“There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.” (Mahatma Gandhi, The story of my experiments with truth, 1927)
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, often known as Mahatma (“Great Soul” in Sanskrit) was born October 2, 1869. In 2007, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved a resolution to create an International Day of Non-Violence on October 2 to commemorate his birthday.
In anticipation of his birthday, we provide a list of some of the relatively recent non-violent movements and their goals:
- Martin Luther King’s campaign in the 1960s to achieve his dream: “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal'”
- Anti-nuclear protests in the 1970s and 1980s—for example, at the Montague Nuclear Plant site where the actions of one man, Sam Lovejoy, led to cancellation of plans for a nuclear power plant
- The Chinese pro-democracy movement of 1987-1989, most memorable for the protests in Tiananmen Square
- The end of apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s
- The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions of 2010 and 2011
- The current demonstrations against economic and political control of the United States by Wall Street
To start a non-violent campaign of your own, you may find the steps offered in this document helpful.
Non-violence can achieve results.
Some wonderful examples can be found in the book A force more powerful: A century of non-violent conflict by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall.
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology