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Learn about the principles and practice of nonviolence as an active force for personal, social, and political change. Co-hosted by Stacie Freasier, Robert Tyrone Lilly, and Jim Crosby, the show covers current events, learning opportunities, and nonviolent direct action taking place locally. Airs 1st Thursdays of every month from 1-2 pm CT at KOOP Community Radio 91.7 FM in Austin, Texas, and streaming online at koop.org.
Greetings, y'all. You were just listening to Jim Crosby kick us off as he does so beautifully every month here on Nonviolent Austin Radio Hour. I am your host, Stacey Fraser. Pronouns are she, they. I am joined by my cohost, Jim Crosby and brother Tyrone Lily.
Speaker 1:Good morning, brother. Good afternoon, brother.
Speaker 2:Peace and blessings.
Speaker 1:Peace and blessings. And our fellow co trainer on Kingian Nonviolence here with Nonviolent Austin joining us in the studio for the first time. Rena Gradford, you pull that mic right down and you tell the world who you are.
Speaker 3:Greetings, peace and love to everyone. What a gift to be here with such amazing people doing such amazing things. Yep.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We're so happy. I'm so happy you're here. We've gone to Selma and back. We're about to go to Selma and back again.
Speaker 1:Not Along with brother Rob. Along with brother Rob. Yes, that's correct. And Jill and Phil Henderson. Of the
Speaker 2:Bakari Foundation.
Speaker 1:Of the Bakari Foundation, that's right. And last March, well, before that, just to recap, Jim Crosby and I went together to get our level two certification in Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation from the Selma Center for Nonviolence Truth and Reconciliation. And, then these two amazing humans sitting across the studio from me said yes and took the leap of faith too and became level one trainers last March.
Speaker 2:That is correct.
Speaker 1:And along with Jill and Phil.
Speaker 2:Got you next to sit at the feet of Doctor. Bernard Lafayette, touching history in the flesh. May he rest forever in peace. He's no longer with us, but we continue to honor the traditions that he's passed on to us. So I am a tradition holder.
Speaker 2:We are tradition holders now.
Speaker 1:That's right. He transmitted the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, who transmitted the legacy of nonviolentists and nonviolent practitioners across the ages. And part of this show and part of my organizing with Nonviolent Austin is to continue that flame. Right? I'm carrying that flame, and y'all are carrying it with me.
Speaker 1:In community, we we go. So today's topic is gonna center around principle four of Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation. Somebody feel like reciting it for me?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Doc always called it the one that has four parts and we'd summarize it with accept suffering but the whole thing is accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal. And I always put it in the context of all six and, you know, the goal for me is beloved community. And but this may be the hardest one. And a lot of times as soon as you say accept suffering, people say, stop right there, I've discovered.
Speaker 4:And, so I think we wanna flesh out through the course of this hour why that might be the case, that people respond that way or that we respond that way, and why we might want to understand it in its fullness and push on through and see it in the context of all six principles. So, yeah, give me your answers, everybody. I'm waiting.
Speaker 2:Well, before we do that, I I like how Rayna has learned to memorize it when we were at the conference, when we were at the training. How do you say it?
Speaker 3:Okay. So I learned things by song because it's hard to remember everything. And it was so much. Drop a beat. Yeah.
Speaker 3:We gotta drop a little beat. So it was except suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal. For the sake
Speaker 1:of the cause
Speaker 3:to achieve
Speaker 4:the goal.
Speaker 3:For the sake of the cause to achieve the goal.
Speaker 1:Hey. Yeah. That's it.
Speaker 2:Mic drop. Boom.
Speaker 1:Did we cook that up in the Airbnb?
Speaker 2:I think she made it up on the spot. You were
Speaker 1:in the spirit and soul center. Yeah. Which music is always, always, always a part of our trainings and workshops.
Speaker 3:That's what I was gonna say. Starting today and getting to hear Jim and his song really meant a lot because the movement and this work can't be done without the songs in our hearts. And that's what really led the civil rights movement was the songs when we're walking together and doing all the things. We have those songs that connect us and let our voices come together, and it was a big part of the training, and it helps us remember.
Speaker 4:And just by way, jumping in for fuller introduction, I've gotta say that Rayna's mom, Judy Gradford, has been at the heart of the Austin Raging Grannies and Woo hoo. And Nonviolent Austin. So shout out to Judy and and for Judy's part in bringing Rayna here.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. I literally would not be on this earth without Judy Gratford. She's been doing this work of spreading love and justice and peace since before I was born, and it's been a real gift, an honor to come from her and to be invited to be around you guys and to continue the work that she still does into her seventies, as beautiful as she is.
Speaker 1:Love you, Judy.
Speaker 2:Gonna second that sentiment. Jim asked us a question, and some thoughts have started to percolate in my mind. But would you, for the audience's sake, read the principle once more?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Go
Speaker 3:for it. Accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal.
Speaker 2:For the sake of the cause to achieve the goal. Okay. So I'm gonna try to weigh in on this question very quickly and succinctly. I'm gonna tell you in my own unique way. My name again is Robert Lilly.
