what is nonviolence?Tree of Nonviolence
Nonviolence is a better way of doing conflict. Where violence dehumanises opponents, nonviolence affirms the humanity in all. Where violence tends to seek conquest and domination, nonviolence seeks solutions that include everybody. Nonviolence challenges injustice but recognises that both perpetrator and victim have to live together after the changes have been made. In the social arena it's something we do together, and we do it using methods and behaviours that reflect the world we want to bring about. We use creativity, imagination, love, humour, intelligence. Nonviolence seeks to even up imbalances of power so that negotiation for change can take place. It's resistance work and involves many different methods of communication, persuasion and direct physical intervention.
Nonviolent direct action seeks to create a crisis and foster such a tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatise the issue that it can no longer be ignored.
Martin Luther King Jnr
Some techniques include:
Dramatising actions, usually symbolic, can be used to reveal the truth of an issue and to draw attention to it. For example, anti-war campaigners stood at London's cenotaph, where royalty and prime ministers publicly remember the dead of British wars, and read out a list of those who had died during the invasion amd occupation of Iraq. They were arrested.
The 'creative disorder' of demonstrations, blockades, marches or invasions attract attention to an issue and can lead to change. Non-cooperation (strikes, boycotts, stay-aways, refusal to follow orders), and intervention (blockades, sit-ins, direct action) create a crisis and can compel necessary change when opponents are unpersuadable. Creating alternative institutions is another way of altering society.
Characteristics of a nonviolent campaign:
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