This was a month of the reactivated struggle against racism.

It started in the United States with an uprising described as a “collective gasp for life” by the Poor People’s Campaign which continues the struggle for justice led by Martin Luther KIng, Jr. Their phrase refers to the last words of George Floyd,” choked and killed by a white police officer “viscerally reminiscent of the lynching photographs that were used to terrorize African-Americans for decades in this nation.”

Excessive force by the police, condemned by fundamental international human rights law and standards, is commonplace in the United States according to a recent study.

As described by Reuters, “tens of thousands of demonstrators amassed in Washington and other U.S. cities on Saturday [June 6] demanding an end to racism and brutality by law enforcement.” ““It feels like I get to be a part of history and a part of the group of people who are trying to change the world for everyone,” said one of the demonstrators.

Thousands took to the streets in Europeen and Asian cities demonstrating in support of the U.S. protests against police brutality, including London, Hamburg, Paris, Berlin, Brisbane, Sydney, Tokyo, Seoul and Bangkok,

The demonstrations in Australia linked the protest to the racist treatment of the aboriginal people in their country, where 432 aboriginals have died in police custody since 1991 without a single conviction. The racism is especially evident in the destruction of Aboriginal heritage sites for development projects. “The NSW Office of the Environment and Heritage shows that between June 2012 and June 2013 there were over 99 applications for the destruction of Aboriginal heritage sites for development purposes – all of which were approved.”

Central to the demonstrations has been the movement of Black Lives Matter, started in 2013 by three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — in response to the acquittal of the murderer of 17 year old Trayvon Martin. Their project is now a member-led global network of more than 40 chapters that organize and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

As described by historian Robiin D. G. Kelley, in addition to Black Lives Matter, there have been many organizing efforts that have built a base for today’s protests. “These include people like Melina Abdullah, Charlene Carruthers of Black Youth Project 100, all the scholar activists who have been working on this question — Barbara Ransby, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore — and then, before that, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Copwatch, Dignity and Power, Critical Resistance, the African American Policy Forum. These were initiatives on the ground who did all this political education, all this organizing work — We Charge Genocide, Dream Defenders, the Rising Majority, Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, and also groups like SURJ, you know, [Showing] Up for Racial Justice, which deals with white racism.

Kelly concludes his interview with “And the real question now is whether or not this can be sustained.”

One of the means to sustain the movement is the mobilization in many U.S. communities and organizations to celebrate Juneteenth, the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln to put an end to slavery. It is now recognized in 47 states and the District of Columbia.

In the view of noted activist Cornel West , it is important to make the connection between U.S. violence abroad and at home. “When you sow the seeds of greed — domestically, inequality; globally, imperial tentacles, 800 military units abroad, violence and AFRICOM in Africa, supporting various regimes, dictatorial ones in Asia and so forth — there is a connection between the seeds that you sow of violence externally and internally.”

For more on the connection of racism to the culture of war, externally and internally, along with its historical roots, see this month’s blog for the culture of peace.

In the month since we wrote in our bulletin that “the medical and economic crisis associated with the coronavirus can be seen as an opportunity as well as a calamity,” many analysts have taken this position and proposed how we can move forward. This includes proposals regarding all aspects of the culture of peace:

Disarmament and Security: Three former Royal Navy Commaders of the United Kingdom sent a letter to parliament saying that the 2 billion pounds a year spent on nuclear submarines cannot be justified and the money should be used for health care. The activist David Swanson in the United States proposes that the American Department of Defense should be converted from military operations and should work for universal financial and medical security. Reacting to the latest American threat of war, that against Venezuela, it is said that “the US should fight COVID, not Venezuela” and that “President Trump has no business deploying US military assets threatening Venezuela.”

Readers will recall that last month we published similar calls from the International Peace Bureau and the Peace Pledge Union to convert military budgets to money for health care, and the call by UN Secretary-General for a global ceasefire.

