Today is the ninth anniver­sary of the war in Afghanistan. In recog­ni­tion, here’s my Non​vi​o​lence​.org essay from 10/7/2010. It’s all sadly still top­i­cal. Nine years in and we’re still mak­ing ter­ror and still cre­at­ing enemies.

Robin wrote a lit­tle about the New Monas­tic move­ment in a plug for the Pen­dle Hill work­shop I’m doing with Wess Daniels this Fall.

Here’s my work­ing the­ory: I think Lib­eral Friends have a good claim to invent­ing the “new monas­tic” move­ment thirty years ago in the form of Move­ment for a New Soci­ety, a net­work of peace and anti-nuclear activists based in Philadel­phia that cod­i­fied a kind of “sec­u­lar Quaker” decision-making process and trained thou­sands of peo­ple from around the world in a kind of engaged drop-out lifestyle that fea­tured low-cost com­mu­nal liv­ing arrange­ments in poor neigh­bor­hoods with part-time jobs that gave them flex­i­bil­ity to work as full-time com­mu­nity activists. There are few activist cam­paigns in the 1970s and 1980s that weren’t touched by the MNS style and a less-ideological, more lived-in MNS cul­ture sur­vives today in bor­der­line neigh­bor­hoods in Philadel­phia and other cities. The high-profile new monas­tics rarely seem to give any props to Quak­ers or MNS, but I’d be will­ing to bet if you sat in on any of their meet­ings the process would be much more inspired by MNS than Robert’s Rules of Order or any fif­teen cen­tury monas­tic rule that might be cited.

For a decade I lived in West Philly in what I called “the ruins of the Move­ment for a New Soci­ety.” The for­mal struc­ture of MNS had dis­banded but many of its insti­tu­tions car­ried on in a kind of lived-in way. I worked at the remain­ing pub­lish­ing house, New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers, lived in a land-trusted West Philly coop house, and was fed from the old neigh­bor­hood food coop and occa­sion­ally dropped in or helped out with Train­ing for Change, a revived train­ing cen­ter started by MNS-co-founder (and Cen­tral Philadel­phia Meeting-member) George Lakey It was a tight neigh­bor­hood, with strong cross-connections, and it was able to absorb related move­ments with dif­fer­ent styles (e.g., a strong anar­chist scene that grew in the late 1980s). I don’t think it’s coin­ci­dence that some of the Philly emer­gent church projects started in West Philly and is strong in the neigh­bor­hoods that have become the new ersatz West Philly as the actual neigh­bor­hood has gentrified.

So some ques­tions I’ll be wrestling with over the next six months and will bring to Pen­dle Hill:

• Why haven’t more of us in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends adopted this engaged lifestyle?
• Why haven’t we been good at artic­u­lat­ing it all this time?
• Why did the for­mal struc­ture of the Quaker-ish “new monas­ti­cism” not sur­vive the 1980s?
• Why don’t we have any younger lead­ers of the Quaker monas­ti­cism? Why do we need oth­ers to remind us of our own recent tradition?
• In what ways are some Friends (and some fel­low trav­el­ers) still liv­ing out the “Old New Monas­tic” expe­ri­ence, just with­out the hype and with­out the buzz?

It’s entirely pos­si­ble that the “new monas­ti­cism” isn’t sus­tain­able. At the very least Friends’ expe­ri­ences with it should be stud­ied to see what hap­pened. Is West Philly what the new monas­ti­cism looks like thirty years later? The biggest dif­fer­ences between now and the hey­day of the Move­ment for a New Soci­ety is 1) the Internet’s abil­ity to orga­nize and stay in touch in com­pletely dif­fer­ent ways; and 2) the power of the major Evan­gel­i­cal pub­lish­ing houses that are hyp­ing the new kids.

I’ll be look­ing at myself as well. After ten years, I felt I needed a change. I’m now in the “real world”–semi sub­ur­ban free­stand­ing house, nuclear fam­ily. The old new West Philly monas­ti­cism, like the “new monas­ti­cism” seems opti­mized for hip twenty-something sub­ur­ban kids who roman­ti­cized the gritty city. Peo­ple of other demo­graph­ics often fit in, but still it was never very scal­able and for many not very sus­tain­able. How do we bring these con­cerns out to a world where there are sub­urbs, fam­i­lies, etc?

