Published in Sequoia: News of Religion and Society, Spring/Summer 2006.
The Oakland-based Pace e Bene group has revised and expanded their very successful book and program, From Violence to Wholeness to a whole new level. They have conducted hundreds of workshops uring this format and the final result is an impressive compendium of nonviolence lore and lesson plans. The Engage program is designed for groups but it also stands alone for individuals wanting a resource to thoroughly study nonviolence. I had participated in the From Violence to Wholeness Program, which is why I wanted to review this book for Sequoia. I think Engage lends itself better to group study and practice, and yet, I personally got a lot from simply reading the book on my own.
One of the highlights of this tome is the many stories where nonviolence was the modus operandi - and the results are startling. Gandhi said that too often our histories and news reports focus only on all the wars and killings and that we need to tell the nonviolence successes to make our history [and herstory] more complete. I think he used the example where two brothers are at odds and one kills the other - the murder is what makes the news; if they resolved their conflict peacefully, no one would bother to report it. It might have started with Cain and Abel but I suspect the problems are deeper.
Engage explores all those deeper issues. The course of study consists of 12 sessions. The book begins with the personal, for example, that Cain and Abel get angry at each other. Part I is about exploring nonviolent power: our assumptions about violence and nonviolence, the situations we face, how we react (or don’t react) and offers some other ways to look at our world. (Did Cain and Abel have only one model for resolving their differences?) The Engage program offers a number of exercises to help participants discover these reactions in a safe and healthy way, as well as teaching new ways to respond. They move on the structural violence (they name it "Prejudice + Power-over") with good personal and social analysis and critique. The last section covers putting nonviolence power into action that every activist would do well to embrace. Included in this section is also commentary on social movements. The book ends with lots of resources: instructions on how to organize Engage study groups, facilitation guidlines, a bibliography which includes books, videos, organizations, and web sites.
Engage will be useful for many different groups: activists of all stripes, people of different religious and spiritual traditions, people interested in learning nonviolence for the first time, and others who want to apply nonviolence principles to their political, social, or justice issues. This program needs no prior experience and the guidelines for facilitating your own group are included.
This was an ambitious undertaking for a relatively small, non-profit organization. They succeeded in tackling a huge topic and making it accessible to people in all walks of life. Buy the book and explore the possibilities with our own group of friends and activists. The world needs your nonviolent activism now.
