Harmful Practice: Prison Systems

“Voices for Creative Nonviolence has long-standing roots in active nonviolent resistance to U.S. war-making. Begun in the summer of 2005, Voices draws from the experiences of those who challenged the brutal economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and U.N. against the Iraqi people between 1990 and 2003. Members of Voices led over 70 delegations to Iraq to challenge the economic sanctions and were present in Baghdad in resistance the 2003 U.S. military invasion. Since 2009, Voices has led delegations to Afghanistan to listen and learn from nonviolent grassroots movements and to raise awareness about the negative impacts of U.S. militarism in the region. We are on the precipice of a full blown world war if one is not already under way. And we ask: what must our response be? And our answer- as tentative, grappling, searching and seeking as it may be- is that it falls upon us as citizens of the country initiating this world war to utilize all nonviolent means available to turn off war- to engage the electoral and legislative process, most definitely; to protest, of course; and to march and demonstrate. We must also move from protest to active nonviolent resistance. We must withdraw our collaboration and complicity with this system and use our bodies and lives as a means to bring the machinery of death to a grinding halt. Nonviolence cannot be a single day event- it must be a commitment we make and act upon every day of our lives. What might this active nonviolent resistance look like? And how might we act in solidarity with the Iraqi and Afghan peoples and others who find themselves in the crosshairs of U.S. war-making? Voices is committed to strategic campaigns and experiments. We engage in active nonviolent resistance. Such resistance must take into account that war-making is both military and economic.”