Recalling Three 911s Renews Dedication to Nonviolence (Page 2 of 2)

Something motivated those 19 terrorists, and, no, it wasn’t that they were envious of our lives. Their enmity grew from a different seed, a combination of misguided religious zealotry—I grew up in a Pentecostal Holiness Christian church, so I know a little something about “true believers”—and a righteous anger at the United States and our policies in the world.

This is where I connect Allende and that other September 11. Because the nation that champions freedom and democracy, at least rhetorically, is also the nation that stood by while musician Victor Jara’s fingers were cut off, and while bodies were dropped from helicopters into a packed soccer stadium …

This is how the rest of the world sees us. We are good guys and bad guys,sometimes very good, and sometimes very, very bad. When we are good, we are appreciated. When we are bad, we are despised. And our badness, in Chile, in El Salvador, in Iraq, in the Philippines, in Vietnam, in Guatemala, in Cuba, in South Africa for so many years—our badness is measured in human suffering, real lives. People notice. Five years ago, some asked in innocence, “Why do they hate us?” I wager few who asked that question know anything at all about September 11, 1973, and the overthrow of Allende. If we knew and owned up to our history, we wouldn’t be so perplexed. They love us and they hate us, sometimes one more than the other.

Which brings me to another 11th of September, 1906, one hundred years ago. It was on that date that a young lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi launched a campaign for racial justice and human rights in South Africa. His campaign was a new kind of campaign, a satyagraha, a “soul force.” It was a nonviolent campaign the likes of which the modern world had never seen, initiated by a man who believed in the surpassing power of nonviolence.

The campaign for human rights in South Africa took years to come to full flower. By then, Gandhi had returned to India and embarked on another satyagraha, this time in pursuit of swaraj, nothing less than the end of the British Empire and self-rule for India.

Gandhi was audacious, foolish, naive, and, as history would demonstrate, indisputably right. The power of nonviolence is far greater than the power of unjust violence, even when injustice is backed by the full might of the greatest military power on the face of the earth.

The 11th of September, 100 years ago had a lesson not often taught in our schoolbooks, and that is why so few of us can even imagine the power of nonviolence, let alone trust it. It offers another vision of life on this planet, another politics, another way of life. “There is no way to peace,” Gandhi said famously, “Peace is the way.”

It’s not the way of life George Bush has vowed to protect at all costs, and he’s sacrificed thousands of lives to prove how deeply he believes in the power of violence to secure the Bush way of life.

Gandhi proves him wrong. Gandhi proved that Empire is only as strong as the people being lorded over are weak. Gandhi proved that the power of nonviolence, the way of soul force, that justice through satyagraha is attainable, that there is another way of living, another way of life. Gandhi proved that spiritual power is greater than military power because it is rooted in a deeper truth and a more profound reality.

So, on the 11th of September, I will draw these three days together. I will mourn the dead—in New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, Basra, Beirut, Gaza, and Israel, in Kabul, Chile, and Surat. I will strive for honesty and understanding about my own country and others. I will read the words of Violeta Para’s Gracias la Vida, and I will think about Gandhi. Maybe I’ll watch the movie again. I will recommit myself to building a life grounded in nonviolence; I will seek out community to support and sustain, encourage and restrain me.

These acts—more than anything we can do with our trillion-dollar armed forces—will create the security I seek, for myself, my family, and for all the world.

Ralph Hutchison is spokesman for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, a non-profit organization working for peace, justice, and an end to nuclear weapons development at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge. On the Web at www.stopthebombs.org.