Speaker 2:Robert Tyrone Lilly. I go by brother Rob. And I'm so proud to be a part of this conversation having come from a background where I didn't question whether or not violence was a reasonable response to harm in my life, to suffering in my life, to oppression in my life. Right? It a natural instinct to think, you hurt me, I hurt you back.
Speaker 2:You hurt me, I hurt you harder than you hurt me. And then sickest I became is when I got to the point where I started thinking it's appropriate to imagine someone losing their life as a result of hurting me. And that I think was the most that's the lowest I've been as a human being. Not a place that I ever wanna revisit again. I remember some years ago, I was new to Austin.
Speaker 2:I was living I had just gotten here in 2018. I was unhoused. I was living in a car. I was with a young lady, that was at the time we were in a relationship. I'll put quotation marks around that.
Speaker 2:Suffice it to say, I remember, enrolling in an inpatient program for at the Phoenix House. I was a person I am a person in recovery, long term recovery. And I remember going to this this outpatient excuse me, not inpatient, outpatient treatment program. And I remember sitting in this class. I'm not a proponent of 12 step models, although it was a 12 step oriented program.
Speaker 2:And the counselor who was teaching the class was very well read, and we were talking in that class. And I remember him bringing up the book, No Mud, No Lotus. No Mud, No Lotus by I'm gonna say his name not correctly, but
Speaker 1:it's Thich Hanh.
Speaker 2:Thich Nhat Hanh. And I remember we were talking about the subject of suffering. And I remember before he even brought the book up, I vividly remember thinking, I'm suffering right now. But I had no idea of what the purpose of suffering was for in my life. I think we, I think suffering is one of those words that we hear and we assume we know what it means.
Speaker 2:We we impose upon it meaning that we haven't really reflected upon. And so in that instance for me, and this was the beginnings of that reflection for me. I asked myself, I knew very clearly, intuitively, I am suffering right now. But I did not understand what the value of suffering was to my life. And so I began to interrogate that idea.
Speaker 2:And what I concluded was and we've this is a refrain that's been around for a long time communities. It's it's a a nomenclature that we use. What doesn't kill you? What does it do?
Speaker 1:Makes you stronger.
Speaker 2:Okay. So we say that. But but we don't equate the part of what doesn't kill you. What what does that mean? Well, I've decided to use that phrase to mean suffering.
Speaker 2:In this life, this, I think it's impossible to live life. What I don't know some level suffering. I think it's impossible to live life without having some kind of visceral response to the struggles and the challenges, the difficulties, the exertions, whatever you choose to call that. Right now, I'm choosing to call it an experience with suffering. And what I've concluded is that some of the best and most substantive lessons in my life have come as a result, not of me taking shortcuts, not of me looking for quick answers like a living a microwave life.
Speaker 2:It's required me to strive, to struggle, to exert effort. And in that, I experience what I believe is suffering. And on the other side of that suffering, what I believe I've gained as a result of that is a more tempered, empathetic life. I don't think they can there's a saying in the Muslim community. I'll end with this thought.
Speaker 2:It says, verily, verily, with every difficulty, there is ease. It doesn't say after every difficulty. It says, with every difficulty, there is ease. So you have to have the difficulty in order to experience the ease. What what would be life if there was never suffering?
Speaker 2:Would it be this life? Or would it be something that we haven't yet conceived? I'll pass that thought to others.
Speaker 4:And can I, at this point, invite weighing in on the first noble truth? We've mentioned Thich Nhat Hanh. Life is suffering. What does it mean to you?
Speaker 1:Well, was thinking, brother Jim, the same thing when brother Rob was describing his suffering. I I jotted down, you know, suffering is one of the four noble truths according to the Buddha who I am very spiritually inspired by and channeling another transmitter of the truth to me. And suffering is well, I don't think I could actually define it better than Brother Rob did, but what I know suffering may be inevitable, which my understanding it is, harm, unnecessary harm is not inevitable. And I think that's where we have agency to build the envision, build, and be the beloved community because we suffer together and through each other and understanding and hold each other to make sense and make meaning of why why do we suffer and This group right here does that with me right you're holding your whole we're we're interrogating this this concept in this idea and that's part of Doctor. King's methodology is to, arrive at the truth which is love through interrogating and examining what what are we what are we talking about when we're talking about suffering.
Speaker 1:So I appreciate you starting there and I appreciate you asking and bringing up the noble truth. Jim, what is your Well, part of what I wanna Yeah, where do you wanna
Speaker 4:Inject or interject at this point is that Doctor. King's emphasis in context was on unjust suffering and, you know, that that he was already in the work for the cause, you know, and his unjust suffering based on the oppressor's retaliation, you know, against protests, you know, about the cause. So you're you're struggling for justice and you suffer as a result of that. So maybe we might wanna talk a little bit about distinction between suffering in general and suffering for the sake of the cause. So
Speaker 1:yeah. And if you're just tuning in, you are listening to Nonviolent Austin Radio Hour here on Co op Community Radio ninety one point seven FM. Thanks for those who stream us from outside of Austin, right, on koop.org. We are talking today about principle four of Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation, and that principle is accepting suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal. Something that I picked up from Doc, Bernard Lafayette, rest in power doc is oppression suffering is present regardless.
