Highly recommended: Gene Sharpe’s book available through the Albert Einstein Institution
Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, author of Refusing to Be Enemies, encourages us to read & learn from Gene Sharpe’s book, From Dictatorship to Democracy. Bruna Nota shares reflections on what the book can teach us now:
“Seeing the courage and determination of the people in Iran protesting against the religious dictatorship, and remembering the courage of so many protesters over the years, I went back to Gene Sharp’s “From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation”. This manual is a sober reaffirmation that nonviolence is all but the soft hearted, feebleminded approach of the coward or the timid.
It is a vigorous, full bodies, totally aware and purposeful stance of the person and community who know their powers and their rights. They go about having them honoured in their entirety. It is hard work, needing a lot of preparation and skills at different levels. Gene Sharp says:
Just as military officers must understand force structures, tactics, logistics, munitions, the effect of geography, and the like in order to plot military strategy, political defiance planners must understand the nature and strategic principles of nonviolent struggle. Even then, however, knowledge of nonviolent struggle, attentions to recommendations in this essay, and answers to questions posed here will not themselves produce strategies. The formulation of strategies for the struggle still requires an informed creativity” (pp. 83-84 of the 2012 edition).
I wonder how many lives have been wasted, how many opportunities missed, how often the tumbling of a dictatorship has only made way for another dictatorship due to the lack of preparation and the inner discipline on the part of the ‘democrats’ as Gene Sharp calls those who rebel against dictatorship.
The likelihood is that the social unrests we are seeing now will only increase as the climatic collapse generates increasing numbers of mentally or physically angry and displaced people, of refugees, of famine and homelessness. The almost automatic responses of many of the people presently in power will be to increase repressive security to quell unrests. It is essential that all people of good will, all those for whom violence and injustice are abhorrent, be familiar with the lessons presented in this modest booklet. When the time is right for urgent action it is advance preparation that will make the difference between success and failure.”
“The Fund was established decades ago as part of our efforts to withold any support from war and militarism.” explains President Jan Slakov. “As we go through a period of transition, we want to make sure that people who have deposited money in the Fund know that it’s shutting down, so they can decide whether to ask us to return their deposits or allow the funds to be redirected to Conscience Canada’s operational costs.”
The International Day of Peace (Sept. 21) & the International Day of Nonviolence (Oct. 2) are good opportunities to raise awareness for a healthier, more peaceful world – AND to get out our white poppies 🙂 More info here: 
