Publications > Nonviolent Sanctions
vol. 6, no. 1
Summer 1994

Nonviolent Sanctions
vol. 6, no. 1
Summer 1994

Download PDF file Contents PANDA project Structural approach to human rights Einstein Fellows awards New AEI mission statement Eskew wins award The Epic of San Fernando Poultry protest PANDA Project to Conduct Worldwide Survey of Nonviolent Direct Action by Doug Bond, William Vogele, and Kimberley A. Pyles World politics have changed dramatically in the last ten years. However, the end of the Cold War has not led to more peaceful or stable interactions between peoples or states. The divisiveness of communal, religious, and ethnic struggles, in particular, threatens to overrun our collective capacity to respond to and, more importantly, to prevent the escalation of acute conflicts into violence and destruction. The Protocol for the Assessment of Nonviolent Direct Action (PANDA) is a data development tool which will aid our ability to track the emergence and to assess the dynamics of collective action and protest politics around the world. The ultimate aim is to improve our understanding of the potential and limits of nonviolent direct action or nonviolent struggle as a functional substitute for the violent prosecution of conflict. PANDA is designed to facilitate the identification, analysis, and interpretation of nonviolent struggle in two ways. First, the protocol facilitates the systematic study of nonviolent struggle by drawing upon recent advancements in "interaction event" data development. It is designed to offer empirical evidence against which to test competing propositions about the use of nonviolent tactics in conflicts, the actors who employ them, and the contexts in which struggle occurs. Second, PANDA has the potential for creating an ongoing, real-time monitoring system to identify and track the emergence of acute conflicts before they erupt into violence. This effort to develop worldwide interaction events data for identifying and analyzing acute conflict complements and extends the well established tradition of international event data development. What is new and distinctive about the present approach is its inclusive theoretical framework and the application of a fully-automated coding system. The framework encompasses violent and nonviolent, cooperative and conflictual, institutional and extra-institutional conflict. In addition, both state and non-state actors are explicitly integrated into the framework. PANDA focuses on nonviolent direct action, but is designed to apply the technologies of computerized textual analysis to the identification and assessment of all interaction events, including those that entail violence. We suggest that nonviolent struggle is a global phenomenon that is little understood in part because conventional approaches to the development of acute conflict data either ignore nonviolent direct action events or collapse them into categories of more or less cooperative behavior. Nonviolent struggle, however, is neither cooperative nor insignificant as is evidenced by the largely nonviolent revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in 1989. Project History This project follows from a five-and-a-half year effort by the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions to develop a theoretical framework, procedures, and instruments that could identify nonviolent struggle in world interaction events reports. We began this process by identifying and hand coding more than two thousand media reported events across some seventy variables. This exercise convinced us that human-assisted coding for high volume identification of events is not only prohibitively expensive, it is theoretically and methodologically misguided as well. Pilot tests conducted between 1988 and 1990 yielded an abundance of nonviolent events, suggesting that mainstream news reports of international conflict events include a significant number of references to the pursuit of conflict by nonviolent methods of struggle. Initially, however, we were frustrated by the lack of an empirical tool that could identify these nonviolent struggle events. Conventional event data development tools, for example, have relatively few categories for interaction events that are neither violent nor reciprocal. In other words, they lack categories for nonviolent direct action. By constructing a set of event categories that include methods of nonviolent struggle, one can "pick up" a significant amount of the nonviolent struggle. The result, we suggest, is profiles of struggle that differ considerably from the traditional top-down view of conflict anchored around overwhelming military force as the ultimate sanction. Thus, by using the vocabulary of "people power" one can supplement the traditional conflict profiles with a view from below. In order to exploit the vast number of readily available worldwide media reports, a fully- automated coding system, known as KEDS (the Kansas Event Data System—a computer program created by Philip Schrodt at the University of Kansas), is applied to PANDA. By using KEDS with the PANDA protocol it is possible to generate an encompassing, cross-national interaction events data set, which may be readily tuned to specific groups of activists, various types of political action, diverse issues generating