Because it works.

“Violence sometimes ‘works’ but never works (in making things or relationships better, for example). Nonviolence sometimes ‘works’ and always works.”

— MIchael Nagler

“Nonviolence means avoiding injury to anything on earth in thought, word or deed,” Gandhi once wrote. We believe with Gandhi and Dr. King, that the words “love” and “peace” can be used by the culture of violence to justify the world’s wars, injustices and violence, so with Gandhi and Dr. King, we use the word “nonviolence” to talk about a new way of life, a new spiritual path, a new methodology for social, political change, and a new way to organize through grassroots movements as the best hope for humanity.

“We can change the world if we do it nonviolently,” Cesar Chavez said. “If we can just show people how they can organize nonviolently, we can’t fail. Nonviolence has never failed when it’s tried.”

Violence is a comprehensive reality that cruelly tears at the fabric of reality. It is any physical, emotional, verbal, institutional, structural or systemic behavior, attitude, policy or condition that dominates, dehumanizes, diminishes, disrespects, or destroys ourselves, our fellow beings, or our world.

Nonviolence, on the other hand, is a paradigm of the fullness of life even deeper than this comprehensive violence. It is a force for transformation, justice, and the well-being of all that is neither violent nor passive. It is a powerful method for challenging and overcoming violence without using violence; for creatively transforming and resolving conflict; and for fostering just and peaceful alternatives. People around the world are using active nonviolence in grassroots nonviolent movements to build more democratic societies, to champion human rights, to challenge racism and sexism, to struggle for economic justice, and to safeguard the planet.  Recent quantitative research has demonstrated that nonviolent strategies are twice as effective as violent ones.

Organized and disciplined nonviolence can disarm and change the world – and our lives, our relationships and our communities. Techniques for everyday nonviolence are spreading – from nonviolent communication to restorative justice; from peaceful parenting to trauma healing; and from anti-racism training to nonviolent community-building.

Pace e Bene tries to carry on the legacy of Gandhi and Dr. King to teach, promote and organize nonviolence at every level of life and society, to take nonviolence into the mainstream, to invite every human being on earth to start living a nonviolent life, to join the global grassroots movement of nonviolent change, and to work for a new culture and world of nonviolence.

“We have to make truth and nonviolence not matters for mere individual practice but for practice by groups and communities and nations. That at any rate is my dream. I shall live and die in trying to realize it.”

— Mohandas Gandhi

“Nonviolence is a powerful, active way of working for human liberation that firmly and clearly resists and refuses to cooperate with evil and injustice, while attempting to show goodwill toward all and taking suffering on itself rather than inflicting suffering or violence on others.”

— Richard K. Taylor

“Nonviolence is the power of love in action resisting and disarming violence, healing relationships, and fostering reconciliation, justice, and peace, all achieved without relying on the trauma of violent means.”

— Ken Butigan

“With one hand we say to one who is angry, or to an oppressor, or to an unjust system, ‘Stop what you are doing. I refuse to honor the role you are choosing to play, I refuse to obey you, I refuse to cooperate with your demands, I refuse to build the walls and the bombs. I refuse to pay for the guns. With this hand I will even interfere with the wrong you are doing. I want to disrupt the easy pattern of your life.’

But then the advocate of nonviolence raises the other hand. It is raised outstretched — maybe with love and sympathy, maybe not — but always outstretched . . . With this hand we say, ‘I won’t let go of you or cast you out of the human race. I have faith that you can make a better choice than you are making now, and I’ll be here when you are ready. Like it or not, we are part of one another.’”

— Barbar Deming