Resources For Nonviolent Action Why did we decide to start a Nonviolence Resource Centre (NRC), in a tiny community lost in the mountains of southeastern British Columbia? Well, it's a long story - but you have to start sometime. I'd say the real spark of the young life of the NRC began one day in the early spring of 1989, when Jack Ross and I were driving across the province on our way to a training at Cache Creek - alias "Trash Creek." The town faced the opening of a giant dump for all the garbage from municipal Vancouver. Local people there were looking for ways to stop the trucks, and Jack and I had some skills and experiences to share. The night before leaving, I got a phone call from a student in Edmonton wanting some help with training for a demonstration in front of a government building. He'd gotten my name from a Quaker fellow whom Jack and I had visited the previous October, on our way north to talk with the Lubicon Indian band. On that trip Jack stayed to stand with the native people on their blockade symbolizing independence from Canada. All summer in 1988, we'd worked with groups up and down B.C.'s Slocan Valley, where watersheds were threatened by logging and pesticides. The bulk of our hands-on experience had come two summers before, when residents of our own Lardeau Valley banded together to stop Forestry spraying in our watershed. We succeeded with a comprehensive campaign of self-education, public education and support, negotiations, blockades, and constructive alternatives both proposed and carried out. In turn, people in our neck of the woods had been inspired by reports from various parts of the province about successful nonviolent actions to protect native lands, to halt uranium mining ... not to mention all the action for disarmament, civil rights ... the list goes on. It seemed that by the end of the eighties, grassroots nonviolence had really started to increase dramatically. During that drive to Cache Creek, Jack and I talked of the widespread need for quality resources and training, and wondered if perhaps we could meet some of those needs without driving five hundred, a thousand miles on every occasion! We sought a form of organization that could pool available talents and materials, and then effectively reach out with those resources to interested groups and individuals. In our own community of Argenta, others joined us as a core working group: Mary and Bruce Farley, longtime Quakers experienced in refugee work; Jay Martell, who's served time in a U.S. prison for going over a Trident base fence; Anni Valentine, active in the Green Party. We drew on generous financial help from the local Friends Meeting and from Canadian Friends Service Committee, and formed a working liaison with the Argenta Friends Press. We'll continue to depend on a wide circle of friends, associates and patrons to offer their ideas, skills and support for our work. With the nuts and bolts of organization in place, the NRC is equipped to start acting on its purposes: * to supply books, videos and assistance with training * to network with action and study groups * to network with other resource groups, serving to channel the most helpful resources where they are needed * to keep abreast of current trends in nonviolent actions around the world. We are all part of, as Gandhi said, an ongoing experiment with truth. Members of the NRC are willing to facilitate training sessions personally when possible; as an experienced trainer can be invaluable for a group organizing and preparing for nonviolent action ... especially for the first time. There are other trainers around, however, so we first try to connect a group with a trainer in their area. The same principle applies to materials such as videotapes and books. The NRC hopes to fill gaps in resource availability both by focussing on the field of nonviolence, and by providing the most efficient route to a given resource. While we may offer personal services in training, speaking, and so on, the NRC is not formed to act as a group in specific campaigns. (If we did that, we'd be overtime activists, unable to mind the shop.) Of course, as individuals we may still participate in whatever actions we choose. Besides the influence of our direct experiences with nonviolence, there is much important background of a theoretical nature that motivates the work of the NRC. Naturally, the individual members of our group will cite their own favorite sources of inspiration: the Christian or Quaker traditions, the examples of Gandhi or Martin Luther King, the writings of Richard Gregg or Joan Bondurant, the songs of Joan Baez or Holly Near. I won't attempt to discuss all these influences here. Rather, I would emphasize two approaches that fully explore the capabilities of principled nonviolence to be effective in the political sphere. The first is Gene Sharp's analysis of social and political power, especially in The Politics of Nonviolent Action. His central thesis - that real power rests with the mass of a people, not the so-called leaders - seems fundamental to all nonviolent action of a political nature . The other major foundation for my understanding of how nonviolence works comes from the Movement for a New Society. Its Resource Manual for a Living Revolution thoroughly covers all the angles and steps of a nonviolent action campaign, with a core message: affiliate, organize, plan and carry out actions on a good, working group basis. Unflinching attention to good group process I've found to be essential to a group's 'success' in the holistic sense. I've seen a group be effective with a hastily-planned action and, later, feel lousy about how it all happened. The principle of good group process reaches into every area of nonviolence. It's the reason why people are forced to take action in the first place - we've been ignored and left out of the conventional decision-making process, even in our 'democracies'. It's definitely missing when peace breaks down, neighbors no longer talk, and bullets start to fly - between individuals as between nations. It's even, perhaps, the missing link between humans and the nature we so blindly oppress: since wild things are not part of our human-group junta. The NRC hopes to encourage an integrated understanding of these issues. Peace, Environment, Native Rights, Social and Economic Justice, are all related. Work in one area naturally touches on others; progress in one often seems to depend on progress in the others. Likewise, the methods of nonviolent action used to address these issues will overlap and interrelate. Spiritual preparation, witnessing, mediating, communicating well, confronting injustice: these are all valuable tools, shades of meaning in our work. When it comes down to one key word for what the NRC is about, I'd say, empowerment. There's a collective sense, a political sense to this word, that means power to act, the will and strength and skill to be effective. There's also an individual component: that each member of a group, a society, a world, is entitled to a voice, a right to be heard, and a compassionate account taken of his or her (or its) concern. For those without voices, the rest of us must listen more carefully still. Nowick Gray Nonviolence Resource Centre Argenta, B.C. Canada VOG lBO (604) 366 4304