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Letter from Staff
Dear friends,
I am grateful for this opportunity once again to write to you on behalf of all of us at the Gandhi Institute. Last week I was heartened to hear a statistic regarding the percentage of a population required for a successful nonviolence campaign. Ready? That number is 3.5%. Does that sound doable to you? It does to me.
Learn more about where this statistic comes from in this TED talk by researcher Erica Chenoweth. Keep reading for ways to support and be supported in steering humanity's course away from intolerance and violence and toward a world that works for all. Believing this is possible is an important prerequisite. Regardless of how discouraged you may feel at times, the truth is that we are making up our collective story every day, together. This comes with love from everyone here,
Kit Miller
For the Gandhi Institute
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Spring Nonviolence Intensive
March 28th-30th
10 AM-5 PM
Friends Meeting House
84 Scio St.
Rochester, NY 14604
This experience is designed for social workers, students, teachers, activists, people of faith and any individual interested in the principles and practices of social change through nonviolence.
During the workshop, participants will learn:
- How to shift conflicts by listening for underlying values,
- How to navigate the world with humility and self-reflection upon one's rank and privilege,
- How to use rank and privilege to facilitate just and equitable social change,
- How to reconnect to hope and energy for social change, in spite of personal and societal challenges, drawing on the Work that Reconnects (from teacher and author Joanna Macy)
The Intensive will be interactive with a focus on group-based learning. We will combine individual reflection with small group learning each day, engaging our heads and hearts.
Nutritious snacks will be provided each day; please pack your own lunch.
Please register here. Only 15 Spots Available!
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Nonviolent Communication Practice Group
Interested in honing your nonviolent communication skills? A new NVC practice group is looking for members!
For more information, please contact Izzie at
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Book Review
Waging Peace:
Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist
By Kit Miller
Did you ever see the film Forrest Gump, about a character who seems to magically appear during historic occasions over the course of decades? David Hartsough seems to have manifested that same ability, except that it's not fiction. From visiting Montgomery, Alabama (and meeting Martin Luther King Jr.) during the early days of the bus strike that launched King's career, to participating in lunch counter sit-ins as a college student and civil rights worker at Howard University, to traveling as a young citizen diplomat in the 1960s Soviet Union, David's life serves as a chronicle of many of the most important advances in 20th century nonviolence. With his equally committed wife, life-long activist Jan Hartsough, David has put his life on the line and served time on numerous occasions, protesting the violence that the US exports around the globe. Among many accomplishments, David co-founded Nonviolent Peaceforce, offering skillful unarmed peacekeeping intervention in several sites where conflict is present and lives are at risk, from the Sudan to Sri Lanka. The organization has become so successful that it was just nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. David continues his work today with a movement that seeks to abolish war forever, www.worldbeyondwar.org.
Given the fact that interpersonal challenges often inhibit social justice efforts and movements, David's humility, loving support and generosity toward colleagues of every age are equally noteworthy. I am one of probably thousands of grateful beneficiaries of his support.
It's a struggle to get the good news out about nonviolence with a mass media that seemingly feasts on stories of heartbreak and horror, making us doubt ourselves and each other. For those of us who care about nonviolence and its potential for contributing to a world that works for all, the commitment David shows through his amazing adventures will serve to educate, inspire and inoculate you against doubt of our collective ability to face and beat the odds.
To order your own copy of David's book, click here!
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Local artist David Johnson painted this beautiful picture of Gandhi during our Dance Party fundraiser, which now lives upstairs in the Gandhi House. Thanks, David!
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Successful Film Screening!
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On February 4th, nearly 300 people came out to the Mankind Project's screening of
The Mask You Live In, an award-winning documentary film that pushes back against popular conceptions of masculinity and encourages a more healthy standard for young men.
After the film, a panel made up of one Mankind Project member and three Gandhi staff took questions from the audience.
Stay tuned for additional screening dates this spring!
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Wish List
Gandhi Institute staff and volunteers work together to keep the Gandhi House clean and welcoming for all visitors and workshops. We greatly appreciate your donations, which support our work.
We are especially in need of the following items:
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- New Socks
- 150 ft medium outdoor extension cord with standing cord storage reel
- 1 gallon exterior oil based primer
- 2 gallons exterior latex paint
- Floor-standing presentation easels (portable, able to hold poster board and flip chart paper pads)
- Meditation cushions (round ones)
- Recent model Apple laptop
- Earth-friendly all-purpose cleaner
- Earth-friendly dish soap
- Brita water filters
- Postage stamps
- Copy paper
- Toilet paper
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Contact Improv as Nonviolence in Action
Saturday, March 5th
9:30 AM-12:30 PM
Gandhi Institute
We will explore nonviolence in action through the dance form of contact improvisation. Movement exercises promoting interdependence, sharing and alternating control, self-assertion, spontaneity, offering, and risk-taking will provide experiences that will be digested through discussion. We'll investigate what dance can teach us about living nonviolently.
