Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) has deep, long-standing roots in active nonviolent resistance to U.S. war-making. Begun in the summer of 2005, Voices draws from the experiences of those who challenged the brutal economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and U.N. against the Iraqi people between 1990 and 2003.

Members of Voices led over 70 delegations to Iraq to challenge the economic sanctions and were present in Baghdad in resistance the 2003 U.S. military invasion. Since 2009, Voices has led four delegations to Afghanistan and two to Pakistan to listen and learn from nonviolent grassroots movements and to raise awareness about the negative impacts of U.S. militarism in the region.

Voices participants rely on and have learned from experiences of those who have engaged in active nonviolent resistance to military might in the U.S. including draft resistance; resistance to the wars in Latin America; and resistance to nuclear weapons, such as the Plowshares resistance efforts. Voices draws upon the lessons gleaned from active participation in peace teams in Haiti, Yugoslavia, Palestine and Iraq.

We recognize that for years now the U.S. has stood on the precipice of all out devastation-of itself and of the world. We look to history as a guide-and try to learn lessons from those who preceded us in far more dire circumstances, who somehow found the ability to form communities of resistance to oppression in Nazi Germany, in apartheid South Africa, in the Jim Crow South of the U.S. and in the super segregated cities of the North.

Voices is committed to strategic campaigns and experiments in truth engaging in active nonviolent resistance. Such resistance must take into account that war-making is both military and economic.