collective action, and disparate contexts in which struggles develop. The fully-automated coding provided by KEDS is superior to human coding of event reports because it produces results that are completely repeatable and consistent. Although the machine may make mistakes that a person would not, the machine never "interprets" the reported event based on background knowledge unless the interpretation is explicitly incorporated in the program. Such human background knowledge always undermines comparative assessment of global interaction event reports. Even well-informed observers know more about some regions than others, and their personal judgments are not necessarily replicable by others. In contrast, KEDS’ decision rules are transparent and readily modified to correct errors or to respond to unique research questions. Finally, the machine is fast and tireless. Our experience to date suggests that the accuracy and reliability of fully-automated coding will match that achieved by experienced human coders. This is especially true for the most important parameters of a reported event, the "who did what to (or with) whom, how, when, where, and why." Project Significance PANDA makes a twofold contribution to our theoretical understanding of conflict. First, our approach distinguishes between direct and routine action in a way that reveals whether the conflict is waged within or independent of the political system. Direct action struggles, both violent and nonviolent, directly challenge the system and are usefully characterized as "fights" amenable to strategic analysis. This direct action analytical framework illuminates the indeterminate nature of the process of nonviolent struggle, setting it apart from the institutionalized conflict resolution procedures of "normal" politics, and offering an indicator of system capacity to manage conflict. Second, our research design draws upon an analytical framework and insights into the development and application of strategic decisions to identify the ways through which various tactics of political struggle operate to effect or resist change. By drawing upon the empirical profiles of interaction events over time, PANDA allows us to identify the evolution, dynamics, and diffusion of various tactics and strategic choices across political contexts, among activist groups, and in the face of regime co-optation and repression. This approach, based upon the flexible and fully-automated KEDS program, represents a significant improvement in our ability to measure conflict. PANDA is explicitly designed to identify low-intensity and nonviolent conflict, and the subtle challenges of "everyday resistance" offered by disenfranchised groups, such as the poor. Also, PANDA facilitates the empirical testing of hypotheses concerning the importance of both strategic choice and structural determinates underlying the development and manifestations of nonviolent direct action and protest politics. Political struggles within the bounds of "normal" politics, such as electoral campaigns, are distinguished from challenges beyond the bounds of routine politics. PANDA illuminates both the emergence of political challenges from below, and shifting levels of government responsiveness to challenge. By utilizing extremely high volume and ratio (as opposed to frequency) measurements in the events analyses, PANDA minimizes many of the problems of inadequate or inconsistent coverage inherent in global event reports. Finally, the KEDS-PANDA approach is designed explicitly to provide an affordable, accessible, and adaptable data development tool. KEDS’ "sparse parsing" approach makes it possible to process enormous volumes of information with an ordinary desktop computer (we use a MAC IIsi). Virtually any machine readable text can be used as input. The only requirement is that the information be consistent in format and comparable. Global, regional, and even local event report sources may be used. The KEDS program and PANDA protocol both are readily adaptable to languages other than English— some work with KEDS has already been done in German. No longer do analysts have to compromise their research questions because a prohibitively expensive, monolithic data set does not address their specific concerns. KEDS-PANDA offers an adaptable tool explicitly designed for maximum flexibility so that one’s particular research interests drive the inquiry rather than available data. Project Objectives At present PANDA has three research components, the outcomes of which will be presented formally during upcoming months in the U.S. and in Europe. The first component involves several tasks. First, we plan to complete the development of the automated protocol itself by mid-summer. We have generated hand coded data for a 6% sample of global events reports for 1990 which is serving as our set of base codes. We have compared several trial runs of machine coding against these base codes, and have achieved convergence of about 70%. We expect to achieve approximately 85% convergence very shortly. The next task will be to expand the machine coding to include a decade of reports, from 1985 to 1994. After extensive analyses and multiple iterations of machine coding (made possible by the automation), we will finalize the protocol before developing worldwide base codes by