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Nonviolence training during the U.S. Civil Rights Movements

By Joanne Sheehan

In 1942, radical pacifists formed the Nonviolent Action Committee of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which trained teams to provide leadership in antiracist and antimilitarist work. Out of that grew the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which in 1945 became the first organization to develop nonviolence trainings in preparation for involvement in the civil rights movement.

For 10 years beginning in 1947, CORE ran month-long training workshops in Washington, DC. Participants learned theories and skills in nonviolence and organizing, with the goal of breaking segregation in the capital area.

Early in the civil rights movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference based its preparation for nonviolent action campaigns such as the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott on African- American religious traditions. At mass meetings held in local churches, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others lectured on nonviolence. Community spirit and the nonviolent discipline were strengthened through singing and prayer. As civil disobedience became a crucial part of the civil rights movement, training included role-plays and the signing of a pledge to remain nonviolent.

It took extensive trainings to prepare civil rights workers for the violence they would encounter in the South. Students in Nashville trained regularly for months before sitting-in at a lunch counter in 1960. Participants in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 began with a two-week training. The Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 held training programs for marchers, marshals and support people.

Excerpted from Decades of Nonviolence Training: Practicing Nonviolence by Joanne Sheehan from the Nonviolent Activist, July-August 1998.

http://www.warresisters.org/nva0798-4.htm

U.S. army deserter Jeremy Hinzman and his family were granted a last-minute stay of deportation on Monday, 22 September, by a Federal Court judge while the court decides whether to hear their appeal.

Jeremy Hinzman, his wife and two children were ordered to leave Canada by 23 September 2008 or face forcible deportation to the United States, where the soldier faces prosecution for fleeing to Canada in 2004 rather than deploying with his army unit to Iraq.

Each fall the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space organizes Keep Space for Peace Week: International Days of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space. These events are intended to help educate the public about the need to prevent the arms race from moving into the heavens.

Turkey continues to dominate this issue of co-update, after we already opened the last issue with a long report on Turkey. However, the good news from the last issue cannot be repeated. This time we have to report that torture and abuse of a conscientious objector in a Turkish military prison does not necessarily lead to prosecution - or if it does, then to the prosecution of the victim.

In recent weeks several US war resisters who have sought refuse in Canada have been ordered to leave the country. U.S. Iraq war resister Jeremy Hinzman was told on 16 August that his family's application to stay in Canada has been rejected. Hinzman was told that he does not qualify under Canada's Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA) program following a review by a Citizenship and Immigration department officer.

Finmeccanica is determined to become one of the world’s leading aerospace and weapons producers. The company, publicly traded but controlled by the Italian government, has spent the past decade forming a complicated web of alliances with Europe’s other players in this field, and now it has its sights set on the huge U.S. military market. It already got a foothold when one of its helicopters was chosen to become the new Marine One used by the U.S. President.

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The report, by the Congressional Budget Office, according to people with knowledge of its contents, will say that one out of every five dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the United States military and other government agencies, in a war zone where employees of priv

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Twin Cities-based Alliant Techsystems, also known as ATK, is an aerospace and defence company with 50 facilities across the country, according to its Web site. The Anoka facility is at 900 Ehlen Drive.

With a seemingly endless war on terrorism gnawing away at the possibility for a lasting peace many activists in the United Sates are finding that they are drawn to a form of activism that deals with the relationship that young people have to militarism. The work is called, counter military recruitment or counter-recruitment for short, and it primary focus is to demilitarise a nation by attempting to first demilitarise the minds of its youth.

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Current "military” includes Dept. of Defense ($653 billion), the military portion from other departments ($150 billion), and an additional $162 billion to supplement the Budget’s misleading and vast underestimate of only $38 billion for the “war on terror.” “Past military” represents veterans’ benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt.*

These figures are from an analysis of detailed tables in the “Analytical Perspectives” book of the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2009.

Reported by: Kory Raftery

Tuesday, February 12, 2008: Students at UC Santa Barbara in the US take to the streets over U.S.