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This past weekend, a Global Justice Now intern and I traveled to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to give a two-part presentation – the first part focused on the Thomas Merton Center and the second segment covered neoliberalism and the global justice movements. For the TMC part, we talked about the history of the Center, its current projects, and its relevance in this day and age. The population of the Upper Peninsula (UP) is comprised of a large portion of college students from Northern Michigan University, a smaller Native American population and an interesting combination of both conservative folks and, as one resident put it, "hippies from the 60s that moved here to get back to nature…" Most of the people at our presentation were from a local group, Citizens for Peace and Justice, that had began to lose hope – there is not a large peace movement in the UP and the recent attendance at their weekly anti-war vigils at the post office has begun to dwindle. They wanted to know how the TMC has managed to stay afloat through all these years, how our projects and membership has grown so rapidly and how we continue to be effective and relevant as injustices quickly metamorphose into more complex manifestations. What’s so different about the TMC? Why is it growing and expanding so rapidly while other long-time peace and justice organizations seem to be stagnating and many are finding it difficult to organize large numbers of people for the long-term struggle? How has it come to encompass so much of the progressive activism in Western PA? One can’t simply export the identical methods to another place with its own unique set of issues, people and circumstances and expect the same results, but I do believe there are some important underlying reasons why the center is succeeding and has some vital lessons to share. For over 30 years, the TMC has been able to keep up a strong resistance while refusing attempts to be pigeonholed into a box where there is one truth or one way to do things. There is no "draft program" that people must adhere to, rather the Center has laid out a general vision of the principles we are striving for - peace and social justice, non-violence, the right of self determination for all, a rejection of militarism and a commitment to working to tangibly improve the lives of all who are oppressed or disenfranchised. Out of this loose structure some key principles have emerged that seem to guide the vision and success of the Center and form the basis of its relevance and uniqueness. The Center promotes empowerment of members and the community; any group of people who wish to further part of the mission are welcome to start or join a project and have access to the resources the Center provides. There is a lack of resource monopolization and accumulation of power – projects autonomously organize as they see fit. This has allowed a variety of overlapping tendencies to develop without stifling any groups. The commitment to principles of decentralization, respect for a diversity of tactics, and a lack of resource favoritism has led to rapid growth and expanding diversity of members and organizers. And, because the TMC is a membership organization, all have a stake in seeing that the Center succeeds. The center is a multi-racial, multi-generational, multi-class organization where youth, radicals, students, senior citizens, people of varying faiths, anarchists, Democrats, Greens, even Republicans, and everyone else end up interacting with those who hold widely divergent beliefs. This forces people to address many of the "isms" paralyzing other places and challenge personal belief systems. The TMC fills a void in activist movements today by bridging divides and breaking out of the boxes society has created. There is strength in unity and diversity! It provides a space for people to get involved in the way they feel most comfortable. And that’s something worth sharing.
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