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Nonviolence

kinginstitute.stanford.edu

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Re: Nonviolence

#111

Post by lukan »

Rperry2174 wrote: post #81
Gagarin1917 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that logically tracks. You (likely) act in a non-violent way every day. If you want some kind of change in your life, you achieve it non-violently. Does that imply you are are actually a violent person that is choosing not to be violent? Are you implying “something violent” every day you act like a good person? MLK didn’t have support because people were afraid of the alternative. They supported him beca…

Let's say you live in an apartment building and your landlord locks you out and keeps you belongings. Police say its not their problem. Courts decide that they don't aare either. So now you have no recourse or body to complain to. In that situation saying "i resolve problems non-violently every day" stops being relevenat. The mechanisms that allow you to do so (enforcement, law, etc) have been removed as they were fo…

"Let's say you live in an apartment building and your landlord locks you out and keeps you belongings. Police say its not their problem. Courts decide that they don't aare either. So now you have no recourse or body to complain to.

In that situation saying "i resolve problems non-violently every day" stops being relevenat. The mechanisms that allow you to do so (enforcement, law, etc) have been removed as they were for those fighting for civil rights.

You may still personally choose non-violence in this case, but I'd bet you would understand/sympathize/maybe-even-join those who decided to break into their apartments by force and grab the things that are rightfully theirs."

I would say it depends. Are there depts of rent involved in that scenario? Did the locking out just happened out of the blue, or was it communicated before, that it would happen?

Apart from that, I surely see more easy examples of justifying violence - for example to stop other violence.

Re: Nonviolence

#112

Post by I-M-S »

RickJWagner wrote: post #100
Rperry2174 wrote: post #28

This is a good articulation of mlkjr's theology and dicipline around nonviolence, but I think its incomplete if you read it in isolation. His strategy worked because it existed alongside MANY other voices, IMO the most underrated of which is Malcolm X, that rejected this "gradualism" outright and refused endless delay. They weren't organizing violence but they were instead making it credible that there is a world whe…

Today, history remembers MLK as a great man. There are parades in his honor, workers are given a day off. Rosa Parks is another peaceful pioneer credited with bringing strides forward. Malcolm X and others are already fading from memory.

I believe that was the OP's point: we remember a sanitized version of the myth of MLK that flatters modern sensibilities, while ignoring Malcom X because we don't like to acknowledge he played an equally important role in bringing about change.

Re: Nonviolence

#113

Post by RickJWagner »

hackable_sand wrote: post #109
RickJWagner wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, history remembers MLK as a great man. There are parades in his honor, workers are given a day off. Rosa Parks is another peaceful pioneer credited with bringing strides forward. Malcolm X and others are already fading from memory.

You should get that checked out.

Ask any kid “ Who was MLK?”

Then ask “Who was Malcolm X?”

You’ll see.

Re: Nonviolence

#114

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

watwut wrote: post #61
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Nah, he was unharmed and uninjured. If he had bruises a week later, it was not from interaction with good. He murdered her, said "fucking bitch" and walked away. His colleague then prevented a doctor from treating her. Nowedays ICE men reference her murder to threaten protesters.

Real talk, if you hit me with a vehicle and put my life in jeopardy, I might call you a fucking bitch in the moment.

Regardless of all other facts of that incident, she chose to hit the gas, like her wife chose to yell DRIVE BABY, DRIVE DRIVE. That’s kind of rude to do an officer.

Re: Nonviolence

#115

Post by throw0101d »

shimman wrote: post #96
throw0101d wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the video: > [Chenoweth and Stephan] have gone out of their way to correct people who treat it like a cheat code, and to caution against overreading any success of non-violent oppostion. The rebuttal is against those arguing that 3.5% is a "magic number", that treat(ed) it like an 'absolute', when we're actually dealing with probabilities and likelihoods and odds. The formulators of the "3.5% rule" do not treat…

Nice, so you didn't watch the video completely. Hopefully others don't make your mistake, both that and believing that garbage. Resistance has always been violence/sabotage towards oppressors, if nonviolence actions were effective you'd see more armed forces bashing skulls at no kings protests.

> Nice, so you didn't watch the video completely.

I did: he talks about the 3.5% is "just" walking and chanting down the street, but about structure changes 'behind the scenes'.

But the video is generally irrelevant to the point being made in the comment, as Stoermer (video creator) recognizes the people who came up with the rule are criticizing some who are putting it forward certain ideas about.

Stoermer is putting forward the idea that the 3.5% needs to be done in a certain way to actually be something meaningful, which doesn't disprove the rule nor the originating comment: that you'll be more liekly to get to a critical mass of movement supporters by eschewing violence.