Speaker 1:You're gonna suffer so either you're suffering by the conditions of the oppressor, who's oppressing you, what's oppressing you, or you're suffering the consequence of resisting that oppression. So I love that idea of if suffering is inevitable, which suffering are you going to experience? Are you gonna experience the suffering imposed upon you by oppression? Or are you going to experience suffering resisting that oppression?
Speaker 4:And I'd like if I could, Rainey, you ready to say something? Yeah. I want to invite you in by contextualizing this a little bit in terms of the work you've been doing with students, high school students. How do you think they would engage or how have they engaged with this idea or how would they? You can project onto your students.
Speaker 4:You know, it's it's a tough one.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I really appreciate what's already been said and, like, the lived experience of this. I'm thinking about in suffering, there's these different levels of suffering, and I think, Stacy, you really said it well. You know, how what are we suffering about? Just to be in the suffering or actually being able to stand up and resist these terrible things that are happening.
Speaker 3:But there's also, I'm a practitioner of yoga and there's this study of wanting things to be a certain way and we want things to be a certain way and they're not, people suffer. And so being able to figure out how to be with what's actually arising and not get stuck in the suffering and harming other people with what you're going through. And when I think about the young people that I work with, because I work at a high school and I do restorative practices, and I'm asking young people who feel harmed sometimes to sit and think about what has happened, what they need to be able to make things right, whether they're the ones that have maybe caused harm. Many times it's not clear, because when people are doing harm to others, many times their reason is because they feel harmed themselves, either in that moment or for the things that have happened to them in their life and the conditioning of maybe violence or trauma or mistreatment that we don't get to see. And so I'm asking them to really contemplate this and think about if we can't change things that have happened in the past, but what could we do to be able to move forward?
Speaker 3:What would you need, or what would that look like? What would you need to do? What would you need for somebody else to do? And that piece for me that it's hard for me to just to think about the suffering, because I always connect it without retaliation, because I think that is the big part of it. And it just escalates the situations, whatever it is, with the students at school.
Speaker 3:I think about my family life. I'm a mom. I have a family with two boys and a partner. And we get mad at each other. We get upset.
Speaker 3:And when we feel upset, there's this sense of wanting to, like, hurt somebody else. That saying hurt people hurt people. But when I think about this bigger cause of nonviolence, Kingian Nonviolence, and using it as a way to actually transform the world and transform these horrible oppressive systems, we really have to be careful with that retaliation part. Because when we're in the world, especially supporting these causes, we can throw them right off if we act out in that moment in a way that is harmful or, you know, and it's a more personal thing. And so, I'm actually thinking of a story.
Speaker 3:When we went to the training, there were amazing people at this training from all over. And there were some young men that were there who had been through a lot. They had been spent time in prison and really faced some really harshness in in their lives. And we were getting ready. It was actually the sixtieth anniversary last year of Jubilee.
Speaker 3:And so we were actually preparing to cross over the Edmond Bridge.
Speaker 2:Edmond Pettus Bridge.
Speaker 3:Edmond Pettus Bridge. That's correct. And we were all in there and we were kind of talking about what could happen. You know, don't know what's going to happen. There could be people that say things, that throw things, that do things.
Speaker 3:And we had some elders in the room with us. And one of the young men said, I don't know if I can sit by and watch as this, my elder sister here gets hit or beat. I don't think I could do it. Like, I'm not gonna, this isn't right. And it was really hard to like listen to, but you felt where he was coming from.
Speaker 3:And the sister friend turned and said, you know, thank you for caring about me, but what I really need from you is your nonviolence. That's how you can support me. And I thought, wow, that's so powerful. Like, be here with me, and I'd rather you just show and practice your nonviolence at this very special and important event so that we could remember the cause, and that is to end racism, to end violence, to end institutionalized violence that we see that you have faced your whole life. And so, I think about that when I work with the students, because many of them have learned through sometimes, some of us have faced, you know, we're learning about right and wrong.
Speaker 3:You know, parents use violence to teach their kids, and that's been a way for many generations. And so I'm asking them to do something that might go against what they have been taught since they were younger. And so I always am very careful about it. And I explain to them, I don't know always what is the best answer. I'm not the expert on anything or everything.
Speaker 3:But I do know that if you continue to retaliate, the violence won't end.
Speaker 4:So you raised the question, you know, how much of learning nonviolence is unlearning violence? You know, we've all been taught violent ways through our whole lives.
Speaker 2:I wonder if I would quickly weigh in. First, I wanna acknowledge. Right now, today, we're sitting in June, and this is the National Gun Violence Awareness Month. There are conversations happening all across the country in relationship to gun violence, gun violence school shootings. We've had a rise of racial violence, religious violence, hate crimes in this country.
Speaker 2:This is an important conversation. Whether you accept the approach of nonviolence or your philosophy is something else, at the end of the day, we all have to coexist in this country. And I think it's imperative upon all of us to begin to think critically, what do we believe? Or do we are we just living life willy nilly? Or is there an an approach that I'm taking towards how I respond to the things that occur in my life?
