Pathways to Peace, with guest Marie Dennis

The editor of The Upstream Journal and Human Rights Magazine, Derek MacCuish, speaks with Marie Dennis, who has worked for several years with Pax Christi International, the Catholic peace movement.  She is the author of several books on peace and nonviolence.
This episode is part of the series Pathways to Peace, in which we hear from people who have been deeply engaged in working for peace and human rights in their various aspects. 

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Transcript

Derek MacCuish:

 This episode is part of a series I am calling Pathways to Peace, in which I will speak with people who have been deeply engaged in working for peace in its various aspects.  My guest today is Marie Dennis, who has worked for several years with Pax Christi International, the Catholic peace movement.  She is the author of several books on peace and nonviolence.

 Marie was also the close friend of Diana Ortiz, the American Catholic religious sister who suffered horrible torture by government agents in Guatemala in the 1980s. Following a long period of recovery, she devoted herself to peace activism until her death in April this year.  

 My own reflections on the life of Diana Ortiz were the motivation for this series of discussions.

 I asked Marie to share some of her reflections on Diana's life and her response to violence, and how it had affected her own understanding of what we mean by violence and how we can effectively respond.

Marie Dennis:

 It is a really interesting and powerful reflection, I think, to look at and really sit with Diana's experience, how it affected her, and how she used that experience throughout the rest of her life.

When she was abducted and tortured in Guatemala, obviously, it was right in the middle of the most, some of the most violent years in Guatemala, in El Salvador in the region. And that, I think, for me, on the one hand, to remember those years to reflect on those years, has been a reflection on violence, the consequences of violence, the ways that we justify violence or not. 

 I think my sense is that out of Diana's long journey, courageous struggle, amazing work founding the task, the torture, abolition and survivor support coalition, doing phenomenal educational work. And on and on that out of that struggle. I was absolutely confirmed in a commitment to non-violence that I was not so sure about during the violence and wars in Central America, because it seemed to me that the resistance to oppression in countries like El Salvador and Guatemala, or the victory, over dictatorship in Nicaragua, in the 70s, were seen to be examples of struggles that would fit with what might be called a just war. 

 And I always felt that it was very easy for me who, though I’ve lived in, you know, violent neighborhoods, I'm fundamentally safe in my in my own life, in my own journey, I always thought it was, it was presumptuous of me to insist that everyone should be passive has to be completely committed to non-violence in every circumstance. My experience with Deanna, in the years of living with her, has convinced me more and more - and I have heard from people who themselves have been so hurt by violence – that if we are ever going to really establish a more peaceful world, more peaceful communities, more peaceful cities, that the only way the only way to do that is both by learning what violence is, by understanding the consequences of violence, and by committing to non-violence. 

 I just believe that her experience points so decidedly to the need to shift our world our thinking, even our struggles for justice and our struggles against oppression, to a place where they can be accomplished, because we have built our capacity to struggle without perpetuating cycles of violence. 

Derek MacCuish:

 If we're to set aside violence as a response to violence, and yet continue on a struggle, on a journey, towards a more peaceful dynamic in the world, how do we do that?

 Marie Dennis:

 We need to understand what is violence much more deeply than we have? Violence is yes, it's direct violence, but it's also cultural and structural, and, and on and on. Systemic. So I think we need to recognize and put a name on violence wherever we see it. We need to think about poverty as violence, exclusion and marginalization as violence, racism as violence and on and on. That's one thing. Second thing that I think we need to do is we need to work much harder at understanding non-violence, not non-violence as the same as pacifism, I'm I differentiate between non-violence and pacifism. Because non-violence, I believe, is spirituality for many people, it's a way of life for many people. But it is also a potentially an effective global ethic. And it is also a broad array of approaches and strategies that we need to use to push back the structural and systemic violence in our world, push back on oppression, to push back on deep injustice and so on. 

 In that sense, I think we have to invest in under both learning nonviolence ourselves. And that takes hard work, but also in developing, deepening the nonviolent tools that we could be using to address injustice and oppression. So for me, that image that's very clear is, as a US citizen, I'm super conscious of the fact that USA spending now about $750 billion dollars a year on preparations for a war, all kinds of preparations for so that so the toolbox of armed and military and violent tools is full to the brim robust with well trained personnel, all kinds of weapon systems that respond to any imaginable threat. Whereas on the other hand, when we look at the investment in developing nonviolent tools, there's very little relatively none. 

