Photo: Star Black Brenda Hillman was born in Tucson, Arizona in 1951. After receiving her B.A. at Pomona College, she attended the University of Iowa, where she received her M.F.A. in 1976. She serves on the faculty of Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California, where she teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs; she is also a member of the permanent faculties of Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and of Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her seven collections of poetry--White Dress (1985), Fortress (1989), Death Tractates (1992), Bright Existence (1993), Loose Sugar (1997) and Cascadia (2001), Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005)--are from Wesleyan University Press; she has also written three chapbooks, Coffee, 3 A.M. (Penumbra Press, 1982 ), Autumn Sojourn (Em Press, 1995), and The Firecage (a+bend press, 2000). Hillman has edited an edition of Emily Dickinson’s poetry for Shambhala Publications, and, with Patricia Dienstfrey, has co-edited The Grand Permisson: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood (2003). Among the awards Hillman has received are Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area; she is married and has a daughter. Buy her books here and here. See an interview here. Find links to some work here and here. Forms of Activism for Overwhelmed People (Presented at the Gandhian Conference on Non-violence Memphis, Tennessee October 18, 2005) At the First Conference on Gandhian Non-Violence in 2004, hundreds of activists of all stripes--including priests, lawyers, peace workers, writers, domestic workers, retired business people, educators and many others--came together with a strong degree of commitment to exchange ideas and methodologies. The number of ideas presented here in Memphis gave us all renewed energy to continue our work. At that conference, I gave a talk on "Poetry and the Spirit of Non-violence" to remind people not only that the imagination and the life of metaphor are important in non-violent resistance, but also that poets write of what is most mysterious in the human heart--including the troubling notion that imagination is fundamentally lawless. This year I wanted to report on some forms of non-violent activism I undertook in as a result of last year's conference, in hopes of opening up some possibilities. It is impressive that many activists are so active. They are not ''passive''-ists. People do the work of non-violence in their communities not just by making inroads into the power structures but by finding new paths. After visiting last year with sensible people who had done a considerable amounts of jail time for resistance--including regular people incarcerated during demonstrations for obstruction, members of the Memphis community who had done civil disobedience in the Civil Rights Movement, and people with a lifetime commitment to activism--I came to understand that grassroots efforts involve both a controlled burn of existing foliage and slow new growth. Yet, activists in many fields find it hard to give themselves credit; one young woman, doing social services advocacy in her community in South Carolina, mentioned feeling helpless about the measures she had taken and about how much there is still to do. This year in particular, it has been hard to remain hopeful. In November 2004, a month after the last year's conference, many of us experienced a sense of hopelessness in the face of George Bush's re-election. In my office at school, students were crying and saying they wanted to move to Canada. Some who had never done anything in the way of activism and who had worked to get the country on a different path, even conservative Christian kids, were horrified by the war and by the policies of revenge, hate, and imperialism of the present administration. A sense of dazed impotence is common. It's hard to sort out the difference between neurotic guilt and an appropriate sense of responsibility. It's hard not to feel guilty if our efforts cannot effect immediate change. But this is no time for perfectionism. I confess I've been a little dismayed by some of the responses in the Bay Area. In my region--one of the most historically vibrant places for political resistance--many people have been doing little but complain and consume more of everything. Some say only a violent revolution to defeat global capitalism will do, and if that revolution isn't imminent, there's little point in doing anything. Some have engaged only in fatigued finger-pointing. Others take blogging and forwarding anti-war emails to be their primary forms of activism. Email is fine, as long as it doesn’t become like a morphine drip, keeping us strangely calm and less engaged outside our screens. After all, most of our email reaches those with whom we already agree. Recalling every day the good Germans in 1933, we must find multiple ways of working outside the immediate interests of own social groups and families. Last year's conference inspired me to clear a few hours of my week to do a little more despite the discouraging situation and a serious time deficit. I want to recommend being uncomfortable. All but #1 and #6 below have been activities that have made me uncomfortable--at times, extremely uncomfortable. They have taken only a few hours a week. I know that the sick, the elderly and those with small children will be able to undertake very little; in the years I was raising children (and working fulltime and trying to write) I found I had less than an hour a week, but even small children can do things to help. Here are some things to pass along: (1) The first is the same as the last, and I'll go into it more in a minute: attend to an imaginative spiritual practice that gives strength for everything else. A commitment to poetry is the basis of my activism but for others, it will be different for others. (2) Actively seek out at least one conversation per week with someone who might not have voted the way you did, especially those outside your community of friends. Often there are family members with