Nuggets From Jonathan Greenberg's Call
ServiceSpace
--Aryae Coopersmith
18 minute read
Apr 26, 2021

 

Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Jonathan Greenberg.

Jonathan Greenberg co-founded the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco, which disseminates the teachings of Dr. King and Gandhi, aiming to advance the theory and practice of transformational nonviolence—to "powerfully confront and overcome injustice and systemic violence and contribute to the just resolution of communal conflict." His co-founder is Dr. Clarence B. Jones, Dr. King’s strategic adviser from 1960 until Dr. King’s assassination in 1968, who spent countless hours with Dr. King “in crisis and action, negotiation and decision, intimate conversation and prayer.” Greenberg previously spent more than 30 years researching, writing, and teaching, primarily at Stanford. His teaching stood out for its direct, experiential formats in which students often holed up together to negotiate peace. “This is the space where I come alive, in those moments of true connection, soul to soul.”

Below are some of the nuggets from the call that stood out for me ...

  • My main focus when I was teaching at Stanford was international conflict resolution. We were looking at places in the world with conflict and trauma. How can places that have experienced all the pain of violent conflict find resolution and come to peace?
  • I learned that without facing the legacy of trauma, resolving conflict and coming to peace is not possible. This became a theme in my teaching and writing.
  • My oldest boy Kenji had autism. They had a field trip to the south, and I joined. We went to places like Birmingham, Little Rock, Memphis.
  • I saw how the same themes that we had studied internationally were also present in our country, in such an enormous way. I wanted to think about these issues in the U.S.: slavery, racism, discrimination.
  • Then I met Dr. Clarence Jones, who invited me to help him start the USF Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco, which has a mission to further peace and social justice.
  • This was one of those things in life, that you can’t predict and can’t imagine. It changed my life.
  • In 2018 we co-founded the USF Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice to disseminate the teachings and strategies of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, in response to the moral emergencies of the 21st century.
  • To work side by side with someone who was so close with Dr. King was amazing. I wanted to continue this legacy after he retired.
  • Gandhi is now a controversial figure in India.
  • Early in his life he had used a racist term, which had led many African Americans and Africans to reject him as a racist. Over time he rejected his earlier views and became completely inclusive in embracing all humanity.
  • Leaders of the American black civil rights movement who visited Gandhi and studied him came to the conclusion that his method was the best way for the civil rights movement in the U.S.
  • Rev. James Lawson, at the request of Dr. King, moved to the South and trained young people in non-violence. Now in his 90s, he continues to teach about non-violence.
  • A surprising teaching from Gandhi and Dr. King: if you have to choose between cowardice and violence, choose violence. But the point is that you never have to choose. Because when it comes to social change, non-violence is always stronger than violence. Ahimsa and Satyagraha — the force of soul, love, truth.
  • A great example of non-violence in our day is Greta Thunberg. She has refused to let go of truth. It helps that she is autistic. She says, “I can't conform to everybody's ability to deny the truth. The truth is the truth.” So I have to keep on holding on to it, and that leads to a wide variety of methods of nonviolence, which are more forceful and more effective than violence.
  • One of the mainstream values in American society when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s was, be well-adjusted. We were all trying to become well-adjusted. Dr. King said: I’m sorry, but I’m maladjusted. To war, hatred, injustice, racism. Please join me and we can be a maladjusted non-violent army together! You don’t want to be well-adjusted to situations that oppress and injure other people. The way to fight it is through non-violence.
  • I was a child born in 1957 with the all the advantages to be well adjusted. But I increasingly found myself feeling extremely maladjusted. There were so many things that seemed wrong,
  • The Vietnam war was horrendous trauma. We Americans were being exposed every night on TV, to the truth of the horrific war we were fighting. With all its bombing, killing and atrocities.
