We must meet physical force with soul force

we are not about war

At Saturday’s 7,000-strong Hands Off rally/picnic in Sacramento, I was saddened that many of the speakers, especially those much younger than I, continued to use the metaphor of war to activate the crowd to action to protect, enhance, and preserve our freedoms and benefits.

One speaker didn’t mince words: “Make no mistake, this is a war, people! We need to get ready to fight. We expect our leaders to fight. We are in a battle” —like that. Other speakers used similar language.

There’s a long history of war imagery in legal, not violent (as opposed to “nonviolent”) campaigns (even the word “campaign” has its origin in military usage). As a paid advocate for multiple consumer groups and unions both nationally and in California, we fared no better. Everything was a ‘fight,’ a ‘battle,’ a ‘war.’ Most of us didn’t consider another way.

For years, I’ve yearned for a new way to describe mobilizations, struggles, etc. (you see how hard it is)

How did our 20th-century wayshowers fare?

Mahatma Gandhi’s speech in court when he was prosecuted as responsible for inciting a bloody uprising —

“In my opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. But in the past, non-cooperation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil-doer. I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non-cooperation only multiplies evil, and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-cooperation with evil. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.”

—Great Trial of 1922 (18.3.1922)

“But let there be not a semblance of breach of peace even after all of us have been arrested. We have resolved to utilize all our resources in the pursuit of an exclusively nonviolent struggle. Let no one commit a wrong in anger. This is my hope and prayer. I wish these words of mine reached every nook and corner of the land…Our ranks will swell and our hearts strengthen, as the number of our arrests by the Government increases…We can refuse to pay taxes if we have the requisite strength. The lawyers can give up practice. The public can boycott the law courts by refraining from litigation. Government servants can resign their posts.

—On the eve of Dandi March (11.3.1930)

However, Gandhi, while he preached nonviolence, did refer to the struggle for freedom for the people of India as a “war” and referred to the purity of their “weapons.”

In his most famous public speeches and writing, Martin Luther King, Jr. does appear to have consistently stayed nonviolent.

“We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force. There is still a voice crying out through the vista of time, saying: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you (Yes), pray for them that despitefully use you.’ …That same voice cries out in terms lifted to cosmic proportions: ‘He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.’ … We must follow nonviolence and love.”

Give Us the Ballot, Address at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. May 17, 1957, Washington, D.C.

In that same address, as Easter approaches here, a good reminder,

“There is something in our Christian faith, at the center of it, which says to us that Good Friday may occupy the throne for a day, but ultimately it must give way to the triumphant beat of the drums of Easter. There is something in our faith that says evil may so shape events, that Caesar will occupy the palace and Christ the cross, but one day that same Christ will rise up and split history into a.d. and b.c. so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name.

Give Us the Ballot, Address at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. May 17, 1957, Washington, D.C.

And, of course, in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, real advice on how to speak and act in these times:

“The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation…The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’ … We will have to repent in the generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

— Letter from Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963, Birmingham, Alabama

I had and still have hopes for the youngest generation of adults to come up with even better words for our time. They come up with ways of talking about and doing everything. Surely a generation who abhors genocide can appreciate the importance of moving to a new way of articulating and moving towards a world that works for everyone rather than simply the tired old violent metaphors? Surely a nonbinary generation can let feminine right-brained language bloom instead of tired masculine violent tropes?