#nonviolence — Public Fediverse posts

Proselytization in Rome, World Religions
https://www.primevideo.com/region/na/detail/0I9WUIBFVBXWET87Z3XS0FAWSQ?ref_=atv_dp_amz_c_pZqpc5_1_1

#documentary #history #Israel #Palestine #nonviolence

No Melek Dictators, No Crusades, No Caliphates
https://pastebin.com/w80wPfy2

#text #scriptures #foundation #logic #nonviolence

Wrote this today and felt good about it. #nonviolence #books #religion #writing #Trump #government #StateofIsrael #Israel #Netanyahu #WeResistWar #Palestine #Gaza #Sudan #Iran #Myanmar #Ukraine #Russia

Religious books
https://pastebin.com/3BC9JFEx

Wrote this today and felt good about it. #nonviolence #books #religion #writing #Trump #government #StateofIsrael #Israel #Netanyahu #WeResistWar #Palestine #Gaza #Sudan #Iran #Myanmar #Ukraine #Russia

Religious books
https://pastebin.com/3BC9JFEx

#singapore #israel #palestine : #gaza / #humaneights / #ngos / #nonviolence / #protest / #repression

„Human Rights Watch ( #HRW ), #AmnestyInternational, and #CIVICUS on Thursday urged the Singapore government to drop charges against several human rights activists involved in peaceful assemblies in support of Gaza and to challenge the #deathpenalty.“

https://www.jurist.org/news/2026/09/human-rights-organizations-call-on-singapore-to-drop-charges-against-activists/

#singapore #israel #palestine : #gaza / #humaneights / #ngos / #nonviolence / #protest / #repression

„Human Rights Watch ( #HRW ), #AmnestyInternational, and #CIVICUS on Thursday urged the Singapore government to drop charges against several human rights activists involved in peaceful assemblies in support of Gaza and to challenge the #deathpenalty.“

https://www.jurist.org/news/2026/09/human-rights-organizations-call-on-singapore-to-drop-charges-against-activists/

#singapore #israel #palestine : #gaza / #humaneights / #ngos / #nonviolence / #protest / #repression

„Human Rights Watch ( #HRW ), #AmnestyInternational, and #CIVICUS on Thursday urged the Singapore government to drop charges against several human rights activists involved in peaceful assemblies in support of Gaza and to challenge the #deathpenalty.“

https://www.jurist.org/news/2026/09/human-rights-organizations-call-on-singapore-to-drop-charges-against-activists/

#singapore #israel #palestine : #gaza / #humaneights / #ngos / #nonviolence / #protest / #repression

„Human Rights Watch ( #HRW ), #AmnestyInternational, and #CIVICUS on Thursday urged the Singapore government to drop charges against several human rights activists involved in peaceful assemblies in support of Gaza and to challenge the #deathpenalty.“

https://www.jurist.org/news/2026/09/human-rights-organizations-call-on-singapore-to-drop-charges-against-activists/

The Geometry of Breaking or Healing

Those are the two options.

To be part of the destruction of that which is precious,
even the life of the enemy.
Or a conduit for the substance that binds up wounds and the broken-hearted.

Even when flaws cause me to hurt those around me or engage in broken thoughts and so, for a time, join with the razing power,
if I am repentant, make the necessary changes, and return to the healing stream,
then the danger of losing my humanity is minimized.

And, if at the end of my life when I am weighed in the balance, and my contribution to fixing outweighs the breaking, then I will be satisfied to rest easy in the knowledge that in some small way I was an addition to the healing sum.

September 10, 2014

The Geometry of Breaking or Healing

Those are the two options.

To be part of the destruction of that which is precious,
even the life of the enemy.
Or a conduit for the substance that binds up wounds and the broken-hearted.

Even when flaws cause me to hurt those around me or engage in broken thoughts and so, for a time, join with the razing power,
if I am repentant, make the necessary changes, and return to the healing stream,
then the danger of losing my humanity is minimized.

And, if at the end of my life when I am weighed in the balance, and my contribution to fixing outweighs the breaking, then I will be satisfied to rest easy in the knowledge that in some small way I was an addition to the healing sum.

September 10, 2014

The Geometry of Breaking or Healing

Those are the two options.

To be part of the destruction of that which is precious,
even the life of the enemy.
Or a conduit for the substance that binds up wounds and the broken-hearted.

