[Peace-discuss] Tires Plus: Expect meanness, respond with kindness or disengageme nt

[Kranich, Kimberlie]

Dear All,

As the war mongering continues and we reach more and more people and start
to build critic mass during our peaceful demonstrations on the sidewalks of
N. Prospect/Marketview Streets, we should expect more people to act
aggressively towards us and we should come prepared.  If we prepare using
the principals of nonviolence, we can respond nonviolently in words and
actions.

In addition to the van incident, one of us was shoved yesterday.  A man in a
truck drove by and flipped us off as he drove down our line.  He also
swerved his truck towards us and one of us reacted by lunging forward in an
act of defiance.  This lunging forward ticked the truck driver off and he
got out of his car and yelled, "Did you touch my truck!"  Swear words were
exchanged between both parties and the truck driver shoved the person who
had lunged.  I rushed over to see what had happened and had my phone out and
said that I was going to call the police.  The driver got back in his car.
I asked our demonstrator if he was OK and he said he was despite being
shoved. I observed two other trucks swerving menacingly towards us
yesterday.

I will call the police Sergeant that Ricky, Jeff, Al and I met with awhile
back to report this incident (I didn't get the truck driver's license plate
because I was too concerned about preventing a fight) and to ask for some
protection.

We have been demonstrating for peace (the latest round sicne we stared
demonstrating in Ocotber 2001) for the past 18 or 19 weeks now.  We
ourselves have not been violent except for verbally on a couple of
occasions, incuding Saturday. We cannot control how people react to us, but
80% of the responses to us are positive. 80%!

It appears to me that we should prepare now to act peacefully to acts of
aggression towards us.  We should watch out for each other has we stand in
line. We should make sure that we look out for people who might park in
Tires Plus and send them to Lowe's immediately.  

I disagree with putting any energy towards Tires Plus.  The person who
parked in front of the van did so out of mean aggression. The van was moved
without incident.  Victory! 

Why must we focus on the meanness and respond to it? The man who drove his
truck up on the sidewalk and almost hit one of us works at Tires Plus.  He
was cited for reckless driving.  What more do we want? Do we want to spend
our energies fighting or do we want to build a peace movement? 

Perhaps it is time to form a core group of people who watch out for us in
our line every Saturday. I suggest that these people be trained in how to
absorb conflict rather than reacting to it.  People who can calm a situation
down, get license plate numbers, etc.  

Some of us are attending a training workshop next week on nonviolent civil
disobedience.  These same principals will be taught there. I attended a
similar training last summer in preparation for my arrest in St. Louis.  I
suggest that AWARE add a section each meeting to its meeting to discuss the
principals of nonviolence and how to prepare oneself mentally and physically
to not respond to violent words or deeds. It is a challenge, but it will
benefit us all.

How can we build a lasting peace movement if we ourselves do not know what
inner peace is? If we ourselves cannot control our tongues and bodies in the
face of violence and aggression, how can we expect nations to do the same?

I am not judging anyone by asking these questions.  I myself struggle with
what I described above.

I would like AWARE to add a section at each meeting on how to act
nonviolently at the P4P demos, and I suggest that similar to the section on
"news," that we add a section on nonviolent readings to the meeting.

I will start by contributing the following poem by Joan Cavanagh as found in
Petra Kelly's book, "Fighting For Hope":

I am a dangerous woman
Carrying neither bombs nor babies,
Flowers nor molotov cocktails.
I confound all your reason, theory, realism
Because I will neither lie in your ditches
Nor dig your ditches for you
Nor join in your armed struggle
For bigger and better ditches.
I will not walk with you nor walk for you,
I won't live with you
And I won't die for you
But neither will I try to deny you
The right to live and die.
I will not share one square foot of this earth with you
While you are hell-bent on destruction,
But neither will I deny that we are of the same earth,
Born of the same Mother.
I will not permit
You to bind my life to yours
But I will tell you that our lives
Are bound together
And I will demand
That you live as though you understand
This one salient fact.

I am a dangerous woman
Because I will tell you, Sir,
Whether you are concerned or not
Masculinity has made of this world a living hell,
A furnace burning away at hope, love, faith and justice.
A furnace of My Lais, Hiroshimas, Dachaus.
A furnace which burns the babies
You tell us we must make.
Masculinity made femininity,
Made the eyes of our women go dark and cold
Sent our sons -- yes, Sir, our sons --
To war
Made our children go hungry
Made mothers whores
Made our bombs, our bullets, our "food for peace,"
Or definitive solutions and first-strike policies.
Masculinity broke women and men on its knee,
Took away our futures,
made our hopes, fears, thoughts, and good instincts
'Irrelevant to the larger struggle,'"
And made human survival beyond the year 2000
An open question.

I am a dangerous woman
because I will say all this
Lying neither to you nor with you
Neither trusting nor despising you.
I am a dangerous woman because
I won't give up or shut up
Or put up with your version of reality.
You have conspired to sell my life quite cheaply
And I am especially dangerous 
Because I will never forgive nor forget
Or ever conspire
To sell your life in return.

Kimberlie