  • And Life Magazine showed us graphic images of the mass starvation in Biafra. This also disturbed me very deeply.
  • As a child, nobody had taught me about the Holocaust. At age 10 I stayed at a friend’s house and we saw a three-hour documentary about the Holocaust. I had no way to process this horror, and couldn’t get it out of my head.
  • My parents, who were well meaning, said don’t worry about it. They wanted me to be well adjusted. Their attempts to protect me from the impact of these horrible truths only served to push me away.
  • "Many years later I learned I developed OCD because I couldn't get it out of my head. And I didn't even know I had OCD, but I'm glad I did because, later, I learned that being maladjusted in this way can be extremely healing and powerful."
  • The rabbi in our temple, Leonard Beerman, helped me a lot. He was extremely maladjusted to war in Vietnam, to racism, to segregation. He gave sermons in prophetic tradition, pointing out: this is wrong! And he Introduced me to Rev. James Lawson.
  • Because of James Lawson I met some amazing people, including Joan Baez. Martin Luther King had invited her to join him in the South. She flew down to Mississippi. She and Dr. King and other leaders drove down to a serious march. But instead of doing the serious planning she expected, they were having fun, joking around, laughing. She said to Andrew Young, I thought I was going to be part of the strategic planning session for this event. And Young said to her — you were!
  • Dealing with these issues is something we all have to go thru. How do we come to terms with all that is wrong in the world?
  • Today climate change is the overwhelming issue. But if you think about it and get engaged together with other people, it becomes much lighter.
  • We have to cultivate young people. It’s not only okay to be maladjusted about these things, but it’s good!
  • If King hadn’t shown up, there wouldn’t have been a non-violent civil rights movement. But his style of leadership was unbelievably collaborative.
  • Jim Lawson says that the two most important ideas in the 20th century were Einstein's Relativity, and Gandhi's Satyagraha. These ideas reflect such a deep understanding of human life.
  • Einstein pointed out that our technology has gone far beyond where we are morally. And we need to catch up.
  • Martin Luther King didn’t identify himself as a civil rights leader; he identified himself as a minister of the social gospel. He said he had no enemies among human beings. He said he had three enemies: poverty, racism, and militarism. And he said. to overcome these enemies, we fundamentally have to change.
  • We have to change, and we now the ability to change, because, ironically, because of the threat of nuclear weapons. We have no choice. We have to radically change who we are.
  • Rev. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, has called for a “moral fusion movement.” In my opinion he comes closest to being an heir to Dr. King. He says that the only way we can succeed is if our movement brings in everyone. At USF we are developing an interfaith non-violent movement by bringing in leaders from different faiths. This is a moral fusion movement.
  • If you look at the entire history of the U.S., the largest non-violent campaign ever was last June, the Black Lives Matter movement. It was interracial and intergenerational, and included Americans everywhere.
  • Whenever any of us witnesess wrongdoing, there is no one formula for what is the right response. It depends on who we are and the situation in which we find ourselves. The teenager who witnessed George Floyd’s killing didn’t rush in and tell Derick Chauvin to stop. That would have endangered her. But by pulling out her smartphone and recording the crime she was witnessing, she was able to help bring justice.
Lots of gratitude to Jonathan Greenberg, and to Janessa, Preeta, and all the behind-the-scenes volunteers who made this call happen!

Aryae

Additional Nuggets from the Transcript

Connection between Gandhian nonviolence and American civil rights movement: The history of the Black Freedom Movement in America, in the United States, has a very deep tie to Gandhi. There was a series — Benjamin Mays, Howard Thurman ... there was a series of Christian leaders involved in the early version of the Black Freedom Movement who made a pilgrimage to meet with Gandhi in India, and they had reached the conclusion [that] the methods of Gandhi were the most powerful methods that could be used to liberate black people from Jim Crow segregation in the United States. And Gandhi agreed with that assessment.

