Pete Highlights Nonviolent Method #3: Declarations by Organizations and Instituions

The third Method of Nonviolent Action that Gene Sharp writes about is Declarations by Organizations and Institutions.  This, too, could help the climate movement when President Obama pushes to get something done about it.

My favorite example came in Nazi-occupied Holland in 1943 when the Dutch Reformed Church AND the Roman Catholic Church came out with a letter that told their congregations it was their RELIGIOUS DUTY to do civil disobedience and to refuse to collaborate with the Nazis.

That drove Hitler’s Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels crazy.  He said it was an “exceptionally insolent letter”.

Oh, right, Goebbels!  It’s INSOLENT for churches not to want to help mass murderers.  “Where do these people who worship the Prince of Peace GET OFF not helping us exterminate people?!  They’re insolent, I tell you!”

Dirtbag.

Anyway, isn’t it also a RELIGIOUS DUTY to save God’s creation?  I mean, how can it not be?!  “Oh, thanks for creating all this, God, now we’re just gonna use it all up!”  God’s not gonna be cool with that.  Not the human God and not the great mama polar bear spirit, who’s breath of life colors the sky of the Arctic night.

Anyway, more and more churches are realizing they all have a religious duty to protect our planet from climate catastrophe.

In Nazi-occupied Norway, on one Sunday in 1941, one pastoral letter was read from almost every pulpit in the land, then copies of the letter were handed out and posted all over the place.  It would be great if, when the President really needs our help to pressure congress to do the right thing, a letter about saving the climate was read in houses of worship from coast to coast.

All kinds of organizations and institutions can do this, not just religious ones.     Trade groups, business and industry groups, they all should do it because they’re all in line to get hammered by climate change: artists’ unions, educational institutions, school districts, parents’ and students’ groups, athletic leagues and organizations, journalist groups, farm groups, unions, guilds, charities, advocacy groups, animal herds, wolf packs, parties of polar bears hunting in concert.  The list is as long as the sea ice used to be.  There’s all kinds of organizations and institutions, and all of them could help, and they ought to!

If you belong to any of ‘em, you should start workin’ it!  Don’t take no for an answer!  Keep pushing, get allies, get the organization’s leaders and membership to realize how urgent this is!

You can light the spark!

So that’s how declarations by organizations and institutions can work.  Next time we’ll talk about Method #4, Signed Public Statements.


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Gene Sharp Illustrates How Important Teachers Can be to a Nonviolent Movement

Day 15 of my analysis of Gene Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part One: Power and Struggle, Chapter 2, applied to the climate movement. Reading Sharp’s books are a prerequisite for anyone who wants to help save our life-support system. Please go to Dr. Sharp’s website, buy these books, and study them.

Sharp:  “Significant nonviolent struggles under exceedingly difficult circumstances  also emerged in Nazi-occupied Europe…against a ruthless enemy…The Norwegian teacher’s resistance is but one of these resistance campaigns….[The Norwegian fascist Vidkun Quisling] created a new teacher’s organization with compulsory membership.,,A compulsory fascist youth movement was also set up.

         “The underground called on the teachers to resists.  Between eight thousand and ten thousand of the country’s twelve thousand teachers wrote letters to Quisling’s…Education Department.  All Signed their names and addresses to the wording prescribed by the underground for the letter.  Each teacher said he (or she) could neither assist in promoting fascist education of the children nor accept membership in the new teachers’ organization.

         “The government threatened them with dismissal and then closed all schools for a month.  Teachers held classes in private homes…news of the resistance spread.  Tens of thousands of letters of protest from parents poured into the government office.

         “…about one thousand male teachers were arrested and sent to concentration camps.  Children gathered and sang at railroad stations as teachers were shipped through in cattle cars…On starvation rations, the teachers were put through “torture gymnastics” in deep snow… their suffering strengthened morale and posed problems for the Quisling regime.

         “The schools reopened, but he teachers…told their pupils  they repudiated membership in the new organization and spoke of a duty to conscience.  Rumors were spread that if the teachers did not give in, some or all of those arrested would be killed…the teachers…almost without exception stood firm.”

         “Fearful of alienating Norwegians still further, Quisling finally ordered the teachers’ release.  Eight months after the arrests, the last teachers returned home to triumphal receptions.”

         “Schools were never used for fascist proaganda”.

         I used to be a teacher myself.  And one of my most poignant moments in realizing we needed to do something about climate change came at the end of school one day, when I said goodbye to a class full of just delightful, beautiful 3rd grade kids.  As they walked out the door I thought, “My God, what kind of a future are we dooming them to?”

         In some districts teaching about climate change has been forbidden because it’s “political”.  Good lord, have we really ceded reality away to the point where science can be labeled politics?  Teachers and administrators can be harassed by parents for teaching this stuff.

         But guys, look what the Norwegians stood up to!  What’s a little being harrassed when you’re talking about saving the world?  As teachers, for a few hours every day, we’re surrogates for the parents.  It’s our job to look out for the kid’s welfare, to help prepare them for a successful future.  If we look the other way while climate change is making the planet unable to support our vast numbers in their lifetimes (maybe even by the time they enter adulthood),  are we not concentrating on the little things and ignoring the big thing? 

         Teachers and parents, and students, should be a big part of our push.

CH   

This was one story, but Sharp’s books are packed with similar stories.  If we’re going to break the fossil fuel industry’s stranglehold you need to read Gene Sharp’s stuff.  Please muster up the $34.85 (plus shipping) and purchase The Politics of Nonviolent Action.  You can order it HERE.

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