Perspectives on Peace: Transforming Tomorrow is the podcast hosted by The M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence that seeks to inform & inspire a better future.
We are based in Rochester, New York and seek to cover topics that are vital to our community and serve as the launching point to transform tomorrow. We attempt to do this in a way that feels authentic & inclusive.
Join us as we investigate perspectives on peace so that we can work on transforming tomorrow!
About The M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence: The M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence (MKGI) is a nonprofit that equips people to use nonviolence to create a sustainable and just world for all.
MKGI collaborates with local organizations, academic institutions, students, and committed peacemakers in these areas: Nonviolence Education, Restorative Practices, Environmental Sustainability, & Racial Justice.
We prioritize programming for people between the ages of 12 and 24. We offer training in skills such as Nonviolent Communication, meditation, cultural humility, de-escalation and experiential interconnectedness.
By serving as a physical manifestation of Gandhian principles and Martin Luther King’s Beloved Community, the Gandhi Institute seeks to advance the cause of peacemaking regionally and beyond from within a neighborhood challenged by poverty and violence.
Imagine unraveling the intricate web of gun violence in our society. Promise us your ear, and we'll guide you through the maze of perspectives and experiences related to guns and violence, the prevalent issues casting a long shadow over our communities. You’ll find yourself immersed in a profound discussion on our societal identity and the urgent need for its realignment. Our dialogue highlights the critical necessity for effective communication while seeking solutions to these pressing matters.
Then, we'll take you on a journey to the heart of fear, a potent force propelling the cycle of violence in our society. As you join our candid conversation on honesty, safety, and the interplay of guns, you'll begin to comprehend the complexity of the world we live in. We not only underscore the importance of confronting our fears but also advocate for collective efforts to end the cycle of violence, making way for a more peaceful and inclusive society. So, lend us your time, and we promise you a thought-provoking experience that will inspire you to ponder and act.
Welcome to the MK Ghandi Institute for Non-Violence Podcast Perspectives on Peace Transforming Tomorrow.
Speaker 1:
This episode of Perspectives on Peace begins an examination of the state of our community and the role that violence, especially violence committed using guns, plays in our culture. Public conversations about what gives rise to gun violence and what to do about it often devolve into well-worn talking points that reflect polar positions, and it can feel like nuance and balance get lost in the noise generated by both sides of the issue. So in this episode, our goal is to set the table for an upcoming Ghandi Institute-hosted Rochester Community Dialogue on this very issue of violence and guns by sharing some of the podcast Cruz Thoughts on and Experiences with Guns and Violence, and then by leaving you with some questions to ponder leading up to the community roundtable. We envision this roundtable as an opportunity for Rochesterians to express ourselves, hear each other and reason with one another. We believe it's incumbent on us to take the steps that we can locally, here in Rochester, to solve our community problems, and purposefully effectively communicating with one another is at the heart of that approach.
Speaker 2:
Hi, I'm Michael and I don't like guns. The purpose of guns kind of plays into the philosophy of might makes right, achieving power through harming others. I don't think guns like the object or item in itself are bad, but what they represent in the cycle of things that's detrimental to our society. Tools and technology bring speed and convenience to masses and now we as a society are feeling the impact of our technological advances or weaponry. Life can be ended or changed in a split second. I understand people who feel they need guns. They need it to feel, to protect what's theirs, to feel safe because of how things are. But it doesn't feel right for me. It reminds me of the short story by Miriam Kava Justice.
Speaker 2:
Justice is about a small place where weapons aren't necessary. They don't even know the meaning of danger or fear. Conflicts are resolved through trust and love. The Swan Place holds humanity, life and community close to the heart of how they are and act. So things look a little bit different over there. There's a lot of constant struggle or fighting against, but are connecting and reconnected with, even if just a little. I'd like to live like that. I understand that my decision and ability to live nonviolently is related to my privilege. I'm not in a spot where I need guns, but I refuse to willingly participate in the cycle of the struggle of harm and the struggles for power that leads to the destruction of relationships and community Laws has changed me so much that I can no longer accept things for how they are. Am I tied or like guns?
Speaker 1:
Here's Katie Thomas.