One of those people who came was someone called Rev. James Lawson. ...  Rev. James Lawson took what he learned from Gandhi and came back to the United States, and he, by coincidence, met Dr. King in Oberlin when he was studying. Dr. King immediately understood that James Lawson, a Methodist minister, could bring the methods and teachings and spirit and strategy and practice of Gandhi to the Black Freedom Movement. So he asked Reverend Lawson, please move to the South. And Reverend Lawson changed his theology school to Vanderbilt University, and he was the person who taught the young students — John Lewis, Diane Nash, and Reverend C.T. Vivian, and many, many people who then became the nonviolent leaders of the United States in the sit-ins and the freedom rides. They were even ahead of King, the young people, because they were trained in Gandhi's methods by Reverend Lawson.

Nonviolence, soul force and cowardice: Both Gandhi and King said, if you have to choose between cowardice or violence, you should choose violence. ... But then they said, you never have to make that choice … because you never have to make that choice. Why? Because nonviolence is a force more powerful than violence. ... Because the concept of nonviolence that Gandhi created — it took this idea of ahimsa, which was not being violent, and added to that this concept called satyagraha, which meant the force of your soul. The force of love, the force of truth, and holding fiercely to the truth.

Being "maladjusted" to injustice: We all want to be well-adjusted because, if you're not well-adjusted, you don't fit in, you're alienated, you're isolated, you're troubled, you're neurotic, you have to go to a psychologist or psychiatrist. So we all are trying to become well-adjusted and then, if we're not, we better go to therapy to get well-adjusted. But he said, “actually, I'm sorry, but I'm maladjusted. I'm maladjusted because I'm maladjusted to injustice. I'm maladjusted to war. I'm maladjusted to violence against other people, I'm maladjusted to mistreatment and hatred and racism. I'm sorry. I'm maladjusted. Please join me. Please join me. We can be a maladjusted army together, a nonviolent army of maladjusted people, and if I have to be maladjusted alone, that's fine, I'll be maladjusted alone.” It's okay to be maladjusted. In fact, it's a good thing to be maladjusted because you don't want to be adjusted to situations that oppress or injure other people. And if it's not happening to you, it still is, because we're so deeply connected. Fannie Lou Hamer and so many people said, we can't be liberated unless everyone's liberated and if you believe that, then you're going to feel this sting of injustice and hatred and violence and the pain of it, and you're not going to want to be well-adjusted to it. You want to try to fight it, and the way to fight it is through nonviolence.

Cultivating personal "maladjustment" and sensitivity: Obviously, I want my children to be well-adjusted in the sense of being at peace with themselves and feeling confident — feeling good about themselves in life. And I feel that way, but, you know, unfortunately dealing with these issues in life is part of the process that we all have to go through, and blocking it out doesn't work. I mean, maybe it works temporarily, but it doesn't work. It obviously doesn't address these problems, which persist. So actually, I feel like that kind of sensitivity — we all have it — it's important to cultivate it and to help young people realize it's not only okay, but it's good to be aware and to be sensitive about those things and to figure out how you can take that feeling and generate some positive path. ...

I see it when I look at the young people, for example, March for Our Lives, the young people who were survivors of gun violence in Florida. These people have so much energy and positive feelings to change the world. And when I look at Greta Thunberg and the young people trying to fight against climate change and force people to address it. These people have energy. They're happy because they're taking all of the pain and channeling it out in a positive direction. So these people are my models, you know.

Embracing light and joy amid our heavy reality: Ironically, the absolute heaviness of the reality that we have to face ... I mean, our entire civilization, our human society is threatened by climate change to a degree that we've never experienced. King didn't know about it at that time. I'm sure it would have been included in his work if it was. If you actually think about it, it is overwhelming but, ironically, if you think about it and face it and get engaged, it's actually ... it makes you light, makes you much lighter. The heaviness isn't something you're pushing down. It's something you're integrating, and then you can use it as energy.

