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  • Barbara Deming

    >> LESBIAN… POET… NONVIOLENT ACTIVIST


    The fact that she was a child of privilege (her mother was an aspiring singer and her father a Republican political operative) makes Barbara Deming’s life story all the more compelling. She was born in 1917 in New York City, and the entirety of her primary and secondary education was spent in a Quaker school. She studied literature and drama at Bennington College from 1934-1938 and earned a Master’s degree in Drama at Case Western Reserve University 1941. Deming experienced her first lesbian relationship when she was 17. From 1954-1972, she partnered with Mary Meigs, and later, from 1976 until her death in 1984, Deming lived with her partner artist Jane Verlaine at their home in Florida.


    Exposed to creative writing influences throughout her childhood, Deming developed a career as a poet, professional writer and film critic until she became interested in Gandhi during a trip to India in 1959. From the 1960s until her death, Deming was involved as a nonviolent activist in the peace and civil rights movements, the movement to end the Vietnam War, feminism, lesbian and gay rights, and working to end violence against women. In Deming’s view, the unifying theme in all these issues was advancing “respect for individual rights and dignity”. (McDaniel and Paley, xi-xii)


    After corresponding with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1962, Deming began to advocate the joining of the peace and civil rights movements, and in 1964 participated in an integrated peace walk through several southern states, “The Nashville, Tennessee, to Washington, D.C., Walk for Peace”. She describes some of her experiences on that walk in the essay “Southern Peace Walk: Two Issues or One?”.


    Since the publication in 1968 of her seminal essay, “On Revolution and Equilibrium“, Deming has become recognized as a leading thinker in nonviolent theory. According to Dr. Ira Chernus, Ph.D., author of American Nonviolence: The History of An Idea, Deming utilized a “strictly secular approach”. She, “developed a systematic argument for nonviolence with no religious basis. More than anyone else,” writes Chernus, “Deming made it intellectually plausible, and even respectable, for nonreligious people to commit themselves to nonviolence with no religious basis.” (Chernus, 182) Deming argued that a faith-based perspective often clouds the thinking of nonviolent activists and prevents them from being “aggressive” or “bold” enough in resisting injustice.


    In addition to her critical evaluation of the faith-based perspective of nonviolence, Deming also advanced a rational argument that nonviolent methods are more effective than violent ones in ending injustice. Not only do nonviolent methods reduce the human cost in conflict situations, they also enable more effective use of moral suasion by the oppressed on the oppressor: “We can putmore pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern,” she wrote. (Lynd & Lynd, 415)


    In “On Revolution and Equilibrium“, Deming also suggested a theoretical alignment of nonviolence with all justice struggles. She argued that, by obstructing or circumventing oppressive social structures, the coercive power inherent in nonviolent methods could be a potent force in creating social change. Deming assumed that human dignity and the right to exercise one’s free will are self-evident principles–and that because all forms of injustice deprive the oppressed of the right to exercise free will, they are all inherently violent. Because all injustice is inherently violent and, in her estimation, nonviolence is the most efficacious method for resisting injustice, nonviolence and all struggles for justice are inextricably linked.


    Finally, Deming also discussed themes familiar to Gandhian adherents–”clinging to truth”, voluntary redemptive suffering, and nonviolence as a method of personal transformation–but her reorientation of priorities and emphasis on the forceful transformation of power dynamics within social structures represented a new and radically different approach to thinking about the philosophy and methodology of nonviolence.


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  • Jeff Sheng on Civil Disobedience

    For my photoblog post this week, I am presenting a diptych of two images that I shot on November 6 and 8, 2008, from two of the handful of Los Angeles Prop 8 protests I participated in right after the November 2008 election.

    Since that election, particularly this past month during the recent California Supreme Court hearings about Prop 8, there has been a lot of talk in the LGBTQ community about civil disobedience. To be honest, when I first heard the call for civil disobedience, I feel embarrassed to admit that my Ivy League education completely failed me (which it actually often does) and I couldn’t with much confidence give an accurate definition of civil disobedience.

    After doing some research on the Internet and finally learning something that I should have adequately learned in high school, I decided to quiz my roommate. He could only name one of the components of civil disobedience: “non-violent and peaceful?”

    I then asked my college students in my Asian American Queer Issues class at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the class of 40 students was likewise stumped. And when I said that civil disobedience involved, “Breaking a law in a non-violent and peaceful way,” one of my students jokingly asked, “So is a group of us drinking in my room civil disobedience since we aren’t 21 yet, we’re gay and want equality?”

