Voices for Creative Non Violence

Link to Voices for Creative Non Violence

Voices for Creative Nonviolence has deep, long-standing roots in active nonviolent resistance to U.S. war-making. Begun in the summer of 2005, Voices draws from the experiences of those who challenged the brutal economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and U.N. against the Iraqi people between 1990 and 2003.

Members of Voices led over 70 delegations to Iraq to challenge the economic sanctions and were present in Baghdad in resistance the 2003 U.S. military invasion. Since 2009, Voices has led five delegations to Afghanistan and two to Pakistan to listen and learn from nonviolent grassroots movements and to raise awareness about the negative impacts of U.S. militarism in the region.

Voices participants rely on and have learned from experiences of those who have engaged in active nonviolent resistance to military might in the U.S. including draft resistance; resistance to the wars in Latin America; and resistance to nuclear weapons, such as the Plowshares resistance efforts. Voices draws upon the lessons gleaned from active participation in peace teams in Haiti, Yugoslavia, Palestine and Iraq.

We recognize that for years now the U.S. has stood on the precipice of all out devastation-of itself and of the world. We look to history as a guide-and try to learn lessons from those who preceded us in far more dire circumstances, who somehow found the ability to form communities of resistance to oppression in Nazi Germany, in apartheid South Africa, in the Jim Crow South of the U.S. and in the super segregated cities of the North.

We ask-what is the appropriate response of a citizenry in a country which has committed unspeakable crimes against a people? Several hundred thousand Iraqis died as a consequence of economic sanctions. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands continue to die as a consequence of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Nearly 300,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 suffer acute malnutrition-when will they die?

The U.S. has adopted the doctrine of “pre-emptive” military action. No longer must Congress approve a war before one is begun and waged. No longer must an imminent threat-however loosely defined that may ever have been- exist before war begins. The U.S. has arrogated to itself the role of Enforcer against the rest of the world.

We are on the precipice of a full blown world war-if one is not already under way. And we ask: what must our response be? And our answer-as tentative, grappling, searching and seeking as it may be-is that it falls upon us as citizens of the country initiating this world war to utilize all nonviolent means available to turn off war -to engage the electoral and legislative process, most definitely; to protest, of course; and to march and demonstrate.

We must also move from protest to active nonviolent resistance. We must withdraw our collaboration and complicity with this system and use our bodies and lives as a means to bring the machinery of death to a grinding halt. Nonviolence, nonviolent action and nonviolent resistance cannot be a single day event-it must be a commitment we make and act upon every day of our lives.

What might this active nonviolent resistance look like? And how might we act in solidarity with the Iraqi peoples and others who find themselves in the crosshairs of U.S. war-making?

Voices is committed to strategic campaigns and experiments in truth engaging in active nonviolent resistance. Such resistance must take into account that war-making is both military and economic.