WAR RESISTERS' INTERNATIONAL

6 5/ 65

STUDY CONFERENCE
TRAINING IN NONVIOLENCE
13th-20th Augus 1965, at Perugia, Italy

NONVIOLENT TRAINING IN THE UNITED STATES
Paper submitted by:
Theodore Olson

CONTENTS

1. Definition
2. Development
3. Current activities
A. Governmental
B.
Quasi-governmental and public
C. Race and Urban Problems
D. Peace
4. Special problems
5. Prospects
1.

By nonviolent training we mean conscious attempts, in the
context of teaching and learning, to impart historical experience,
general concepts, technical skills and personal experience in how
to act effectively and nonviolently in conflict situations. By
"nonviolently" we mean to stress programmatic or active nonviolence,
as exemplified by - but not restricted to - social action struggles:
Gandhi's action in India and that of the peace and race
actionists in the United States.
But as we shall see, this definition, if applied retrospectively,
would deny the name of training to much that in former years passed
under that name. And if applied too narrowly it would eliminate from
consideration much governmental or quasi-governmental work related
to nonviolent training. Therefore the paper will proceed in great
part descriptively, not attempting to pass final judgment on all
that is called nonviolent training in the United States, but trying
instead to relate these efforts to the definition and perhaps to
test the definition.

The concrete notion of non-violent action on social problems
to say nothing of training - came to birth quite late in the United
1. States. 1. After the Second World War American pacifists began an
abortive social action campaign against racial discrimination,
conscription and the rearmament incident to the rise of the Cold War.
This effort proved abortive for many reasons, some quite beyond
anyone's control. But in part it failed to draw others into a continuing struggle because many of its leaders, particularly as they
worked through the then-central organization of Peacemakers, saw
nonviolence as integrally connected to anarchism, ruralism, vegetarianism, sexual experimentation and other concerns of little
interest to the main stream of American life.
2.

1. see page 6.

-2In the Dulles era, with the onset of major bomb-testing programs and with the example of Negro nonviolence in Montgomery under
King, radical nonviolence underwent a renaissance. Its forays against
bomb-test sites, missile bases, submarine yards and the civil
defense program raised it to continuous public view and played a
role in bringing about the public pressure that ended atmospheric
bomb-testing and the strategy of massive retaliation.

Here a curious contrast developed, however. In the Negro
freedom struggle, non-violent training and discipline became the
key to success. People could be trained and were willing to be
trained because there were concrete ends in view, physically
realizable goals to be achieved. Often it was experienced peace
actionists who aided in this training. But in their own peace
movement there was little that could be called nonviolent training.
Projects were sporadic and unrelated; they took place at sites to
which people came for a "confrontation" and after which they left,
Some efforts were by nature elite operations requiring youth or
nautical skills.
Perhaps most significant was the distinctive moral basis of
peace action in the hey-day of the Committee for Nonviolent Actions
An ideology of purity and suffering came to dominate projects.
It stated that appeal was to the "heart", that "unmerited suffering"
would "generate spiritual power." This power would in some way
"reach" opponents and general populace and bring about conversions
to the point where governments would be forced to alter policies.
At least as it developed in American direct action, this notion
hindered the growth of training. For what, exactly did one need to
be trained? Beyond bravery, persistence and the expertise necessary
to swim a cold river or walk a thousand miles, what need was there
for what we now find desirable for second and third-line leadership:
a year of sociologically oriented study and experience? One was
either morally nonviolent or he was not. Becoming qualified took
care of itself.
But as this movement developed its characteristic excesses, it
moved steadily away from contact with its ostensible target: the
American people. Problems became more complex than bomb-testing.
Are there moral distinctions to be made between massive retaliation
and counter-force doctrine? How is one to demonstrate effectively
with bomb-test tactics against newly-sophisticated techniques and
strategies? Ironically, the protest movement associated with INVA
was collapsing into an ideologically-committed hard core just at
the time that government and intellectuals were coming to accept
key parts of the radical pacifist critique of Cold War dogma.
Perhaps the most important element accepted was the idea of proportionate response to attack, response that did not foreclose in
advance the necessity of further and constructive contact with the
opponent after the first blows had been struck. At this point, in
the early 'Sixties, a complex realignment took place in the peace
and race efforts - an operation that can be appreciated only in
the context of analogous events within other contexts.

3.

A.

Public agencies, from the Federal government to local
law enforcement (which is quite autonomous and often
ideosyncratic in the United States) , increasingly took
into account not only the notion of proportionate
response, but also the idea of initiatives. They began
to appreciate the political and social utility of
unfreezing conflict situations through overtures that
did not seek advantages but actually put the initiators
under some risk and possible disadvantage: they discovered the virtue of vulnerability.

