by Admin | October 30th, 2009
On the morning of October 7, 2007, Nonviolence International and SOA Watch, two nonviolent grassroots organizations aiming to close the School of the Americas (SOA), worked together for vigil and lobbying to support the US Congressional bill HR 2576 to suspend and investigate the school of the Americas/WHINEC in morning. As a citizen from Japan, this was a very interesting experience because these kinds of activities are not so common in Japan.
At first, we got together in front of Capitol South Metro Station at 8 am. We held banners and handed out flyers and postcards introducing SOA Watch and insisting on importance of closing the SOA from a human rights perspective. We were targeting people coming out of the station for work on Capitol Hill. My mission was holding a banner with a nice and friendly smile. I saw some people make a glance at us, but most of them were too busy to stop. This was not difficult at all, but the challenge to me was distribution of handouts. I was shy doing this kind of thing; however, I had an idea of what to do because there are many people who give out flyers and advertising tissues to people on street to promote business in Japan. Fortunately, most of the handouts assigned to me were gone by the end of the vigil.
After the vigil, we moved to lobbying Congressional Representatives to cosponsor the bill HR 2567. This was my first experience visiting offices at the US Capitol, and I had no idea how to deal with politicians. I felt a big pressure on my shoulders, but I was thankful to another participant who stood by me and showed what to do. Moreover, unlike what I expected, the Congressional staffs were so nice and kind to me when I visited their offices. This released a lot of pressure. After visiting a few offices, I was comfortable walking around and passing out our materials to ask them to support HR 2567. I got the impression that US politicians were very open to common people, a much closer relationship between politics and people than in Japan because we cannot visit politicians’ offices as easily. I was impressed by the openness of US politics to common people. From this point, I thought civil society is more developed in US.
Developing civil society is not easy task and requires a long time. There are many conditions to fulfill first. Looking around the world, many countries do not have a strong civil society. Even developed countries like Japan do not have it like the US. Civil society development may call for struggles and pains before appearing in front of us, but this is the only way that people are empowered and become engaged citizens, rather than just bystanders in a crowd. Democracy is an unfamiliar concept for many people in the world, but as our institution enlarges, we are needed to understand the value and meaning of democracy to protect our lives. This trend is growing slowly but steadily. The important thing right now is to believe in the value of democracy and power of people for our bright future and those efforts will be worthwhile.