    In all seriousness, I think that while we have all heard the term civil disobedience, many of us in the LGBTQ community probably do not have a complete grasp on the history, definition, and appropriate application of civil disobedience. For an oppressed group, especially in our current times, this ignorance is now unacceptable.

    Key components of civil disobedience not only include peaceful, non-violent actions to educate the public about an unjust system of laws, but participants also break the law in their actions of civil disobedience. I believe it is this combination that seems to stump many of us when it comes down to really coming up with the most effective strategies to get our message heard. That is, what actions can we take that are both peaceful and non-violent, also break the law, and can spread our message of demanding equal rights?

    And while many LGBTQ people I know would readily say that they would block a freeway or chain themselves to a marriage licensing counter, how many of us are truly prepared to do this safely and with the ability to legally protect ourselves from the aftermath of such actions (like a felony conviction)?

    I created this photo diptych of the Prop 8 protests as my weekly photoblog image because it reminds me of the overwhelming police presence at many of the events I’ve been at recently. Luckily, I think in many of these cases, the police officers were more concerned about our protection than anything else. But what if instead of marching safely in West Los Angeles, we were on the 405 Freeway, or blocking a highly publicized media event like the Academy Awards? I don’t think the police would be as friendly.

    When looking at these photos, my mind thinks of those brave crusaders of past movements involving civil disobedience, protesters who had to fend off beatings, high-pressure water hoses, attack dogs, days of incarceration and ruined careers. I look at the scores of police in these two pictures and wonder, if they wanted to forcibly remove me, would I be able to stay my ground peacefully? What would I do if they started to handcuff me and physically hurt me because I was unwilling to move?

    For everyone in the LGBTQ community, I encourage all of you to begin thinking about civil disobedience in a very serious way, and whether or not you personally are willing to engage in it to advance our cause - and I don’t really think the fight right now is about marriage, but rather for equality and protection across the board with all laws in all 50 states - we should educate ourselves about what civil disobedience really is and how to effectively execute it.

    Our community is very fortunate to have some incredibly passionate activists who have been working on educational and training materials, and one of the groups I’ve been learning a lot from, a collaboration including organizations such as Soulforce, One Struggle One Fight, and activist Cleve Jones, has put together the website http://www.nonviolence4equality.com so that we can better prepare ourselves for civil disobedience if that is truly where this movement is headed. I encourage all of you to be ready in case.

    This post is reprinted from The Bilerico Project with permission from Jeff Sheng.

  • Lesbian Couple Walk for LGBT Rights (LA to SF) - 2 of 2

    This video was filmed by Albert Kaba. He can be contacted by email atalbert_kaba@yahoo.com. His website is http://kabavideo.com.

    On December 19, 2008, a rally took place at SF City Hall to welcome Valerie Paget and Gracie Jones, a married lesbian couple who arrived in San Francisco on their walk from Los Angeles, culminating a 450 mile march through California to demonstrate their conviction that the California Supreme Court should revoke Prop 8. Danielle Askini, a transgender woman and one of the leaders of the group One Struggle, One Fight, welcomed Valerie and Tracie and invited the LGBT community to volunteer their talents in planning the march to Sacramento, March 25-30, 2009.

  • Lesbian Couple Walk for LGBT Rights (LA to SF) - 1 of 2

    This video was filmed by Albert Kaba. He can be contacted by email atalbert_kaba@yahoo.com. His website is http://kabavideo.com.

    On December 19, 2008, a rally took place at SF City Hall to welcome Valerie Paget and Gracie Jones, a married lesbian couple who arrived in San Francisco on their walk from Los Angeles, culminating a 450 mile march through California to demonstrate their conviction that the California Supreme Court should revoke Prop 8. Danielle Askini, a transgender woman and one of the leaders of the group One Struggle, One Fight, welcomed Valerie and Tracie and invited the LGBT community to volunteer their talents in planning the march to Sacramento, March 25-30, 2009.

  • One Struggle, One Fight: Rally for LA-SF March

    This video was filmed by Albert Kaba. He can be contacted by email atalbert_kaba@yahoo.com. His website is http://kabavideo.com.

    www.onestruggleonefight.com

    On December 19, 2008, a rally took place at SF City Hall to welcome Valerie Paget and Gracie Jones, a married lesbian couple who arrived in San Francisco on their walk from Los Angeles, culminating a 450 mile march through California to demonstrate their conviction that the California Supreme Court should revoke Prop 8. Danielle Askini, a transgender woman and one of the leaders of the group One Struggle, One Fight, welcomed Valerie and Tracie and invited the LGBT community to volunteer their talents in planning the march to Sacramento, March 25-30, 2009. Excerpts from the rally can be seen in two parts on YouTube.