Even when flaws cause me to hurt those around me or engage in broken thoughts and so, for a time, join with the razing power,
if I am repentant, make the necessary changes, and return to the healing stream,
then the danger of losing my humanity is minimized.

And, if at the end of my life when I am weighed in the balance, and my contribution to fixing outweighs the breaking, then I will be satisfied to rest easy in the knowledge that in some small way I was an addition to the healing sum.

September 10, 2014

The Geometry of Breaking or Healing

Those are the two options.

To be part of the destruction of that which is precious,
even the life of the enemy.
Or a conduit for the substance that binds up wounds and the broken-hearted.

Even when flaws cause me to hurt those around me or engage in broken thoughts and so, for a time, join with the razing power,
if I am repentant, make the necessary changes, and return to the healing stream,
then the danger of losing my humanity is minimized.

And, if at the end of my life when I am weighed in the balance, and my contribution to fixing outweighs the breaking, then I will be satisfied to rest easy in the knowledge that in some small way I was an addition to the healing sum.

September 10, 2014

The Geometry of Breaking or Healing

Those are the two options.

To be part of the destruction of that which is precious,
even the life of the enemy.
Or a conduit for the substance that binds up wounds and the broken-hearted.

Even when flaws cause me to hurt those around me or engage in broken thoughts and so, for a time, join with the razing power,
if I am repentant, make the necessary changes, and return to the healing stream,
then the danger of losing my humanity is minimized.

And, if at the end of my life when I am weighed in the balance, and my contribution to fixing outweighs the breaking, then I will be satisfied to rest easy in the knowledge that in some small way I was an addition to the healing sum.

September 10, 2014

NOW ON VERDANT SQUARE RADIO ==

NOW PLAYING == Talk World Radio with David Swanson 8/31/26: Israel is using drones to shoot children in the headhttps://youtu.be/zO4uy5qnk4g?si=SVSlvygekvD9Zl-o#news #peace #geopolitics #uspol #politics #antiwar #nonviolence #DavidSwanson #WorldBeyondWar #NoWar #vsn #radio #peaceeducation #activism #resist #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft #SupportIndependentMedia

https://mastodon.social/@VerdantSquareRadio/117215499619582216

#news #arts #left #commentary

NOW PLAYING == Talk World Radio with David Swanson 8/31/26: Israel is using drones to shoot children in the head

https://youtu.be/zO4uy5qnk4g?si=SVSlvygekvD9Zl-o

#news #peace #geopolitics #uspol #politics #antiwar #nonviolence #DavidSwanson #WorldBeyondWar #NoWar #vsn #radio #peaceeducation #activism #resist #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft #SupportIndependentMedia

What Are We Going to Build Together?

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.pressenza.com/2026/09/what-are-we-going-to-build-together/

Habitual Fraud Under the Mask of Religion

The following is a spoken word piece recorded outside of an immigrant church while clergy and others stood outside as a show of solidarity and support so our sisters and brothers could worship safely within.

Transcript

They called it
habitual fraud under the mask of religion.

Not an error.

Not a moment of weakness.

Not one hand caught
briefly in the offering plate.

Habitual.

A practice.

A discipline.

A liturgy.

The mask goes on in the morning.

God bless America.

God save the nation.

God protect the leader.

God secure the border.

God bless the bomb.

God bless the market.

God bless the prison.

God bless the order
we have constructed
to keep certain people
on one side of the gate
and certain people
on the other.

And beneath the mask

the old machinery turns.

Power.

Money.

Fear.

Land.

Blood.

Control.

The words change.

The machinery does not.

Pharaoh had priests.

Caesar had temples.

Kings had bishops.

Plantations had preachers.

Armies had chaplains.

Empires have always preferred
a God who salutes.

A God who stamps the paperwork.

A God who approves the budget.

A God who stands obediently
behind the podium
while the ruler speaks.

This is the oldest political trick:

put heaven
on the letterhead.

And perhaps that is the fraud.

Not believing in God.

The fraud is making God
believe in us.

Drafting the Almighty
into our party.

Putting Christ
in a campaign hat.

Making the Prince of Peace
pose beside the weapons.

Making the refugee Jesus
guard the checkpoint.

Making the condemned Jesus
cheer the execution.

Making the poor Jesus
explain why the poor
must tighten their belts.

Making the brown-skinned
colonized Nazarene

the patron saint
of empire.