country over the decade. Developing these data on global patterns of conflict evolution, dynamics, and diffusion between 1985 and 1994 should reveal very interesting insights into the "surprising" nonviolent revolutions of 1988–1990. In addition, these data will be used to test competing propositions on the nature of rebellion, revolution, and other mass collective action. Thus, this investigation of nonviolent action as a method for struggle in acute conflicts has the potential to make a significant contribution to ongoing research in a variety of disciplines on a range of issues from democratization to ethnic conflict. The second component deals with the implementation of automatic coding of event reports in real-time monitoring of interactions worldwide. As noted above, we assume that the presence of significant nonviolent action in acute conflicts indicates both the strained capacity of a political system’s conflict resolution capabilities and the potential for serious violent confrontation. Thus, nonviolent conflict can serve as an early warning system. Ethnic conflicts, for example, often have been ongoing for months before they erupt into the international press headlines. The earlier indications of this typically sub-lethal, less than "spectacular," and protracted conflict are still reported in the international press, but generally without prominence. PANDA’s focus on nonviolent direct action illuminates this pre-eruption phase of acute struggle and thereby supports the very early identification of these potentially violent conflicts. This very early warning is critical to early diagnosis and diplomatic intervention before the conflicts become destructive. Contingent upon securing additional funding, we plan to be operating such a real-time system by January 1995. The third component is our ongoing effort to refine the KEDS-PANDA approach by conducting studies on alternative sources and explanatory variables, on different levels of analysis, and on the reliability and validity of machine coding. We are drawing upon the global network of scholars and ethnic/indigenous peoples’ organizations through the Cultural Survival Center, the research division of Cultural Survival. We are arranging for those with the appropriate expertise to review and help validate our data as they are developed. While we make no claims that our data represent anything but trends and patterns, we employ such data screening and consultation both as a means of quality control and as a means of developing working relationships for subsequent in-depth evaluation of specific conflicts. Project Participants PANDA is a collaborative project of the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions, Center for International Affairs, Harvard University and the Kansas Event Data System (KEDS) Project of the Department of Political Science, University of Kansas at Lawrence. PANDA project members include Brad Bennett, Doug Bond, Joe Bond, Doug Imig, Cynthia Irvin, Roger Karapin, Christopher Kruegler, Myung-Soo Lee, Roger Powers, Karen Rothkin, Andrea Strimling, and William B. Vogele. KEDS project members who have worked with PANDA include Shannon Davis, Deborah Gerner, and Philip Schrodt. Philip Schrodt is the creator of the KEDS computer program. His research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation and by the University of Kansas General Research Allocation Fund. The Albert Einstein Institution has supported the PANDA project since its inception. The development of the PANDA protocol would not have been possible without funds for both projects as well as the exceptionally collaborative working relationship between the PANDA and KEDS teams. We are indebted also to Gavan Duffy, Les Kurtz, Lily Ling, and Peggy Scranton for their helpful suggestions during an early evaluation meeting. Please direct all inquiries to Doug Bond, Director, Program on Nonviolent Sanctions, Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, (617) 495-5580, dbond@cfia.mhsgw.harvard.edu n Doug Bond is director of the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions; William Vogele is special assistant to the president at the Albert Einstein Institution; and Kimberley A. Pyles is assistant editor of Nonviolent Sanctions. A Structural Approach to Human Rights by Gene Sharp, Senior Scholar-in-Residence Vital work to defend and advance human rights is being conducted by a variety of meritorious organizations and individuals around the world. These bodies have used various means to expose human rights abuses and to pressure repressive regimes to uphold human rights covenants. Other groups, individuals, and institutions have concentrated on creating new agreed standards with respect to human rights through the formulation and adoption of international conventions. These means have contributed to a wider recognition of human rights. Many individuals have been spared repression, torture, and death. Even repressive regimes sometimes feel they must pay lip service to human rights, which may have some long-term effect. These gains have been achieved in part because of the work of these groups, and in part because some of the regimes that have been major violators of human rights no longer exist. Most human rights organizations have understandably concentrated on ending specific