{"id":160829,"date":"2020-05-18T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2020-05-18T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=160829"},"modified":"2020-05-14T08:23:03","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T07:23:03","slug":"15-may-international-conscientious-objectors-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/05\/15-may-international-conscientious-objectors-day\/","title":{"rendered":"15 May–International Conscientious Objectors\u2019 Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Courtesy of the Peace Abbey, Millis MA.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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CO Memorial Stone at Cambridge Friends Meeting, Cambridge, MA. A gift from the Peace Abbey Foundation<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

May 15 is International Conscientious Objectors Day. Although conscientious objection to war is not a hot media topic today, respect, admiration, and appreciation for conscientious objectors (COs) will be expressed (mostly distally) around the world this Friday May 15; see here<\/a>, for example.<\/p>\n

The Peace Abbey<\/a>, in Sherborn, MA, maintains a site that provides numerous materials regarding concientious objection, including historical information, a copy of the \u00a0National Registry form<\/a> , and a rich discussion of pacifism, reprinted here:<\/p>\n

\u201cPacifism<\/strong>\u00a0is opposition to\u00a0war<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0violence<\/a>. The word\u00a0pacifism<\/em>\u00a0was coined by the French peace campaigner\u00a0\u00c9mile Arnaud<\/a>\u00a0(1864\u20131921) and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in\u00a0Glasgow\u00a0in 1901.\u00a0A related term is\u00a0ahimsa<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(to do no harm), which is a core philosophy in Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. While modern connotations are recent, having been explicated since the 19th century, ancient references abound.<\/p>\n

In Christianity,\u00a0Jesus Christ\u2018s injunction to\u00a0\u201clove your enemies\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and asking for forgiveness for his crucifiers\u00a0\u201cfor they know not what they do\u201d<\/a>\u00a0have been interpreted as calling for pacifism. In modern times, interest was revived by\u00a0Leo Tolstoy<\/a>\u00a0in his late works, particularly in\u00a0The Kingdom of God Is Within You<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0Mohandas Gandhi<\/a>\u00a0(1869\u20131948) propounded the practice of steadfast\u00a0nonviolent opposition<\/a>\u00a0which he called \u201csatyagraha<\/a>\u201c, instrumental in its role in the\u00a0Indian Independence Movement<\/a>. Its effectiveness served as inspiration to\u00a0Martin Luther King Jr.<\/a>,\u00a0James Lawson<\/a>,\u00a0James Bevel<\/a>,[2]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Thich Nhat Hanh<\/a>[3]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0and many others in the 1950s and 1960s American\u00a0Civil Rights Movement<\/a>. Pacifism was widely associated with the much publicized image of\u00a0Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989<\/a>\u00a0with the \u201cTank Man<\/a>\u201c, where one protester stood in nonviolent opposition to a column of tanks.<\/p>\n

Pacifism covers a spectrum of views, including the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved, calls for the abolition of the institutions of the military and war, opposition to any organization of society through governmental force (anarchist or libertarian pacifism<\/a>), rejection of the use of physical violence to obtain political, economic or social goals, the obliteration of force, and opposition to violence under any circumstance, even defence of self and others. Historians of pacifism\u00a0Peter Brock<\/a>\u00a0and Thomas Paul Socknat define pacifism \u201cin the sense generally accepted in English-speaking areas\u201d as \u201can unconditional rejection of all forms of warfare\u201d.[4]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Philosopher\u00a0Jenny Teichman<\/a>\u00a0defines the main form of pacifism as \u201canti-warism\u201d, the rejection of all forms of warfare.[5]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Teichman\u2019s beliefs have been summarized by\u00a0Brian Orend<\/a>\u00a0as \u2026\u2019A pacifist rejects war and believes there are no moral grounds which can justify resorting to war. War, for the pacifist, is always wrong.\u2019 In a sense the philosophy is based on the idea that the ends do not justify the means.[6]<\/a><\/sup>\u201c<\/p>\n

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Lewis Randa is a Quaker, pacifist, vegan, educator, and social change activist. He received an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector from the US military during the Vietnam War in 1971. Lewis is the founder and director of The Life Experience School for children with disabilities (1972); The Peace Abbey, an Interfaith Center for the study and practice of Nonviolence and Pacifism (1988); The Special Peace Corps., an organization that provides community service programs for adults with mental challenges (1990); The Courage of Conscience Award, an international peace award for nonviolent contributions to peace and justice (1991); The National Registry for Conscientious Objection, a register for people of all ages to publicly state their refusal to participate in armed conflict (1992); The Pacifist Memorial, a national monument honoring pacifists throughout history (1994); The Veganpeace Animal Sanctuary, a safe haven for animals that have escaped from slaughterhouses following the rescue of Emily the Cow (1995); Stonewalk, a global peace walk that involves physically pulling a two-ton memorial stone for Unknown Civilians Killed in War (Documentary shown on PBS) (1999 \u2013 2005); Citycare, an empowerment program for the homeless (2000); R.A.T.C., the college-based Reserve Activist Training Corps; and The Lavender House, a Group Home for adults with disabilities (2002).<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – engagingpeace.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although conscientious objection to war is not a hot media topic today, respect, admiration, and appreciation for COs are expressed (mostly distally) around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":160831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[229,260,1960,291,444,119,109,287,380,126,118,75],"class_list":["post-160829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism","tag-activism","tag-history","tag-international-conscientious-objectors-day","tag-military","tag-nonviolence","tag-peace","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-solutions","tag-violence","tag-war","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}