_3_
Though little has come of it concretely, particularly
since the passing of Kennedy and Khrushchev, the idea
of unilateral initiatives - and the political and
social disciplines necessary to carry them through
has become an option at many levels of U.S. national
policy. Domestically the Federal government has
learned to work complementarily with massive civil
rights actions. Its field agents have sometimes
shown great understanding of the dynamic of nonviolence. At another level, New York State has,
by law, legitimated the rent strike , in which tenants
withhold rent in substandard buildings or put the
money into escrow or trust accounts pending remedial
action by the building owners.
At still another level, police forces have begun to be
trained in minimally-violent methods and in techniques
other than the use of violence. In America, where
even the police directing tr a ffic are heavily-armed,
this move away from total reliance upon the ironmongery
of massive violence is particularly significant. In
several cities, leaders of peace and race nonviolence
have been called on to aid police officials in this
training. In the South, some police bodies have sought
to avoid the unfavorable publicity attendant on
brutal suppression of civil rights activities by conducting their operations in large part through at
least overtly nonviolent behaviour. In some cases this has
achieved notable short-run success. For a time in
New York City, after a disastrous incident marked by
poor control of participants on the part of both peace
actionists and police, actionists were left largely
alone to police their own activities. Action plans
were agreed upon by extensive consultation between
police officials and actionists. Though the contact
has been informal, each side has done a good deal to
aid the other in nonviolent training.
B.

In quasi-governmental and other "public" programs,
more dramatic ventures have been undertaken. Local
government personnel assigned to work with teen-age
gangs have developed operational nonviolence to a
level achieved only by the most sophisticated peace
and race actionists. Other governmentally-supported
experimental programs have taken as their purview the
entire structure and functioning of depressed areas.
In the largest of these programs, it became established
policy to support radical nonviolent attacks on
community problems. A controversial but often-effective
Chicago-based social mobilization organization for
minorities depends on hard-hitting and at least
overtly nonviolent tactics.

C.

Civil rights nonviolence needs no summary here, its
effectiveness being known everywhere. But there is
increasing use of nonviolent tactics in other urban
problems on the part of local groups, focussing on
housing, transportation, schools, criminal elements,
recreational facilities and even the intangibles of
"dignity" and "participation".

D.

While all these activitieswere growing peace effort
nonviolence was not, nor was training. As was
suggested earlier, peace activity, as then conceived

-4was difficult to train for. But in 1962, after a
period of experimentation on the West Coast, a new
structure was put forward for peace activity. Without
judging among competing organizations and peace
strategies - except to exclude those based on the
triumph of one side or the other in the Cold War it set up a structure in which all American organizations at all concerned with a "turn toward peace"
could cooperate at national, regional and especially the
local levels. There was no attempt to set up a common
denominator programme but instead a conscious effort
to put before the public the full range of policies
and programs through which any concerned citizen could
work actively for peace on a regular continuing basis.
Participating groups ranged from war veterans to
labour unions to social service agencies to direct
action groups.
Focussed particularly at the community level on the
"community peace center", the Turn Toward Peace program required for successful operation sophisticated
and well-trained people. For the first time in peace
training, there were a multitude of specific and continuing tasks for which people could be trained - tasks
that did not require a prior commitment to an esoteric
lore or to a pacifist ideology.

2.

With this need there developed the notion of a school
for training pre-professionals or "internes" to work
on peace, race and urban problems. This program
operated experimentally in New York City under my
In September,
direction, then spread to other cities.
1965, Upland Institute, a full-time professional
school of social action training, opens its doors in
Chester, Pa.
The direct influence of the non-violent action groups
themselves in the pilot training programs, and in
local TTP structures, was often small. TTP was viewed
with reserve by many of these agencies. And for the
most part they had no local affiliates, nor were they
geared to on-going community work. Further, attention
was laid from the beginning in TTP on penetration of
Middle class institutions and organizations, a program
from which the direct action agencies were largely
self-exiled. Nonetheless, the basis was laid for
community-centered, functional nonviolence. It was
continually emphasized in my own work that nonviolent
direct action was an integral part of the arsenal of
community peace action. And if, as seemed crucial, a
relation were to be built with race and urban problems
agencies, it became even more necessary to include
direct action in a wide variety of program.
The
Upland program will insure this connection, with its
unified training of all sorts of agency trainees.
A separate program has grown up using the idea of
civilian defense as its model: unarmed national
resistance to aggression. Canadian and American Quakers
have led in a steady expansion of training ordinary
citizens in the comprehensive means of defending an
invaded society without arms. The chief utility of
2. See page

6.