government practices such as torture, securing the release of unjustly held prisoners, or gaining the right to emigrate for particular individuals. Broader issues usually have not been raised in the interests of achieving one of these limited, but important goals. With the forces for human rights often relatively weak it has often been rightly judged wise to concentrate on limited achievable objectives. There was no need to irritate the established regimes by pressing for larger objectives which could only imperil achieving the specific, immediate goal. Such limited victories could relieve the immediate suffering, and, hopefully, contribute cumulatively to a broader recognition of human rights in the future. Significant gains have been won in this way, and such efforts should continue by human rights organizations dedicated to this approach. Yet, it cannot be denied that major human rights violations continue widely in various parts of the world. Even regimes that give way a little here and there on specific issues or for particular persons often broadly continue their oppressive practices and violate human rights in other ways. In some countries, established governments that have had reasonable records on human rights practices have themselves increasingly become violators of civil and personal liberties. In other cases, those governments have been replaced by coups d’état or other means with regimes indifferent or actively hostile to human rights. These have been countervailing tendencies to those in which some authoritarian regimes have become less authoritarian and have practiced relatively greater recognition of human rights. In still other cases, such as China, Cuba, and Burma, the violations of human rights continue without major departures in policy, only limited cosmetic changes being made. In some countries, such as Zaire and Nigeria, the struggle for human rights seems tied to the struggle for a change of regime, and the decision is still hanging in the balance. It is still possible for new dictatorial regimes to come into existence, especially by military or political coups d’état or executive usurpations. Unfortunately, it also remains true that some approximately democratic countries practice specific human rights violations, such as the United States with its widespread executions of convicted criminals and radiation experiments on human beings, France’s sinking of the "Rainbow Warrior," Israel’s shooting of youths for throwing stones or wearing certain clothing, and the United Kingdom’s shooting policy in Northern Ireland. It is impossible to ignore, however, that a strong correlation seems to exist between extreme human rights violations and the existence of a dictatorship. In countries which have a generally democratic political structure, violations of human rights tend to be more limited and less severe. In countries which have a dictatorial political structure, violations of human rights are more widespread and more severe. Broadly, the more authoritarian and dictatorial a given regime is, the more serious the human rights violations are, and the less responsive the regime is to traditional human rights pressures and activities. This is not to say that democracies have no serious problems, but only that application of human rights is far more possible there than under dictatorships. The implications of this simple overview seem to be clear. If would-be dictatorships can be blocked from coming into power, the human rights violations that they would have perpetrated are unlikely to occur, at least not to the same extent and degree. If existing dictatorships can be disintegrated by means which are not conducive to the establishment of similar regimes, then the chances for the protection of human rights under a new democratic political structure are significantly increased. People who work in the area of human rights, therefore, have two important political tasks before them: (1) Develop and apply programs to prevent the establishment of new dictatorships, whether through coups d’état or other ways (not excluding electoral means); and (2) Develop, assist, and apply programs designed to disintegrate existing dictatorships. We know from certain historical cases that both of these tasks are achievable. Actions to install new authoritarian regimes or dictatorships have, in fact, been blocked by improvised massive noncooperation and defiance: as against the Kapp Putsch in Germany in 1920, in France against the Algiers generals coup in 1961, and in Gorbachev’s Soviet Union against the 1991 hard-line coup attempt. Established extreme dictatorships have also fallen as a result of the revolt of their own populations applying "people power" and because of the weaknesses inherent in dictatorships of all types. Three of these were the Communist regimes of Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. Of course, not all mass uprisings to bring down a dictatorship have succeeded, as for example in Burma in 1988. In other situations, as in Argentina, authoritarian regimes responsible for gross violations of human rights have also been replaced. In each of these cases, the reductions in human rights violations have come as a result of changes in the political structure, not as a result of traditional human rights activities. Cases of