act of actually taking a stand together and being photographed doing felt like a work of political art. The presence of many men, also taking a stand against sexist violence. The sponsorship by a teachers’ union and preponderance of teachers and students, embodying the process being advocated for. And the naming, and calling on, of love as the true antidote to violence—rather than the greater violence of the state and the penal system. Fifty years after the declaration of the first International Women’s Day, feminism had come a long way from demonstrations where we marched in the streets to take back the night—without feminist men at our sides as our allies, and calling on the police as the main solution.
I was particularly excited by the naming of our ribbon as a ribbon of love. I am a retired professor of economics whose research has focused on the emergence, alongside of and within capitalism, of the solidarity economy—economic practices and institutions centered in cooperation, equity, democracy, sustainability, and pluralism. These new institutions are part of and require the emergence of a new paradigm of social life which is based on mutuality, unity amidst diversity, and love, within a crisis-ridden, dying paradigm based on competition, separation, violence, and fear.
So many of the metaphors and memes we use on the left to describe our work are conceptualized as a process of fighting against something, a violent activity that brings to mind traditional, macho masculinity. The naming of love as a powerful force, embodied in a purple ribbon against violence, captured my imagination, representing as it did the power of the strong feminine. Women and feminist men standing up for themselves and for others, against all forms of violence, using the power of love, caring, education, good mothering and fathering. The demonstration provided one of a multitude of potential answers to the core question that we progressive activists face as we work to shift the paradigm from fear to love: How can we use the power of love to transform our violent, fear-based practices and institutions?
I was extremely impressed by the ability of a small team of lead organizers to manifest this demonstration very quickly and beautifully. The Lazo de Amor was the brainchild of my friend Margarita Ostolaza Bey, a retired women’s studies professor and former senator, and her friend Gretchen Coll-Marti, a retired appellate judge and former executive director of Legal Services of Puerto Rico. On Valentine’s Day, only three weeks before, the two had the idea to create a Lazo de Amor Contra la Violencia Machista on International Women’s Day. Gretchen had created an AIDS Awareness Ribbon campaign during the 1990s. Held annually for eight years, it grew from 500 people to a campaign organized in all of the island’s schools that brought together 8,000 men, women, and children. The idea was to use the same method to mobilize energies to fight sexist violence.
Margarita and her wife, Ivelisse Rivera Almodovar, a retired public relations director, presented the proposal for the Lazo de Amor Contra la Violencia Machista to Professor Victor Bonilla Sanchez, the president of the Association of Teachers of Puerto Rico. He immediately and enthusiastically committed to the project. Ivelisse took on the huge task of quickly coordinating permits, sponsorships, media announcements, and the participation of spokespersons in radio, press, television, and social networks, along with the design of the ribbon. Essentially these three women came up with the idea, engaged the head of the teachers’ association, and started a campaign for feminist education against sexist violence which they hope to be ongoing and growing yearly, like Gretchen’s AIDS Awareness campaign, in the space of three weeks. Their story makes me wonder what other kinds of campaigns could be created to help bring the paradigm shift we all need.
Another interesting aspect of the Lazo de Amor Contra la Violencia Machista that I would like to flag is the involvement of corporate sponsors. In my experience, left and progressive circles have tended to avoid funding from for-profit businesses, focusing instead on non-profits. But for-profit firms inhabit a spectrum of positions on the value scale from “low-road,” narrowly profit-motivated firms—union-busting, polluting, price-gouging, etc.—to high-road businesses that embody the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profits. Students from the School at the University of Puerto Rico designed the Lazo, but Goya de Puerto Rico stepped up to provide financial support, and El Nuevo Dia, the main newspaper on the island; Channel 2 TV; and Radio Isla all provided free air time to promote it. We need to remember that progressive, for-profit businesses and social enterprises can be valuable allies in the paradigm shift, even though they are capitalist, and can and should be called upon for support.
One question you may be asking—how did this demonstration relate to the political parties of the island, and to the question of the island’s political status? Puerto Rico’s people have been deeply divided into political parties based on the issue of how to relate to the U.S.: the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP), aligned with the U.S. Republican Party); the pro-Commonwealth Popular Democratic Party (PPD), aligned with the U.S. Democratic Party; the pro-independence Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), aligned loosely with the left in the U.S.; or the new Citizens’ Victory Movement (MVC) party. This demonstration attempted to bridge these political divides and was not affiliated with any political party.
There were other demonstrations across the island commemorating International Women’s Day’s 50th anniversary. A coalition of left feminist groups, the Coalition of the 8th of March, put on a press conference. One of their members, the Colectiva Feminista en Construcción (Feminist Collective Under Construction), held a demonstration and blocked a highway, protesting against a wide range of oppressions, including the occupation of Palestine, Puerto Rico’s colonial status, and racism, along with sexism, violence against women, and anti-trans violence. Is there a place in our feminist imaginations and strategizing both for this show of force and courage, and for the Lazo de Amor? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each in terms of shifting the paradigm?
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