Mahatma Gandhi was a script flipper. So was Martin Luther King, Jr.
I remember watching a movie on Gandhi in school when I was a kid. There was this scene where the protestors were marching against these guards (? or police? figures of authority of some sort), and the guards would strike down the protestors...
Some of them would then help move the bodies of the first line away, and the next line stepped up to take their spot. They were utterly unthreatening, not trying to attack the guards or anything...
But every time one group was struck down, the next stepped up to take their place. And you could sort of see something going on in the faces of the guards, as they kept striking these people who refused to give them any sort of excuse or justification for their violence, and it starting getting to them, bothering them, that they kept offering violence to people who weren't threatening them at all.
I know some say Martin Luther King only succeeded as much as he did because there were other, more violent organizers in the background like Malcom X. Maybe so, maybe no. It doesn't change MLK Jr's role as a someone who chose not to respond in the more typical human response to the injustices of his day.
It seems that it's all too easy for people to turn their anger and resentment into violence... terrorists show that to us on a regular basis, no script flipping there.
I remember watching a movie on Gandhi in school when I was a kid. There was this scene where the protestors were marching against these guards (? or police? figures of authority of some sort), and the guards would strike down the protestors...
Some of them would then help move the bodies of the first line away, and the next line stepped up to take their spot. They were utterly unthreatening, not trying to attack the guards or anything...
But every time one group was struck down, the next stepped up to take their place. And you could sort of see something going on in the faces of the guards, as they kept striking these people who refused to give them any sort of excuse or justification for their violence, and it starting getting to them, bothering them, that they kept offering violence to people who weren't threatening them at all.
I know some say Martin Luther King only succeeded as much as he did because there were other, more violent organizers in the background like Malcom X. Maybe so, maybe no. It doesn't change MLK Jr's role as a someone who chose not to respond in the more typical human response to the injustices of his day.
It seems that it's all too easy for people to turn their anger and resentment into violence... terrorists show that to us on a regular basis, no script flipping there.
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