We live in an occupied country, misunderstood;
justice will take us millions of intricate moves.
--William Stafford, from Thinking for Berky
I grew up three blocks from the Stafford house. One of the boys was a classmate. Mrs. Stafford was a teacher at my elementary school. William taught at nearby Lewis & Clark College.
This is another chapter in my ongoing autobiographical series. This will quite likely be chapter two.
I was raised in a violent atmosphere. Our house was not filled with the physical violence that leads to bodily injury. But there was physical violence that results in psychological trauma and much verbal and emotional abuse. It's difficult growing up knowing that one is not good enough, that one's talents and skills are not appreciated, and that who one is less important than who one might be perceived to be.
My father was an angry man. While practicing his bowling in the living room and simultaneously arguing with my mother, he "accidentally" threw his ball through the living room wall. Because he was having trouble with the Christmas tree one year, the tree was thrown through the plate glass window in front of which it was to supposed to stand. That his anger did not produce physical violence against his children is testament to my mother's fortitude. But there was always the mental abuse. All four of us kids are just starting to cope with that...40 years later.
Growing up as a child, I became involved in fisticuffs exactly twice. On one occasion, I chose to protect a neighborhood lad in my school who was the target of stones being thrown by the local bully. Though the bully was bigger than I, I managed to wrestle him to the ground with me on top and gave him enough good blows to send him on his way. I did not feel good about that. On the second occasion, I was attacked by a boy who I thought was my best friend. He was himself being given a hard time for hanging out with me, the "cry baby" of the neighborhood. I got a split lip during the altercation. And yes, I went home crying.
The two incidents resulted in my conviction that violence is never the correct response for me. I could have protected the first boy by hurrying him out of distance of the stones. And the second attack only escalated when I tried to protect myself. The damage done to my soul by not choosing to refuse to fight was hard for me to bear.
I have chosen to refuse to inflict violence ever since. During the Vietnam War, I chose to dodge the draft and was successful for nearly three years until found by the FBI in Oklahoma. Since being nonviolent was not sufficient reason to keep me out of the military (the option I was given was to serve 5 years in the violent atmosphere of a penitentiary), I did do my time in the Army. But I chose to do so as nonviolently as possible. When they taught me how to kill and maim, I would spend the night afterwards trying to meditate on peace while sick to my stomach. In the end, I was lucky. I never had to hurt anyone else during those awful two years. Had they attempted to send me off to kill, my plan was to attempt to run away again. Failing that, I would have chosen to die rather than kill someone else, for killing someone else would surely have been the death of my soul and protection of my soul is more important to me than protection of my body.
Once during my time in Haight Ashbury, we were accosted by a visiting ex-soldier who was dying for a fight. He deiced to use his "karate" skills at me. He threw a kick in the direction of my head, but I understand the principle of leverage and I am tall. So I grabbed his lower leg and lifted forcefully. He ended up on his ass...and we left.
The only good thing that I can see my time in the military taught me was the ability to disarm a dangerous situation without violence. I was taught to use the violent approach, to be sure, but I refused to use it. Being a military cop and a prison guard, violence did have a tendency to happen around me. But I found that words and reason could stop fights and the skills they taught me to keep from being in a situation where I could be the focus of the violence were sufficient to protect me. But I still regret learning the skills they taught me so that I could inflict damage on other people. I hope I have forgotten most of them by now.
When I was in graduate school in Eugene during the Buy-Centenial Sell-ebration a neighbor guy decided to turn an argument he was having with his girlfriend into a knife fight. When we realized what was going on, he was in front of our apartment waving a knife at her. I went outside, inserted myself between the two of them...and disarmed the situation. Long arms helped.
I was raised in what is now a suburb. That was back in the days when even suburbs needed workers. But I have lived in areas where violence occurred more frequently than it should (which is never, as far as I am concerned)...in San Francisco after the Death of Hippie, on the original Skid Row in Seattle, in a brothel in Miami, in Resurrection City during the Poor People's March in 1968, in Spanish Harlem in New York for a spell, in a racially divided area of Milwaukee. But I refused to let the violence change the way I lived.
No, I do not know what it is like to be a person of color. But I do know what it is like to be attacked solely because of my appearance. None of those places brought as much danger as being a transsexual woman living in Arkansas and traveling this country. It's not too hard to tell I was born male. I was assaulted twice while living near Little Rock and once in Menlo Park, CA, because of it, had all the tires on my car slashed because of it, and had cat feces put in my mailbox because of it. I've been arrested using a public restroom because of it. Compared to that, when I became the target of a big rock in Little Rock on another occasion because I was a dyke, I actually had the thought pass through my mind that at least the perpetrators were acknowledging me as a woman.
