Engage: Exploring Nonviolent Living in Action
The spike in violence had been horrifyingly dramatic.
Over a few short weeks, a public housing project for the mentally ill in a large Midwestern US city had experienced five suicides, two questionable deaths, and numerous fist- fights. In spite of this growing, violent wave, the housing case manager couldn’t persuade mental health agencies to provide the long-term support she knew was needed. Because of the chronic nature of mental illness, with its often slow response to behavioral interventions, she believed that what was required was ongoing mental health outreach to form a support group with the residents. But the assistance for this just wasn’t there.
“I felt a deep compassion for the suffering of these wounded sisters and brothers,” the case manager later wrote. Aware of the way that, for all people, our woundedness lies at the root of violence in ourselves, toward others, and in our culture, she wondered, “Can I help them face their wounds with active nonviolence?”
She decided to try. To do this, she turned to Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service’s study program, From Violence To Wholeness, (now entitled Engage: Exploring Nonviolent Living) and adapted it to the special circumstances of the housing project.
She began gathering with the residents who wanted to explore nonviolence as a creative and effective process to resolve the violence in their lives and in the world. Each session, they reflected together on the previous week’s experiences of violence and possible nonviolent responses. They discussed basic readings and viewed videos on Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez, highlighting the principles they had lived by, and how their very lives had demonstrated an alternative to the cycle of violence. In each session the group did role-playing, skits, and group activities to experience the toolbox of techniques to become nonviolent peacemakers.
“I have been humbled by many of the behavioral changes and testimonies of the residents,” wrote the case manager (who prefers to remain anonymous to protect the privacy of the persons involved). “By about the twelfth week, physical fights and verbally abusive behavior were greatly reduced and at some sessions were not present at all. Some residents made statements that their psychiatrist or their community support worker commented on how they were changing.
“The residents themselves expressed statements of ‘feeling peace,’ ‘feeling less angry,’ ‘more in control.’ You could also hear a sense of pride in their conversations with one another and with other residents in the building who had chosen not to participate. They were not in a support group for the mentally ill because they were ‘crazy’; rather, they were in a ‘nonviolence group’ learning to be peacemakers with themselves and others in the building, working to make it a better place to live.”
From Engage: Exploring Nonviolent Living (Session 2: The Situation We Often Face, page 32) Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service.
