Foundations of Fierce Vulnerability: Nonviolence, a way of life for courageous people
Making violence backfire while holding onto our true selves
Today’s newsletter on nonviolent discipline is the second in my January series Foundations of Fierce Vulnerability. You might find it helpful to read the previous installments on power and unity.
There is a sanitized, whitewashed version of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. which, without fail, makes an appearance at this time of year. Quotes are mangled beyond recognition, extricated from the rigorous social critique in which they were originally embedded, used like so many bookends to prop up the status quo.
And then there is the man in his own words.
On several occasions throughout my life, I have been taken aback by the gap between the Dr. King I learned about by cultural osmosis, and who I met in reading what he wrote. The first such realization occurred my freshman year of high school, when my English teacher had us read the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” The second was during my second year of seminary, when a retiring priest gave me a copy of King’s brief yet incisive 1967 work Where do We Go from Here? Chaos or Community. And this week, while reflecting on Dr. King’s work and witness, I have been moved to still greater depths of respect by revisiting his indictment of militarism and his staunch commitment to nonviolent discipline.
In his famous 1967 sermon, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence”, preached a year to the day before his assassination, Dr. King decries US violence and humanizes the people of Vietnam:
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land….
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence… it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition….
We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.
For Dr. King, nonviolence was as much a spiritual discipline as an urgently strategic one. This “way of life for courageous people,” is about seeing reality clearly. Its rigorous and consistent practice sheds light on the manifold ways violence operates in our world, as well as the violence lurking in the corners of our own hearts.
Nonviolence is the means of transforming the hate which readily metastasizes within us, including those oppressive internalized narratives lethally aimed at ourselves. It enables us to be transparent with ourselves about the ways we contribute to patterns of violence, and to be transformed in the context of community.
Even for those who see nonviolence as purely pragmatic (and it is that: nonviolent revolutions are twice as likely as violent ones to succeed), it is worth spending a moment here, with this proleptic spirituality, by which I mean a well-nourished nonviolent imagination that both anticipates and builds the world we want to inhabit.
To that point, Dr. King consistently called his listeners to begin at the end. That is, to keep in mind the destination of Beloved Community — a world characterized by justice flowing through love in liberating action. A world where no one dominates anyone else, no one is thrown away, and all people are free from what Dr. King called the “giant triplets of racism, economic exploitation and militarism.” It is from this vision of shared humanity and radical belonging that we can engage nonviolently — even with those whom we have been told are enemies to be feared.
In 1959, King preached, “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermath of violence are emptiness and bitterness.”
Nonviolence lifts us up and out of the zero-sum game of Us v. Them by empowering us to imagine everyone living along the spectrum of allies as moveable toward freedom. For those who are actively doing harm, nonviolence looks like holding them to account and preventing them from continuing to do violence by creatively making their violence backfire. For those who are being harmed, nonviolence gums up the works of oppression with collective disruptive action.
All of which brings me to three reasons why nonviolent discipline is strategically invaluable:
Nonviolence humanizes everyone involved, creating opportunities for people to shift loyalties.
Dehumanization is the logic of violent systems, and dehumanization has a creeping effect. This slippery slope was well articulated by 20th-Century German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller when he wrote:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Nonviolence, on the other hand, insists upon the humanity of everyone involved. The maintenance of nonviolent discipline during an action shows those upholding violent systems — whether passive or actively — that they can change sides without fearing for their lives.
This is simple science — under threat of violence our bodies go into fight, flight or freeze. Nonviolent discipline helps lower these reactionary defenses in those who witness it. Granted, many people perceive nonviolent actions as threatening, precisely because they are benefitting from the status quo. But nonviolent discipline helps ensure that when someone wants to defect, there is a place for them to land. Nonviolent movements grow by refusing to dehumanize anyone.
Nonviolent struggles have a low barrier to entry.
In 1977, a group of disability activists occupied the federal building in San Francisco for a whopping 26 days (the film Crip Camp tells this story brilliantly). This was one of many powerful actions undertaken by people with disabilities in the 1970s and 80s, ultimately yielding the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.
Whereas violent movements require able-bodied people to participate in high levels of training to use various weaponry, nonviolent movements can involve many people, who bring their varied abilities and gifts to bear. This contributes to what is known as the participation gap between violent and nonviolent movements — it is easier for nonviolent movements to reach the crucial threshold of 3.5% of the population, since there are jobs as varied as babysitting, poster-making, and direction of street theater. There is something for everybody!
More people getting involved also contributes to tactical diversity, and allows a movement to focus on a wider array of targets. Both of these factors are invaluable for success.
Nonviolent discipline makes oppression backfire.
In the film Selma, Dr. King asks fellow Black civil rights organizers who the most reactive, repressive police chief is in the area. The answer — the staunch segregationist Bull Connor — factors into Dr. King’s calculation that he could make racist oppression backfire.
When Connor and his department turned fire hoses and dogs on nonviolent protesters, the media was there — as planned by the Southern Leadership Coordinating Committee — to document everything. The blowback was severe: national outrage prompted President Kennedy to send a negotiator, and a desegregation agreement was reached not long after.
The consistent, unwavering application of nonviolent discipline means that the oppressor will increasingly isolate themself from the mainstream as they double down on violence. Meanwhile the nonviolent movement garners the sympathy of an increasingly wider swath of the public. This doesn’t mean nonviolent tactics shouldn’t escalate in order to create more pressure. It means that as tactics scale up, the adherence to nonviolent discipline needs to do so also. This is especially important given that oppressors often send provocateurs into nonviolent spaces in order to seed violence, so that they can discredit the movement.
Maintaining nonviolent discipline helps movements draw a clear line between the systems sowing violence and those building a world where all can flourish.
To quote Dr. King,
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
Learn more about the power of nonviolent discipline at Beautiful Trouble.
Questions for reflection: What is a nonviolent practice — whether spiritual or strategic — that you would like to adopt? Do you find nonviolence more challenging as a spiritual discipline or strategic one? Could you lean into practicing nonviolence this week in a way that challenges you?