Don't get me wrong. I do not condone anyone's use of violence. But I figure that a violent response by me means that those who acted violently towards me have won. I refuse to let that happen. What if someone comes face to face with me and demands my money? Then they can have my money. What if someone invades my home while I am there and wants my property? Then they can have what they want. What if someone wants to kill me? Then they can have my life...but they cannot have my soul.
Peace is not won easily. It is definitely not won by enacting war, either war on a large scale or war on a personal level. Certain parts of this society have much invested in keeping us divided and at each other's throats...divided along racial lines, economic lines, religious lines, and gender lines. Until we can refuse the fighting, they are the winners. Until we can cease being afraid of one another, they are the winners. Until we can learn that we can work together, they are the winners. Until we realize that there is strength in our numbers, they will rule.
The way we stop the violence is to stop the violence. It is a personal act in behalf of our society when we refuse to be violent. It is a public act in behalf of our society if we can teach others to be nonviolent as well.
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I wrote that back in the mid-90s. For several years it was hosted at a website by an Australian gentleperson. I checked and it no longer seems to be available there. It was one of the first diaries posted at Daily Kos (about two weeks after I became a member in the fall of 2005) which I hoped would gather an audience. It got 3 recs and 3 comments.
I've done a bit of a rewrite, adding a few sentences here and there, but it is basically the same piece. Maybe more people will read it now.
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Imagine a future. In my future, you would choose a good one, one good for coexistence on this planet as long as we all have to live here.
See if you can act so as to turn reality towards that future. Plan. Create or discover the necessary resources. Shape a scheme.
Set up the dominos, as many as you can build, and try to find the words that will generate the change you seek. You will undoubtedly fail. Analyze feedback. Loop. Hope for convergence. Better yet, design for it.
[Have I mentioned I once took a class in Optimal Control Theory (feedback control and system stability)? Probably not. Ordinary differential equations. Linear and non-linear systems. And I taught linear programming many times over the years. I believe all knowledge gained is to be used, even for purposes for which it was not initially intended. And everything happens for a reason. Including my education. Even my signing up for that course on a whim.
It dawns on me that this is part of the reason I sometimes have gotten annoyed at lack of feedback. Feedback loops work better when there is more accurate feedback.]
Repeat over and over again, adding to the resources, revising the plans, changing arenas as necessary. Alter the initial conditions somehow. See if I can find the words to to start the dominoes knocking each other over.
Do what I can do. Incite, maybe even inspire, other people to do things which will add to what I can do.
Then do more.
If nothing else, maybe set an example. Inspire someone else to imagine that future, so that maybe it could be kept alive.
I wonder sometimes if anyone will be there to keep this hope alive. And wonder if some day change in the trajectory of reality will be achieved in an amount sufficient to converge to that future.
What else is a human being meant to do?
As the teacher once said,
We seek to fling our students, like peas, into the future.
A better future...and with the hope those students will pull the present towards that future. And with hope that we have had more students than we realize.
Rapidly would be nice. I struggle with impatience sometimes.
Relative Size
Small Moments
I am not John Chapman
But I'd be honored
if some of my words
were the seeds
for someone like him
If history
has taught me anything
it is that
it will not be me
who can spread those words
and the thoughts they express
It takes someone like you
rather than someone like me
All I can do is
interact with you
make a minor adjustment
in those small moments
that make change possible
--Robyn Elaine Serven
--June 6, 2008
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Peace is elusive. It always has been and many people over my life have told me that it always will be. In fact, I've had people assert to me many times through the years that War is our natural state.
I've always rejected that notion (but that doesn't mean that if you believe it, that I reject you). I just can't hold that thought in my head and continue to consume any of the nutrients necessary to sustain life. What would be the point?
Early in my life, I thought it might be sufficient for me personally to practice nonviolence...to engage in Peace. I believed it would be enough to surround myself with whatever peace I could find. Given our family life, that meant walling myself off in my room as much as possible. But how much peace does that spread?
I've mentioned Mr. Stafford above. When I discovered he had been a Conscientious Objector during World War II, he became my hero. That more than anything is probably what started me reading his poems whenever I could find one. They didn't capture my imagination as much as cummings or Sandburg or William Carlos Williams or Dylan Thomas...or later the Beat poets...and even later the women, who had so carefully been elided in those early years. But they were the work of a man of Peace...and I was desperate.
