ABSTRACT Joseph Echols Lowery, a key founding member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, led the organization for twenty years. This study explores how Lowery, who took over during an era when many considered the civil rights movement dead, reenergized the SCLC, became a leading black spokesman who challenged Congress, presidents and the Justice Department around issues of voting rights and social justice, while consistently questioning U.S. hegemonic international and domestic policies around jobs and poverty. This research further investigates how Lowery fought for the continuation of affirmative action in the midst of an oftentimes hostile environment and waged campaigns against multi-national companies that discriminated against blacks and minorities. This qualitative empowerment study examines how and why Lowery and the SCLC became the leading non-Muslim influence on the 1995 Million Man March and his role in affirming women leaders and their initiatives.

<p>This is a theoretical study of the importance of adopting a strategy when waging a nonviolent struggle on governmental oppression. It serves as a preparatory study for future research about the method of non-violent struggle.</p><p>It is written to illuminate the difference between conducting a nonviolent struggle in a passive manner and conducting it in an active nonviolent manner, based on planning, structuring, discipline and hard work. Hence, the primary aim with this study is two-fold. First, it is to discern the advantages that come with developing a strategy when using non-violent action to pursue a struggle. Second, the aim is to construct an analytical framework for future studies of non-violent action. To reach the aim with this thesis, the following questions were asked:</p><p>• Why should a strategy be used in non-violent action?</p><p>• What similarities and differences are there between planning and structuring a nonviolent struggle, compared to an armed one?</p><p>• Is there any core principles to follow and how is a clear strategy developed?</p><p>This theoretical study is based on an argumentative method of research. A critical literature approach has been made and the material derives only from secondary sources like books and the Internet.</p><p>The study outlines in an analytical framework that is developed to be applied in future research of non-violent cases. The outcome of this study indicates that to have a clear strategy is as crucial in a nonviolent struggle as in an armed conflict. It is of highest importance to have a detailed strategy if the struggle is going to be successful and to be able to utilize one’s resources and forces in a maximum way. When used to its maximum capacity, nonviolent action is a force that seems to be a fruitful alternative to bring about societal change.</p>

Project (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-268).

The purpose of this essay is to examine Judith Butler’s approach to the problem of ethics, and the ways in which she attempts to reformulate notions of morality and responsibility based on an understanding of the subject as inherently bound to others within a context of normative structures that exceed its own influence. For Butler, this bond implies that the subject’s constitution is structured within what she calls a ”scene of address,” where it emerges into a social field by being appealed to by others, and replying to that appeal by giving an account of itself. By setting out to examine the way in which she puts two influential thinkers—namely Foucault and Levinas—to work, I will examine her notion of scenes of address more closely, and try to show how it enables her to pose the problems of ethics and morality in novel ways. I will argue that her ethics should be understood as one of relationality, since it moves away from the self-sufficient, autonomous subject as the outset for ethics, towards an understanding our very being as dependent on the being of others. This, I propose, puts it in contrast with many established ways of thinking about ethics, both within the Western philosophical tradition, and in views of ethics more generally. Thus, I hope to show that Butler’s ethics constitutes a valuable resource with regard to the question of ethical responsibility. Finally, I will propose that it carries significant implications that point towards ethical nonviolence, and that these are of increasing importance to us today.

Select members of the Congressional Black Caucus through their votes, speeches, arrests and nonviolent forms of protest practice a renewed kind of nonviolent resistance against a neoconservative political agenda advanced by the executive branch of the U.S. government in the past six years. Their practices are nonviolent according to the definition of nonviolence discussed by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his 1962 New York Times Magazine article: "we will take direct action against injustice without waiting for other agencies to act...We will try to persuade with our words---but if our words fail we will try to persuade with our acts." Nonviolent resistance according to this quote means first trying to persuade with words then trying to persuade with direct action. This study will compare nonviolent methods of direct action between 2001 and 2007 and those between 1955 and 1963. The nonviolent methods between 2001 and 2007 resist the neoconservative policies that are based on the same assumptions as those in the civil rights movements between 1955 and 1963. The identification of five comparisons in particular proves a continuing tradition of nonviolent protest identified as a 'surviving legacy' of resistance against neoconservative policies. First, Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat on a city bus is comparable to U.S. Representative Barbara Lee's refusal to support the military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Second, Daisy Bates's commitment to ensuring a quality public education for the Little Rock Nine is comparable to U.S. Representative Chaka Fattah's efforts to improve the Philadelphia public school system. Third, the organizing work of Ella Baker in creating the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960 is comparable to the organizing work of Maxine Waters in creating the Out of Iraq caucus in 2005. Fourth, the appeals to the U.S. Constitution of James Farmer and the Freedom Riders serves as a foundation for John Conyers' appeal to the U.S. Constitution in his lawsuit against George W. Bush. Fifth, the strategy of getting arrested to call attention to unjust foreign policies within the past five years is comparable to the "jail, no bail" strategy during 1962 and 1963. The major point of this thesis is to argue the existence of a concerted strategy of nonviolent resistance practiced by specific Congressional Black Caucus members. The thesis will compare nonviolent resistance in the 21st century to that of the early 1960s.