Habitual fraud

under the mask
of religion.

And the mask is useful.

Because without it

we might have to say plainly:

We are afraid.

We want control.

We want the land.

We want the money.

We want the oil.

We want the votes.

We want the enemy
to disappear.

We want our children safe
and are willing for someone else’s children
to be terrified.

We want to win.

But these things sound ugly
when spoken nakedly.

So bring the vestments.

Bring the flag.

Bring the Bible.

Bring the choir.

Bring someone
to pray before the cameras.

Cover the machinery.

Hide the gears.

Bless the blade.

There is an old story
about a man in the wilderness

offered all the kingdoms
of the world.

Imagine that.

All the kingdoms.

Every palace.

Every army.

Every border.

Every treasury.

Every throne.

All yours.

And he said no.

We have spent two thousand years
trying to persuade him
to reconsider.

Jesus,

we can get you elected.

Jesus,

we can make Christianity great again.

Jesus,

we can protect you
from your enemies.

Jesus,

just stand here.

Hold the flag.

Smile.

Say nothing
about the stranger.

Nothing
about the prisoner.

Nothing
about the poor.

Nothing
about the peacemakers.

Nothing
about loving enemies.

Certainly nothing
about selling possessions.

We have polling
on that.

Just give us
your name.

We will handle
the rest.

Habitual fraud
under the mask of religion.

Perhaps someday
there should be a tribunal

not for unbelief

but for misuse of belief.

For laundering cruelty
through holiness.

For hiding ambition
inside prophecy.

For calling domination
discipleship.

For baptizing nationalism.

For canonizing vengeance.

For turning God
into an authorization code.

And perhaps the witnesses
would come forward:

the migrant,

the prisoner,

the hungry child,

the bombed family,

the woman silenced
by sacred authority,

the dissenter called traitor,

the believer told
that obedience to power
was obedience to God.

One by one
they would take the stand.

And somewhere near the back

an itinerant rabbi
from Galilee

would be waiting
to testify.

But perhaps
there would be no need.

Because he has already
given his testimony.

Blessed are the poor.

Blessed are the merciful.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Love your enemies.

Welcome the stranger.

Put away your sword.

Whatever you did
to the least of these

you did
to me.

The evidence
has been entered.

The record
is remarkably clear.

So when Caesar
wears the cross,

look beneath it.

When the empire
quotes Scripture,

keep reading.

When the ruler says
God is on our side,

ask what happens
to the people
on the other side.

When cruelty arrives
carrying a Bible,

do not confuse
the book
with the hand
that carries it.

And when they tell you
that domination is holy,

that vengeance is righteous,

that exclusion is purity,

that violence is peace,

that wealth is blessing,

that obedience is faith—

remember the charge.

Not religion.

Not faith.

Not devotion.

But

habitual fraud

under the mask

of religion.

The Ball and the Mirror

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.pressenza.com/2026/08/the-ball-and-the-mirror/

The Archer

In the high sea of clouds,
in willowing wisps of white,
an evil lurks.

The winds of the world bring
the first whisper of change,
an alien thing.

A dragon.

Red as blood, gleaming darkness,
its armor, invincible?

Heavy metal talons, drooling jaws,
acid falling, burning earth below.

It screams through the sky,
wings creaking, flapping furiously,
breathing flame.

Men flee,
like tiny ants scurrying
from desecration
into it.

Only One holds his ground,
a bow and one arrow
in his hand.

The Prince awaits,
as if to allow the dragon to
devour him.

Then with a flash,
he looses his arrow.

It soars through the air.

Blood gushing,
the dart buried deep,
the dragon crashes to the ground.

Landing on the One.

From amongst the dragon’s corpse,
amidst dying coals and wisps of smoke,
a figure crawls,
stands.

It is the Archer,
the One,
Him.

From the collection “Words at 16 (1983)”

An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #MahatmaGandhi #NonViolence #Revenge #Violence

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Guangxi #China #LiRiver #LiJiang #TowerKarst #Geology

The Sabbath Sabotage

They told us
holiness was neat,
pressed flat like Sunday clothes,
folded into bulletins,
spoken in indoor voices,
kept safely between hymns
and handshakes.

They told us
Sabbath was a soft thing,
a nap for the soul,
a gentle pause
before returning
to the holy machinery
of earning, buying, proving, becoming.

But Sabbath was never safe.