Dr. King did not see himself as a civil rights leader, but as a minister of the social gospel: We think of Dr. King as a civil rights leader, but that's not how he thought of himself. It was just an irony of history that he became a civil rights leader. It just so happened that he was present in Montgomery, Alabama, at the Dexter Street Church when Rosa Parks and her fellow women organizers requested him to be the president of their Montgomery Boycott Association. He agreed, and carried it out unbelievably. But, really, he didn't identify himself as a civil rights leader. He identified himself as a minister of the gospel and especially of the social gospel that he believed, which was the gospel that focused on the most vulnerable, the least of these, the people who are crushed by society, racism and poverty. That's how he saw himself. He had three enemies. He had no enemies among human beings because he didn't want to waste or toxically poison himself with hatred. So he said, "I have no enemies among human beings, but I have three enemies: poverty, racism and militarism." And the militarism part was the way our society is so immersed in the use of violence to solve problems, internationally and domestically.

Rev. Barber and the "Moral Fusion Movement":  'Moral Fusion Movement' was coined by Rev. William Barber in North Carolina who created this revival of the poor people's movement. In the American religious world, Reverend Barber is considered to be carrying Dr. King's legacy most significantly. He carries on this vision, which is, we cannot succeed unless our movement is interracial, intergenerational, multi-ethnic, inclusive, nonviolent, disciplined and brings in everyone. That's the only way we can succeed. So that's what he means by a Moral Fusion Movement.

Black Lives Matter as the largest (mainly) nonviolent movement in the US, and the importance of 100% nonviolence: Amazingly, if you look at the entire history of the United States, the largest nonviolent mass movement or campaign that ever happened, happened in June and July last year in response to the murder of George Floyd. The Black Lives Matter movement had millions of people, completely interracial and intergenerational. This goes to the issue of nonviolence because even if for whatever reason you feel that Gandhi's kind of a weirdo and I don't want to be so extreme in my religious practice or anything else, that's fine. The issue is what works, and we saw that last summer.

There's an amazing person called Erica Chenoweth who teaches at Harvard. She's the best scholar in nonviolence in the country. She found out that somewhere around 95-97 percent of the Black Lives Matter protests were nonviolent. But what you see on Fox News is the 3 percent. So, the use of violence may not completely destroy but undermines radically the social change that's possible from nonviolence.

Why should black people or non-Christians adhere to nonviolence? The post-MLK movement: The Black Freedom Movement, from Montgomery all the way through Selma, was church-based, and black churches were the center of the movement where the mass meetings took place. So, there was a fusion of faith and political activism. Of course, there were lots of secular movements going on, and SNCC was mostly secular, but the faith aspects of it overlapped between the religious and the political. I'm a Jewish person ... and part of what was inspiring about Dr. King was the Gospel and the role of sacrifice. Howard Thurman was one of the greatest teachers who wrote about nonviolence and the dispossessed. There was a sense that, through sacrifice, there could be redemption, and that's religious.

So if you don't come from a Christian background, that model may not be compelling. The other part, the strategic part, which was, if you're not religious at all, why should you follow that path? These were arguments that were happening in real time. My mentor, Dr. Jones, all those people and Martin Luther King were engaged in these marathon debates and conversations with Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X in which this debate was happening. There was a lot of mutual respect in those conversations and a lot of argument and, at a certain point, Malcolm X was really attacking King, but eventually they came to an understanding with mutual respect.

One of the things that Dr. Jones says is, "do you want to win or not? Black people in the United States, let's say 12 percent of the population, there's no way that 12 percent of the population in a militant, violent movement, will be able to succeed. It's impossible. You'll be crushed." James Baldwin was very sympathetic to the people who believed in violence, actually, but he was against black nationalism. He said, "this is our country we can't separate and make our own half of a country. We’re in it together."

Clarence Jones worked with Dr. King from 1960, and he didn't believe in nonviolence, at least at first. He was trained to be a killer, because he went to the Korean war training and he said, "I don't care what you say, someone punches, I'm going to punch him back, and I'm going to punch him worse so they get out of my way." That's very understandable. Dr. King told Clarence Jones, "I respect you, but I don't want you coming to my demonstrations." He didn't march with them, because he couldn't maintain that discipline. But Jones was converted, because he realized the use of violence in the Black Lives Matter context, the use of violence is what our enemies want us to do. They can't wait for it, because then they can put it on Fox News and say, "there is a bunch of violence to mobilize against us." Only by nonviolence can we succeed, because the violence ends up being used by the others to undermine our cause. So the people who argue for violence, I'm against them.

