Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/non-violent-communication-nvc/page/4/)
All of the tips I present here are based on my own personal experience and what I have learned on my way to being able to survive, and often even thrive, as a “professional” outlier in the world.
In response to the intensity of hatred and separation that I see coming from Trump and his supporters, I want to find a way to meet them in an entirely different way. A beloved poem comes to mind…
Watch any television program, listen to the radio, go to the movies, listen with some detachment to many conversations going on around you: Vulgarity is not the sole purview of the Republican party. It’s become our national culture. If I had fallen asleep when television had just begun and were waking up today, I’m not sure I could withstand the shock, just thinking of the way people speak to each other today, never mind the ubiquity of the violence
The first time I heard that groups thrive on dissent, I didn’t like the idea. This assumption didn’t change overnight. It was a slow process of seeing, again and again, how individuals and groups find creative paths forward when they surface disagreements and engage with conflicts.
No city is immune from the American epidemic of police killings that has only recently begun to gain wide attention — not even a liberal bastion like San Francisco. In her latest post, TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon, whose new book, American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes, will be published in April, takes a look at officer-involved killings in the “City of Love.”
In this post, I look at how experimenting with the full gift economy can only take place from a position of privilege, and what, ultimately, we can do to begin and continue these experiments in a sustainable way.
This incident was one of the many egregious attacks on Palestinians that we, two Jewish American women, witnessed while we were spending time in Hebron working with activists at the YAS Center and documenting the daily human rights violations that they face.
We have been trained to mistrust anything offered freely… When I envision a full, global, functioning gift economy, I see an enormous and endless flow of generosity in which resources continually move, always forward, always from where they exist to where they are needed. This image is one of the deepest sources of faith, energy, and passion that I have. It’s pure beauty for me.
Working in a retail job, you think you’ve become accustomed to bad behavior on the part of children as well as parents. But you are appalled to see a mother use an umbrella to spank a small boy.Will intervening threaten the child or endanger your job? Walking through a grocery store parking lot, you notice a crying toddler in the grocery cart and a woman screaming at the child as she loads packages in her car. She slaps the child’s face and arms as you walk past.If you say anything will you make it worse? Looking out your apartment window you see a young man standing next to a motorcycle, pushing and yelling at a teenaged girl from the building who seems to be his girlfriend.Would the police consider this abuse if you called?
I have long known that it is uncomfortable for people to take ownership and responsibility for their privilege… This is part of why it’s so much easier for so many people to say that they are “fortunate” than to say they are “privileged.”