Speaker 2:And listen to my word. I didn't say react. I said respond. And then that word respond is the word responsibility. Right?
Speaker 2:So I wanna be responsible for my actions. I wanna be responsible for the way I show up in the world in relationship to the things that happen to me. When I was younger, I just reacted. And usually my reaction was a trauma response, not a responsible response. I'll yield to someone else.
Speaker 1:Well, when I am 46 years old, which I am right now, I'm still practicing this. I am triggered by traumatic childhood events that I will forever be practicing and that's why you'll hear me framing this as a language of practice because it is a practice not perfect. It's, you know, I grow and I learn and I turn the next corner. I'm also a mother to a seven year old every turn of my life, every event and every literally every season of his life, there are triggering things that happened to me, that happened to me when I was a young person. And I think that this framework, nonviolence, is way to is the way out to that is centered on love and centered on healing and centered on the the one of my core nonviolent beliefs is the means are the end.
Speaker 1:So how we are right now in this moment, if we're behaving violently and harming or if we're choosing a different path, I believe that is the end. I believe that it is the means.
Speaker 4:AJ Musty, there is no way to peace, peace is the way.
Speaker 2:I have a quote I'd like to read from Doctor. Cornell West, who visited us last year. We all three had a chance to be with him. Hopefully, we'll have that again before he passes on to the ancestors. But he has this to say, this country is in deep trouble.
Speaker 2:We've forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than we found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances, we will be stopping stepping out on nothing and just hoping to land on something, but that's the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word. Cornel West.
Speaker 3:For
Speaker 2:me, I think about when I read when I hear this quote, I think about the sacrifices that I'm making in my life today to be a part of this show, to to go to a meeting, to sit down with another member of my community, that time that I could be spending with my family, but my family understands my purpose, and so they allow me to sacrifice what little time that I choose to give to this cause. There's a suffering in that. And that is for the sake of the good. Right? For the sake of the cause.
Speaker 2:Right? And so suffering is not just necessarily a negative thing in the sense that wrong or harm comes to us. There's a sacrifice. There's a there's a suffering in sacrifice. There's a suffering in traveling out, going away from our families, traveling to to to Selma, Alabama in this in this coming month to participate in the training.
Speaker 2:There's a certain love. I'm going to leave my wife to do that. She won't be coming with me this time. And in and in all of that, what am I doing that for? I'm doing it because I believe in something bigger than myself.
Speaker 2:I don't believe that I'm in this world and that if I just make my bed and everything is comfortable in my bed, I'm alright. No. I live in a world where around me, there are people that are worse off than I am. And so I have to remember those people. Is there something that I ask myself this question?
Speaker 2:Is there something that I can do? I may not be able to solve it all and I know absolutely I can't but I do know this much. I cannot sit back back and abide doing nothing when I know that I have some breath in my lungs and some movement in my body to be a part of it. And when I when I look at the historical legacy, the historical record of those people that came before me, when we went to Selma, meeting Doctor Lafayette was the was a beautiful thing. But meeting some of the foot soldiers who names that are not in the history books.
Speaker 2:Knowing that if if Doctor King and and and Doctor Lafayette were out there in the front by themselves, they would have been just two people walking down the street. That moment is remembered because of all the unnamed people that decided to be a part of the cause and say, this matters to me.
Speaker 4:And some of them nine years old, 14 years
Speaker 2:old? Children. Children.
Speaker 1:Alright. We're gonna pause for some community announcements, and we'll be right back.
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Speaker 1:You are tuned in to Nonviolent Austin Radio Hour here on Co op Community Radio ninety one point seven FM, k o o p dot o r g. You can join us from everywhere, although we have the lovely privilege and opportunity to sit with each other here in Austin, Texas in this moment here at the studio. Brother Rob, you were mentioning something that led me to share this framing of Principle 4of Kingian Nonviolence, which we're centering our conversation around today, and that is accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal. And the King Center further articulates this principle with, Nonviolence holds that unearned suffering for a cause is redemptive and has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities. I'm gonna repeat that.
Speaker 1:Nonviolence holds that unearned suffering for a cause is redemptive and has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities. And I think your example of what you just shared about going back to Selma for level two and Your wife, Najeeene who hello Najeeene you're you're in the community. You're in the beloved community in a big way Same thing roomy my kiddos staying back. It takes a lot for me to to be away from my baby. And I believe this articulation that that King Center offers, which is the transformative and educational possibilities of me expanding my understanding, expanding my world, my view, my daily worldview, right, of going through my commute, drop offs, pickups, camp drop offs, picks up, pickups, etcetera.
Speaker 1:Like, if I stay in that rhythm I'm losing perspective to an extent and so I offer that
Speaker 3:I was just thinking about what you said, Brother Rob, when you were reading from Cornel West, that powerful statement, and he talked a lot about courage. And I know that we are discussing number four, but it always brings me back to the first principle, which is nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. And I bring that into there because I think it does take so much courage to be in that suffering and to decide to do something about it and to decide to choose nonviolence. And when I'm working with the students, I say that to them because sometimes they'll say, Oh, Ms. Reyna, like, you know, that's weak.