Rev. James Lawson is very tough right now and says, "I judge your method. The Antifa people who come into these Black Lives Matter marches are racist and are almost all white. They're coming in to say, 'you black people don't know how to win your struggle and need violence.' I'm against the Antifa people and the anarchists who want to use violence and property destruction. They undermine our movement, and they're our enemies." That's what James Lawson says today, and he has had billions of hours of conversation with people in the black community who have different views, and he's stuck with his point of view.

Critical role of young people, and for all of us to learn to learn from their spirit: King in 1955 and ‘56 was this transformational leader because of the Montgomery bus boycott, which was organized mostly by women in the community. And then he tried to reproduce it and in 1957, ‘58, ‘59, ‘60, he couldn't reproduce it. So it was the young people. There were the young people who took the lead in all of these movements, from the sit-ins to the freedom rides to the Mississippi summer and the voting registration. It was the young people.

And it's the same for the antiwar movement. The young people were leaders. And today the anti-gun violence movement is young people. The movement to deal with climate change is young people, and the Black Lives Matter movement. So, yes, I completely agree, but I do believe that we can learn from each other, work together, and we need to form intergenerational movements because it makes it so much stronger. And I do think that we older people, we do have a lot to offer. As long as we're respectful, supportive, and listening. We can provide aid and support and work together with young people. ...

I think young people by nature have the ability to be maladjusted better than older people who are forced to fit in, make a living, pay the mortgage, figure out how to get through life and maintain the family — it's all understandable. Young people, this is a traditional thing, idealism is often something that we find by sensitive young people. And the point is that this is a beautiful thing. We want to cultivate it. We want to support it. We want our education systems to cultivate and support it and to provide the power, to provide the tools and the methods so that those young people can be successful. 

And I think that we also don't have to assign idealism to youth. I mean, we can learn from them and get energized and continue their spirit and work together. In the Bay Area, where I live, there's a fantastic organization called A Thousand Grandmothers. And that group, A Thousand Grandmothers, they go to protest in the streets, like for Black Lives Matter, and they go to the front line because they want to protect the young people. So, you know, we can do this together, we have to do it together.

How to "rebuke" a destructive or negative action we've witnessed (drawing on the Jewish tradition) without inciting violence: Joachim Prinz was a rabbi in Nazi Germany for some years until he escaped. He said that what he learned more than anything was that bigotry and hatred were not the most terrible thing that he witnessed in society. The most terrible thing he witnessed was the silence of good people. That's what he said. So that creates a responsibility. We use the word “bystander”: When people are witness to someone using racism, using anti-Semitism, brutality or hatred, we have a moral commitment to intervene.

Therefore, the question is, how do you intervene effectively? That's a very challenging thing to do. I do think that, with the conception of respect for all human beings, there are things that cannot stand and that are not okay. I think there are ways to say that that's not okay. Because it mistreats another person, it abuses another person, and it's not okay. Sometimes that might mean protecting that person. Sometimes that might mean physically stepping into a place between two people. Sometimes it might mean bringing someone to a different place. Sometimes it might mean telling the person that, while they may not be aware of it, what they just said was very harmful and hurtful.

There may be a variety of ways to do it. I don't have a specific answer, but it's different in each case. And it's very difficult and it's also very important. ...

In the case of George Floyd, this policeman was murdering somebody in front of other people. If someone had tried to jump at him and pull him off, it was too dangerous. But a young teenager filmed it because they knew that that documentation would be an intervention against that abuse and violence. So there's such a wide range of ways. There can be interventions; finding the right one is a question of being present at the moment and being honest with yourself that I need to do something. What can I do that is as effective as I can be at that moment?
 

Posted by Aryae Coopersmith on Apr 26, 2021