_5_
this program is that the civilian or social defense
idea brings together all the techniques of nonviolence
and integrates them into one operational program
focussing on defense of the empirical society. This
year's program included a sustained attack-and-defense
exercise on Grindstone Island in Canada.
Other programs have of course continued.' Notably the American
4.
Friends Service Committee, the New York Yearly Meeting of Friends
and the Committee for Nonviolent Action's New England branch have
all conducted regular programs under the rubric of "non-violent
training". Each makes its own contribution, but I feel that each
3. has major drawbacks as presently constituted. 3. The Quaker
summer institutes draw their constituency from committed pacifists
and from others newly-alienated from the main stream of American
life. The Quaker emphasis on the individual and upon subjective
response often hinders any understanding that training must center
on concrete organizational jobs, actual physical tasks integrated
into a continuing and pragmatic program of broad social change.
Too often Quaker training stops with internalized attitudes and
merely personal activities powered by short-run emotions. Individuals from this milieu, however , have often played key roles in,
for example, the early CNVA campaigns and in Turn Toward Peace.
. New York Yearly Meeting has experimented with role-playing and
other psychological means of insight into nonviolence. Its program
shows promise of growth but is presently confined to the haute
bourgeois constituency of New York area Quakers.
The CNVA program, centered on its farm in Connecticut, is an
outgrowth of the campaign of several years ago in which small
groups of robust persons attempted to hinder the construction and
launching of Polaris submarines. Here, in a rural setting, a
fairly broad range of ideas and techniques is put forward that
have to do with nonviolence. Demonstrations, often imaginatively
conceived, are conducted with some regularity. ,Problems here are
constituted by the narrow understanding now current in CNVA about
the relation of direct action and its practitioners to the rest of
society. Demonstrations tend to be just that: demonstrations of
the convictions shared by this close-knit in-group. The long-term
means of convincement and social mobilization are neglected and
the impression is conveyed of an almost total rejection of contemporary American society. Yet it is by no means true that this
and other programs are of no value. What is taught is of value;
and what is learned is often greater than what is taught.
The prospects are not bright for non-violent training in the
5.
United States. The TTP national program has been cut back, due to
a number of problems - some of its own making. The Upland Institute
will have to play a major role in producing trained people now
that TIP is unable to continue systematic seminars.
In the freedom movement, nonviolence in crisis areas is on the
wane. Violence and the threat of violence seem to produce what
nonviolence often does not: an immediate lessening of police or
mob brutality. Also the growth of Federal and state programs
implementing civil rights legislation has moved the focus of work.
Instead of mass agitation for new laws or for the abrogation of
unjust customs, attention has shifted to the machinery necessary to
carry out compliance with now-extant legislation. Still other
areas are less amenable to rectification by law: e.g. the fact
Sepag6

that over the past generation the Negro share of national employment and national income has slipped downward. Here the usual
techniques of nonviolence have yet to show their direct applicability.
But here too training and a high degree of sophistication will be
required of local leaders for them to re-apply old techniques, and
discover and implement new ones.
The present foreign policy crises, so deceptively amenable to
military solutions and so steadily slipping out of control, are
having a marked effect on the peace effort. The effect of Santo
Domingo and Viet Nam on the sensitized public is twofold. First it
constricts sensible discussion in the name of national unity in a
time of crisis. Secondly, the nakedly aggressive aspects of both
crises have given rise to a mindless reaction on the part of many
sensitive people, causing them to be purely negative toward their
own society, sometimes even falling prey to pro-Moscow and pro-Peking
elements with a vested interest in fostering such alienation. In
such a situation, action does not develop sophistication or communicability. A continual crisis atmosphere inhibits long-range training; and short-run training is often outflanked by the onrush of
events.
Still, developments in UN peacekeeping, in governmental and
other public programs point toward a -convergence of interest among
law enforcement, order-creating and change-fostering agencies. This
can only be exploited and implemented through thorough, long-range
training integrally related to non-violence.
Page 1
1.
Isolated early examples, such as those of the first New England Quakers,
exercised little or no influence on succeeding generations. Pre-Civil
War social radicalism organized freedom routes for escaped slaves, but
its nascent social action program - including pacifism - was destroyed
by the passions of the Civil War and the subsequent rise of a boastful
and bellicose bourgeois capitalism. This in turn provoked the rise of
a new pacifism, drawing into uneasy but close alliance socialist and
Christian critiques of war and nationalism. This movement foundered
on the First World War and emerged from that struggle a tiny group
dominated for the first time by convinced pacifists. Still the
empha ses were largely determined by the legalistic idealism of that era,
stressing treaties, resolutions and governmental superstructures. Only
through the labour struggles of the Great Depression was nonviolence
or pacifism hitched to concrete struggles with living bodies. Secular
and Christian pacifists helped powerfully to shape the nonviolent and
quasi-violent struggles to organize industrial unions. So deeply enmeshed were p a cifists that their major organization, the FOR, split.
over the issue of violence in labour organization. Subsequently the
schismatics helped to bring America actively into the anti-Hitler war.
Page 4
2. See the training manual for this program: Theodore Olson, Peace and
the American Community (New York: Turn Toward Peace, 1963) , vii-650;
$2.00 from 218 E. 18th, New York.
Page 5
3. For a critique of the TTP program, sec my °Peace Training: A
Beginning" Our Generation, Vol.III, No.2
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