Re: Nonviolence

#116

Post by Atlas667 »

zahlman wrote: post #103
Atlas667 wrote: post #73

There is a quote by Gandhi where he is talking about the Holocaust and he says: "The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs..." This is very idealist of him. And that, I find, is the fundamental problem of nonviolence. It depends on a notion of "good" existing, or that, at the very least, the people in power will care about the appearanc…

> Try stopping racism, that has economic roots (profits), by appealing to "goodness". It won't take you very far. When the British outlawed slavery and made their moral arguments against it, it seems to me that that worked pretty well everywhere except the US. I mean, sure, they might have had to invoke military force against other Europeans, but the idea spread within Britain easily enough, and they didn't lack symp…

Industrialization killed slavery not morality.

The reason for abolishing slavery was that it was a backwards system that prevented the super exploitation that came naturally for the proletariat.

The abolition of slavery was the proletarization of slaves. It absolutely was economic in nature. There was no economic need for slavery anymore, it didnt end racism tho, which was the ideological weapon that permited slavery.

Racism was simply repurposed for the black (and other) proletariat.

Industrialization killed slavery not morality.

Where is the goodness?

You have an idealist conception of history.

How would this allow superexploitation?

When capitalism becomes more productive than the market can handle it just shuts down the factories or when it gets more efficient it just gets rid of workers. Try doing that with slaves.

Proletarization created a pool of unemployed and a labor makret that benefited capitalists.

Re: Nonviolence

#117

Post by zahlman »

Atlas667 wrote: post #116
zahlman wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try stopping racism, that has economic roots (profits), by appealing to "goodness". It won't take you very far. When the British outlawed slavery and made their moral arguments against it, it seems to me that that worked pretty well everywhere except the US. I mean, sure, they might have had to invoke military force against other Europeans, but the idea spread within Britain easily enough, and they didn't lack symp…

Industrialization killed slavery not morality. The reason for abolishing slavery was that it was a backwards system that prevented the super exploitation that came naturally for the proletariat. The abolition of slavery was the proletarization of slaves. It absolutely was economic in nature. There was no economic need for slavery anymore, it didnt end racism tho, which was the ideological weapon that permited slavery…

I don't understand how it's possible to read contemporary thinkers and come to those conclusions about their mindset.

Re: Nonviolence

#118

Post by Atlas667 »

zahlman wrote: post #117
Atlas667 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industrialization killed slavery not morality. The reason for abolishing slavery was that it was a backwards system that prevented the super exploitation that came naturally for the proletariat. The abolition of slavery was the proletarization of slaves. It absolutely was economic in nature. There was no economic need for slavery anymore, it didnt end racism tho, which was the ideological weapon that permited slavery…

I don't understand how it's possible to read contemporary thinkers and come to those conclusions about their mindset.

What?

Re: Nonviolence

#119

Post by nathan_compton »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #51
nathan_compton wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All Lives Matter" redirects attention away from the specific thing "Black Lives Matter" was meant to draw attention to, which is that, if you are black specifically your chance of getting killed in an interaction with police is higher. There are other racial issues surfaced by black lives matter, as a slogan, eg, having to do with health care, real estate, etc. No one things that all lives don't matter, but the stat…

> if you are black specifically your chance of getting killed in an interaction with police is higher. Again, not an expert. But, are we talking per police interaction, or per capita, or of all police homicides? Pretty sure when I saw, far more unarmed white people were killed than unarmed black people per year, which per capita makes sense, right? But, isn’t total police interactions more inportant?

Its very hard to get a sense for this. There are a few papers which indicate that on a per interaction basis, black and latino people are a few percent more likely to end up dead than white people, but that, again, doesn't necessarily mean that police are more disposed to escalate with these two groups. "Criminality" might be higher among some groups than others, and so the context of interactions with police might be different, but, on the other hand, criminality is to some degree socially constructed and is also correlated with economic hardship, which is racialized in the US (and most other places).

I'm not really interested in defending some sort of per se percentage of unjust police killings, anyway. I think there is ample enough evidence that racism is still a pretty big issue in the US that the slogan "black lives matter" is at worst harmless and at best communicates something important.

Re: Nonviolence

#120

Post by judahmeek »

Gagarin1917 wrote: post #69
Rperry2174 wrote: post #28

This is a good articulation of mlkjr's theology and dicipline around nonviolence, but I think its incomplete if you read it in isolation. His strategy worked because it existed alongside MANY other voices, IMO the most underrated of which is Malcolm X, that rejected this "gradualism" outright and refused endless delay. They weren't organizing violence but they were instead making it credible that there is a world whe…

I’m not sure that logically tracks. You (likely) act in a non-violent way every day. If you want some kind of change in your life, you achieve it non-violently. Does that imply you are are actually a violent person that is choosing not to be violent? Are you implying “something violent” every day you act like a good person? MLK didn’t have support because people were afraid of the alternative. They supported him beca…

> MLK didn’t have support because people were afraid of the alternative. They supported him because they agreed with him message.

You sound like you've never heard of political triangulation before.

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