—

RELATED READING: I first wrote about the sim­i­lar­ity between MNS and the Philadel­phia “New Monas­tic” move­ment six years ago in Peace and Twenty-Somethings, where I argued that Pen­dle Hill should take a seri­ous look at this new movement.

Over on Quaker Oats Live, Cherice is fired up about taxes again and propos­ing a peace wit­ness for next year:

My solu­tion: Quak­ers, Men­non­ites, Brethren, and whomever else wants to par­tic­i­pate refuses to pay war taxes for a few years, and we suf­fer the con­se­quences. I think we should cam­paign for a war-tax-free 2010 in all Quaker meet­ings and Mennonite/Brethren/etc. com­mu­ni­ties. What are they going to do–throw us all in jail? Maybe. But they can’t do that for­ever. No one wants to pay their taxes for a bunch of Quak­ers and other paci­fists to sit in jail for not pay­ing taxes. It doesn’t make sense.

A com­menter chimes in with a warn­ing about Friends who were hit by heavy tax penal­ties a quar­ter cen­tury ago. But I know of some­one who didn’t pay taxes for twenty years and recently vol­un­teered the infor­ma­tion to the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice. The col­lec­tors were non­cha­lant, polite and sym­pa­thetic and set­tled for a very rea­son­able amount. If this friend’s expe­ri­ence is any guide, there’s not much drama to be had in war tax resis­tance. These days, Cae­sar doesn’t care much.

What if our wit­ness was directed not at the fed­eral gov­ern­ment but at our fel­low Chris­tians? We could fol­low Quaker founder George Fox’s exam­ple and climb the tallest tree we could find (real or metaphor­i­cal) and begin preach­ing the good news that war goes against the teach­ings of Jesus. As always, we would be respect­ful and char­i­ta­ble but we could reclaim the strong and clear voices of those who have trav­eled before us. If we felt the need for backup? Well, I under­stand there are twenty-seven or so books to the New Tes­ta­ment sym­pa­thetic to our cause. And I have every rea­son to believe that the Inward Christ is still hum­ming our tune and burn­ing bushes for all who have eyes to see and ears to lis­ten. Just as John Wool­man min­is­tered with his co-religionists about the sin of slav­ery, maybe our job is to min­is­ter to our co-religionists about war.

But who are these co-religionist neigh­bors of ours? Twenty years of peace orga­niz­ing and Friends orga­niz­ing makes me doubt we could find any large group of “his­toric peace church” mem­bers to join us. We talk big and write pretty epis­tles, but few indi­vid­u­als engage in wit­nesses that involve any dan­ger of real sac­ri­fice. The way most of our estab­lished bod­ies couldn’t fig­ure out how to respond to a mod­ern day prophetic Chris­t­ian wit­ness in Tom Fox’s kid­nap­ping is the norm. When the IRS threat­ened to put liens on Philadel­phia Yearly Meet­ing to force resis­tant staffers to pay, the gen­eral sec­re­tary and clerk said all sorts of sym­pa­thetic words of anguish (which they prob­a­bly even meant), then docked the employee’s pay any­way. There have been times when clear-eyed Chris­tians didn’t mind loos­ing their lib­erty or prop­erty in ser­vice to the gospel. Early Friends called our emu­la­tion of Christ’s sac­ri­fice the Lamb’s War, but even seven years of real war in the ancient land of Baby­lo­nia itself hasn’t brought back the old fire. Our meet­ing­houses sit quaint, with own­er­ship deeds untouched, even as we wring our hands won­der­ing why most remain half-empty on First Day morning.

But what about these emerg­ing church kids?: all those peo­ple read­ing Shane Clai­borne, mov­ing to neigh­bor­hoods in need, orga­niz­ing into small cells to talk late into the night about prim­i­tive Chris­tian­ity? Some of them are actu­ally putting down their can­dles and pre­ten­tious jar­gon long enough to read those twenty-seven books. Friends have a lot of accu­mu­lated wis­dom about what it means the prim­i­tive Chris­t­ian life, even if we’re pretty rusty on its actual prac­tice. What shape would that wit­ness take and who would join us into that unknown but famil­iar desert? What would our move­ment even be called? And does it matter?

—–

Any­one inter­ested in think­ing more on this should start sav­ing up their loose change ($200 com­muters) to come join C Wess Daniels and me this Novem­ber when we lead a work­shop on “The New Monas­tics and Con­ver­gent Friends” at Pen­dle Hill near Philadel­phia. Methinks I’m already start­ing to blog about it.