Speaker 3:Or, you know, they have other words they use, you know, you're being this way, punk, whatever it is. And, and I say, you know, don't mistake my kindness for weakness because I choose to be this way. There was a time when I was faced with thinking about having to protect myself physically, you know, as a young person in New York where I grew up. And I would have to make that decision and I had to try to be tough and you couldn't show that weakness, quote unquote. And it put up a wall for me in what tough looked like.
Speaker 3:And it really hurt. And I didn't do healing around that for a long time. And as I got older, that wall that goes up when you're tough and you're so strong and what we think is not weak, it festers at you and festers at you, that wall keeps everybody else out as well, and it doesn't allow you to grow and expand if that is what we're doing here on this earth, is being able to grow and expand as humans. And so I really want them to know that when they choose to pause, and I think as you also said, Brother Rob, which I love this saying, to respond rather than react. It's such a big thing because our world is so reactive.
Speaker 3:Everything I tell the kids, you know, are you a puppet? If I push the button, I can make you move and jump. Like, if this person says this to you, you're now they're in control in control of you. And so when we look at it from that point of, like, what power really looks like of having control over yourself and over how you choose to do things, it doesn't mean that we allow people to harm us and allow them to create suffering for us, we are strategic with how we face it. And that is the big difference is it's a strategy.
Speaker 3:It's not a giving up or a stepping back. It's a stepping forward. And I think another thing that I took from the training last year was that nonviolence without the
Speaker 2:I see.
Speaker 3:The little hyphen Mhmm. Is active. It's not passive. And sometimes, even though you see I see these fights, I actually see physical fights. I've been in a I've been in some fights myself, but it's really hard to watch when it gets into that level of conflict.
Speaker 3:And it takes a lot more to pause in those moments and step back. And then even when after that happens, to be able to remember the humanness in that other person and to try to sit down with them, that takes courage because it is scary. You don't know if it's gonna keep happening, but the fact that you're willing to face it and to face it with your full power, like the mind, the body, the spirit altogether, there is something that is so beautiful when that can happen. And to me, that is the very opposite of what weakness is. It is a strength that is divine.
Speaker 1:And it's easier to be courageous when you know people are around you with your back, right? Work requires us to work together. We are all individual human beings, but together is when it really locks in.
Speaker 2:Doctor. Amos Wilson says that we are individuated social beings. So we're like the waves. We're like the individual waves on the ocean. Right?
Speaker 2:We're all made of the same substance, but we're we're all a part of the ocean. And so if I remember my interconnectedness with every other human being, it's a little bit easier to pause and and think, how do I wanna show up with this individual should there be a conflict in my life with this person? Couple of things come to my mind. One, I'm thinking about a statement from the the prophet of Islam, Muhammad. He said that the strong man is not the one who can throw one from here to hither.
Speaker 2:The strong man is one who can control his emotions. And recently, I watched a video online. There's a lot of these that cover my feed probably because I select them. But there's one video of a young man. I don't know what city or state he's in, but he's a he's a youth.
Speaker 2:And he is approached by seven or eight other young men. And it looks like the caption says they're about to jump him. And then all of a sudden, you see him reaching in his waistband, and he pulls out a firearm. And now he's chasing them, and he starts firing his his his gun. And and please forgive me, listening audience, if this is triggering to you and you've experienced gun violence, there are resources in our community that are being opened for your support, like the trauma center trauma recovery center on 6633 East Highway 90 on the North Side.
Speaker 2:That said, I watched that video, and, you know, we often think about violence from that moment. The gun is pulled. The fire the the the bullet is is emitted from the gun and someone struck. But I looked at that video and I said, you know what? There's a thousand other moments before that moment came that that are part of what transpired in that moment.
Speaker 2:But we're so focused on the sensational and the devastating that we will concentrate only on that moment and forget that there's there are moments before that that need us to be critical and think we can't it's very difficult to clean this up once the bullet comes out of the gun and it hits the flesh of another human being. But if we start thinking about this from the perspective of all of the events that what led up to this person having a gun? What led up to these other boys deciding to confront this person in an act of aggression? What led this person to think it's alright for me to pull the trigger and shoot this gun if I'm threatened in this way? And so quickly, I wanna just read what we learned in the Selma Institute.
Speaker 2:And I wanna say to everyone that's listening, you're not gonna understand everything that we have to say about nonviolence just by listening to this program. There are resources online, piece of bean. There are resources online. We have our website. We have our, Facebook page that's available to anyone that wants to go and look into it.
Speaker 2:But we went to the training, and we can also support people to learn about what that requires of one to be a part of. And we'll be doing trainings here in the community. When we come back after our level two certification, we're gonna take this to the next level. Schools, playgrounds, parks, wherever there are people, there needs to be an opportunity for them to learn this methodology. And so what we learned at the center was that there are four levels of conflict.
Speaker 2:And you have to be aware that conflict doesn't just start at the moment that the gun is pulled out. We learned that there's normal conflict. I won't read everything, but I'll read one line. It occurs as a result of normal daily life pressures. Then there's pervasive level of conflict.
