of Câmara’s central convictions was that the violence that fragments the world is caused primarily by structural injustice that economically crushes the many for the benefit of the few. He called this the first and most basic level of violence. In desperate response to structural injustice, the oppressed rise up in violent rebellion—the second level of violence—which in turn is savagely repressed by the powers that be—the third level. Violence, Câmara saw, is a “spiral” that perpetuates itself ceaselessly as long as the first level endures. But violent revolution is no solution to oppression, he insisted. It will only bring more violence and not the longed-for justice. A much more effective tool for putting an end to the spiral of violence is stepping outside of it by engaging in nonviolent direct action against structural injustice—strikes, boycotts, appeals to public conscience. For Câmara, this strategy exemplified the spirit of Jesus.
Although detested and feared by governmental authorities, Câmara was beloved by the Brazilian people for his courage in living his faith. “Denunciation of injustice,” he told them, “is an absolutely essential chapter in the proclamation of the Gospel.” And, he added, it’s “an absolute duty for shepherds.”
8 February
Martin Buber
8 February 1878—13 June 1965
Inclusive Zionist
By the time he immigrated to Jerusalem in 1938, Vienna native Martin Buber was already recognized as one of Europe’s leading Jewish intellectuals. Raised in an Orthodox family, he spent most of his childhood studying Torah and Midrash. As a young man he studied philosophy before launching his career as a public intellectual. He became a professor at the University of Frankfurt in 1930 and helped cofound the Central Office for Jewish Education, an alternative institute of higher learning, when the Nazis forbade Jews from attending German universities.
Buber’s writings, especially his books on Hasidism, earned him acclaim. But his best known book, I and Thou, became one of the twentieth century’s most influential texts. In it, Buber argued that humans are relational, interdependent creatures rather than radically autonomous, self-sufficient ones. There are, he wrote, two modes of relating to other people: one in which we reduce them to the status of objects to be used, and one in which we recognize them as subjects valuable in their own right and essential to our own development as humans. When we relate in the first way, we transform people into “It”s and stunt their development. When we relate in the second way, we recognize them for the “Thou”s they are and allow them to flourish.
For Buber, the Thou-It distinction wasn’t merely a philosophical abstraction. He saw it as the key to building community based on mutual respect and reciprocity rather than an often violent competition for control. “The most pernicious of all false teachings,” he wrote, is the claim that “history is determined by power alone.” Buber conceded that power is sometimes a necessary response to evil. The rise of European fascism and the horrors into which it led the world were stark reminders of that truth. But genuine community and individual flourishing are ultimately built on dialogue that aims at understanding and cooperation rather than manipulation and control.
Even before relocating to Palestine, Buber was a committed Zionist. But in keeping with his embrace of I-Thou rather than I-It relationships, he opposed all versions of Zionism that were nationalistically exclusivistic. Buber wanted a binational state in which Jews and Arabs recognized one another’s humanity so that they could “develop the land together without one imposing his will on the other.” Far from either group trying to exclude the other, each should see it as their “duty to understand and to honor the claim which is opposed to ours and to endeavor to reconcile both claims.” The “disease of nationalism,” Buber warned, would destroy any real prospect of a homeland for the Jews. Since Buber’s death, the wisdom and humanitarianism of his call for a binational state of Israel has become increasingly apparent.
9 February
Alice Walker
9 February 1944—
Writing Down the Truth of Peace
In Alice Walker’s 1983 novel The Color Purple, Celie pleads with her sister Nellie “to write.” Nellie promises that “only death can keep me from it.” Her response reflects Walker’s own passion for writing.
When a freak childhood accident robbed her of vision in one eye, Walker longed for death. Once confident and self-assured, she became a shy, introspective child who battled bouts of depression. But the accident and its aftermath eventually turned her toward writing and what she described as “a need to tell the truth.”
The eighth and last child of Georgia sharecroppers, Walker attended the only nonsegregated high school in her county and graduated at the top of her class. In 1961 she enrolled in Spellman College and became immersed in the civil rights movement. Her mentor, conscientious objector and peace activist Staughton Lynd, urged her to transfer to Sarah Lawrence College to hone her already considerable writing talent.
In college, Walker combined activism with her passion for writing. She worked for the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, championing the rights of Southern blacks evicted from their homes because they registered to vote. It was during this period that she met and married Melvyn Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They divorced in 1976, five years after the birth of their only daughter.
Walker was instrumental in bringing the work of Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937) out of obscurity and into the literary mainstream. Her talent in multiple genres (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) seamlessly weaves scholarly and imaginative focus onto the experience of oppression.
Her novel The Color Purple earned Walker the Pulitzer Prize; she was the first African American to receive it. The novel highlights the many variables, including the suppression of female spirituality, that inhibit a vision for peaceful human existence. More recently, Walker has been an outspoken critic of war in general and the Iraq War in particular, commenting before the war that “the women and children of Iraq are just as dear as the women and children in our families . . . and so it would have felt to me that we were going over to actually bomb ourselves.” She has also championed the cause of the Palestinians by visiting the people of Gaza in 2009 with the anti-war group Code Pink.
10 February
Frances Moore Lappé
10 February 1944—
Dietitian for a Small Planet
It’s a truism to observe that the planet is shrinking. Cyber-technology, supersonic transport, and growing economic interdependence now bind together what to earlier generations seemed to be remote regions of the world. The communities in which we now live are as global as they are local, and this shift calls for a reconsideration of familiar ways of living in the world.
One of the things that needs to be reexamined is the standard American diet. Per capita, we Americans consume nearly three hundred pounds of meat per year. For several generations now, our national dietary assumption has been that meat should be the centerpiece of every meal; the well-fed American family is a meat-eating family. Moreover, meat—beef, poultry, and pork—is affordable to families in nearly all income brackets. A food that not so terribly long ago was considered the prerogative of the wealthy is now enjoyed by the majority of people in America. Meat is the great democratizer.
But our meat-centered dietary culture was called into question in 1971 with the publication of Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet. In her book, Lappé