improvised defense against new coups d’état and of improvised struggles against long-established dictatorships operated under unfavorable circumstances. There had been no significant preparations and no strategic planning for the struggles. With advance analysis, strategic planning, preparations, and training, the effectiveness of these types of dictatorship prevention and dictatorship disintegration probably could be dramatically increased. The establishment of realistic and well-grounded policies of mass noncooperation and defiance to prevent and disintegrate dictatorships can have wide-ranging implications. If new dictatorships are blocked from being established, they will not be able to violate human rights. If established dictatorships can be disintegrated, the chances of building democratic structures with greatly enhanced recognition of human rights are vastly increased. A note of caution is in order here. The implementation of these prescriptions is unlikely to be cost free. Indeed, those struggling to defend and achieve more democratic governments, which would have greater respect for human rights, may trigger serious repression against themselves. This should be anticipated and planned for. While established human rights organizations will and should continue their important work to prevent specific types of violations and to assist imperiled individuals, other human rights advocates may want to chart courses of action based upon this structural approach to human rights. The principle is simple: End human rights violations by denying human rights violators the power to perpetrate their atrocities. Cultivate the capacity of oppressed peoples to liberate themselves and to defend their growing liberties by means of their own empowerment. 1994-95 Einstein Fellowships Awarded The AEI Board of Directors, at its March meeting, awarded Einstein Institution Fellowships to three scholars conducting promising research on nonviolent forms of struggle. The three were chosen as fellows from among forty-six applicants, based on their research proposals and recommendations. They are: Holly Ackerman, a doctoral student at the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Miami. Ms. Ackerman’s dissertation research analyzes protest migration from Cuba as a method of strategic nonviolent action. Her study will assess the extent to which Cuban emigration is protest-based, the motivations and calculations that exist in protest migration, and its effects on the Cuban government. Patrick G. Coy, a current Einstein fellow whose fellowship has been renewed for the academic year beginning in September. He is a doctoral student in the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts at Syracuse University. Mr. Coy’s dissertation research is on Peace Brigades International (PBI) and its practice of accompanying nonviolent activists to protect them from political violence. His work addresses questions about the dynamics of third-party intervention and includes direct observation of PBI’s methods of training and action. Anthony Pereira, a member of the political science department in the graduate faculty at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Mr. Pereira’s research project is on nonviolent action and state repression in Brazil from 1964 to 1979. Specifically, his project will examine how legal repression affected the level of nonviolent action in comparison with violence, and the persistence of political opposition in Brazil. Through its Fellows Program, the Einstein Institution supports research, writing, and systematic reflection on nonviolent action. Its primary goal is the advancement of knowledge about the strategic uses of nonviolent action in relation to problems of political violence. Prospective applicants should contact Ronald M. McCarthy, the Program director. He can be reached at the Albert Einstein Institution, 50 Church Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138. The deadline for 1995 applications is December 31, 1994. New AEI Mission Statement Adopted In an attempt to communicate more simply the mission of the Albert Einstein Institution, the board of directors has adopted a new, streamlined mission statement for the organization. The Institution’s essential purpose has not changed, but the new wording is hopefully clearer and more accessible. It is also intended to convey the Institution's abiding concern for democratic outcomes, in addition to nonviolent processes. The new mission statement follows: The mission of the Albert Einstein Institution is to advance the worldwide study and strategic use of nonviolent action in conflict. The Institution is committed to: - defending democratic freedoms and institutions; - opposing oppression, dictatorship, and genocide; and - reducing reliance on violence as an instrument of policy. This mission is pursued in three ways, by: - encouraging research and policy studies on the methods of nonviolent action and their past use in diverse conflicts; - sharing the results of this research with he public through publications, conferences, and the media; and - consulting with groups in conflict about the strategic potential of nonviolent action. Former Einstein Fellow Wins Award Glenn Eskew, an assistant professor of history at Georgia State University and an Einstein Institution