Violence and Nonviolence

In honor of the anniversaries of Romero's death and the Iraq war, on Wednesday our community night focused on violence and nonviolence. What are different forms of violence? Physical? Verbal? Structural? And what are forms of active nonviolence? Not just avoiding conflict, but handling problems in a nonviolent way. We came up with a great list of examples of violence and nonviolence and reflected on our own experiences of violence and nonviolence.

Here are some resources we used:
Structural/Cultural/Direct Violence (PDF)
Tools for Nonviolent Living - Four Steps: Center, Articulate, Receive, Agree

And what would a blog post be without another Romero quote?

"We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work." -Oscar Romero, November 27, 1977