Tag: Gandhi
Sparking Change: How Movements Pass On Inspiration
/ | Leave a CommentChange doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Resistance is a continuum. Nonviolent movements arise amidst the efforts of many other struggles. The knowledge of how to organize for change is a global legacy passed between movements and generations of activists through lineages of inspiration that stretch through hundreds of years. (The first recorded strike happened in […]
Read more »Gandhi’s Salt: How a Fistful of Mud and Seawater Shook the British Empire
/ | Leave a CommentOn April 6th, 1930 at 6:30am after morning prayers, Mohandas K. Gandhi raised a lump of salty mud and declared, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.” Salt was an unexpected choice for the revolutionary nonviolent movement. Earlier that year, the Indian National Congress had boldly issued a declaration of self-rule, […]
Read more »The Nonviolent History of American Independence
/ | 4 Comments on The Nonviolent History of American IndependenceIndependence Day is commemorated with fireworks and flag-waving, gun salutes and military parades . . . however, one of our nation’s founding fathers, John Adams, wrote, “A history of military operations . . . is not a history of the American Revolution.” Often minimized in our history books, the tactics of nonviolent action played a […]
Read more »Got Strategy? Check Out Constructive Program
| Leave a CommentMany of us know about protests and marches, there is also a whole other side to nonviolence: constructive program. The phrase was coined by Gandhi whose famous salt and spinning campaigns combined both direct action and constructive program into powerful forces for change. A constructive program is more than a positive project; it should have […]
Read more »Salt Thoughts . . .
| Leave a CommentWhenever someone asks me, “What is our salt? What is the US equivalent of Gandhi’s constructive program?” I tell them that I think it’s local food and gardening, seed saving, and caring for the Earth. Whether we’re planting in pots or urban community gardens, or we’re on a small farm, or, like me, you lovingly […]
Read more »Without Kindness, We Lose Our Common Dignity
| Leave a CommentAs I’m riding the overnight train from Chicago to New Mexico, an elderly African-American man in a wheelchair is taken off the train by paramedics, police, and the conductor. Earlier, I had heard the car attendant say something about a minor heart attack. The man, a double amputee, shivers in the cold night air as […]
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