the.com/nonviolence
the art of winning by refusing to throw the first punch — or any punch.
means The principled refusal to use physical force or harm, especially as a moral philosophy or strategy for political and social change.
from A 19th-century compound built from Latin pieces: 'non-' meaning 'not,' plus 'violence,' which traces back to Latin 'violentia' (vehemence, impetuosity), from 'violentus' (forceful), kin to 'vis' (force, strength). So the word literally negates 'force' — though it gained its weight in the 20th century as a translation of the Sanskrit 'ahimsa' (literally 'non-harming'), the ancient principle Gandhi made famous, and which Martin Luther King Jr. carried into the American civil rights movement.
- gandhi's spark
- Coined satyagraha, toppling an empire without firing a shot
- statistically lethal
- Nonviolent campaigns succeed twice as often as armed ones
- 3.5 percent
- That share of a population, mobilized, never failed
- king's debt
- Borrowed his entire playbook from Gandhi's India
- slow burn
- Costs more patience than any weapon costs bullets
gandhi's salt march — 250,000 indians walked 240 miles to protest british salt tax in 1930
montgomery bus boycott — 381 days in alabama 1955-56 ending segregation through refusing to ride buses
tiananmen square protests — 2 million chinese students occupied beijing square for 7 weeks in spring 1989
velvet revolution — czechoslovakia overthrew communism through strikes and mass protests in november 1989