How do we achieve a nonviolent world? We be nonviolent. How do we change the world? We be that change. My seven-year-old niece understands this. We all understand this. Let’s not think we need to converse and dialogue and conference and convince and defend and explain to make people get this. We get it already, the moment we are born. We just have to be reminded.
Art is a catalyst, an impetus to remember. Art can remind us.
Here is another video I would put up on my nonviolence blog at work, if I could. I believe we all understand what “Be the Change” means inherently, because we understand the connection between cause and effect. We don’t need reasons, we don’t need convincing to know that the statement has validity. By sharing the quote, in verse, in song, on a t-shirt, a bumper sticker, wherever, we are saying to each other, “Yes, I understand, and so do you. We are makers of our own reality. We have the power to change the world, by changing ourselves. I am a member of that understanding, that movement. I know you are, too. I recognize You in Me.”
Music. Can be an expression of nonviolence, a teacher of nonviolence, an inspiration, a reflection, a call to union, a lone voice expanding through the energy of the universe, shared and therefore not lost, shared and yet therefore adding energy of love and refusing to add to the energy of violence. I don’t agree that music is merely symbolic. It is our common human language. I won’t say nonviolence cannot be taught through song.
A quote follows from James Connolly, a quote that towers over the revelers and performers each week at the Starry Plough (friendly neighborhood revolutionarily-spirited Irish pub), most notably over the heads of the fiddlers and drummers each Sunday. You’ll find it just on the outskirts of the Berkeley Bubble and loud enough to be heard all the way to Oakland:
“No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetic expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses, they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, fears and hopes, the loves and hatreds engendered by the struggle.
“Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most discinctive marks of a popular revoutionary movement; it is the dogma of the few and not the faith of the multitude.” — 1907
Peace to those who want reasons. Peace to those who don’t need them. Peace to those who convince and would be convinced. Peace to those who dance in the name of nonviolence. Peace to the little girl who gets it. Peace to the old man who does not, and wishes, with all of his being, that he could.
