book review: healing resistance by kazu haga
23 Mar 2022
Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm by Kazu Haga
What are the main ideas?
- nonviolence is often framed as weaker than violence. but there is evidence and experience that nonviolence is not only more effective at social change than violence, it also engages more people that said, it is harder than violence because it requires more training, skill, and discipline.
- the difference between nonviolence and non-violence is important. non-violence is a commitment to not using violence. nonviolence is a commitment to building beloved community via the six principles and six steps (the “will and skill”).
- just like you don’t become meditation when you meditate, you don’t become nonviolent when you practice nonviolence. it’s a practice, not something you are.
- the six principles (aka “the will”) of nonviolence are:
- nonviolence is aw ay of life for courageous people
- the beloved community is the framework for the future
- attack forces of evil, not persons doing evil
- accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal
- avoid internal violence of the spirit as well as external physical violence
- the universe is on the side of justice
- the six steps (aka “the skill”) of nonviolence are:
- information gathering
- education
- personal commitment (aka self-purificiation)
- negotiation
- direct action
- reconciliation
- the six principles of nonviolence are co-terminus, meaning they are all practiced at the same time and influence and strengthen each other.
- a similar thing is true for the steps. you may engage in multiple steps at once. you may also move through the steps in a nonlinear and/or iterative way.
- the beloved community is a north star. and like enslaved people following the north star to freedom, you’re not necessarily trying to get to the north star. you’re using it as a guide to get to freedom. nonviolence is the most effective path as we moved towards beloved community.
If I implemented one idea from this book right now, which one would it be?
start a conflict journal.
How would I describe the book to a friend?
i was truly surprised at how fun and funny this book on nonviolence was. i also was surprised that the book was mostly about nonviolence as a political philosophy. i sort of thought nonviolence was going to be part of a bigger approach but nonviolence was the approach. my misconception was probably due to a limited understanding of what nonviolence is. all that said, i did love this book and i will be recommending it for sure. the humorous deep dive into such a widely popular political philosophy was greatly appreciated. in this book, haga also helped me me resolve some of my issues with the historical framing of the civil rights movement itself (namely, the framing of it as the civil rights movement. that makes it seem like the goal was legislation; it was not. when what ppl during the day called it was the southern freedom movement and that was the goal. the work was ended by state-sanctioned (or actually state-implemented) murder of critical leaders who had not yet worked patriarchy out of their systems enough to build leaderful movements).
reminder: book review structure
words / writing / post-processing
510w / 14min / 5min