Selma Case Study: Voting Rights & Protest

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Selma Case Study

• Exams with unanswerable questions were posed to African American potential voters.
• African Americans registered to vote were offered classes.
• Classes to help more people become registered voters were banned through an injunction preventing meetings of more than five persons.
• Selma was chosen for the March 7th demonstration for journalists access, brutal law enforcement, and low African American voter registration.
• March 7th, "Bloody Sunday," involved violence against peaceful protestors on a major bridge in Selma, hospitalizing seventeen people.
• Media coverage provoked both sides.
• News reporter hid his camera for more accurate understanding.
• Media outlets biased reporting hindered honest journalism.
• The first draft of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 stemmed from excessive force against peaceful protestors and public support (52% support).
• Laws to protect peaceful protestors' constitutional right followed.

Rwanda Case Study

• Catholic Church's role: Re. Athanse Seromba and other church leaders committed genocide.
• Around 2,000 Tutsi people were killed in a bulldozed church, part of 1 million total deaths.
• Catholic Relief Services (CRS) sought peace with church leaders.
• Reconciliation featured a Jubilee synod with all church levels, public confessions, requests for forgiveness, and scripture.
• Trauma training was provided by the Diocese of Kibungo's Peace coordinator and the CRS director.
• Gacaca Process means "justice on the grass", perpetrators asked for public pardon, and official judges gave closure.
• Complex cases were referred to the ICC due to local system limitations.
• Relationship between Catholic church and the Rwandan government: 80% of Gacaca are CRS-trained in restorative justice.

Philippines Case Study

• Actors reviewed due to their complexity.
• Conflict cultural, not religious.
• There is religion in socio-economic, geo-political, and cultural divisions within the archipelago.
• Col Ferrer required paramilitaries to bathe, act professionally, lower weapons around civilians, and smile; also, peace training was encouraged.
• The main obstacle was continued tensions from paramilitaries and perceptions of peace training.

Just War Tradition

• An ethical code guides when to engage in war.
• Discrimination requires engaging violence only with combatants.
• Ad bellum/before war necessitates just cause, lawful authority, reasonable success, last resort, and right intention.
• In bello/during war focuses on non-combatant immunity and proportionality.
• Just Peace entails participation, right relationship, restoration, reconciliation, and sustainability.

Types of Reconciliation

• Punishment
• Reparations
• Forgiveness
• Accountability
• Rebuilding for social justice
• Truth-telling.

Civil Resistance Model

• Focuses on oppressive regimes → pillars of support → civilians.

DDR

• Is Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration.

Vocabulary and Concepts:

• Participation requires connection from both victims and perpetrators (combatant/non-combatant).
• Restoration involves education, trauma healing, citizenship, resettlement, art, and leadership.
• Right Relationship means to reimagine and restore.
• Right Intention: End goal must be positive peace.
• Terrorism: Killing civilians by non-state actors to inspire fear, (never JW).
• Reconciliation: Truth, reparations, investigation, trans/restorative justice, and acknowledgement.
• Sustainability is marked by climate and economy indicators of a peaceful state.
• Insurgencies occur in poorer, less industrialized/urban countries or transitioning democracies.
• Peacemaking typically involves elites.
• Trauma Healing: Re-establishing safety, truth telling → community integration.
• Conflict Trap: Cycles of violence and retribution without peace, fixed w/ reactionary ideology or economic diversification and support.

Stick Figure of Conflict Transformation

• Head: envisions systems.
• Heart: relationships as life-giving opportunities.
• Hands: enables constructive change.
• Legs/Feet: spread change and continue peace cycles.

Peacebuilding

• Seeks to prevent, reduce, transform + help people recover from all violence
• Not soft or idealistic, doesn't use only Western ideas
• Not conflict transformation, not only for post-war societies, doesn't ignore violence
• Skills: MINDS P-SRL: mediation, inquiry, negotiation, dialogue, speaking, problem-solving, reflection, listening
• Analysis: Local context, justification for violence, violence is related
• Strategy: Must know the 4Ws to get to the how (see diagrams)
• Principles: local context, violence is related, violence is always justified by perpetrators
• Violence: underlying social conditions frequently lead to increased violence.
• Structural. Committed by inadequacies in infrastructure/government
• Secondary. Reactions to structural violence

Nonviolent Conflict Tactics

• MAIN-C PP: monitoring, advocacy, protest, persuasion, non-co-op, intervention
• Aikido Principle: An opposition's power can be used to defeat it (Selma, Case #1)
• Attackers expect resistance pushing them farther throws them off
• Exposes violence to the perpetrators themselves and the global community

Human Rights

• material, social, and cultural needs; humans are interdependent

Justice

• People can participate in their environment and meet their needs

• Restorative justice: engages people in joint processes of identifying obligations and responsibilities resulting from injustice/violence, meeting needs, and promoting healing

• Focuses on the needs of the victims (truth telling, empowerment)

• Victim, their needs, who must meet those needs, how do we move forward

• Transitional justice: operate in weak/no government situations

• Creation of new systems based on IR law standards includes amnesty programs

• Punitive justice: State-based process, can cause increased violence since it doesn't address economics, grief, or community relationships → conflict trap

• Justpeace: Justice pursued violently leads to further injustice, peace w/o justice is unsustainable

Culture of Justpeace fostered by building capacity

• Military conversion: increases civilian authority over the military (Philippines, Case #3)
• Research, education, development; DDR: disarm, demobilize, reintegrate

Human security

• People are safe from direct and structural forms of violence and can meet their basic needs/rights

Conflict Transformation

• Envisions and responds to social conflict as life-giving opportunities for constructive change that reduces violence, increases justice in direct relations, social structure and real-life problems.
• Conflict impacts personally, relationally, structurally, and culturally
• Peace: an evolving quality of a relationship
• Conflict is understood as a normal human experience.

Change Goals in Conflict Transformation

• Minimize effects of social conflict, maximize growth potential.
• Minimize poorly functioning communication and maximize understanding.
• Address root causes of violent expressions of conflict.
• Promote nonviolent mechanisms/eliminate violence.
• Foster development of structures to meet justice and participation.
• Identify and understand cultural patterns.
• Identify and build upon resources/mechanisms for response.