2011 has been a season of great hopes and of great disappointments. A great hope are the breakout of nonviolent revolutions from Egypt to Wall Street. Yesterday I heard about a documentary about Gene Sharp, the father of modern day nonviolent revolutions. The documentary is called How to Start A Revolution . Let’s hope the Occupy Wall Street movement can be revived in the spring and spread.

A disappointment this year was again our President, Barack Obama. As a candidate when he said “Yes We Can” we all filled in what it was we can do working together. I guess he did not share in our goals or else he decided to compromise and forget what we can do. Today, New Year’s Eve he signed the National Defense Authorization Bill which among many violent things allows US citizens to be held without due process by the government. Of course he said he would not do that as long as he is president but he has a history of doing what he said he will not do.

We can learn from our disappointments, electoral politics and the military/industrial/education complex and from our successes like practicing nonviolent resistance for real change you can believe in and see.

For myself I feel renewed in resistance to stop the teaching of war and immoral values, like reflexive killing, killing without conscience at Marquette University. However whatever hopes or disappointments happen in the New Year of 2012 they will be our choices of past and present and affect our choices in the future.

Comments

(:commentboxchrono:)