Solidarity: Around the world, people have responded to the crisis with actions of local solidarity to care for those who are vulnerable to the pandemic. A good example comes to us from the youth of Gabon who are providing water stations for the people living in poor areas. As expressed by the organization Tamara, in Portugal “the crisis represents a great opportunity, in addition to all its challenges: now, we have the opportunity to join forces worldwide to achieve a shared goal, develop social cohesion, set up decentralized structures, a solidarity economy – a genuine reboot”

Democratic participation: The Moroccan professor Abdelmoughit Benmassoud Tredano states that the economic crisis has only just begun. He repeats the call for solidarity: “at the individual, group and national level, individualism is outdated and solidarity is needed instead.” “This certainly implies rethinking the organization of the world on all levels . . . the organization of the world by regional groups must be adopted because no single state can stand alone, unless it is an entire continent.” According to the Council of Europe, Iin many countries, the lead is being taken by cities rather than the state. They provide the example of Raseborg in Finland.

Women’s equality: Nazra Feminist Studies of Egypt proposes that we adopt the feminist values “such as joining forces in times of fear, loss and build, collective responsibility and action towards our survival, international cooperation and collectiveness in order to understand and identify ways to overcome this crisis.”

In the short term sustainable development has been set back by the pandemic, but according to the World Economic Forum, “now is the time to start redirecting the $5.2 trillion  spent on fossil-fuel subsidies every year toward green infrastructure, reforestation, and investments in a more circular, shared, regenerative, low-carbon economy.”

Education for peace: In a recent webinar by he International Institute on Peace Education  and Global Campaign for Peace Education, educators from the USA, Austria, Puerto Rico, South Africa, China, Nigeria, Philippines, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and South Korea shared how they are responding to the pandemic and associated systemic violence and injustices.

“How human rights can help protect us from COVID-19″ is the title of an article from Amnesty International, stressing the need to protect the human rights to health, access to information, employment, housing, water, sanitation and freedom from discrimination.

Free flow of information. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the global crisis has pushed us further into a digital world. There has been a leap in teleworking and online conferencing, but only 20% of the population in the least developed countries use the internet, so the world needs a coordinated multilateral response to deal with the challenge of digitalization.

Of course, the eight aspects of the culture of peace are all inter-related and need to be addressed in coordination. This is seen in the following analyses.

Mazin Qumsiyeh sends us a global call from Palestine Action for the Planet which calls for democratization of the United Nations, reorganization of development priorities, drastic reduction in military spending, defense of democratic participation, global solidarity and restoration of ecological balance (“We humans must recognize ourselves as part of nature and live in harmony with it”).

William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, gives us seven suggestions “to change America” [and, we may add, “to change the world”]. The first is to reduce military spending and the next two are to reduce the 800 US military bases around the world and to abandon the plan for waging two major foreign wars at the same time. He calls for a Works Progress Administration to rebuild America’s infrastructure and reinvigorate our culture (like that of President Roosevelt during the depression). He calls for “an end to fear-mongering and warmongering, and to recognize as true heros not warriors and sports stars, but rather those who are on the frontlines against the coronavirus. And “finally, we must extend our love to encompass nature, our planet.”

Nobel Peace Laureat Mairead Maguire reminds us that “If this virus has done anything, it has reminded us that we are only human and very vulnerable; we need each other to survive and thrive.  If anything, this virus hopefully will cement the opinion that we are All One, brothers and sisters; what affects one affects all. . . . Government policies of sanctions, militarism, nuclear weapons and war must be radically replaced by government policies that put their citizen’s health – both physical and mental – on top of the political agenda. . . . Capitalism does not work, the system is broken, and we are all challenged to build a system of real democracy that works for everyone.

Another Nobel Peace Laureate, Mikhail Gorbachev, calls for a “radical rethinking of international politics . . . Is it not clear by now that wars and the arms race cannot solve today’s global problems? War is a defeat, a failure of politics! . . . We need to demilitarize world affairs, international politics and political thinking and reallocate funds from military purposes to the purposes serving human security. We need to rethink the very concept of security. Above all else, security should mean providing food, water, which is already in short supply, a clean environment and, as top priority, caring for people’s health.”

