#nonviolence — Public Fediverse posts

🌈✊ Celebrating #BayardRustin: A Trailblazer for #Equality! ✊🌈

Bayard Rustin, a visionary activist, and architect of change, dedicated his life to fighting for #civilrights and #justice. His strategic brilliance, commitment to #nonviolence, and intersectional vision continue to inspire us. Let's honor his legacy by standing up for #equality and creating a more inclusive world. #Inspiration #SocialJustice #Trailblazer

A Different Way to “Never Forget”

It’s hard to forget where I was the day it happened. I was walking with my family around the fun center at the Bavarian Inn in Frankenmuth, MI, when I saw the horrific news that chaos had rained down from the sky and taken so many innocent lives. People were weeping outside the wreckage as others dug through the rubble looking for bodies. My gut was wrenched. I couldn’t believe the scene I was looking at.

May we NEVER FORGET how a United States missile killed more than 100 schoolchildren on February 28th, 2026, at a small Iranian school on the first day of war with Iran.

Though many have already forgotten. And I assume some still don’t even know it happened. It’s clear that Iran hasn’t forgotten, as the school was recently turned into a memorial, with pictures displayed of all the innocent lives that were taken.

“Never forget” is 9/11’s catchphrase, and it has generally bothered me over the years. I think I understand what we mean to communicate with it: “Never forget the thousands of lives lost that day and how America came together to grieve and heal in that moment.”

But given America’s character and response, that’s never been the vibe I’ve gotten from the catchphrase. Instead, I hear it through the lens of violence, blood, and anger. I see it through our immediate militaristic response of a “War on Terror.” “Never forget” has always struck me as a mindset that allows us to villainize and attack others when we perceive them as a threat.

But despite our commitment to never forget, I think we already have. If we remembered, then we would weep every time the United States crumbles another building to the ground. The rubble, the bodies, the weeping, the flashing lights, and the sirens would be giving us flashbacks of 9/11.

But instead of grieving the 100+ bodies of schoolchildren, we argue about whose fault it was, as we try to justify the horrors as an unfortunate part of war. Our anger blinds us to hearing the message in the innocent blood crying out from the ground of Iran in unison with the innocent blood of the 9/11 victims crying out from the ground of America. More violence does not heal their agony. It only stirs up the cry of more innocent blood.

If we’re truly never going to forget, then may we never forget in a way that heals the world. May our crumbled building teach us not to crumble buildings. May our lost loved ones teach us not to take the lives of others. May the violence done to us teach us to see a different way forward than more violence.

May we never forget so that we never reenact our worst days on others.

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

UN Warning in the Fight Against Hate Speech: AI and Social Media Malice Pose an Existential Threat to Humanity

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.pressenza.com/2026/06/un-warning-in-the-fight-against-hate-speech-ai-and-social-media-malice-pose-an-existential-threat-to-humanity/

A Day for the World to Say Sorry

From Australia’s National Sorry Day Toward an International Day of Truth, Repentance, and Repair

A PeaceGrooves Reflection

There are words so overused that they risk becoming weightless. Sorry is one of them. We say it when we bump into someone in a hallway, when we answer an email too late, when we make an insignificant mistake. Yet there are times when sorry is not small at all. There are wounds so deep, so deliberately inflicted, and so long denied that the speaking of sorrow becomes an act of public truth.

Australia’s National Sorry Day, observed each year on May 26, is such a day. It remembers the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families, communities, languages, and cultures under government policies now associated with the Stolen Generations. The date marks the anniversary of the 1997 tabling of the Bringing Them Home report, the landmark national inquiry that gathered testimony from survivors and documented the devastation caused by these removals. The report called not only for recognition of what had happened, but for apology, healing, reparations, family reunion, access to records, and measures ensuring such violations would never recur.

National Sorry Day did not begin as a sentimental holiday….

Read the full essay at PeaceGrooves.

Resistance, Remembrance, and Comunidad: Cinco de Mayo, Mount Pleasant, and the Rebuilding That Erases

Cinco de Mayo is often misunderstood in the United States. It is reduced to a marketing holiday, a day of beer specials, paper flags, mariachi clichés, and the shallow consumption of Mexican culture without the burden of remembering Mexican history. But the heart of Cinco de Mayo is not consumption. It is resistance.

The day remembers the Battle of Puebla, May 5, 1862, when Mexican forces defeated the French army, then one of the most powerful military forces in the world. It was not Mexican Independence Day. It was not the founding of Mexico. It was a day when a people under pressure from empire stood their ground. It was a day when the powerful were resisted by those who were supposed to lose. It was, at its deepest level, a day about memory, dignity, land, sovereignty, and the refusal to be swallowed by imperial appetite. (MySA)

That is why, for me, Cinco de Mayo cannot be separated from another May 5: May 5, 1991, in Washington, D.C.

I was there.

Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.com.

> Conspirituality: Brief: Antifascist Woodshed 2 (Punching Nazis?)

Episode webpage: https://conspirituality.net/
#Violence #Nonviolence #Oppression #USPol #Dharma #Interbeing #Mindfulness #Meditation #PlumVillage #BuddhaGang #EngagedBuddhism #RecoveryDharma #SanghaInTheStreets @dharma @engagedbuddhism @bodhisattvaway @buddhagang @recoverydharma @plumvillage
@sanghainthestreets

Affichage nocturne par Extinction Rebellion et Attac

14 avril 2019, Paris, France

Surprise pour les enfants de l’école Keller à Paris ce matin ! Pendant la nuit, nos rebelles d’Extinction Rébellion et des militant·e·s d’Attac ont décoré le mur de l’école avec #coquelicots, #abeilles, vers, fleurs…

#RebelForLife #ExtinctionRebellion #xrfrance #xr #extinctionrebellion #lrdp #climat #pollution #politique #fr #desobéissance #nonviolence #paris #biodiversité #ecologie #industrie #attac

Action d'Extinction Rebellion France contre @hmfrance et l'univers destructeur et laid de la #fastfashion ✊✊🏿

Le textile, 2e industrie la plus polluante au monde!!! Et qui fait travailler des quasi-esclaves. #RebelForLife #ExtinctionRebellion #xrfrance #xr #extinctionrebellion #lrdp #climat #pollution #politique #fr #entreprises #ourfutur #desobéissance #nonviolence #paris #biodiversité #ecologie #industrie

https://tube.p2p.legal/videos/watch/dcb8bdc8-aece-400b-ac89-721bbe0bb2a8

⚡️⚡️Hier soir à Paris ⚡️⚡️, action de nos rebelles contre @[email protected] et l'univers destructeur et laid de la #fastfashion ✊✊🏿 Le textile, 2e industrie la plus polluante au monde!!! #RebelForLife #ExtinctionRebellion #xrfrance #xr #extinctionrebellion #lrdp #climat #pollution #politique #fr #entreprises #ourfutur #desobéissance #nonviolence #paris #biodiversité #ecologie #industrie