64 Ways in 64 Days

This year we have created a beautiful brochure to help include nonviolent principles into our daily life. It contains a thought and commitment for each day of the Season for Nonviolence and can be carried with you or posted at home, at school or in your workplace.  If you want hard copies of the brochure or to learn more about the Season, just send us an email at snv@edpjc.org.

Click on the poster to the right to download a copy of the brochure.

Season for Nonviolence

"And so it is marvelous and great that we do have a dream; to forever challenge us; to forever give us a sense of urgency; to forever stand in the midst of the "isness" of our terrible injustices; to remind us of the "oughtness" of our noble capacity for justice and love and brotherhood."   Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Season for Nonviolence is an international grass-roots educational, media, and community action campaign dedicated to demonstrating that nonviolence is a powerful way to heal, transform, and empower our lives and our communities. Commemorating the lives and deaths of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez, the Season for Nonviolence honors and promotes their vision for an empowered, nonviolent world, by using media, events, education and dialogue to spread the message that making nonviolent choices to meet challenges, as a way of life, brings together communities, groups, and individuals in a way that  can move mountains.  Initiated by Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, the Association for Global New Thought has been coordinating plans for the eleventh annual Season for Nonviolence.

Our local Season for Nonviolence runs from the Martin Luther King holiday to April 4th, which commemorates the death of Dr. King.  This year, several the El Dorado Peace and Justice Community for the fifth year joined forces with several organizations, churches, and individuals, to create our local Season for Nonviolence.   

This years Season include

If you want to participate in this year’s Season, or just want more information, contact Dominique at 295-3881 or Jim at 622-9549. 
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Youth Violence: Fact Sheet

Youth violence is an important public health problem that results in deaths and injuries.  The following statistics provide an overview of youth violence in the United States.

Occurrence

• In 2003, 5,570 young people ages 10 to 24 were murdered—an average of 15 each day. Of these victims, 82% were killed with firearms.
 
• Although high-profile school shootings have increased public concern for student safety, school-associated violent deaths account for less than 1% of homicides among school-aged children and youth.
 
• In 2004, more than 750,000 young people ages 10 to 24 were treated in emergency departments for injuries sustained due to violence. 

• In a nationwide survey of high school students:                 
– 33% reported being in a physical fight one or more times in the 12 months preceding
the survey.
– 17% reported carrying a weapon (e.g., gun, knife, or club) on one or more of the 30 days preceding the survey.
 
• An estimated 30% of 6th to 10th graders in the United States were involved in bullying as a bully, a target of bullying, or both.

Consequences

• Direct and indirect costs of youth violence (e.g., medical, lost productivity, quality of life) exceed $158 billion every year.

• In a nationwide survey of high school students, about 6% reported not going to school on one or more days in the 30 days preceding the survey because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to and from school.
 
• In addition to causing injury and death, youth violence affects communities by increasing the cost of health care, reducing productivity, decreasing property values, and disrupting social services.
            
Groups at Risk

• Among 10 to 24 year olds, homicide is the leading cause of death for African Americans, the second leading cause of death for Hispanics, and the third leading cause of death for American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Asian/Pacific Islanders.

• Of the 5,570 homicides reported in 2003 among 10 to 24 year olds, 86% were males and 14% were females.
 
• Male students are more likely to be involved in a physical fight than female students (41% vs. 25%).
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Some Words of Nonviolence

The terrible violence of the twentieth century holds a lesson for the twenty-first. It is that, in a steadily and irreversibly widening sphere, violence, always a mark of human failure and a bringer of sorrow, has now also become dysfunctional as a political instrument. Increasingly it destroys the ends for which it is employed, destroying the user as well as the victim. It has become the path to hell on earth, and perhaps the end of earth. (Jonathan Schell)

Humanity is at a crossroads. It has to make its choice between the law of the jungle and the law of the spirit. (M. K. Gandhi)

We must either learn to live together as brothers, or we will die together as fools. (M. L. King)

Humanity as animal is violent, but as spirit, is nonviolent. The moment we awake to the spirit within, we cannot remain violent. Either we progress toward nonviolence, or we rush to doom. (M. K. Gandhi)

A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. (M. L. King)

The states that are today nominally democratic have either to become frankly totalitarian or, if they are to be truly democratic, they must become courageously nonviolent. (M. K. Gandhi)

It is the law of love that rules mankind. Had violence, i.e., hate ruled us, we should have become extinct long ago. And yet the tragedy is that the so-called civilized men and nations conduct themselves as if the basis of society was violence. (M. K. Gandhi)

I know that the progress of nonviolence is seemingly a terribly slow progress. But experience has taught me it is the surest way to the common goal. (M. K. Gandhi)

Nonviolence cannot simply be preached, it must be practiced. (M. K. Gandhi)

Those who are attracted to nonviolence should, according to their ability and opportunity, join the experiment. (M. K Gandhi)

I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of mankind, and that I could not do unless I took part in politics. The whole gamut of one’s activities today constitutes an indivisible whole. You cannot divide social, economic, political, and purely religious work into watertight compartments. (M. K. Gandhi)

Before all else, non-cooperation with evil is the first duty of the nonviolent person (M. K. Gandhi)

Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measure of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support, are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so, frequently, the most serious obstacles to reform. (Henry David Thoreau)

If liberty and democracy are to be truly saved, they will only be by nonviolent resistance no less brave, no less glorious, than violent resistance. And it will be infinitely braver and more glorious because it will give life without taking any. (M. K. Gandhi)

“Men will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war any more.” And I don’t know about you, but I ain’t gonna study war no more. I ain’t gonna study war no more. (M. L. King)

Nonviolence Reading List