Please wear comfortable clothes you can move in! No previous dance experience necessary.
$15-30 requested donation.
Please email Shannon to register by March 4: srichmond@ur.rochester.edu
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 Transforming Conflicts: Nonviolence 101
Saturday, April 9th
9:30 am-1:00 pm
Gandhi Institute
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Maintaining a compassionate, respectful stance toward others supports conflict resolution and peace within, between and among groups of people. Join Gandhi staff for this monthly orientation to resolving your conflicts with more confidence and skill, using the philosophy of Nonviolent Communication and other nonviolence skills. Students free. Donations requested, no one turned away for lack of funds.
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Youth Webinar Listen-In
Monday, April 11th
11:00 AM-12:40 PM
Online
In partnership with Laurel Elementary school in Los Angeles, the Gandhi Institute will be guiding the school's 6th grade class in an interactive lesson on nonviolence and social justice. With the school's permission, we are inviting adults to quietly listen-in as the students explore fundamentals of nonviolent thought and practice.
Suggested donation of $5-$55. Listeners who contribute $25 or more will receive a free Gandhi Deck.
Please register here. C ontact Malik with questions: malik@gandhiinstitute.org
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Black History Month;
A Comment
By Malik Thompson
Ultimately, 'history' is, as many things are, a power struggle. A struggle over airtime and validation. Whether or not a particular narrative has basis in reality is irrelevant; the most profitable and seductive constructions of the past are meticulously chosen, culled into easily digestible pieces, and spoon fed to the masses. Sadly, and with cold-blooded intention from the upper echelons , most individuals constituting the masses are too preoccupied with surviving poverty, racism, wanton violence, and a web of other gauntlets to thoroughly regurgitate the venom we have all been nursed on.
The histories of people who were forced to act as a society's soil often receive particularly vicious dismemberments. In the United States, Indigenous people and African-Americans have served as the nation's soil; trampled upon, used as dumping grounds, riddled with venom and forced to sprout cane and cotton from blood-drenched land-these actions were an unjustifiably pyrrhic necessity for this nation's fruition. Founded on the dual tragedies of enslavement and genocide; a historical examination of the United States containing a thimbleful of integrity must consider these realities unflinchingly-devoid of mock horror and sentimentality.
In this era, with our increasingly advanced and sophisticated communication technologies, access to knowledge discrediting popularly accepted narrations of history is more readily available than ever. Communities, organizations, and vast networks have been established to hasten the proliferation of revisionist histories.
Despite some people's unwillingness to accept it, Black history is American history. While it is important to locate and differentiate the particular realities of Black people from those of others, this must be done in a manner which incorporates Black history into this land's broader historical oeuvre. While never having been that syrupy 'melting pot' it is often assumed to be, making light of the cultural amalgamations that are the United States' backbone would be, to speak with restraint, equally insensible.
Regarding Black History Month specifically, it has never shocked me that Black people in the United States have officially been given the shortest month of the year to celebrate our history. This fact, in tandem with narrations of Black history which expunge the long history of Black people's painstakingly organized rebellions against remarkable injustices, have been the source of a private corrosive bitterness.
Seeing Black history characterized as little more than the accomplishments of a small smattering of charismatic, typically male, leaders from the Civil Rights era enrages me. As it currently stands, and has stood for centuries, an incautious parrotings of celebrated articulations of the past are capable of rendering the contributions of legions, and geniuses, invisible. What of Fannie Lou Hamer? Dr. Dorothy Height? Bayard Rustin? Why are so many of our brilliant allowed to fade into oblivion?
As I grow out of my juvenile years, and mentality, however, bitterness and rage consume decreasing amounts of my interior wanderings; rather, these days, I am more enamored with creation, excavation of historical archives, and the dissemination of information. Honestly, spending my personal time perusing the vast archives of Black history, of Black artistic and cultural production especially, is exhilarating. The sheer depth and range of Black people's participation in our nation's every sphere is simply breathtaking; militaristic endeavors, affiliations with the Communist Party, communities of formerly enslaved people who fled bondage and erected homeplace in the wilds-the range of Black people's involvement in every sphere of our society is nearly unfathomable.
If Black history were to be taken seriously by educational institutions and communities in the United States, the myth of Black inferiority would no longer have basis to exist. In my personal explorations of history, time and again, I continually find evidence of Black people's ability to endure, and even, at times, blossom, in a society dependent upon our living in a state of ignorance and servitude-akin to lotus flowers blooming from basins of poisoned mud. Extraordinarily durable; yet dazzling.
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Gandhi staff member Maria Engels recently hung this anger continuum at Monroe High School's Vice Principal's office to help students articulate their feelings on challenging days.
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Learn more about our Gandhi & Nonviolence cards and order a deck of your own here.
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