(As published in the journal Peace & Change) When the important work of third-party nonviolent intervention is undertaken by people with relative privilege, it runs the risk of hindering the empowerment of the local movements they aim to assist by replicating racist or classist dynamics in the struggle itself. By relying on the status attached to the economic, cultural, and military dominance of the Global North, nonviolent intervention organizations can facilitate a relationship of dependency that offers short-term strategic advantages but that in itself is less likely to promote the nonviolent empowerment of local movements. Sensitivity training within intervention organizations may help activists strategize in ways that avoid some of the pitfalls of operating from positions of privilege.

When third-party nonviolent intervention is undertaken by people with relative privilege, it runs the risk of failing to empower the local movements they aim to assist. They may indeed disempower to some extent those they seek to support by injecting racist or classist dynamics, however subtly, into the struggle itself.

In June, I attended the 2005 Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. The conference, entitled “Transforming Fear into Love,” was designed to equip participants with the tools to speak truth to power, and offer ideas on how to build communities for the common good. This is the text of my report to the Swarthmore Presbyterian Church peacemaking committee and the Philadelphia Presbytery peacemaking committee, who together funded my trip.

A paper based on parts of my thesis, to be co-authored with Prof. Lee Smithey of Swarthmore College, has been accepted for presentation at the Peace and Justice Studies Association National Peace & Justice Conference.

This study investigates the emerging field of third-party nonviolent intervention, in which activists who are not involved in a particular conflict enter into that conflict to support and empower local individuals and movements in struggles for social change, justice and democracy. Utilizing theoretical developments in the nature of power, the structure of social movements and the role of advocacy, interventionists have the potential to aid indigenous social movements in achieving their aims without dictating to them the paths the movement should take. This is only possible if interventionists commit to an explicit and unequivocal training in their own rank and privilege, learning ways to employ that rank without reinforcing hegemonic oppression and structural racism.