Just a lit­tle note to every­one that I’ve blogged a cou­ple of posts over on Non​vi​o​lence​.org. They’re both based on “peace mom” Cindy Sheeran’s “res­ig­na­tion” from the peace move­ment yes­ter­day.
It’s all a bit strange to see this from a long-time peace activist per­spec­tive. The move­ment that Sheehan’s talk­ing about and now cri­tiquing is not move­ment I’ve worked with for the last fifteen-plus years. The orga­ni­za­tions I’ve known have all been housed in crum­bling build­ings, with too-old car­pets and fur­ni­ture lifted as often as not from going out of busi­ness sales. Money’s tight and careers poten­tially sac­ri­ficed to help build a world of shar­ing, car­ing and under­stand­ing.
The move­ment Shee­han talks about is fueled by mil­lions of dol­lars of Demo­c­ra­tic Party-related money, with cam­paigns designed to mesh well with Party goals via the so-called “527 groups”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/527_group and other indi­rect mech­a­nisms. Big Media likes to crown these orga­ni­za­tions as _the_ anti­war move­ment, but as Shee­han and Amy Good­man dis­cuss in today’s “Democ­racy Now interview”:http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07%2F05%2F30%2F1343232, cor­po­rate media will end up with much of the tens of mil­lions of dol­lars can­di­dates are now rais­ing. Shee­han makes an impas­sioned plea for peo­ple to sup­port those grass­roots cam­paigns that aren’t sup­ported by the “peace move­ment” but this rein­forces the notion that its the mon­eyed inter­ests that make up the move­ment. I’m sure she knows bet­ter but it’s hard to work for so long and to make so many sac­ri­fices and still be so casu­ally dismissed–not just me but thou­sands of com­mit­ted activists I’ve known over the years.
There are a few peace orga­ni­za­tions in that happy medium between toad­y­ing and poverty (nice car­pets, souls still intact) but it mys­ti­fies me why there isn’t a broader base of sup­port for grass­roots activism. I myself decided to leave pro­fes­sional peace work almost a decade ago after the my Non​vi​o​lence​.org project raised such piti­ful sums. At some point I decided to stop whin­ing about this phe­nom­e­non and just look for better-paying employ­ment else­where but it still fas­ci­nates me from a soci­o­log­i­cal perspective.

There’s some inter­est­ing follow-up on the Cindy Shee­han “res­ig­na­tion” (see yesterday’s post). One fel­low I cor­re­sponded with years ago gave a dona­tion then sent an email urg­ing us not to fall into despair. It’s hard.
Go beyond Demo­c­ra­tic Party fronts like MoveOne and you’ll find the most of the peace move­ment is a ridicu­lously shoe­string oper­a­tion. Nonviolence.org’s four month “ChipIn” fundrais­ing cam­paign raised $50 per month but the sac­ri­fice isn’t just short-term–just try apply­ing for a main­stream job with a resume chock full of social change work!
Michael Westmoreland-White over on the Lev­ellers blog talks about “keep­ing going through the despair”:http://levellers.wordpress.com/2007/05/30/needed-for-long-haul-peacemaking-a-spirituality-of-nonviolence/:
bq. This is a cau­tion­ary tale for the rest of us, includ­ing myself. Out­rage, right­eous indig­na­tion, anger, pub­lic grief, are all valid reac­tions to war and human rights abuses, but they will get us only so far. They may strain mar­riages and fam­ily life. They may lead to speech and action that is not in the spirit of non­vi­o­lence and active peace­mak­ing. And, since impe­ri­al­ist mil­i­tarism is a sys­tem (bib­li­cally speak­ing, a Power), it will resist change for the good. Work for jus­tice and peace over the long haul requires spir­i­tual dis­ci­pline, requires deep roots in a spir­i­tu­al­ity of non­vi­o­lence, includ­ing cul­ti­vat­ing the virtue of patience.
Michael’s answer is specif­i­cally Chris­t­ian but I think his advice to step back and attend to the roots of our activism is wise despite one’s moti­va­tions.
Sheehan’s retire­ment didn’t stop her from “talk­ing with Amy Good­man on Democ­racy Now this morning”:http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/30/1343232. She talks about cash-starved peace activists and con­trasts them with the tens of mil­lions pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates are rais­ing, most of which will go to big media TV net­works for ads. Shee­han says we need more than just an anti­war move­ment:
bq. Like, end­ing the Viet­nam War was major, but peo­ple left the move­ment. It was an anti­war move­ment. They didn’t stay com­mit­ted to true and last­ing peace. And that’s what we really have to do.
More Cindy Shee­han read­ing across the blo­gos­phere avail­able via “Google”:http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=cindy+sheehan&btnG=Search+Blogs and “Technorati”:http://technorati.com/tag/cindy+sheehan.
And for those look­ing for a lit­tle good news check out the brand new site for the “Global Net­work for Nonviolence”:http://gn-nonviolence.org/. I designed it for them as part of my “free­lance design work”:http://www.martinkelley.com but it’s been a joy and a lot of fun to be work­ing more closely with a good group of inter­na­tional activists again. Their “non­vi­o­lence links”:http://gn-nonviolence.org/links.php page includes sites for some really com­mit­ted grass­roots peace­mak­ers. This long-term peace work may not give us head­lines in the New York Times but it’s touched mil­lions over the years. If human­ity is ever going to grow into the kind of cul­ture of peace Shee­han dreams of then we’ll need a lot more won­der­ful projects like these.

