Today We Begin to Stand Against the Violence

Hunger Strike

To Stand Against the Violence
Of US Domestic and International Policy
& Initiate a Nationwide
Nonviolent Democracy Campaign

Today, on the anniversary of Gandhi’s initiation of the All-India Satyagraha campaign on April 6, 1919, I am taking up a hunger strike to summon the people of the United States to begin, before it is too late, to build a nation-wide campaign to transform US governmental policies of violence and devastation into policies of healing and justice, and to repair the breach in the heart of the world.

This political and spiritual work cannot wait until the next Presidential election in 2008. By then it may be too late. What is needed in any case is more than simply a change in the party of the executive administration. We need a fundamental change in the framework of policy that governs this country, whatever the political party in charge of the executive or Congress.

The mid-term elections this year give the citizens of the US the opportunity to demand fundamental change in the policies that have been leading this country so badly astray at almost every level, foreign and domestic. --Environmental policy that ignores the overwhelming evidence of the devastating effects of global warming; economic policy that ignores the gathering signs of fundamental economic rupture; social policy that ignores the growing costs of increasing poverty and lack of adequate health insurance for 46 million Americans and more; and a national security policy and framework that is unable to provide even the most basic forms of human security and voting rights to Gulf Coast victims scattered across the face of this country.

While changing the fundamental framework of our nation's policy agenda is undoubtedly a large task that will require the collaborative vision and creativity of all the citizens of this country, this task is much less difficult and heavy than continuing to accept the dead load of a policy framework that has failed us at almost every level. If we work together to learn to organize our demands in dramatic new ways, beyond mere party lines, and to demand fundamental policy change, rather than superficial change in the bodies that inhabit the seats in Congress, we will be able to accomplish so much more this November than an election victory for one party or the other.

For if the personnel are changed, but the policies remain the same, what's the point of all the money and time and energy spent on politics in this country? What if, instead of focusing on the stale old politics of winning a seat for our party politician, we focus instead on the politics of transforming the policy (and the policymaker) that will be speaking from that seat?

Politics can be about so much more than the media show and superficial personality games and glitz it has come to signify. But it will only mean more in practice if we demand that it do so. And the best way to give our demand force is for us to stop investing in politics as usual. This is the core spiritual and political meaning of the "strike" I am calling all Americans to take up, and of which the hunger strike is merely a symbol of refusing to invest in life as usual.

Over the months ahead, we need to find ways to organize a nation-wide and sustainable sit-down strike against politics as usual, in order to open the door to forging a new democratic policy agenda for the nation. This strike is intended to open up the creative space for inventing a framework for policymaking beyond the unimaginative and violent black box to which the traditional political game confines it.

We all recognize how desperately we need a new kind of politics, one that engages our deepest spiritual and human values and aspirations and hopes for not only a better and more just world, but for a more humane and beautiful world for both our own generation and generations to come. It is now high time for us to stop being satisfied with what our paid politicians and corporate leaders have been willing to hand us. It's time for us to go on strike to open up the new imaginative space we need to be able to forge a new vision for politics and a new framework for policymaking.

If we continue to govern ourselves as usual--as if even the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic Ice caps (which has been speeding up tremendously in the last ten years--see the series of articles in last week's [April 3] special report on global warming in TIME magazine, titled "Be worried, Be Very Worried") is no big problem, then we all will have failed not only each other, but the many generations after us that will have to survive in the wake of the environmental devastation our generation might have prevented. We will have failed the essential test of our humanity--upholding our responsibility to the future.

As responsible citizens of the United States, WE cannot continue to live “normal” lives without being complicit in the policies that the US government is promoting in the name of its war against terrorism. If we continue to allow our government to sacrifice the values that once made this country stand for something positive in the eyes of the rest of the world, not only have the terrorists already won, but WE will have allowed our own government to sell us out to terrorism.

Because in a democracy we the people are ultimately responsible for what our government does, it is we who must dramatically transform the nature of our governmental policies if this nation is to stop leading the world into a horror-filled century of increasing poverty, terror, and environmental devastation. We must therefore call each other, as fellow citizens of this country to engage—before it grows too late—a nonviolent democratic spiritual/political struggle to resist and transform the policies of this country contributing to global warming, growing poverty, and the war on terror.

As one person alone, I realize I can do little to change the direction of US policy. Gandhi developed Satyagraha into a soulful political technique to draw together the powers of individual bodies, minds, and souls into a collective struggle capable of overcoming the British empire. He refused to believe that the unarmed Indian people were powerless to overthrow the military and economic might of empire. And by unifying the spiritual and political force of the people of India, Satyagraha brought British dominance over India to an end without the use of military force.

Because both our major political parties have proven unable to resist the corrupting powers of wealth and the seductions of military force, it is time for the people of the United States to rise up and call each other and their politicians to account. I refuse to believe we are powerless to change the policies of our government. I believe together we can learn to organize the spiritual and political force of our nation to take government back into the people's hands to use for the purposes of achieving the healing of each other, our fellow citizens, and the world.

It is time for Americans to begin to organize together the spiritual force of a new kind of politics and policy that will allow the people of the US to break the political stranglehold of the addiction to violence and oil, which has come to dominate us. We cannot afford to allow ourselves to continue to feel powerless before the foreign and domestic policies that have made the United States a symbol of arbitrary, undemocratic, and unjust power to the rest of the world.

The struggle against the policies of destructive violence that now govern us will not be easy. But the alternative for our futures, and that of generations to come—if we fail to live up to the challenges of this struggle—is too bleak to contemplate.

Through engaging now--with all our hearts and souls--a sustained and persistent struggle to win back our government and our national policy for the noble democratic purpose of creating human well-being for all, rather than allowing our government to be exploited for purposes of individual profit and greed, we may still be able to preserve our link to the future, and thereby salvage our humanity in the present.

And more than this--We may learn together that the best way to promote democracy in the rest of the world is to learn how to practice it well here at home. If we show the rest of the world we can do this, we may slowly win back the admiration of the rest of the world we have lost by trying to impose democracy by the brute force of military might. By its very nature, democracy must grow from within; it cannot be enforced from without. This is the most tragic error of understanding, both spiritual and political, at the heart of the current failed policy in Iraq.