Sabbath is a wrench
thrown into Pharaoh’s gears.
A door barred against the market.
A candle lit
in defiance of the floodlights.
A refusal
to kneel before the stopwatch.
A holy no
rising like thunder
from tired bones.

Six days, they say,
you shall labor.
And the seventh?
The seventh is mutiny.

The seventh day
the fields are not your masters.
The ledgers do not own your name.
The inbox may howl
like a beast outside the gate,
but you will not feed it.
The empire counts bricks.
Sabbath counts blessings.
The empire demands output.
Sabbath gathers manna
and says, enough.

Enough for today.
Enough for this body.
Enough for this earth.
Enough for a life
that was never meant
to be fed into furnaces
just to keep the towers warm.

Sabbath is not laziness.
It is revolt
with bread on the table.
It is trust
with dirt under the fingernails.
It is the slave
remembering he is human.
The widow
remembering she is seen.
The ox
remembering grass.
The land
remembering how to breathe.

And maybe that is why
they sabotage Sabbath.

Because rest breaks rank.
Because silence interrupts slogans.
Because delight cannot be monetized forever.
Because a people
who learn to stop
may also learn
they can refuse.

Refuse the lie
that worth is measured in production.
Refuse the sermon
of profit without mercy.
Refuse the fear
that if we cease for one day
the world will fall apart—
as though we were the ones
holding up the stars.

No.
Sabbath is the admission
that we are not God,
and the miracle
that God is still good.

So let the engines choke.
Let the schedules stutter.
Let the tyrants call it weakness.
Let the anxious call it waste.
Let the merchants stand bewildered
before shuttered stalls
and unhurried hearts.

For this is the sabotage:
to rest in a restless world,
to feast in a famine of joy,
to loosen your fist
when all of history
has trained it to clench.

To stop.
To breathe.
To bless.
To remember
that we were not made
for endless extraction,
but for communion—
with God,
with neighbor,
with creature,
with soil,
with our own forgotten souls.

And so, on the seventh day,
we commit our small rebellion:
we light candles against consumption,
set tables against despair,
sing psalms against the grind,
and call this shattered life
still sacred.

This is no small thing.
This is how the kingdom enters:
not always with trumpets,
but with napping children,
unbought hours,
shared bread,
and a people audacious enough
to believe
that the world can turn
without their frantic striving.

Blessed are the saboteurs of empire.
Blessed are the keepers of Sabbath.
Blessed are the tired
who lay their burden down
and find, beneath the weight of all they carried,
a joy the masters could not confiscate.

For every Sabbath kept
is a crack in the idol.
Every prayer whispered at rest
is a seed beneath the pavement.
Every holy pause
is a hammer blow
against the myth
that Caesar owns time.

He does not.
The clock does not.
The market does not.

Time belongs to God.
And God,
in mercy,
has given some of it back to us.

#assassinationattempt #nonviolence Attention all center, left of center, and far left friends: if you advocate, plan, or engage in political violence of any kind, I will block you and cut you out of my life.

Who Will Be Romero Today?

On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.

Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”

That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.

Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.

And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.

Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.

How an #AssassinationAttempt Affirmed #MLK’s Faith in #Nonviolence

https://www.history.com/articles/martin-luther-king-1958-assassination-attempt

#history #coldwar #nonviolence #pacifism #resistance #literature #science #charta77 #csce

I would like to study long-term nonviolent (social) resistance (history, theories, practice, etc.) in #Czechoslovakia after the occupation in 1968 by the USSR. Can anyone recommend some introductory literature? Thx!

A re- #introduction

I'm a #writer and working on yet another draft of a novel. I post about things that interest me and will engage with thoughtful people.

For mental health reasons, I don't post about #politics much. The #worldonfire and I grieve over it every day, as well as show-up, contribute, protest, and vote. I respect people who know the source of their news & cull out misinformation. I read a minimum of 3 newspapers a day. (IMO we have to keep #journalism esp. #localnewspapers alive.) I'm a member of one of the groups our (USA) House Speaker would like to get rid of: #LGBTQ

I'm a #breastcancer survivor. I hate war, nukes, guns, nazis, and bullies. I love my wife, my #dog, the #cats across the street, my friends, #theatre #musicals #films some #tv #nonviolence #qigong and #taichi #greenchile and #NewMexico .

Books: I'll read most anything. Esp. #mysteries #scifi #poetry #haiku #history