whom we can re-open conversations if we take a compassionate approach. Many intellectuals and artists I know are busily dismissing Christian communities rather than trying to discuss Jesus’ teachings with them. Where and how does Christianity allow for killing in a Just War? Recent conversations with an elderly Catholic friend of mine have also left me still wondering whether I can be so sure of my own positions. This woman, working in the Resistance in WWII, shot a Nazi soldier when he approached the woman beside her. And as a fierce defender of humans, she still has dreams of the horror of killing a man. She says about my commitment to non-violence: "You never know what you would do under stress." This year, I decided to visit some conservative Christian churches to try to determine how these communities are thinking about the War and about Jesus’ non-violence. Because many anti-war and environmental activists feel strong antipathy toward conservative Christian communities, dialogue has become impossible. The groups have demonized each other since the election. Yet I felt repeatedly welcomed into these communities when I visited, and could understand why people so value their churches. A connection between Home, Democracy and God has been formed. The idea of a Just War is of great importance to many people, especially those with family in the military. It is important to understand the basis of this. There are profound similarities between people who support our President, our Flag, and the War and those who oppose the War and are angry about it. Both conservative Christians and non-violent resisters have a concept of personal submission for a greater good, especially the notion that giving up on one's personal will might be useful. For the Christian, this involves submitting to God's will, and for the non-violent activist like Gandhi or King, it involves actively seeking opportunities to put oneself in harm's way in order not to fight back and to have the opponent register his harmful actions. Jesus himself, probably a member of an Essene sect of Judaisim, radically re-thought the notions of brotherhood; when Jesus asks his followers not to fight back with violence, it may be because the Essenes did not even permit weapons in their community. Having been raised as an independent thinker in a Baptist household, I feel impatient with the vocabularies of obedience, and balk when frightened people talk about following God's will. My own poetry, rooted in hermetic and mystically inward ideas of the antinomian "rebel" traditions, is based on the free conduct of a soul instructed from within to follow her path of conscience and best nature. The break-away outsider branches of Protestantism of my forebears--including Ranters, Quakers, Muggletonians and Baptists--were founded in part on the premise that doing God's will might go against the rules of the State. I honestly don't know what happened to the Baptists in the last few decades. (3) A third idea: take as part of your practice the idea of giving up on a trivial fight. Last year, a talk by Maureen Holland, a lawyer in Memphis, allowed me to take a different tack on an incendiary disagreement with neighbors over a specific issue of the rights to property. I have made the decision not to pursue the disagreement. I do not want to spend many years of my life in an angry lawsuit. It is better to live at peace, knowing that nothing is to be gained by a victory if my neighbors will not understand their unfairness in the matter. Unless it means your family cannot eat or live, your property is not a sufficient reason for pursuing an argument. In deciding not to pursue the matter of what is best for my property, and feel at peace with the decision. I've saved years of energy for writing and for further social work. This is something I recommend to everyone. Give up on a fight about a specific issue of ownership or property, even if you think you can win, and even if you feel economically entitled to do otherwise, so that you can save your energy for other matters that really count for saving health and lives. (4)Conversely: On a matter of universal importance, take a principled stand that makes you uncomfortable. It is very easy to choose an issue that makes you feel uncomfortable. Only you know what your limits are. I decided to do a limited war tax resistance on my Federal Income Tax in April. I had attended some meetings of the National War Tax Resisters in the Bay Area, and after finding the range of possibilities, I decided have my accountant prepare my Federal Taxes and to submit what I owed, but to withhold one-sixth the taxes owed, based on the fact that one-sixth of every tax dollar is now going to the Pentagon. I attached a letter to the I.R.S. saying exactly why I was doing this. I have received a lot of advice not to pursue this particular path, the main thing being its impracticality. I have to date received three pieces of correspondence from the I.R.S., one of which resulted in an illuminating conversation with an investigating team in Utah. Many are quite afraid of going outside the law when it comes to taxation, even if their taxes have been committed to a wrongful war. I have been amazed at the number of people who have asked, "Are you working with anyone on this?" and mostly I have said, "Yes, Henry David Thoreau." If anyone is interested, she should visit the National War Tax Resisters' website. I have not at this point finished a whole cycle of this process, and the I.R.S. is about to contact my employer to begin collection procedures. I do not know how I will proceed in the future; I am in favor of paying more, not fewer, taxes for schools, roads and social services and this symbolic action takes a lot of energy. No matter what, I am not cowed by folks at the I.R.S., who, despite their scolding, have always been polite to me. They have pictures of their families on their desks, some of whom are in the military. I feel encouraged that this action opened the door for contacting my congressional representatives, and opened the door in myself for further