NONVIOLENCE OR NONEXISTENCE Witness of a Body in the Body of the World

The summary of this book is present in the title, Nonviolence or Nonexistence. I grew up knowing closely the violence of my father. He was violent with me and also with my stepmother (after my mother’s early death). As a boy, I thought this was the life for men. I was living a lie. But I soon learned about nonviolence from Martin Luther King and, with much more detail, from Mohandas Gandhi of India. Later, I read the works of Gene Sharp of Harvard, who emphasized strongly that we must abandon violence. Early in my adult years, I became a devotee of nonviolence, especially after I learned that nuclear weapons were manufactured at the Rocky Flats Plant near Boulder, Colorado, where I lived. Achieving closure of Rocky Flats was a major accomplishment for devotees of nonviolence. In words I used as a visiting professor at the University of Denver, 'I am a body in the body of the world.' Drawing on a lifetime’s experience of nonviolent thought and activism, this book emphasizes that to survive, we must end our devotion to violence.