Finally, here at CPNN, we are providing additional tools and proposals in our blog to chart the way forward, to take advantage of the crisis to reform the world’s governance structure and make the transition from the culture of war to a culture of peace.

Viewed from the perspective of the culture of peace, the medical and economic crisis associated with the coronavirus can be seen as an opportunity as well as a calamity.

As discussed in the blog Has the crash arrived?, it may provide us with the opportunity to make the transition from the culture of war to a culture of peace? The scenario was foreseen In the novella I have seen the promised land written in 2008 which foresaw a global economic crash in the year 2020, opening the possibility for this radical transformation.

Recent articles in CPNN point out how we can overcome the crisis together by working in the various domains of the culture of peace.

DISARMAMENT. The International Peace Bureau has issued a statement demanding world leaders to put disarmament and peace back in the center of policy making. “Without it, we are handicapping our fight against future health pandemics, to eradicate poverty, hunger, to provide education and healthcare for all, as well as the realization of the SDG 2030 goals.”

Similarly the organization Peace Pledge Union says “In this crisis, everyone needs support from others, some especially so. This costs money. The government can still divert funds away from multi-million pound weapons and NATO training exercises. Let’s fund things that will really help to make us safe. You can’t nuke a virus.”

UN General Antonio Guterres has called for ceasefires in the wars that are raging around the world, saying “The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war. . . . It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives.”

SOLIDARITY. In this time of suffering and fear, we can learn from the wisdom of indigenous peoples as described in the article coming from the Mixe people of Mexico, a people who have known the ravages of epidemics ever since they were brought to the Americas from Europe. “The communal care that saved the life of [my grandmother Luisa] made it possible that I can today share the dying words of my great-grandfather during a previous epidemic: the individual good is the collective good.

Cuba has shown us a good example of solidarity in the face of the global pandemic. “The same humanitarian and internationalist spirit that led Cuba to allow the [infected cruise ship] Braemar to dock has also led the tiny country to send doctors to assist Haiti after that nation’s devastating 2010 earthquake, fight Ebola in West Africa in 2014, and, most recently, help Italy’s overwhelmed health system amid the coronavirus pandemic.”

EQUALITY OF WOMEN. The women of Mexico are giving us a good example of solidarity which can serve as a model for future mobilizations. Echoing the cry, ‘A day without us’, millions of Mexicans participated March 9 in a National Women’s strike sparked by the wave of outrage over femicides and expanded to a long list of demands of the feminist agenda. The strike was organized to follow by one day the annual mobilization for International Women’s Day which was celebrated around the world.

DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION. As emphasized in the statement of the International Peace Bureau, “We know from the history of our own organization and many of our member organizations that in such crises, democracy must be defended above all else, and it must be defended against increasingly authoritarian states.”. During the last great depression, in the 1930’s, democracy was replaced by dictatorships in Germany, Italy and Spain, leading to civil wars and the Second World War. How can this be avoided? Robert J. Burrows, specialist in nonviolent action, provides us with a nonviolent strategy including a list of specific strategic goals “to defend humanity against a political/military coup conducted by the global elite.”

The director of Pace e Bene, a peace organization familiar to CPNN readers because of their extensive mobilizations around the International Day of Peace, tells us that the COVID-19 is a messenger calling us resolutely to join a “planetary movement that is emerging.” The greatest social movement in human history is coming.  Each of us is called to join it.  It is a global movement, a movement of movements.  It is learning from the history of movements that has been accelerating over the past century.  It is rooted in the blood and tears of millions who have spent their lives throughout history clamoring for justice, working for peace, laboring for a world that works for everyone. This movement will not appear by magic.  It requires hard work and “acting our way into thinking.”  It will be deeply nonviolent—saying No to injustice and Yes to the humanity of all, including the humanity of our opponents.

Yes, it depends on our actions now to determine whether the crisis becomes an opportunity or a disaster. CPNN will continue to publish news of these actions as they develop. Readers are encouraged to please send us reports.