Mainstreaming nonviolence is the long-term process of creating a culture of justice, peace and well being for all using tools of nonviolent change.  This blog by Ken Butigan highlights ideas, books, videos, websites, projects, campaigns, organizations and individuals offering new directions for mainstreaming the power of transformative nonviolence.  Click here for more about mainstreaming nonviolence. 

March 21, 2010

48 Day March Seeks to Avert Disaster in the Golden State

Shortly after Cesar Chavez’ death in 1993, members of the Franciscan Province of St. Barbara (which had worked closely with the United Farm Workers throughout the 1960s and 1970s) decided to honor this prophet of nonviolent change by holding a series of workshops on his work and vision with Latina and Latino youth from throughout California.

I was invited to help facilitate these retreats that were held over the next four years at Forty Acres, the UFW’s first headquarters, in the heart California’s San Joaquin Valley.

The land there is rich, flat, endless – and sacred. 

Another pilgrimage is underway in this same valley, devoted to preserving the social safety net The fact that it is the source of much of the nation’s food would make it a sacred place.  But the sacredness of this region goes beyond its bounty.  This land has been consecrated by the lives of those who make that abundance possible, those who have worked and lived and died here—many of them poor, many of them moving from field to field like pilgrims on an endless peregrinacion, or pilgrimage. 

And it is sacred because these people made a decision to join together in nonviolent resistance to demand their dignity.  We are human beings, they announced at that time, and we oppose intolerable working conditions, low pay, and the lack of basic respect. They then backed this declaration by launching the United Farm Workers (UFW). 

As part of this struggle, in 1966 the took their peregrinacion to Sacramento, walking for weeks to dramatize the call for change.

Now, another pilgrimage is underway in this same valley, working to prevent a looming disaster.

A New Pilgrimage

My friend and colleague Anna Graves (whose many photographs grace the Pace e Bene website) is on a march to salvage California’s future in the face of  impending massive budget cuts to social services. 

“The March for California’s Future continues to move up the San Joaquin Valley,” Anna reports.  “Today the marchers enter Fresno and will have events there tomorrow (Tuesday).  I hope you’re able to follow the march at the march website.” 

Anna published a moving and clear-sighted essay on the march online on the Huffington Post/Los Angeles Times.  I encourage you to read it. 

You can also see Anna’s photographs on her web gallery (go to the last eight albums).  They are also posted on Facebook: click here, log in, and click above to the Profile page.

Pilgrimage as Sacred Journey for Social Change

“Pilgrims,” Richard R. Niebuhr writes, “are persons in motion – passing through territories not their own – seeking something we might call completion.”  James Preston speaks of pilgrimage as “spiritual magnetism.” 

In more traditional terms, Jean and Wallace Clift point out that there are many different reasons that pilgrims set out on their journey, including: to answer an inner call; to reclaim lost or abandoned or forgotten parts of ourselves; to hope or ask for a miracle. 

This applies to places like Jerusalem, Mecca, Machu Picchu, or Benaras – but it also illuminates Gandhi’s march to the sea, the march from Selma to Montgomery, and many other “movements” — including the pilgrimage taking place for the next few weeks in the San Jaquin Valley.

Ken Butigan currently serves as the director of Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service.  Since the early 1980s he has worked with numerous social movements, including movements for a nuclear-free future, an end to homelessness, freedom for East Timor, and peace in Central America.  In 2006 he helped found and organize the Declaration of Peace, a nationwide, grassroots nonviolent action campaign for a comprehensive plan for peace in Iraq.  Click here to see all of his blogs.

To see Pace e Bene’s Nonviolent Change 101, click here.

Photo: Anna Graves.