Speaker 2:An atmosphere is charged with tension and emotion in which conflict can be expected to erupt at any moment. And there's levels of response for each one of these levels of conflict. The the next one, the third one is an outer level of conflict. Excuse me, an overt level of conflict. It it can actually be the cumulative effect of numerous past incidents that would not resolve in a mutually satisfactory way.
Speaker 2:And each one of these levels of conflict require a different react, a different response to address. And if we are not aware that there are different gradations of conflict, we could be applying the wrong solution to address the problem. So I just wanted to put that in the midst of us thinking about this because, you know, if if if there's a normal level of conflict, I live in a home with somebody and my my son doesn't do the dishes, and he doesn't do the dishes. I feel something about that. I have an emotion.
Speaker 2:And that emotion can cause me to say something to my son that I might regret. But I love my son and I want a relationship with my son. So I have to check my emotion so that I don't say that thing that could destroy that relationship. Do I want the dishes to get done? Yes.
Speaker 2:But if I use words that harm our relationship, what's more important? My relationship or getting my way with the dishes being done? I want them to learn responsibility. That's important. But am I going to get that as a result of me yelling at him, cursing at him, saying names to him, putting him down, berating him.
Speaker 2:Those are all things that happened to me when I was growing up. So there's a level and and so my biting my tongue, holding my tongue, restraining myself, there is a level of suffering in that. There's a level of self reflection that requires me to think about myself and how I wanna show up in my relationships. But but if I if and and I'll say this in yield. Sometimes we allow things to get to a point where we've accepted offense after offense after offense.
Speaker 2:That's not nonviolence. Nonviolence is not accepting offense. Nonviolence is me picture me holding out both hands. One hand is turned towards you and one hand is laying up facing the sky. With one hand, I'm offering you peace.
Speaker 2:And with the other hand, I'm holding you back from harming me. That is what I've learned about nonviolence. It's about me stopping. However, I might be able to do so without destroying my humanity or your humanity, stopping you from harming yourself, myself. I'll say this to you.
Speaker 2:Doctor King said, you cannot hold a man down or a woman for that matter without remaining down with them yourself. So our oppressors, they whether they understand this or not, they are denying themselves their full humanity. And that's the tragedy of being an oppressor. You think that being on top is stepping on others. And I say that being on top is serving others.
Speaker 1:This is why I practice nonviolence because it's so deep and it's so rich and it is not I'll just say for me, I didn't know what nonviolence meant at all. I thought I heard it once. I didn't know what that meant. I thought it was I thought it was passive, like you mentioned earlier. I thought conflict was always bad.
Speaker 1:Conflict can be generative. This framework taught me that. Conflict is the opening from which growth can come. So conflict doesn't mean bad. I mean there's so, so much in this, in Doctor.
Speaker 1:King's principles and Doctor. King's practice that it requires studying. It requires a lifetime of studying to even crack it. And you don't have to have know it all to start practicing it. Like the moment you're introduced to any of these concepts is the moment you can start living in that direction towards love, which I think is really powerful.
Speaker 4:Back to Principle one, way of life.
Speaker 1:That's that's a way of life. We're gonna be right back. We have one more station announcement
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Speaker 1:You're listening to Co op Community Radio ninety one point seven FM koop.org and you're tuned in to the Nonviolent Austin Radio Hour. Here I'm your host Stacey Fraser, Jim Crosby, brother Tyrone, Lily, and Rayna Gradford is joining us today. We have spent the first three quarters of this show unpacking, first reciting over and over and over and will continue to recite it, Principle four, within the framework of Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation. Anybody wanna recite it?
Speaker 3:Accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal. For the sake of the cause to achieve the goal.
Speaker 2:For the sake of the cause.
Speaker 4:To achieve the goal.
Speaker 2:For the sake of the cause.
Speaker 3:I just wanted to share one thing when you were talking, Stacy, about conflict. That was one of the biggest things that blew my mind when we went to the training last year. And that was when they said conflict is neutral. You know, because whenever you hear the word conflict, it, I don't know, it makes me think of like arguments and war and just that kind of thing. And I found in my notes, because we took so many notes, and maybe it was Nikesha who said this, but shout out to Nikesha.
Speaker 3:She is one of the trainers and just amazing healing resistance. Healing resistance, conflict is the spirit of the relationship. And that when handled right, conflict is actually a sacred gift. And I thought, What? And then I thought about, or some of the students that I've worked with where even for me, sometimes, I I tell the students, I'm like, My job is to think well about everybody.
Speaker 3:And when the students come and they're mad about what's happened, you know, just want to listen to them. Because many times conflict results from somebody not being heard or, you know, being misunderstood in some way. And so I listen. I say, well, in this moment, I'm not the judge. So I'm not going to be here decide that you were right and you were wrong.
Speaker 3:That's somebody else's job. My job is really just to listen to you and, like, hear what happened and see what we can do to try to create a better space for you to come back to wholeness and not feel so much anxiety or upset or fear. Cause when the conflicts arise at school, it creates anxiety and fear for people to not feel safe because there's the threat of what might happen. And again, is not just physical. It is also verbal.
