On Tuesday, January 26, 2021, I joined colleagues from the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative – Marie Dennis, Jasmin Nario Galace, and Eli McCarthy – in a webinar entitled, “Nonviolence for the Next Generation,” on the importance of nonviolence in education.  This webinar, moderated by Mary Ann Cruz, was hosted by the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines. (See the entire webinar here. My presentation begins at 1:08:35.)

In my talk, I explored how Catholic universities, colleges and high schools can play a key role in mainstreaming nonviolence in the Church and the world by integrating it in their mission, curricula and culture.

I was grateful to take part in this Zoom panel – which had 1,000 attendees from throughout the Philippines, and 12,000 views on Facebook – for many reasons, including the opportunity it afforded me to share my deep gratitude for the historic contribution that the people of the Philippines had made to global nonviolence through its historic People Power movement in 1986 that brought down the brutal military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

Under Marcos, there was much corruption, poverty, widespread human rights violations, and a lack of democracy. Widespread violence by the government was aimed at destroying the opposition, including community-based organizations and movements working for change.  There was little hope for social transformation.  Consequently there was a growing armed struggle led by a group called The New People’s Army.  At the same time, however, the Catholic Church in this predominantly Catholic country was casting about for an alternative.  Was there an option to passivity on the one hand and violence on the other?

Many people were not too sure.  A bishop was quoted at the time as saying, “I used to believe in nonviolence, but Marcos is too cruel; only a bloody revolution will work against him.”  When he was asked how long such a revolution would take, he said, ‘Ten years.”  The 1983 assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino seemed only to confirm the bishop’s gloomy assessment.

It was then that the church’s leader in the Philippines, Cardinal Sin, decided to see if an alternative was possible.  He put the full weight of the church behind an exploration of Gospel Nonviolence and how it could be applied to change the situation in his country.  As part of this, he took part in a three-day nonviolence training in Manila led by Hildegard and Jean Goss-Mayr of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and sponsored by the Little Sisters of Jesus in the Philippines.  It was a life changing event that led to organizing “active nonviolence” trainings focused on resisting dictatorship for scores of Catholic and Protestant bishops and hundreds of other clergy, women religious and laity.  A Philippine chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation was established, which organized hundreds of nonviolence trainings in 30 provinces.

These workshops eventually played a key role in the nationwide mobilization to stop the dictator from stealing the 1986 national election. Cardinal Sin joined with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines in formally calling on the highly Catholic country to engage in “active resistance” and “a nonviolent struggle for justice.”  They appealed to Filipinos of all religions to follow the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels and use peaceful means to change the political situation in the Philippines. Nonviolence trainings — and nonviolent inventiveness on the spot — contributed to the emergence of a widespread nonviolent revolt, both within the civilian population and key sectors of the military that refused orders rather than attack unarmed civilians organized in disciplined human barricades. Nonviolent activists found themselves in the surprising position of protecting soldiers who defected. Within four days, Ferdinand Marcos boarded a plane bound for Hawaii. 

In Manila, over two million unarmed peoples flooded into the streets and demonstrated how nonviolent people power can trump tanks and circling bombers.  There were many factors to its success, but two of those included a call from the Church to take nonviolent action, and the role of the Church in organizing nonviolence training.

For the last thirty years nonviolent people power movements like this one have accelerated: from the nonviolent pro-democracy movements that swept away dictatorships throughout Latin America to the crucial role it played in the collapse of the Soviet Union; from the nonviolent student movement that brought down the “Hitler of the Balkans,” Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, to the critical role it played in ending Apartheid in South Africa and creating a peaceful transition to a new, multi-racial society there; from Indonesia to Ukraine to East Timor to Liberia to the Arab Spring. These are not isolated cases; the classic study by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan (Why Civil Resistance Works, 2011) analyzed 323 major social struggles across the globe between 1900 and 2006 and concluded that nonviolent campaigns have been twice as successful as violent ones.  For many of us, the case of the nonviolent, pro-democracy movement drove home the point that this was possible. 

Next month we will celebrate the 35th anniversary of the People Power movement in the Philippines.