Big topic today fellow lifelong learners! In this post we will be addressing the Principles of Nonviolence as defined by Martin Luther King Jr. and how those principles fit into what we are seeing today.
The Principles of Nonviolence were created by Dr. King and described in his first book, Strive Towards Freedom. They established the fundamental tenets of Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence and outlined the mindset Dr. King believed people needed to have to rid society of the Triple Evils as defined below:
Poverty - unemployment, hunger, homelessness, etc.
Racism - prejudice, anti-Semitism, sexism, colonialism, homophobia, ageism, discrimination against disabled groups, stereotypes
Militarism - war, imperialism, domestic violence, rape, terrorism, human trafficking, media violence, drugs, child abuse, violent crime
He believed that while violence may have a stronger capacity to incite change, achieving one’s goal through nonviolence means making the goal of a nonviolent future more possible. These are the Principles of Nonviolence:
Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. It is active nonviolent resistance to evil. It is aggressive spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.
Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding. The end result of nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation. The purpose of nonviolence is the creation of the Beloved Community.
Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people. Nonviolence recognizes that evildoers are also victims and are not evil people. The nonviolent resister seeks to defeat evil, not people.
Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform. Nonviolence accepts suffering without retaliation. Unearned suffering is redemptive and has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities.
Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate. Nonviolence resists violence of the spirit as well as the body. Nonviolent love is spontaneous, unmotivated, unselfish and creative.
Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice. The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win. Nonviolence believes that God is a God of justice.
The reason these principles are so important is not just because they are a part of history and should be an influence in all of our daily lives. They are important because many people, specifically not people of color, have been posting about Martin Luther King Jr. and asking ‘why.’ Why can’t protesters today be nonviolent like MLK was then? Wouldn’t we get so much more done by staying peaceful and just listening to each other? Let’s talk about this.
In a recent article by Vox titled, Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful, Ezra Klein interviewed author Ta-Nehisi Coates about his 2015 book Between the World and Me and what he felt about what was going on today. One of the things that stood out was a feeling Coates wrote about in his book with regards to learning about the civil rights movement and stories of MLK and Rosa Parks in school. In his book he questioned, “Why were they showing this to us? Why were only our heroes nonviolent?... How could the schools valorize men and women whose value society had actively scorned?”
Candice Delmas evidently resonated with this line as well, and addressed it in her book A Duty to Resist. She wrote, “Coates highlights the hypocrisy and even absurdity of urging nonviolence upon children whose daily lives are dominated by violence,” and she importantly points out, “in a country founded upon, and continually engaged in, the same.” Essentially, what Coates was saying was: why were White people asking the Black community to be nonviolent when their existence in this country has been met time and time again with violence perpetrated by White people for hundreds of years (i.e. slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, police brutality, etc.)?
This idea is one of the fundamental problems going back to the question: Why can’t protesters today be nonviolent like MLK was then?
Here are a list of reasons why:
It’s hypocritical. In the 1960s, MLK was the most hated man in the country and viewed as an enemy to White Americans. White people cannot suddenly decide Dr. King is their poster child for the “ideal Black protestor” when they hated, brutalized, and assassinated him even though he was nonviolent. In a parallel to today, Colin Kaepernick taking a knee was a very clear expression of nonviolent protest, and yet, the public criticism cost him his NFL career.
It perpetuates a double standard. Just a few weeks ago, a group of armed protesters entered the Michigan capitol building with machine guns to protest a shelter-in-place order that had been implemented for everyone’s safety as a result of the deadly coronavirus pandemic. In cases like these involving predominantly White people, the pleas for adhering to principles of nonviolence were seemingly thrown out the window despite their threatening and violent response to neutral government orders about social distancing, wearing masks, and a shelter-in-place order. However, when a video of yet another Black man deliberately murdered by police surfaced publicly, demonstrating a blatant disregard for Black lives, protesters were asked, why can’t you protest nonviolently?
These principles are for everyone. The Principles of Nonviolence are not a standard reserved just for Black protestors. It is an idealistic standard for everyone to follow. Including, and most especially, those in positions of power.
Furthermore, the question “Why can’t protesters today be nonviolent like MLK was then?,” ignores the fact that the vast majority of protests are, and have been, nonviolent. Only acknowledging the violent acts of the few (in the media, on Facebook, in conversation with friends and family) subverts the power away from the longstanding activism and dedication of the many. When White people say, “I agree that there needs to be change, but I don’t think they should be violent,” it also ignores the far worse, systemic violence that the Black community faces every day.
As Dr. King himself wrote in “A Letter from Birmingham Jail” in 1963, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice;” he wrote, “who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action.’” Those who criticize the present movement but have failed to actively engage in seeking out justice fall into this category that Dr. King describes. May we all seek healing and direction from the Principles of Nonviolence, and then actively do our part in supporting the movement for social justice that is tirelessly playing out each day.
For those interested in learning more about how to be a nonviolent activist, there are formal trainings available that range in length from an hour to multi-week undertakings. To learn more, check out the resources at the Alliance of Community Trainers: https://trainersalliance.org/alliance-of-community-trainers-what-we-offer/.
Sources:
Vox Interview by Erza Klein with author Ta-Nehisi Coates - https://www.vox.com/2020/6/5/21279530/ta-nehisi-coates-ezra-klein-show-george-floyd-police-brutality-trump-biden
The King Center Website - https://thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy/
A Duty to Resist by Candice Delmas
King's Message of Nonviolence Has Been Distorted by Dara T. Mathis https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/kings-message-of-nonviolence-has-been-distorted/557021/
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