people have the power

Mark Kurlansky’s Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea is a brief, intense, and invigorating book I’d recommend to all. In a culture that glorifies violence -- indeed, our entertainment system is largely predicated on violence (particularly against women) – and fetishizes militarism (about half the federal budget pays for past, present, and future wars), it’s good to be reminded of the Anabaptists, Quakers, and other non-conformists, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, AJ Muste’s Fellowship of Reconciliation, Bayard Rustin and CORE, King, SANE and the anti-nuclear movement, women’s liberation, gay liberation, Solidarity, the Velvet Revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union and it’s “bloc” (hideous appellation!), People Power in the Philippines, the defeat of the PRI in Mexico, the examples do pile up even though those invested in power do not want us to think about them.