Speaker 3:It's not just an external thing. It's internal. And so we have to be mindful of that too. Because even before somebody puts their hands on somebody, in many households, the threat of violence is used to intimidate or keep people in line. And so, so I thought of that conflict.
Speaker 3:And anyways, thinking back to these kids when sometimes there'll be a situation where people have gotten into a physical altercation and it's been pretty bad. And, you know, sometimes the powers that be are like, we need to solve this, like do the restorative, get them in there. And the thing about restorative practices, and I go back to what you said, Stacy, about this being a practice. That's why I love restorative practices being called practice because it is, it's a practice is like a ritual or something that you do every day and you keep trying it over and over so that it probably never becomes a perfection. It's always a practice.
Speaker 3:It's something that you just do. But when these students they want to have it solved very quickly and get them in. The way that restorative practices works is it's actually a consensual thing. So if a student says they are not able to be in a circle, there will not be a circle because it is up to them. It's not up to an adult or anyone else.
Speaker 3:I think about like adults who will tell a little child when they've said something mean to another one, just say you're sorry. And yeah, somebody can just say they're sorry, but there's no action behind it. It's, something somebody forced them to do. And so restorative practices invites us to slow down. It's the practice of slowing down into our humanity, to the pace of our humanity and getting to notice what's coming up and some, yeah, let's take a deep breath.
Speaker 1:Yes, thanks for that prompt.
Speaker 3:We do. We have to stop and come back to our regulated selves because that's where we're not gonna react. We can respond from our power. And so, when the students come together and they're able to have that time together after a conflict, sometimes I even think, oh, they'll never do it. And then they surprise you.
Speaker 3:You spend a lot of time just listening to them one on one. And one day, a student, one of my favorite girls, she's amazing. And, you know, she's got a lot of attitude, but it's not just attitude. It's power. She's so strong and she defends herself.
Speaker 3:And sometimes that gets a reputation, you know, depending on the body that you're in and the shade of your skin. You know, teachers and adults look at you a certain way and start having, like, already an idea. And I might come up against that because I'd hear even adults saying, Well, you know, they've always done this or she's always done that. I'm like, Hey, we need to pause. This is a new situation.
Speaker 3:So anyways, towards the end of the school year, this student, I asked her, there was a conflict that had happened and we had talked about it. She goes, so you want me to sit with this other student and dot dot dot dot. And in the past, I it wouldn't have been an option because of the reactivity that she had. But she said, I'll do it. And it just blew my mind.
Speaker 3:And when she sat in that circle and she was so reflective and just she showed so much empathy, she put herself in the other person's shoes and it just it made me realize that this stuff is real. Like when you plant these seeds and you water them, your garden will grow. You know? It's gonna grow into whatever it was meant to be. And and so thinking about the conflict anyways, how powerful it was, this conflict that these two people had now transformed the relationship because not only did they, like, before think that they hated each other, disliked each other so much they didn't want them to exist, to now that they've moved past that.
Speaker 3:So what's on the other side of that? Like how close could we be in a relationship if we could actually be clear and say the things when they're hard and be courageous and face those things and get to the other side of that. That's the transformation.
Speaker 2:That's humanity.
Speaker 1:Some of the closest relationships I've been in are with people that were, I was, we were enemies, right? Or at least I thought. And then it was actually a generative conflict that resulted in a very deep and meaningful relationship.
Speaker 2:I would like to just say that a couple of things that come into mind and I know all the time is swiftly coming to an end. Number one, I think I'm a wordsmith. I love words. And I think too often this society, we've been so poorly educated that we don't really appreciate words. And so we take for granted that we understand what something means.
Speaker 2:And then we give words to things that don't really help us understand what the thing is. If I talk about emotions with young folk, they may say something like, I feel some type of way. Okay, that does that tells me nothing. Give me an emotion word, right? I don't even know sometimes what an emotion is.
Speaker 2:I don't have a word to describe my emotions. So, that's that's what comes to my mind. So, when I think about conflict, I have to think about language like enemies. I didn't even know what a friend was. I had to find, I had to, at some point in my journey, in my twenties, I stopped using the term homeboy because it, I realized it meant nothing.
Speaker 2:It's just a word we contrived in the streets and because it has no real meaning, I'm tying a a value to it that I might be misappropriating. I'm calling this person somebody important to me but what does a homeboy mean, right? So, I had to go get a definition for a friend and the same thing with an enemy. I'm told, we today, we use the word ops. Okay, that's a that's a, what does that mean?
Speaker 2:It's just a catchy word to to to dismiss somebody's humanity but what do you mean by that? You're calling someone an enemy. What it really is an enemy? First of all, you have to know where you're going in order for you to have somebody who opposes you and that leads me to the last thing I'll say is, you know, I think about, I'm sitting here thinking about the words that we often time like the word dharma. Dharma means what?
Speaker 1:Teaching. The teaching of the Buddha. Spiritual teaching.
Speaker 2:Teaching, right? Mhmm. In Islam, they use the term the straight path, right? Jesus, what the, what did his followers, what was his followers called in the early days of their existing? The way.
