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Meet Marshall Rosenberg, quiet revolutionaryOntheBY D. KILLIAN

further explore the implications of hiswork - especially for superstructures suchas international relations, institutionalizedracism, capital punishment and how hiswork bridges the spiritual and the political.But meanwhile, with all hype aside, theself-help diva Jack Canfield is probablyright: "the principles and techniques in thisbook can literally change the world."

For the last 35 years, Rosenberg hasbeen on the front line teaching conflictresolution in hot spots around the world.

Based on cover endorsements'from John Gray and JackCanfield (Men are from Mars,Women are from Venus andChicken Soup for the Soul),

Marshall Rosenberg's NonviolentCommunication: A Language ofCompassion sounds like another NewAge, self-help book. Yet like NoamChomsky -who deconstructed languageand then moved on to media and poli-tics - Rosenberg's work is intrinsicallyradical. Beginning by addressing lan-guage, it subverts our whole status-quosystem of power: between children andadults, the sane and the psychotic, thecriminal and the law.

Rosenberg starts with a question:"What happens to disconnect us ... lead-ing us to behave violently and exploitive-ly?" In answering, he gives his own story- from surviving race riots and anti-semitism in Detroit to his training as aclinical psychologist. Ultimately, like thephilosopher Michel Foucault, heexplores the relationship between"power and knowledge" - the way dis-course is complicit in oppression.Cracking the code, he gives a pragmaticmethod of identifying feelings, valuesand needs, illustrating the judgmentallanguage and the power relationshipsdominating every level of our SOciety.

Not just theoretical, Rosenbergshows NVC at work - often dramatical-ly - from dealing with racists inAmerica to surviving attacks inPalestine simply for being an American.Well-written and laid out, with cartoonillustrations, transcripts from actual dia- Marshall Rosenberg.logues and a summaI)' of main pointsin the margins, Nonviolent Communicationis accessible and easy to read - perhapsdeceptively so. Especially in the latter halfof the book, Rosenberg makes some chal-lenging points: that compliments andapologies also operate in a system of

g: oppression; that rewards are as harmful~ as punishment; that, as violence goes,~. killing is the easy way out. Making the~ personal political, he takes to task parent-:c ing, political activists, corporations, the~ prison system, education and psychology~ - which, years after he finished his train-

ing, he still finds harmful in its emotionali distancing, diagnosis and hierarchy. His;::: distinction between "punitive" and "pro-::: tective" force - and how to discern whene! force is necessary - should be required~ reading for anyone making U.S. foreignS policy or policing our streets.~ Demanding the ultimate form ofd responsibility - and vulnerability - it's no

wonder that, like Chomsky, Rosenberg has" received relatively little media and mass'" attention. Perhaps in future studies, he will

For the last 13 years, in Cleveland, he'sbeen creating a quiet revolution: teachinghis method of "compassionate listening"in more than a hundred different colleges,churches, hospitals, museums andschools. According to Rita Herzog, direc-tor of the Cleveland Center for NonviolentCommunication and co-editor ofRosenberg's new book, he has conductedmore NVC training in Cleveland than inany other U.s. city, except for San Diego.

Next week he will sign his new bookat Borders in Beachwood on Thursday,March 18. The following are excerpts ofa phone interview with Rosenberg whilehe was at work in Sweden.

Free Times: In your book, you saythat "judgments are tragic expressionsof unmet needs." So where does thatleave ethics and morality?

Marshall Rosenberg: We need judg-ments. Every living creature needs "need"judgments. I tried to give a dog an applethe other day, and he looked at me as

FT: Statistically, men are much moreviolent than women - are they just poorcommunicators?

MR: Men are more violent to otherpeople. Women are more violent tothemselves.

though I were crazy. Obviously, we needto know whether what we eat is poisonor not. We need to make need judgments .continually in our lives - but keep those Ii

different from moralistic judgments.Every major religion has been saying thisfor centuries: judge not others. They'retalking about moralistic judgments.

FT: Your method of conflict resolu-tion is called "non-violent communi-cation," but most people would con-sider language an alternative to vio-lence, not a form of it.

MR: Well, I define violence in manydifferent ways. There's institutional or sys-tematic violence: the American judicialsystem is vel)' violent - it discriminateson the basis of class and race. Then wecan talk about physical violence, the onethat most people think of - but not what Iconsider the most dangerous. And thephysical is almost always based on thepsychological, where you dehumanize theperson with your language - implyingsome kind of badness, wrongness orinappropriateness. You define people withhaving the kind of badness as deservingto suffer. This is the most destructive con-cept ever invented by humanity: the con- i

cept of deserve. IFT: You talk about anger being a state ,

of mind - a result of our thinking. But if .you're not making a living wage or are beingdiscriminated against for the color of yourskin or the gender of the person you sleep'with - injustice is not just in your head.

MR It's not injustice. It's not meetingour needs for justice. If you are clear thatyour need isn't being met, you're muchmore likely to take action to get yourneed met. If you judge it as an injustice,it's "wrong," then you're going to take aviolent action.

FT: U.S. foreign policy seems to bealways punitive.

MR: Our leaders do not know thedifference between the protective andthe punitive. As we just saw, the rightwing wanted to punish Clinton. Theyweren't trying a protective use of force -to protect the morals of the country.They weren't interested in that. Theywere interested in punishing ... and pun-ishment not only never works, it almost 'I'

always creates enormous pain for ,whoever's using it. •••