Did
you know October 2 is the International
Day of Non-Violence? Neither did I
and it was a big surprise when I stumble on the information during my daily
scrounging for something—any damn thing—to write about. My first thought was that it is such a good
idea that it is no wonder it is obscure.
It’s
one of those United Nations observances. Right away that makes it deeply suspect here
in America where a huge chunk of the population is convinced that UN black helicopters supported by the minions Barak Hussein Obama are poised
to swoop down and rip the guns from
the hands of patriots. But other UN holidays get better press even here—International Women’s Day, International Children’s Day, the International Day of Indigenous Peoples—to
name a few examples.
Maybe
it’s because it is still pretty new and hasn’t had a chance to catch on—it was
first observed in 2008 after being adopted General
Assembly on June 15, 2007.
Apparently the ambassadors of several countries were asleep. After all protest—even non-violent protest—is not popular with a wide range
of dictatorships and even with oligarchies posing as democracies. It’s law
breaking and anarchy in practice
in most countries and only to be encouraged in the realms of one’s
enemies. Take the U.S. which gets giddy in support of various color coded non-violent revolutions
where the old Soviet Union held
sway or about Arab Springs, but
shovels riot gear and arms to dozens of repressive regimes
when those being repressed are on our own shit
list.
And
in an era of militarized police, free
speech zones, the general criminalization
of dissent, and FBI/NSS coordination
of local law enforcement suppression
of the Occupy movement, it is pretty
clear that there is no commitment to respecting non-violent protest at home,
either.
The
very origins of the UN observance are, after all, suspect.
In
2003 Shirin Ebadi an Iranian lawyer, a former judge, human rights
activist, founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate met an Indian teacher, Akshay Bakaya in Paris. Bakaya brought her an idea that he said
originated with his students—an international observance honoring non-violence
as a tool for social change tied in some
way to its greatest modern proponent, Mahatma
Gandhi.
On
January 30, 2004 while in Bombay, India for
the World Social Forum, Ebadi first
proposed that the date, also the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination by Hindi extremists
in 1948 be designated as an international day of non-violence.
In
tandem with South African Anglican
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ebadi reiterated the proposal at the Satyagraha Conference at Delhi but changed the proposed date to
October 2, Gandhi’s birthday which already was an Indian celebration known as Gandhi Jayanti. The conference had been cosponsored by Tutu
and Sonia Gandhi, President of the
Indian National Congress Party. The
term satyagraha was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi and translates as “insistence
on truth” or “soul force.” It is a philosophy and practice within the broader idea
of non-violent resistance.
With
the support of the ruling Congress Party, India brought the idea to the U.N.
General Assembly, which acted with unusual speed adopting the proposal on June
15 of the same year. The resolution
called on member states to commemorate October 2 in “an appropriate manner and
disseminate the message of non-violence, including through education and public
awareness.”
The
first year celebration was marked by the issuance of a postal cachet by the United
Nations Postal Administration in New
York City which was used on all outgoing U.N. mail between October 2 and 31
of that year.
Since
then celebrations in most countries outside of India and South Africa have
been, at best, muted.
Perhaps
that is because the Non-Violence promoted by the commemoration is not just a
sort of vague warm fuzzy pacifism, but
an active strategy for social
change. The U.N. puts it this way:
One key tenet of
the theory of non-violence is that the power of rulers depends on the consent
of the population, and non-violence therefore seeks to undermine such power
through withdrawal of the consent and cooperation of the populace.
There are three
main categories of non-violence action:
protest and
persuasion, including marches and vigils;
non-cooperation;
and
non-violent
intervention, such as blockades and occupations.
Gee,
that sounds like the last thing most regimes want to happen.
Maybe
today is a good day to dust off this neglected celebration….in the
streets. Seems to me we have plenty of
reasons to do it….
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