Since we’re getting serious about pacifism, we should also get serious about the words we use to talk about it.
Language has been nearly fatal to pacifism: the word itself is often considered foul and offensive. This is because many people mistakenly believe pacifism to be an extreme and … Read the rest
A couple of weeks ago I announced my plan to launch a new nonprofit organization and website, Pacifism21 and Pacifism21.org, in order to promote pacifism as a viable political philosophy for the 21st century. A beta version of this website will go live in the next few days, and … Read the rest
How can pacifists possibly defeat ISIL, the cruel Islamic State government that has taken violence to a horrifying new level in Iraq and Syria? This is the question we’ve been asked most urgently since we launched the fundraising drive for Pacifism21 three weeks ago.
We’re glad people are asking this … Read the rest
Our new Indiegogo project for Pacifism21.org has given me the opportunity to hear from many people who, it turns out, have widely diverse ideas about what the word “pacifism” means.
Some people have explained this to me in apologetic terms: they like me a lot, but they can’t support my … Read the rest
Henry David Thoreau and Walden came early into my life, thanks to my mother, a boldly independent career woman who must have felt oppressed by her era’s strictures of feminine married domesticity. She had a favorite quote from Walden that she would paraphrase liberally whenever the topic of housework came … Read the rest
… Read the restEarlier this year, I answered a question in an interview by saying, “The United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun-safety laws — even in the face of repeated mass killings.” And later that day, there was a
My friends, we’re ready to show you the secret project we’ve been cooking up for nearly a year. Literary Kicks is happy to announce that we are founding a new non-profit organization, website and social media presence called Pacifism21.
To find out what the name means, and to watch … Read the rest
I wonder how many years ago I first made the announcement: “Something new is coming from the Litkicks laboratory”. I’ve been cooking up a secret project for a while, and I’ve really lost track of all the times I thought I was close to launching this thing.
Maybe the first … Read the rest
It was very easy for me to meet Herschel Silverman, then a Beat/jazz poet of some renown, around twenty-five years ago when I began frequenting the downtown New York City poetry scene that swirled between St. Marks Church, ABC No Rio and the Nuyorican.
These were the years when Allen … Read the rest