Speaker 3:
In my own life, in what seems like the lives of many other people in America and internationally, nonviolence really feels like it's becoming more of a common and frequent phenomenon that covers our news feeds and is inching further into our daily lives. It's really becoming more clear that the issue of gun violence is more than an issue. It's an epidemic. This is a trend that we see all over the United States, in which gun violence is becoming a more prominent threat to us and our daily lives. My fear of guns has spanned all the way back to being a young kid and playing with my cousins and sister at my grandparents' house in East St Louis, missouri. We were running around, playing tag and laughing with each other until we found our granddad's hunting rifle under the bed.
Speaker 3:
Even at that young age, I could grapple with the weight that came along with this object and the horrible violence that it's capable of. As much as I hate guns, they've never been too far from me. I can recall my father keeping a gun in our home for protection in nights that I think about that weird metal object that can so easily end someone's life or change their life with one simple motion in that same place that I laid my head at night. I remember the fear and the discomfort that came along with knowing that there was a gun in my house, but in the same breath, there was a similar anxiety and a fear of a scenario of my family being defenseless in the case of someone else using a gun against us.
Speaker 3:
The complexity of these competing fears has led me to intensely just dislike anything that has to do with guns and leads to my leaving conversations on the state of guns and violence in our world feeling honestly overwhelmed and drained. My stance hasn't changed much since then. I've been constantly and increasingly haunted by the idea that guns exist in this world and yet more anxious about what protection and safety really looks like for all of us in a world in which bearing arms, both legally and illegally, and the use of guns in general, is becoming more of a norm. With my perfect world, we wouldn't need guns and everyone would get along and settle conflicts and issues without the use of weapons like these. But if only it was that simple right. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which violence and guns are really becoming woven into the fabric of our day to day lives, and I don't really know how to grapple with that.
Speaker 1:
Here's Jordan Campbell.
Speaker 4:
There's a quote out there that says guns don't kill people, they make it easier. I don't think that there's a better quote to describe the current situation around gun violence in America. I think that when you start having these conversations about gun violence, it begins to get complicated because there's so many different routes you can take. I think that that's because America in itself is built off violence. It's built from violence and using guns. It's something that our forefathers fought for and it's something that we're seeing still to this day, whether it be school shootings, whether it be black and brown people brutally being killed in the street by police officers. We see it with gang violence on the regular. It's a part of the American identity. I think when we start talking about solutions, we need to start facing those facts. It's who we are and we have to change what the identity of America is in order to move on, in order to improve and get better.
Speaker 4:
I personally am not the biggest fan of guns. I don't like guns. I've never liked guns. It's been really weird, considering.
Speaker 4:
I've spent a lot of my time, most of my life, around people who were all for guns, people who glorified the idea of having guns. I remember having a close friend and this was before middle school, maybe elementary school who would bring a gun to school. The idea that he didn't feel safe and the idea that we were living two different lives. That always amazed me because, like I said before, I'm not the biggest fan of guns, but my understanding for some people is they feel unsafe on the day-to-day basis. They can't walk towards certain streets without feeling like they need something like that. I feel like I get really conflicted when I hear things like that because, like I said, I'm on the side of.
Speaker 4:
I don't like guns, I don't think guns should be used, but also I think I get really affected by the fact that maybe one day I will need one, maybe one day I will need to protect the people that I hold dear and that holds a lot of weight for me, and I think that that sometime sways my look a bit. I think that gun violence and the idea that we all need guns is a sickness. I think that we're all affected by it in some way and I think once we stop playing this game of follow the leader where it's hey, because he has a gun, I feel like I need a gun, and so on and so forth. With the next guy, we will be working backwards. We won't be working towards progress, we'll be working towards destruction.
Speaker 1:
This is Aaron Thompson, and what follows are some of my personal views on violence, on firearms and on the state of our community today. H Rapp Brown once famously said violence is a part of America's culture. It is as American as cherry pie. I believe that sentiment to be true when uttered by H Rapp Brown originally and I think that that continues to be the case today. We live in a very violent culture. Thinking about our violence problems locally here in Rochester, and how they disproportionately are affecting black people, hispanics, people of color, I think something is critically different between now and in the 60s when, when Rapp Brown made that statement. I think that in many ways, black people have lost their sense of solidarity that H Rapp Brown felt, and it helped to drive him, and we have now turned the guns on ourselves. I think that black folks have suffered disproportionately from violence and from violence perpetrated by guns, because violence is embedded in the systems that affect us. It's embedded in our housing and our economic systems. I feel like we are awash in guns.
