Non-Violence

Our culture implies that needs are negative and destructive; the word needy applied to a person suggests inadequacy or immaturity. When people express their needs, they are often labeled selfish, and the use of the personal pronoun I is at times equated with selfishness or neediness.

As Martin Luther King, Jr., put it in a phrase drawn from the abolitionist Theodore Parker, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Bends, not swerves—but what we can miss in this cold-eyed understanding of history is that the arc won’t even bend without devoted Americans pressing for the swerve.

the Selma march, Lewis recalled, “injected something very special into the soul and the heart and the veins of America. It said, in effect, that we must humanize our social and political and economic structure. When people saw what happened on that bridge, there was a sense of revulsion all over America.” Revulsion, then redemption: Is there

NONVIOLENCE is an orphan among democratic ideas. It has nearly vanished from public discourse even though the most basic element of free government—the vote—has no other meaning. Every ballot is a piece of nonviolence, signifying hard-won consent to raise politics above firepower and bloody conquest.