How Non Violence Protects The State -Talk and Interview

bristol | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Tuesday September 09, 2008 09:25 by Last Hours

http://www.lasthours.org.uk/archive/interviews/peter-gelderloos/

Peter Gelderloos is a radical community organiser from the USA. He has written a number of books including Consensus: A new handbook for grassroots political, social and environmental groups and How Non-violence helps the State as well as being a member of a number of campaigns including local Food Not Bombs, Copwatch and Anarchist Black Cross chapters.

In 2001 he was arrested at Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, previously known as the School of Americas, and spent six months in prison. In 2005 he published his most well known book How Non-violence protects the State in which he addressed the problems with non-violence activism and what the possible alternatives are. It was an illuminating call to arms, which if nothing else served to get a range of people in the anti-authoritarian movement asking questions of their tactics.

More recently in 2007, Peter was arrested in Barcelona and charged with public disorder and being at an illegal demonstration. As he has said the charges against him are “fairly absurd” but because of bail conditions he had until recently been confined to the Spanish borders. However, in January and February of 2008 he was able to travel to the UK on a tour discussing his work about non-violence. The recording is of the talk that he gave in the RampART social centre on February 2nd, whilst the interview was done the following day in London.