Nonviolence Introductory Workshops

Last year I thought a lot about the introductory workshops that we run here
in Melbourne and began to look for ways of making them more relevant for
people who have little or no experience in an action campaign. These people
may be interested in doing a workshop for  understanding better the violence
around them, for exploring their reactions in particular situations; they may
just have a theoretical interest. They may want to be involved in something
but be finding various emotional and psychological blocks to their
participation in action. These people actually make up the largest numbers in
our workshops and yet the workshops didn't seem to suit them well.

Around this time Katrina Shield's book "In the Tiger's Mouth"1 was published.
From it I have included exercises in the workshop and developed exercises
which I think help people to further the connections they are already making
between their own emotions and the violence in their own lives AND the
structural violence in the society.

My own understanding of the interaction between structural violence  and
'direct' violence was a gradual unfolding of insights, over some years. This
helped deepen my understanding of nonviolence and the role of nonviolent
action in social change. I see the role of the workshop as giving people the
space to move further along in their understanding, a place to get the
insights ticking over!

There were four major additions with a little vision sharing tucked into the
after lunch sharing. After the case studies and before the theory of
nonviolence I included a small groups discussion of nonviolence paths - "what
has led you to a nonviolence workshop (and not a Marxism workshop)"; "what
are your foundations of nonviolence. Are they Christian, Buddhist, Feminist,
Gandhian, Deep Ecology or just strategic"; "Is there a history of political
resistance in your family past". This helped people tune into the
non-theoretical part of nonviolence in themselves and was a good contrast and
contradiction to the Sharpian categorisation that followed.

After lunch and before an exploration of the principles of nonviolence we had
small groups discussing "what are you own experiences with direct violence
(as receiver or perpetrator - perhaps your brother's violence or school
playground violence) and what do you think made that perpetrator be violent";
"Are humans inherently violent". This was good for bringing out the
connection between people's own experience of violence and structural
violence.

I also included three of Shield's suggestions from her chapter on empowerment
and becoming active.  The "waking-up stories" I included in an active
listening exercise. Sharing "empowering stories" was done in groups of three
as part of the Sunday morning sharing and exploring our "double lives" as
part of the after lunch sharing on Sunday.

The sharing of empowering stories was a new exercise for me and I found it
incredibly valuable as it was a place that I obviously and consciously learnt
from someone who was a very new activist.
Margaret Pestorius

Footnote:
1. In the Tiger's Mouth: An empowerment guide for social action, Katrina
Shields - Newtown, NSW: E.J. Dwyer, 1991.  ISBN 0855748923.