In the news:  more than 1,000 ser­vice mem­bers sign peti­tion to end Iraq War (Stars and Stripes), orga­nized by the Appeal for Redress cam­paign spon­sored by a hand­ful of mil­i­tary anti­war groups includ­ing Non​vi​o​lence​.org alums Vet­er­ans for Peace. The sim­ple peti­tion reads:

As a patri­otic Amer­i­can proud to serve the nation in uni­form, I respect­fully urge my polit­i­cal lead­ers in Con­gress to sup­port the prompt with­drawal of all Amer­i­can mil­i­tary forces and bases from Iraq. Stay­ing in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.

Sup­port­ing the troops means mak­ing sure Amer­i­can lives aren’t being wasted in dead-end wars. Their ser­vice and their sac­ri­fice has been too great to con­tinue the lies that have fueled this con­flict since the very begin­ning, start­ing with the myth­i­cal Saddam/Al Qaeda con­nec­tion and the phan­tas­mic weapons of mass destruc­tion. The cur­rent esca­la­tion (euphemised as a “surge”) of troop lev­els is sim­ply an esca­la­tion of a badly-run war plan. When will this all end?
*Update*: Pres­i­dent Bush has admit­ted that the Iraq gov­ern­ment “fum­bled the executions.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/washington/17prexy.html. Mean­while, the UN puts the “2006 Iraqi death toll at 34,000″:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/world/middleeast/17iraq.html. When will Bush admit he’s fum­bled this whole war?

As will be obvi­ous to any­one see­ing this, the Quak­er­Ran­ter has been seri­ously redesigned and moved off the Non​vi​o​lence​.org server. I plan to talk about the tech­ni­cal under­pin­nings soon on “MartinKelley.com”:martinkelley.com. In the mean­time “email me”:mailto:martink@martinkelley.com if there’s any hor­ri­fy­ing glitches.
h3. Update, 9/1/06:
My vis­i­tor logs picked up a very inter­est­ing new Google entry for my site that high­lights the power of key­words and tags that are run­ning on this new site. More over on Mar​tinkel​ley​.com in the immod­estly titled post “I am the King of Folksonomy”:http://www.martinkelley.com/blog/2006/09/i_am_the_king_of_folksonomy.php.

In the New York Times, a “glimpse behind the scenes of the Bush Administration’s sup­port for war in Lebanon”:www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/washington/10rice.html:
bq.. Washington’s resis­tance to an imme­di­ate cease-fire and its staunch sup­port of Israel have made it more dif­fi­cult for [US “Sec­re­tary of State”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/secretary%20of%20state] Rice to work with other nations, includ­ing some Amer­i­can allies, as they search for a for­mula that will end the vio­lence and pro­duce a durable cease-fire.…
Sev­eral State Depart­ment offi­cials have pri­vately objected to the administration’s empha­sis on Israel and have said that Wash­ing­ton is not talk­ing to Syria to try to resolve the cri­sis. Dam­as­cus has long been a sup­porter of “Hezbollah”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/hezbollah, and pre­vi­ous con­flicts between the group and Israel have been resolved through shut­tle diplo­macy with Syria.
p. The wars in “Lebanon”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/lebanon and “Iraq”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/iraq are caus­ing irrepara­ble harm to the U.S. image in the Mid­dle East. High-sounding words about democ­racy ring hol­low when we for­sake diplomacy.