Speaker 2:They had a direction they were going in and I think at the end of the day, that's simply what we're saying Like, I'm choosing a direction that my life is going in. Early on in life, I defaulted in a direction. I let my circumstances and environments overwhelm me to the point that I was carried away into prison and I thought I was following my truth and I was as wrong as two left shoes. So I just paused there because I have a couple of things that I wanna share with people so they'll know that there's something coming down the line. Is that alright?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do a quick round robin of that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I know that this coming June 6, sister Christina Muhammad has an event at the HT, Houston Tillerson Martial Arts Conference. It's called put the guns down, put your fists up, June 6, 9AM to 6PM, there's gonna be this beautiful sister coming in from Chicago teaching martial arts. I don't know her name, so please forgive me for miss for not being able to articulate that. And then also there's a the fifth annual gun violence prevention summit is happening Friday, 06/12/2026 here in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 2:You're gonna have to go online and look for more details about that. But these things are happening around gun violence. Again, this is National Gun Violence Awareness Month. Wear orange. This is an opportunity to stand in solidarity with all of the victims of school shootings and all of these horrible thing events that have transpired in our communities.
Speaker 2:I wanna say thank you to my cohost who've had a beautiful day being here with you all. Any other announcements?
Speaker 1:Yeah. We got a lot of nonviolent Austin stuff coming up. And y'all, all are welcome. Nonviolence is a a practice that, and a philosophy and a framework that applies to every area of our society and lives. So if your passion is animal rights and well-being, then you have a seat at this table.
Speaker 1:And if your passion is ending mass incarceration, you have a seat at this table. And if you care about improving education for young people, you have a seat at this table. It's actually a cause a neutral table and it is a way of making positive loving change in any of those areas of life. Getting away with poverty. Humanity.
Speaker 1:Mental health care. War, destruction. Hallelujah. Exactly. So for Nonviolent Austin, we have a group, a small group going to get their level two certification in Selma in July.
Speaker 1:And to that end, we are passing the hat. This is not a call to action, but, this is just an FYI. We are having a potluck. And what are the details of that?
Speaker 3:It will be Sunday, July 12. It's called the Freedom Feast, which is a great gathering. My mom, Judy, organized it because it's about bringing community together. There are so many amazing people doing awesome things out there, progressive things to push the world forward into nonviolence. And we need to come together to do that so we can support each other because it is about the beloved community.
Speaker 3:So, the time we don't have the exact time. I believe it's gonna be in the evening. It's typically from four to six. But because of the heat, we're probably gonna wait till it gets a little cooler. There'll be some music, some great people there.
Speaker 3:We all bring a a dish to pass, and we hang out. And this time, it'll be a fundraiser for our trip. So we'll we'll be passing the bucket because, you know, this work is important, and it's investing into our community and a world with nonviolence.
Speaker 4:The Princeton Palace, 2505 Princeton Drive.
Speaker 1:And then we're gonna be coming back, right, from Selma and his brother Rob teed up offering level one Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation Certification here Austin. Those details are coming soon. You can find us in between our monthly shows and what's going on at the Nonviolent Austin Facebook group. It's an open group and also nonviolentaustin.org. So you can reach out via nonviolentaustin.org and get ahold of any of us right now.
Speaker 3:I just wanted to quickly say this training is not just for people who are activists working in this field. This is for parents, people, mothers, daughters, people who are alive today that are breathing that can learn real ways to be in relationship with one another and have a vocabulary and strategy to being together that doesn't lead to escalated relationships of violence or that kind of stuff. And I think we need a part two of this, principle because we gotta get into the second half of it next time.
Speaker 1:You know, we're we're we're here for at least the whole next year, every month y'all. So, thank you Reyna for joining us. This was lovely. I'm I'm gonna say maybe open invite here on this. I'm
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for
Speaker 1:having my cohost would disagree with that.
Speaker 4:No disagreement here.
Speaker 1:Alright. Take us out, brother Jim. And, up next is Democracy Now here on Co op Community Radio. So stay tuned after this.
Speaker 4:Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Went at forty four.
Speaker 4:Stagger Lee left Billy Delions lying dead cold on the floor. That bad man, a cruel Stagger Lee. Yeah. Boom. Boom.
Speaker 4:Boom. Went at forty four, an AR 15 in his hands. He could have killed a whole lot more. That bad man, oh, cruel, stag a li. But maybe he went off to war and killed against his will.
Speaker 4:VA couldn't help him. Congress wouldn't put the bill for that bad man, oh, cruel stag a lead. Oh, he's 14 and video kills have been his steady diet. Now killing for real, the only thing to quench his appetite. He's a bad kid.
Speaker 4:That cruel young stag a li. He hated school, bullies there. His teacher wore a frown. Now he's going back to show them off. Time to bore him down.
Speaker 4:He thinks a gun means power. Young Stagglee. Gotta follow the money, though. See who the real Staglees are these days.
Speaker 7:K o o p h d one h d three Hornsby.
Speaker 8:The following is a nationally syndicated news program broadcast by licensing agreement with Co op Radio. The views expressed are not necessarily the views of Co op Radio or its board of directors, volunteers, staff or underwriters. From New York, this is democracy now.