 So what we've been arguing for the last number of years is, where can we find the wisdom, the financial resources and the human intelligence to invest in building nonviolent capacity, everything from diplomacy, for sure, and negotiation, and so on, but also in trauma, informed aid in trauma, dealing with trauma in our schools and universities all over the world, in restorative justice practices in unarmed civilian protection practices, in a whole slew of ways that we might build human security, build a real commitment to what actually makes us feel secure, which is a roof over our head and food on the table. And health care and education and so on. 

 I think that in order to be serious about using nonviolent approaches, in responding to oppression, terrible injustice, violence, threats, and so on, we have to make a major investment of time and all kinds of resources in understanding non-violence, and strengthening, for example, the research to know what is most likely to work when and where. So, the research that, for example, Erica Chenoweth at Harvard and Maria Stephan at the US Institute of Peace recently have been doing on when is it effective for external actors to invest or support a nonviolent civil resistance action like what's happening in Myanmar right now?

 When is it effective? When does it do more harm than good? What should that aid look like? And on and on. I want every university in the world to have graduate students doing research on what kind of unarmed civilian protection works, under what circumstances or at the level of school discipline in Washington, DC, the city where I live?

 What do we know about what will decrease the level of violence in our city? We have a huge increase in the murder rate in Washington DC in the last year. What's happening? How do we get at that? Why is that happening? So I guess my simple answer is we have a lot of work to do to make it possible to not run from conflict to not avoid the struggle for against oppression or injustice, but to learn ways to engage it effectively and non-violently.

Derek MacCuish:

 Can you comment a little bit about your own role in that engagement, and the engagement of Pax Christie in responding to these challenges?

 Marie Dennis:

 After 911, we and most particularly Pax, Christi, international PACs, do us to some extent, began to ask why is it that our only response to even an egregious attack like that of 911? Is military action? Why is it that we've that we lack the creative imagination, to treat it as a criminal act and, you know, deal with it in the court system, and so on? So, we began to have some pretty interesting dialogue with some Pax Christi international is an in a network of about 120 member organizations all over the world, many of which are located in zones of war and conflict, whether in, you know, looking at violence as in the United States, or Europe, or in Colombia, or the Philippines or wherever else. 

 So we began a pretty active dialogue, to try to understand we Pax Christi always had a commitment to non-violence, but it was there was a tendency to think of it as a personal commitment to non-violence, that is, who I am and how I interact with people. We began to ask our members, PAC System members, particularly in war zones, zones of conflict, why do you have a commitment to non-violence? How do you practice it? How does it connect with your faith tradition? And so I began to sort of gather stories. 

 We decided that the one sort of point of access that we might actually be able to make use of was that we're a Catholic organization. So the Catholic Church has a network of religious congregations universities, dioceses, parishes, you know, some a diplomatic identity and almost every country in the world capacity presents that the international entities, the UN, the EU, and so on. So we decided that we were going to try to convince the Catholic Church institutionally to shift literally from a focus on the just war tradition is this war just to embracing non-violence as a fundamental gospel value that is reflected in the life of Jesus but became, over the centuries, something that individuals might adopt, but wasn't considered to be a practical framework for protecting people in a given country or dealing with political violence. 

 About five years ago, we began a process of dialogue with the Vatican called the Catholic non-violence initiative that grew out of we first we talked to the what was then the Pontifical Council for justice and peace into co-sponsoring a conference for us, with us with Pax, Christi International, on non-violence and just peace. at that conference, we invited there were about 85 people, and probably, maybe half were from every war zone we could name where we had a connection, Afghanistan, Iraq Pakistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan and South Sudan, Uganda, South Africa, Colombia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Iran. So we had gathered people who had an understanding of non-violence, but we're living in very difficult circumstances. 

 And we asked them, is this foolish? What if the church actually taught the skills of non-violence using all of the capacity that the institutional Church has? And what the answer that we got, which wasn't unexpected, but it was very clear, war is killing us.

 I really believe that we, that we as a world, have to move in this direction. And that if we do, we actually can accomplish some of the of the really deep changes that that we need to see happen.