UfPJ and allied groups, which seemed early on to have strong connections to the global justice movement, seems to have been transformed — in the hopes of attracting more "mainstream" participants — into not an anti-war organization, but an anti-Iraq War organization; not a pro-peace movement, but a pro-better-war-policy movement. Few connections are made to "the soul of America," as King would describe it, and much attention is focused on those things that are at best cogs in the system — individual policies on the war, planning or lack thereof for the war, and particular Republicans in Congress and the White House. Yet these problems go considerably beyond Bush and Republicans.

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.