Fellow from 1991 to 1993, received this spring a 1994 Robert C. Anderson Memorial Award. The award, which is sponsored by the University of Georgia Research Foundation was given in recognition of his outstanding research accomplishments as reflected in his doctoral dissertation and subsequent academic work. His dissertation focused on the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama. Eskew writes: "Had it not been for the assistance I received from the Einstein Institution, I doubt I would have been so recognized. Thank you." The Epic of San Fernando by Amado L. Picardal, CSsR [Editor’s Note: In January, Gene Sharp was in Rome at the invitation of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Union of Superiors General of the Catholic Church. On "Public Education Day" during an all-day mass at which he spoke, he heard the following story told to the congregation. It is a moving account of how Christian peasants in the Philippines used nonviolent struggle to stop logging in their communities.] We are poor peasants, living in small Christian communities in a remote valley of San Fernando, Bukidnon. We have lived amidst violence— the violence of poverty, of a guerrilla war, of the destruction of our environment, and the violence of the military. But we walked the way of peace— the way of the cross, and we have experienced its liberating power. This is our story. There was a time when the mountains were green and the river was blue. The heavy rains did not flood our farms. Nor the long hot summer parched the land. That was before the logging companies came. They were owned by the politicians and protected by soldiers. We watched helplessly as the trucks passed by carrying away the logs to be shipped to foreign lands. We signed petitions asking the government to stop the loggers from turning our land into a desert and our river into a highway. But we never got any response. Then the Redemptorist Mission Team came. Priests, brothers, sisters and lay missionaries. They lived among us and worked with us to build Christian communities. In our nipa huts late at night, and in our bamboo chapels on Sundays we came together to listen to the Word and to listen to each others’ words. We realized that to be true Christians it was not enough to worship and to read the Bible. We have to care for others and care for the earth. We have to defend the forest— which is our home, the home of our neighbors— the native Dumagats and Subanons, the home of the birds, the animals and the wild plants. The guerrillas— who called themselves the people’s army wanted to help us with their guns. But we preferred to struggle in our own way— the way of the cross. We were prepared to give up our life but we would never take the life of another. The day came when we gathered on the road where the logging trucks pass. There were several hundreds of us— men, women, children and old people. We barricaded the road with our bodies and the logging trucks could no longer pass. It was like a fiesta. We sang and danced, we shared our food with one another and with the loggers who were stranded. It was a real communion. The priests, the brothers, sisters and lay missionaries were with us. Even the bishop came one night to pray with us. They listened to us when we shared with them our stories and our reflections on the Word of God and on the unfolding event. It was our turn to proclaim and witness the Gospel. Those who did not join us taunted us. They said that we will never succeed. We were poor, powerless and few and we were up against rich businessmen and powerful politicians who were protected by the military and who could bribe the corrupt judges. On the thirteenth day in the barricade while celebrating the Eucharist with our parish priest a truckload of soldiers came carrying an order from the judge to disperse us. They beat us without mercy. They did not spare the old people and the pregnant women. They even beat the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We did not resist them. We turned the other cheek. While they kept on beating us we sang the "Our Father" with tears in our eyes. When they brought our parish priest to the camp we also went with him. We told the soldiers that if they will imprison him they will also have to imprison all of us. They finally told all of us to go home with our priest. We went back to the side of the road that we used to barricade and watched helplessly as the logging trucks passed by. We prayed and cried. We were defeated. It was our Good Friday. The sky darkened and the heavens wept with us unceasingly. It rained day and night for a couple of weeks. And the river rose and the overflowing waters dashed against the bridge where all the logging trucks pass. And the bridge collapsed. And the road leading up to the logging camp was blocked by a landslide. The logging operations were stopped. Nature continued the barricade for us. When we gathered the following night to pray on the side of the road where the logging trucks used to pass, we all praised and thanked God who has not abandoned us. A few weeks later we were ordered to appear in court before the corrupt judge. We filled the courtroom— men, women, children, old people. We were not afraid even if we were poor and powerless because we believed that God’s Spirit was