Table Talk

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Session I. 22 Million Iraqis
“With Weapons of the Will” (p. 20)

Nonviolence is not about putting flowers in gun barrels, say Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall. “It is not about making a point, it's about taking power.” As the Bush administration maps a military route to ending the regime of Saddam Hussein, Middle East peacemakers remind the U.S. of a higher road to democracy—one that incorporates the power of 22 million Iraqis.

Questions to Consider
1. What do you know about the history of the United States in Iraq? What do you think drives the Bush administration's plan to depose Saddam Hussein?

2. Have you participated in nonviolent action? What was at stake? Was your goal making a point or taking power? Did you accomplish what you set out to do?

3. What do you think are the limits of nonviolent resistance? Are those limits defined by questions of effectiveness, or more by ethical considerations?

4. The nonviolent victories described by Ackerman and DuVall required the kind of defiance and discipline usually found only in the military. What circumstances prepared the combatants in those struggles? Where does the U.S. peace movement stand in comparison? The Iraqi freedom movement?

Resources
A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall (St. Martins Press, 2000). A collection of stories of nonviolent movements; the companion book to the PBS documentary of the same name.

The Education for Peace in Iraq Center. EPIC works to change U.S. foreign policy and raise public awareness in support of human rights in Iraq. (www.epic-usa.org)

Session II. Broken Promises
“Forty Acres and a Mortgage” (p. 24)

“We have great-grandparents who were slaves,” says Franklin Raines, reminding those who believe discrimination no longer exists that 12 percent of the U.S. population still lives under oppression inherited from their parents. With ancestors who were denied access to land and loans for decades after emancipation from slavery, this generation of African Americans faces a staggering $1 trillion capital gap.

Questions to Consider
1. How have you witnessed economic discrimination against African Americans? Are you aware of a “race gap” in wealth?

2. Raines focuses on the economic discrimination that grew out of the institution of slavery. In what other ways is the United States still affected by the legacy of slave economics?

3. Do you know about the economic status of your great-grandparents? How have you and your family benefited or suffered from their opportunities, choices, or limitations?

4. Do you own your home? If so, what securities can you take for granted? If not, what struggles are you guaranteed?

5. In what ways are you or your community confronting economic racism?

Resources
America's Original Sin, by the editors of Sojourners. This 178 page study guide on racism for individual or group study is organized into nine chapters. (www.sojo.net or 1-800-714-7474)

Session III. Love is Zero
“Striving to Be ‘Number Zero'” (p. 41)

Humility is a virtue not much discussed in our culture of corporate ladders and cover models; and when it is, it's usually presented as the enemy of “self-esteem” and twisted into the opposite of freedom. But in the upside-down kingdom, writes Rose Marie Berger, the first are last, and humility is what “liberates and produces self-love and love of others.”

Questions to Consider
1. What messages have you seen or heard that advised you to look out for number one instead of striving to be “number zero”?