I was born in April of 1948. Here is some of what transpired in my first dozen years:
Costa Rican Civil War, March - April, 1948
1948 Arab-Israeli War, May, 1948 - June, 1949
Internal conflict in Myanmar 1948 - present
Malayan Emergency, 1948 - 1960
Korean War, 1950 - 1953
PLA Invasion of Tibet, 1950 - 1951
Tunisian War of Independence, 1952 - 1956
Mau Mau Uprising, 1952 - 1960
Uprising of 1953 in East Germany, June - July, 1953
Algerian War of Independence, 1954 - 1962
First Sudanese Civil War, 1955 - 1972
Hungarian Uprising, October - November, 1956
Sinai Campaign, October, 1956 - March, 1957
Cuban Revolution, 1956 - 1959
Ifni War (Western Sahara), October, 1957 - June, 1958
Lebanon Crisis of 1958, July - October, 1958
1959 Tibetan Rebellion, 1959
Vietnam War, 1959 - 1975
I turned 12 in 1960. I've got 150 more to go in the following 48 years of my life, but the horror of the above list is already too much for me. And that 150 doesn't count the Cold War, which I count as the biggest armed conflict of all time.
And of course, there are ongoing wars...too numerous.
But this is supposed to be about peace.
I'm struggling with that since I feel like I am being barraged with conflict. The asynchronicty of blog participation assures that. If ever things begin to calm down, someone is going to show up who missed the fact that they would have done so and reignite the fire intended to burn this place down. Burn, baby, burn. That is not peace. So how do I write about peace?
Mr. Stafford refused to serve in the military during WWII. He spent most of those years in a CO work camp one place or another. One of those was in Arkansas. I found it an interesting diversion when I lived there to visit some of the places where work was done, like Petit Jean State Park, and imagine that he personally had worked there. The biography/remembrance by his son is not specific enough for me to know for sure.
William's brother was a soldier. I'm sure that caused family disruption of one sort or another. After all, they were of the same faith (Brethren). Members of the Peace Churches had a choice of whether or not to fight. Of course the option to not fighting was being part of a work gang...and for those not of the right religion, it was just a chain short of being on a chain gang.
They pretty much closed that loophole when it came to be my time to serve. What 18 year old can clearly, passionately and concisely express his feelings against war well enough to gain CO status...unless one can prove the Peace Church connection. The Lutheran Church was not a Peace Church. So I ran rather than serve...and tried to serve in other ways...until I was caught and given the choice between learning to kill or five years in prison. I chose the former but clung to the knowledge that if I would be forced to actually apply that knowledge, I could run again...probably be caught again...and still do the prison thing.
I spent my years in the Army trying to spread as much peace as I could. It is not easy to do that in a military atmosphere. But resistance is not futile. Resistance sometimes succeeds. And we sometimes have to accept the few small victories we can achieve and try to build on those.
And sometimes we have to work on the thing without which there can be no Peace, which is Justice. At least that's what I believe: No justice means no peace...at least for those people who are not being justly treated, those people who are being denied justice. I'd go so far as to say, that's what I have learned, that's what I know, from 66 years of living. But I'm pretty sure someone may challenge me on that.
How does one wage peace? It's a hard concept. Working with those peace churches is one way. Do what you can to feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless and empower the powerless. There are ways of doing that, many organizations which will accept help in doing so. But the point of that, of course, is to try to prevent the next war.
Some believe that is all we can do: try to prevent the next war.
As individuals, there is little that we can do to stop War that is ongoing. I believe War can never be ended by fighting. All fighting does is move the location of the conflict, perhaps sublimate it for a few months, a few years, until it erupts again.
What can a person do? Walk out on the battlefield and try to take the guns away from the soldiers? From both sides? Maybe if there were enough of us. I'm game to give it a try if there are people with me. Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?
What can the individual do? I've relied on trying to teach the children, or at least teach the young people who will become parents, and specifically teach those who are going to teach the children. The problem is that what I may have imparted will at best be hearsay and at worst be distorted by a culture which celebrates conflict, which is motivated by greed, and which has no time...or energy...to challenge injustice.
Waging peace is not easy. But the cost of not waging it, even if only in our personal lives, is too dear.
Loose Thread
Clarity
Peace
without Justice
is just another name
for War
War
is only defeated
when its offspring
are not born
The spread of Justice
is the nutrient
for Peace
and the abortifacient
for War
--Robyn Elaine Serven
--July 25, 2008
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