Speaker 1:
America was founded in revolution and founded by the gun by the use of the gun, and it has been clung to as a representation of what American culture is, and American culture oftentimes is not valued black people, and that's been reflected in all of our big systems, and it's trickled down and it's crystallized in the form of physical violence that, as I mentioned now black folks are perpetrating upon each other. You know what makes the news is often the mass killings, and you know it's newsworthy tragedy. Of course, what goes often unreported are the many killings in the inner cities and in communities of color, poorer communities. That happens all the time and there's not much interest in that until you know, until white folks' interests are impacted somehow. I think that any conversation about guns and violence has to look at what's going on in the culture generally. How are we trending? What has fundamentally changed as far as quality of life and how we relate to one another? I think focusing on the object that is being employed in acts of violence misses the point. It's a point and it's relevant, but it misses the bottom line, though, of what is driving this urge to harm, to kill, to take from. That's a harder conversation to have. It's easier to focus on political talking points. It is easier to imagine that the evil that people do is driven by the object that they're using. You know, the thing about it is there's a unique history here in the US between black folks and the government. Simply put, I don't have a lot of trust in the government. I don't trust government. I don't trust the police, the different organs of the state, and I feel that I'm on solid ground in my reasoning for that. You know, police have no duty to protect. That's legally established. So they have no duty to protect the people and they often, in fact, are sources of terror for black and brown people.
Speaker 1:
I'm an advocate for nonviolence. I take my role and position at the MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence very seriously. I am also of the mind that it is ultimately incumbent on me to see to my own self-preservation and that of my family, because we do not have systems in place, relational systems or legal systems in place that will do so for me, and I take that responsibility extremely seriously. That's kind of my bottom line responsibility is to do what I can to see to it that those that I love live lives that are free, dignified and just. I see, quite frankly, hopelessness as the driving factor, the primary driving factor, for our gun violence, and I think that's the common denominator, whether you look at mass shootings, whether you look at the daily violence that's related to hustling, whether you see it as if you look at economic driven gun violence, robberies and burglaries. But I also see other other factors.
Speaker 1:
You know, there is a diminishment in the appreciation for life, I think for our own lives and for the lives of others, like life has somehow started to feel cheap, and I think that in this, in this age, the rise of the internet, things have really started to get confused. People have started to confuse reality for virtual reality and for narratives that are created and, in some cases, intentionally proliferate. People's values and sense of what is real and important are up in the air and upside down, and I think that it's reflected on all of our cultural fronts, in the music we listen to, in the media we consume online, in the replacement of person to person interactions, with interactions mediated through a screen, through an app, that are modified by those who control the hardware and software that we're using, and there are, there are impacts, you know where affected. I think that you cannot unring a bell and when we talk about, you know, moving to a place of peace and disarmament. That's the ultimate goal, that's what I want, that's what the beloved community represents. Is this shared sense of belonging, inclusion, accountability, a shared sense of humanity, of seeing ourselves in one another. But you cannot unring a bell, and I think there's a necessary order of operations that we have to engage in when we talk about moving from our current state of armed to the teeth and out of control to the ultimate end game of living in peace and harmony with one another.
Speaker 1:
There are, there are certain steps we're going to have to take, and I think the conversations that are calling for disarming people, eliminating semi automatic rifles as an example, I don't think that's, I don't think that has legs, I don't think it's going to work. I think that so long as the major powers that be used the tools of war as a means of working out conflicts, as a means of securing resources, and as long as we allow ourselves to give into the baser aspects of human nature which lead to subjugation, which lead to exploitation, then there's no real reason for the people to be willing to disarm themselves and render themselves even more powerless before forces who would continue to perpetrate injustice like we see that exists in the world today. I think it's just that simple. You know, when politicians talk about disarmament, they're not talking about disarming themselves. They're talking about disarming commoners, because you best believe that their security details are going to be armed with the most efficient killing machines available to them.
Speaker 1:
And I think that's a significant point that there is a certain looking at the divides in this topic of gun violence. Where the divides lie is an interesting study. My comments are running super long now so maybe I'll get into this more during the community round table, but we've got some hard work to do and it's gonna require real honesty in naming what is really keeping us in this state of fear of one another. We fear one another, we don't feel safe and secure and so we turn to guns as kind of an attempt, in an attempt to feel more secure, and it leads to this vicious cycle keeping us destabilized and othering each other or to come. These are my initial thoughts.
Speaker 3:
Hey everyone, it's Katie here and thank you for listening to Perspectives on Peace.
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