{"id":991,"date":"2015-01-24T14:45:32","date_gmt":"2015-01-24T18:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/quakerpagan\/?p=991"},"modified":"2015-01-24T19:22:37","modified_gmt":"2015-01-24T23:22:37","slug":"peace-and-the-language-of-the-unheard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/quakerpagan\/2015\/01\/peace-and-the-language-of-the-unheard.html","title":{"rendered":"Peace and the Language of the Unheard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I was quite moved by Thorn Coyle\u2019s recent post, Disturbing the Peace<\/a>, because she put her finger on something that has been itching at me for some time.<\/p>\n

In her blog post, Thorn declined the invitation I took, earlier this month, to write something about best practices for peace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOrganizing with Black leaders and communities of color affected by police militarization and systemic harassment and imprisonment has diminished my talk of peace,\u201d she wrote.\u00a0 \u201cTalk of peace can be used\u00a0to stifle anger\u2026 Talk of peace can all too often wish to rush toward niceness, toward a balance that doesn\u2019t exist, and toward a veneer that will soon crack.\u00a0 Before there can be peace, there must be justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Short response:\u00a0 Boom. \u00a0Nailed it.<\/p>\n

Longer response:\u00a0 I\u2019m reminded of John Woolman<\/a>, the great 18th Century Quaker advocate against slavery, who worked tirelessly to remind Friends of exactly this point, when he wrote, \u201cOh, that we who declare against wars, and acknowledge our trust to be in God only, may walk in the light and therein examine our foundation and motives in holding great estates!\u00a0 May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions, or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the exception of the invocation of a monotheist deity, Woolman is speaking directly to my condition.\u00a0 If I declare myself a proponent of peace, I have the obligation to look at how my privilege, my part in the machinery of injustice and inequality, is itself one of the causes of war and violence.<\/p>\n

Mouthing nice phrases about peace is not it<\/em>!<\/p>\n

Peace work is not just protesting against war, or, worse, \u00a0attempting to stifle violence where it appears as an attempt of the voiceless to cry against injustice.<\/p>\n

Peace isn\u2019t just the absence of overt violence.\u00a0 It is the promotion of justice, and the end of covert violence, like poverty, racism, and homophobia, and a refusal to quietly accept privilege that has roots in those forms of violence. \u00a0Peace work is<\/em> justice work, and it must be waged, actively, not simply requested, nicely.<\/p>\n

I have been increasingly troubled, these last few weeks, as protests continue within the Black Lives Matter <\/a>movement, by the number of whites I have encountered who seem to spend all their time combing reports and videos of protest marches, looking for anything and everything they can identify as \u201cviolent\u201d in order to attempt to discredit\u00a0the movement for justice.<\/p>\n

I actually saw one story, which reported on counter-demonstrators at a rally in support of the Ferguson Police Department having popped blue balloons as an incident of \u201cblack violence.\u201d\u00a0 The mind boggles. \u00a0Black men and women are dying in the streets, but popping balloons is an expression of violence?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve lost count of the number of white critics who have had the arrogance to invoke Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s legacy of non-violence in an effort to shame the protesters in the Black Lives Matter<\/a> movement, and in the Reclaiming MLK<\/a> marches last week.<\/p>\n

\"1964.<\/a>
1964. Martin Luther King<\/a>. Rights released to public by US News and World Report<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI mean seriously, this isn\u2019t the protests of MLK. He would hate this,\u201d one white commenter wrote<\/a>.\u00a0 \u201cHe loved<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe loved.\u201d \u00a0Well, I believe he did. \u00a0But that doesn\u2019t mean he would have wanted protesters to be too nice to discomfit the complacent, or to disrupt business as usual within a society still running full bore on institutionalized racism.<\/p>\n

I love my child. Which never translated into telling her to be quiet when she was ill or injured, or not confronting bad behavior with strong words and strong consequences. \u00a0And while I wouldn\u2019t lie to you and say that my loving parenting always looked like a Mother\u2019s Day card or that I never made mistakes\u2013embarrassing ones\u2013I also know too much about love to think that it always looks pretty.<\/p>\n

Love is a passionate business. \u00a0Sometimes, it\u2019s loud. \u00a0Especially when there is real danger, and real harm, sometimes it can be very loud indeed.<\/p>\n

Contrary to what condescending white Americans may want to believe, the love\u00a0King was talking about wasn\u2019t always a Hallmark greeting card version of love, either. \u00a0And as for his non-violence, it was a\u00a0hell of a lot more nuanced than, \u201cDon\u2019t swear, don\u2019t shout, and don\u2019t pop the other guy\u2019s\u2013literal\u2013balloons.\u201d \u00a0Actually, when asked to condemn riots on the part of African Americans of his day, he said,<\/p>\n

It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both King and Woolman understood something that too many whites who are upset about the current wave of racial unrest fail to understand: peace is not a matter of stillness, and particularly, it is not a matter of dissent suppressed.<\/p>\n

Rather, peace, real peace, is an active force, constantly on the lookout for quiet violence as well as the use of weapons and force.\u00a0 Poverty is violence.\u00a0 Racism is violence.\u00a0 Relegating women, or gays, lesbians, and the transgendered to lesser lives\u2013that is violence.\u00a0 Colonialism is violence.<\/p>\n

And at times, the very calm that would outwardly seem to those in comfort to be the essence of peace, is instead simply another form of violence.<\/p>\n

Peace is effortful.\u00a0 Peace will involve struggle.\u00a0 And though I would never agree that violence is necessary to reach it, I would very much agree that, \u201cNo justice, no peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s reach toward justice.\u00a0 Let\u2019s reach toward peace\u2013real peace\u2013and never settle for the hush of censored Truth.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peace is effortful. Peace will involve struggle. And though I would never agree that violence is necessary to reach it, I would very much agree that no justice means no peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1904,"featured_media":995,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[22,98,70,101,100,97,7,95,96,99,6],"class_list":["post-991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cats-posts","tag-activism","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-institutionalized-racism","tag-john-woolman","tag-martin-luther-king-jr","tag-non-violence","tag-pagan","tag-peace","tag-peace-testimony","tag-protest","tag-quaker"],"yoast_head":"\nPeace and the Language of the Unheard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Peace is effortful. Peace will involve struggle. 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