activism, which leads to my point #5: (5) Pursue very specifically, in a slow and steady manner, some form of grassroots activism or organizing that you can do locally, but that might have national consequences. It will be slow at first, and it may be easier than you think. Choose a grassroots organization that you can participate in actively and give one or two hours a week--or more, when you have more time. This year, I became involved with CodePink. I have admired the organization for its guerrilla theater, and for the fearless forms of resistance the members have undertaken, so I signed up for their email list. I saw that the Bay Area Chapter was going to be doing a campaign to bring home the California National Guard. They were going to Sacramento. I thought: "This will take one day; I'll dress up in pink and go along." When I had to make a phone call to my State Assemblyperson, I was frightened. First of all, I didn't know exactly who my Assemblyperson was. Then, calling up to try to get an appointment was frightening. What if she says No and hangs up? But I managed to make several appointments. A group of us, dressed in Pink and carrying signs, went to Sacramento in mid-August (a good time for me as I am a teacher)to lobby to bring home the National Guard; we were able to visit the offices of 19 State Assembly Members on the morning of August 15. We spoke to many staff members at the State Capitol. We were also able to speak to TV and radio reporters about the importance of bringing home our Guard. Our district assemblywoman, Loni Hancock, has agreed to co-author a resolution, AJR 36, to bring home the National Guard. I am gratified by how helpful our State Assembly Staff people are. We called, pleaded and harassed many other state Assemblypersons to convince them to co-author the Resolution. Once my fear had passed, I got very adept at calling, and made over forty follow-up phone calls in a few hours. The State Assembly Resolution to bring home the National Guard--AJR 36--still needs more Democratic co-authors but it has quite a few at the time of this writing. If you are in California, you can do a lot on this issue: find out who your state assembly person is; ask if he or she has decided to co-author the Resolution. (You can begin by asking to speak to a staff person about the matter.) Writing and calling is much better than emailing on any of this. Visits are best. You don't have to be a powerful or articulate speaker. Local city council members and state assemblypersons usually have appointment times available for local lobbying, and all you have to do is find out whom to make the appointment with, and bring your talking points (you can access talking points on CodePink websites. If you are interested, visit the websites to get ideas of your first step: info@bayareacodepink.org and www.codepinkalert.org. Outside California: start your own campaign in your state.) In addition to the State Assembly Resolution, CodePink has gotten 4 city councils to pass resolutions--Berkeley, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and Oakland--to bring home the Guard. In Oakland, we showed up before the City Council in bright pink and they handed us a copy of the Resolution, passed by consensus. There are more progressive city council members everywhere, and many more cities could now follow the lead of these cities and ask to bring home the National Guards that have been deployed. The actions of our Working Group have been inspiring in light of how urgent it is to end the use of National Guard troops. Over 50 percent of our California National Guard has been deployed to Iraq, and are serving in this backdoor draft. After realizing how abused these soldiers are, having to buy their own equipment, killing people when they signed up to put out forest fires, my zeal for this work has increased. The CodePink women are tireless and fierce. I urge you to get involved in some way to end this war by going to your representatives. (6) The sixth point is the same as the first: attend to your spiritual practice to keep healthy and sane. The Gandhi Institute is the very embodiment of mixing activism with spiritual practice. Your strength derives from staying engaged with the power in yourself during stressful times. My parents taught me to take care of the body and mind. Lyric experimental poetry has always been my main activism: connecting the mind with that of the environment, with the world of non-human world of animals and plants, with other arts and cultures, with the qualities of the invisible world. The paradoxes inherent in poetry often have to do with what Keats calls "negative capability," with being open when sense-impressions and mental life don't mesh. In the life of language, in the complexity of words and in the nature of communication, there is a mystery of otherness the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas writes about in Ethics and Infinity; this allows us to be many at once. Surely knowing ourselves through our language is one of the keys to loving the world, for all the terrors and dismaying realities of our official governments. Gandhi said we must never underestimate the value of empty protest. When we invaded Iraq, many took to the streets; it seemed the individual in a crowd is rather like a wheel. I wrote a twenty-four line poem that uses Gandhi's phrase as the title. Thank you for your attention today, have courage, and do what you can. Here's the poem: THE VALUE OF EMPTY PROTEST Longing declined; whatever had been charged with it, what curls, what octave flowers angered the voice ramp which for a while called from their gray-rim signs Come back to the stamped lawn as people cheered, wearing an abyss in the whorled capitol, threads dangling from their placards, from misery of capital, known as a crowd in the crowd--and they would lose again, but as a a wheel loses, taste, past, skies reptilian and vast, nothing to sell but being sold, mute hands clapping at the why of whys-- Brenda Hillman, Saint Mary's College of California (website for Gandhi Institute: www.gandhiinstitute.org)