Project (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-268).

Project (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 208-268).

The dissertation takes as its central problem the priority and value of nonviolent and pragmatic social epistemology. Many concede the desirability of nonviolent problem solving, but quickly and unreflectively assent to violence when the imagination fails to procure viable alternatives. Moreover, the kind and quality of knowledge gained through the use of nonviolence, it is argued, is far superior to the kind and quality of knowledge gained through the use of violence. This dissertation attempts to settle the discussion of the priority and value of nonviolence as a social epistemology by arguing for, and ultimately proving with the use of rationale and empirical evidence, that pragmatic nonviolence has more social-epistemological and/or value as knowledge than the available violent alternatives. Neither modern nor post-modern violence are able to produce knowledge with quite the same staying power, lasting effects, and high quality than that which is generated through what I call "pragmatic nonviolence." Traditionally, for a variety of biased reasons, classical American pragmatism has not taken a stand for either philosophical or methodological nonviolence. This unfortunate situation will, I hope, change with the argument in this dissertation. The issue of whether or not the social-epistemological value of pragmatic nonviolence, as a philosophical movement, has the potential to steer the course of contemporary social, political, and moral pragmatism into the 21st century, has largely been settled. The discussion and analysis offered in chapter one focuses primarily on the logic of domination, violent knowing, and violent realism. Historical context is provided to situate the central problems, compare sources of knowledge, and explore the relationship between violence and knowledge. The views of Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, The United States Military Academy, Wendy Hamblet, Crispin Sartwell, Judith Bradford, and Aaron Fortune receive primary attention in chapter one. Chapter two focuses primarily on the development of a radically empirical social epistemology and theory of concept formation. I examine the roots of social epistemology and describe the problem of learning theory and concept formation through notions of habit, conduct, and struggle. The views of John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and Leonard Harris receive attention in this section of chapter two. I conclude this chapter by outlining concepts of peace and social justice as they demonstrate how social knowledge is created pragmatically. The views of Martin Luther King, Jr., Duane Cady, and Steven Lee receive attention in the latter section of chapter two. The analysis offered in chapter three centers on what I claim generates better knowledge: pragmatic nonviolence. The first section of chapter three describes the kind of normative epistemology I advocate and how pragmatic nonviolence offers qualitatively better knowledge than the alternatives. The views of C.S. Peirce, John Dewey, and Edgar Sheffield Brightman are considered in this section. The second section details the extent and value of uniting pragmatism and nonviolence, the need for a distinctly pragmatic conception of nonviolence, prophetic pragmatism, and American personalism. The views of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cornel West, and Randall Auxier are treated in this part. The third and fourth sections of chapter three applies the theories advanced in previous sections and chapters to demonstrate how pragmatic nonviolence generates better knowledge. The views of Myles Horton and Bob Moses are considered at length.

Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis aims to ‘reconstruct’ the concept of nonviolence, offering a new unifying and pluralistic definition, which rejects recent worrying uses of the term, and is able to deal with the crisis of democracy and the construction of a post-secular society. Currently nonviolence is split in two between principled and pragmatic nonviolence. This division has been successful, but it is now a problem: it divides means and ends, politics and morality, religion and politics. In order to find a way out we will turn to the Italian philosopher Aldo Capitini. He interpreted nonviolence as a tension, a praxis of liberation from the chains of reality and openness to the existent. This approach includes a pragmatic dimension, which is a logic reinterpreting current practices and inventing new ones to build up via facti a new society (omnicracy); and a principled dimension, which is a craft of integrating reality with values, reaching its peak in the connection with everybody in an action of value (compresence). This approach offers actions of protest-to-project to overcome the division between means and ends; a political approach between ‘realism and serenity’ to overcome the division between politics and morality; an open religion which can work at the centre of society and politics. Finally, we will extend Capitini’s reflection claiming that nonviolence as praxis is a non-systematic revolutionary approach aiming at freedom and plurality. We will add that this praxis is impure, because made of less than perfect actions performed in a very imperfect environment by imperfect human beings. Reconceiving nonviolence as impure praxis will allow us to reunite principled and pragmatic nonviolence, reinterpreting the former as actualisation of a public principle and the latter as a phronesis. This interpretation will offer an interesting form of transformative realism, which enriches via facti any democratic order with life, and show the way to overcome the secular divisions towards a post-secular society centred on the Assisi presumption.