On Monday, 17 April 2000, Tom Howard-Hastings wrote to the PEACE STUDIES listserv:

. . . a really exquisite nonviolent demonstration, undertaken by highly trained nonviolent actionists will be much less likely to be misrepresented on mainstream media. I am listening to an NPR reporter at the moment--a sellout, to be sure, but a somewhat more available and open media than, say, a major net--telling the nation that the demonstrators are running around doing a loud chant, "Whose streets? OUR STREETS!!" Great. That cuts to the bone of the issue... The point is to win over the hearts and minds of Americans and listening to another report this morning, in which arrested protesters whined about being given fruit drink with "zero percent real fruit juice" is just inane. I've spent lots of time in jails and prisons over the years and MY eyes were rolling, listening to this jerking off. Chanting loudly is anti-dialogic. Complaining about non-vegan food is alienating (I say this as someone who did eight weeks of eating only five meals per week as a result of my prison vegetarian stance) when the real issues are there but ignored. If I hear one more reference to "peace-Nazis" I'll be just about ready to give up on these young activists. They need to get a grasp of history, of the theory and practice of nonviolence, and they need to look for coalition rather than shove it away, in my opinion. They are in a position to lead us to the next level and they seem determined to turn back to the level of the antiwar demonstrations of the Sixties, a naive and confused movement if ever there was one. I say that having been a young person in the thick of it then...

Tom H Hastings, Coordinator
Peace Studies, Northland College
Ashland WI 54806

On Tuesday, 18 April 2000, Andrew Hunt responded:

Hello Tom:

Thanks for the comments -- the movement today appears to be a combination of multiple groups -- environmental, labor, anti-submarine sonar, peace advocates, socialist, save the sea turtles, polar bears, etc. to name only a few. Each of which has their own agendas seperate from each other. The WTO, IMF, and World Bank appear to be a cross-over issue or organizing mechanism for the groups to unify. And yes, some of the groups have been organized around the imprisoning of Peltier and Mumia. In Northern CA, this is a major organizing issue, which has produced hundreds of dedicated activists seeking justice for the wrongfully imprisoned, at least from their perspectives. As for myself, on several occasions I signed petitions asking for Mandella's release and sent letters for Amnesty International on behalf of the wrongfully imprisoned in various countries -- and also have done the same for Peltier, who I believe has not been treated fairly in the courts.

Andrew Hund

On Tuesday, 18 April 2000, Tom Howard-Hastings responded:

Dear Andrew,

I guess what I find regrettable is that there is a long list of nonviolent resisters imprisoned around the world and the two who get almost all the movement attention both carried guns. I too believe that there are plenty of questions around both cases, and they ought to have new trials, but the focus on their cases when draft resisters in Turkey and Greece, plowshares prisoners in the US and Australia, SOA resisters in the US, and others who use robust and consistent nonviolence, are all "rotting" in prison, noticed much less by the so-called wishers for social change in favor of the romance of armed liberation prisoners--well, I am sorrowful about that. Peltier wasn't even a leader, just basically a bodyguard, and I watched while a true Native Holy Man (Larry Cloud Morgan) suffered through an 8-year prison sentence for his application of nonviolent force to a nuclear missile site. Larry is dead now, victim of the drastic medical maltreatment of prison, where his diabetes worsened and ultimately killed him last year, after a few years "on the outs." Where was the movement concern about a true nonviolent practitioner in Larry's case?         

In my opinion, without a focus on nonviolence instead of a pandering to the infantile imagery of the armed guerrilla, we are going nowhere. The NPR reports about the black masked so-called anarchists giving the finger to IMF delegates just helps to reinforce the notion that all protesters are more attached to juvenalia than serious work for social change. It is an image that some of us have given decades of our lives trying to change and I cannot help but comment.

best regards,
Tom