with us. We were charged with violating the law and causing the logging companies huge loss of profits. They wanted twelve million pesos for damages. The judge scolded us as if we were naughty children and set the date for our trial. We knew that the judge was on the side of the loggers. Our main worry was where to get that huge amount of money to pay the loggers if we lose the case. Meanwhile, the newspapers, the TV and radio began to report our story. Suddenly, the conscience of many all over the country was awakened. They realized that our problem was also their problem. Many began to show their support. And there were even others in different parts of the country who followed our example. Our voice was beginning to be heard and finally, the President of the Philippines ordered a stop to the logging operations in San Fernando. When we heard the good news our tears of sorrow became tears of joy. Our suffering had not been in vain. We thanked God by celebrating the Eucharist and by having an instant fiesta. It was our Easter Sunday. When we went back to the courtroom the judge reluctantly dropped all charges against us. A few months later a pastoral letter of the Bishops’ Conference was read in all the Catholic churches and chapels all over the archipelago. It spoke about the ecological crisis in our country. And it mentioned the struggle of the people of San Fernando as a sign of hope and as an example for all. We could not believe that we, in our insignificance and powerlessness, can make a difference. Our story and our struggle should have ended then. But it did not. One year later we discovered that while the logging had stopped in San Fernando it continued in the neighboring mountains. We realized that even if it happened in other places we would be affected because we were all connected. And so, we found ourselves once again in the barricade far away from home— in the provincial capital. This time we were more numerous because the people from neighboring areas joined us. We wanted the logging to be stopped in the entire province of Bukidnon. At first, we pitched our tents outside the office of the Department of Natural Resources. They just ignored us. And on the fifth day, we transferred to the checkpoint in the national highway where all the logging trucks usually stop for inspection. We took over the place and set up a human barricade. And all the logging trucks could no longer get through. The soldiers came and they could not disperse us. The truck drivers tried to drive through the barricade. Some of us placed some spikes on the road and when one truck tried to run us down the tires were punctured and the truck with logs almost turned over. We were filled with remorse realizing that the driver could have been hurt or killed. Once again the newspapers, radio and TV reported our story. Finally, the President’s cabinet member who was the head of the Department of Natural Resources heeded our request for a dialogue. He came all the way from the national capital riding on a helicopter to meet with us. After listening to us, he granted most of our demands. He told us the logging in the neighboring mountains and towns would be stopped. He asked us to help in the greening of the brown mountains and to help guard the forest. We went home rejoicing and thanking God once again for not abandoning us. The Eucharist became a victory celebration. Now the logging companies have disappeared from San Fernando and from the neighboring mountains of Bukidnon. The trees that we have planted are growing. When our children grow up, they will see green mountains, and they can swim and fish in the blue river without fear. The heavy rains will not flood their farms. Nor the long hot summer parch the land. They will remember us for what we did for them. And they will remember the wonderful things God has done for us. New Hampshire Police Pinch Poultry Impersonator [Editor's Note: We are always keeping our eyes open for new and unusual methods of nonviolent action. This one caught our attention recently: impersonating a chicken! The following story is reprinted with permission from the Associated Press.] PORTSMOUTH, N.H., Mar. 24 (AP) — Police and security personnel surrounded a hotel yesterday— and arrested a chicken impersonator. Emily Fujawa, 22, who was dressed as a chicken to protest the slaughter of poultry for food, was arrested on a criminal trespass charge after walking on hotel grounds chanting, "Stop the torture, stop the pain, killing chickens is insane." About 120 members of the New England Poultry Association were at the hotel for a meeting. Portsmouth Police Officer Christopher Roth slapped the cuffs on the feathered Fujawa of Rockville, Md. "I’ve never arrested a chicken before," he said. "We didn’t have much of a choice. We were directed to," he added. "She was on their property and had been warned. She chose to be arrested." At least 20 Portsmouth police officers, Rockingham County Sheriff’s Department deputies and hotel security were at the hotel for a protest by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But only 10 protesters showed, and only Fujawa was arrested. "We weren’t sure what to expect," Roth said. "We were just trying to guard everybody’s rights. We always plan for the worst, but it didn’t turn out bad." Download PDF file