MISSION
To use radio to increase the practice of nonviolence around the world.
The goal of World Liberation Radio is to prove radio can deliver nonviolence instruction more effectively than current methods and then use it to arm the world’s victims of oppression and discrimination with the know-how they need to liberate themselves.
The educational broadcasts, translated into local languages, can help those trapped inside closed societies understand nonviolence's basic ideas and methods. Programs will encourage new thinking and a humane approach to freeing the world.
Civic empowerment has been proven to promote international peace, social justice and economic development. Now we want to scale it up on a mass basis.
Imagine a planet with fewer wars. Where everyone's voice is heard. And where more people can contribute to a better future for all of us.
THE EXPERIMENT
Radio is the most accessible broadcast medium.
As much as 50% of households inside dictatorships own, or have access to, a radio with shortwave listening capability. Where jamming prevents shortwave reception, micro transmitters, or “shoebox radios,” can allow for local broadcast.
Radio defies censorship
Even when computers, television and newspapers are available, they are heavily censored by most authoritarian regimes. Shortwave broadcasts, coming from sources outside the government’s control, are more difficult to censor.
Radio overcomes distribution inefficiencies
Printed materials, such as books and leaflets, must be smuggled into the country or physically distributed. This is expensive, dangerous and often fails to penetrate the market.
Radio breaks the bounds of illiteracy
When recorded in local languages, radio is understood by everybody. Radio crosses the digital divide.
Radio is portable and immediate
Radios are less expensive and more easily purchased for family or community use than TV sets or computers. People in closed societies often gather together to listen to radio.
Nonviolence works.
Across time, geography and culture, from the time of Jesus to Gandhi’s India, from the American civil rights movement to East Europe’s Color Revolution and more, nonviolence has often proven a powerful way for oppressed and disenfranchised people to free themselves.
Nonviolence breeds peace and development.
Dictators cause most of the world’s wars. Countries that are democratic tend to be more peaceful. Peace and human rights promote economic progress.
Methods of nonviolence are not limited by race, class or gender.
Anybody capable of understanding its basic principles can practice nonviolence. It is a way to release the power of the world’s ordinary people.
Nonviolence offers a way out.
Empowering the individual through non-violence grows civil societies as an alternative to the choice between dictatorship and chaos.
Nonviolence is good for everybody.
A freer, more peaceful world is good for democratic countries, too. Fewer wounded veterans and bereaved families. Lower taxes. More efficient global trade. New markets.
The term nonviolence is often used as a synonym for pacifism. However, the two concepts are fundamentally different.
Pacifism denotes the rejection of the use of violence as a personal decision on moral or spiritual grounds. It does not imply promoting change on a sociopolitical level.
Nonviolence presupposes the intent of social or political change as a reason for the rejection of violence. It is the practice of refraining from the use of violence, especially when reacting to oppression, injustice, discrimination, and the like. Nonviolence, when wielded aggressively, is a form of psychological and economic warfare which, while preserving human life, removes a dictatorship’s sources of support until it dissolves.
In the tradition of Gandhi’s “experiments with truth,” World Liberation Radio will begin with a pilot program to measure whether non-violence can be taught through radio broadcast. If successful, the project will be expanded to more countries.
Working together, we can unleash humanity’s creative potential to make a better future for everyone.