Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler

MettaCenter.org Greetings everyone. I’m Michael Nagler and I’m bringing you our Metta Center’s Nonviolence Report for the second week of November. I’d like to point out about our film which is having a very good response. This film is called, “The Third Harmony.” That today and tomorrow it’s screening at the African Human Rights Film Festival in Johannesburg. That’s the furthest we’ve reached yet. I’m very happy about that. And all month long we are the Film of the Month at Tricycle Magazine. So, there should be good outreach there to Buddhist communities and those of you who are one of them or have friends in Buddhist communities let them know about Tricycle. Thank you.

01:01 - So, now to the most critical problem we are facing here in the states. One thousand election experts, legal experts, have just signed a letter condemning the shameful attack on democracy as outgoing President Trump continues his baseless statements about election fraud. This is very serious because it is stirring up potentially violent groups. Now, there was a very interesting article. I think it appeared just yesterday in Foreign Affairs on how they are countering disinformation in Taiwan.

01:45 - Taiwan has had a big problem because they’re inundated with news from China which is, you know, ranges from bias to outright faked. And what they’ve decided to do is create some trusted resources with correct information. So, people have come to rely on these and that has been very successful in overcoming the effect of the political disinformation. So, this sounds to me a lot like what the Buddha said and what we’re always saying in nonviolence, counter untruth with truth. Don’t go after each lie and say, “Hey, that’s a lie,” but just flood the world or your part of it with correct information and it’s not like the economic law that says, “Bad money drives good money out of circulation.

” 02:40 - This is truth drives untruth out of circulation. So, for those of us here in the states who want to take some kind of steps, as usual, I want to mention the two main resources that are there for us, Choose Democracy which has been offering trainings, ChooseDemocracy.us is where to look for that. And the other is Hold the Line. And they have a guide, a pretty extensive document that’s helped to design people to ensure that we can prevent a coup which some people say that is really being built up to. So, to move on from that crisis to some good news, you may remember Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. She survived the calls for a kidnapping recently.

03:41 - Whoever thought this would come to this in the U.S. Anyway, she did something wonderful just now for the environment. And it’s being called a really, really big deal. And that is she moved to shut down the Line 5 pipeline to protect the Great Lakes. This was a pipeline that was being upheld by Enbridge – that’s the name of the company.

04:07 - And their statement is that Enbridge has imposed on the people of Michigan an unacceptable risk of a catastrophic oil spill in the Great Lakes that could devastate our economy and way of life. So, moving around the world now, first with a couple of somewhat parallel episodes. We talked to you once before about the struggles that were going on in Newfoundland Canada on the part on behalf of the Mi’kmaw people, Mi’kmaq, [Mi’kmag] it’s sometimes pronounced. So, they were struggling with a company called Clearwater which was bought by General Foods. And it was about fishing rights and lobster rights.

05:00 - And this struggle which was getting nasty and was becoming violent. And you know, First Nations people were not allowed to shop. They were not being served when they went into shops for vital supplies and so forth. But now it’s taken a really, really interesting twist. And since the Mi’kmaq are a part of a large confederacy within the Mi’kmaq Nation and also with Penobscot and many others in that part of the world – part of Turtle Island.

05:35 - What they did was they purchased half of the rights that Clearwater had held. And so, from a protest where they held up big signs saying, “Mi’kmaq livelihoods. Not Clearwater billions.” The chief of one of these communities, an Membertou community, a man named Terry Paul stated, “This is a transformational opportunity for the Mi’kmaq to become significant participants in the commercial fishery through the investment in existing infrastructure.” So, they now have 50% share in that industry. And he also said – Chief Paul, he said, “You have to play to win. And we won.

” 06:26 - Okay, well, you know, we nonviolence folks get a little bit nervous about saying we won. But I do think that this is a really significant development that could radiate out to similar struggles which are going on around the world. So, for example, far across the world in the Russian Arctic, there are people who are resisting a company called, “Norilsk Nickel.” Which happens to be one of Elon Musk’s endeavors. And it’s one of the largest nickel companies in the world. And they are not cooperating with international law. The way they are mining nickel, copper, and cobalt, it’s all produced from a kind of ore that contains a large proportion of sulfur. If you’ve ever worked in a chemistry lab, you know what sulfur dioxide smells like. And they emit close to 2 million tons of sulfuric dioxide every year. So, a recent research paper on dendroclimatology, the study of the climate’s effect on trees has shown that this is having serious consequences for the forest.

07:35 - So, people are now in the stage of making demands, and we will see where that goes. And onto other news around the world, not too long ago it was the 125th birthday of Vinoba Bhave. And they have started a website called, “VinobaBhave.org.” V-I-N-O-B-A. Vinoba. B-H-A-V-E.org. Which has his writings and stories about him and so forth. The reason I mention it, is that quite a large number of activists, nonviolent activists in India today who are working on land rights in Tamil Nadu and many other issues are really coming up to us under Vinoba’s umbrella.

08:28 - They cut their teeth and they learned how to do nonviolent action with Vinoba Bhave who was said to be the closest spiritual successor to Mahatma Gandhi. We will be giving you some of these stories from time to time about Vinobe Bhave and his legacy. One story that I really like because of its relevance for now is that he overcame a group of what we would call terrorists by simply going to them and saying, “You turn in your weapons. And yes, you will face police, but they will not carry out these attacks on your family and so forth. I guarantee that.” And there’s an incredible grainy photo of Vinoba sitting there under a tree looking a little bit like Lord Buddha and these Dacoits, you know, unslinging their very expensive rifles and piling them up in front of him.

09:22 - But meanwhile, to come back to the present time, we have a report from a group called, “Equipe Media,” which we’re quite familiar with from our film because we have a segment about Sudan that comes from them. We got permission to use it from them. But they also are covering a protest we would like to report to you on from time to time. It’s the Saharawi People in what is now Morocco. And they have started a march toward an area called, “Guergarat.” They’re coming from a refugee camp to Guegarat and they are going to organize a sit-in which may have started by now. They were stopped by some soldiers, but they continued on. And they are offering logistical support to dozens of volunteers who were protesting against Morocco’s violation of one of the terms of that recent ceasefire. And precisely, many stolen goods from the Saharawi region are going to West African countries. And this is the last truly colonized area, I think, in the world. And it’s a struggle that has been going on for a long time and it’s very nonviolent in character. And there’s a last colony in Africa.

10:49 - And this sit-in will be joined by Saharawi civil society. And it is not limited in time. It’s going to go on. As Chief Paul says, “Until we win.” So, incidentally, Saharawi is the name of the people, the culture, but we know that region as the Western Sahara. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, there was this jobs law which looked like it was going to be very destructive both to labor rights and to the environment. And the president, Joko Widodo said way back in July that he was going to push ahead with this unpopular reform because it would invite foreign investment. And he said – this gave me a bit of a chill.

11:45 - He said he was no longer constrained by politics because this is his final term. So, just imagine how things could have gone here. So, now the main issue is that extractive industries harm the environment and the economy. That’s the false dichotomy that we have to get out of people’s minds. There are many sound projections by economists that show this. And they also show that the opposite is resoundingly true. That the Green New Deal would actually amount to hundreds maybe of trillions of dollars gained and saved with the new industries. So, you know, we’re always saying in nonviolence that one of the beauties of nonviolence is you don’t have to choose between what is ethical and what is strategic. This here is quite similar. You don’t have to choose between the environment and the economy. Somehow, the universe has been well organized and they can thrive together.

12:53 - So, until next broadcast, thank you very much for listening. And keep up the good nonviolent struggle. .