Speaker 1: Not long after Martin Luther King Jr. Was killed in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, a cartoon ran in the Chicago Sun Times.
Speaker 1: It showed King standing next to a seated Mahandas Gandhi,
Speaker 1: another iconic leader, slain by an assassin's bullet. The cartoon,
Speaker 1: Gandhi tells King the following, The odd thing about assassin's
Speaker 1: doctor King is that they think they've killed you. The
Speaker 1: American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that society punishes
Speaker 1: those who try to improve it. King and Gandhi were
Speaker 1: willing to take that punishment. In fact, they welcomed it
Speaker 1: as the price of change, even when it meant losing
Speaker 1: their own lives. And indeed, as the cartoon suggested, the
Speaker 1: principles of love and nonviolence that they preached did not
Speaker 1: die with them. What Gandhi called the Sole Force continues
Speaker 1: to live on in the hearts of millions, challenging injustice
Speaker 1: all over the globe. All in we go to find
Speaker 1: we have to we got to all up the good,
Speaker 1: save that we've got to all it up to wed.
Speaker 1: I'm Sean Braswell, and this is the thread. This season,
Speaker 1: we've traced the origins of a powerful idea, one that
Speaker 1: has cross continence and transcended religion, class, and other barriers
Speaker 1: to change the lives of millions of people during the
Speaker 1: past two hundred years. That idea is non violent resistance,
Speaker 1: the counterintuitive notion that the best way to reform your
Speaker 1: enemies is to love them. The best way to counter
Speaker 1: their blows is to absorb them. Here's a quick recap
Speaker 1: of where our journey through the history of non violence
Speaker 1: has taken us this season. We began with the Reverend
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King, Jr. The American most famous for you
Speaker 1: a nonviolent protest. Well several weeks now were the Migro
Speaker 1: citizens of Montgomery have been involved in a non violent
Speaker 1: protest against the injustices, which we have experienced on the
Speaker 1: busses a number of years. King, however, was standing on
Speaker 1: the shoulders of giants, starting with his own mentor Buyer Rusting,
Speaker 1: a tireless activist who organized the March on Washington and
Speaker 1: transformed the civil rights movement into a powerful force from
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. The man who believes in non violence
Speaker 1: is prepared to be hard to be crushed, but he
Speaker 1: will never crush others. Buyer Rustin's own arsenal of non
Speaker 1: violent tactics, in turn, were borrowed from a remarkable Indian
Speaker 1: I regard my tiv as a soldier Bill as a
Speaker 1: young lawyer. Mahandas Gandhi learned about the potential of non
Speaker 1: violence from another larger than life figure. After he accepted
Speaker 1: passive resistance, he wanted to learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about it from Tolstoy, and so he started a correspondence
Speaker 1: with him, which we went on for several years. Meccan
Speaker 1: for Leo Tolstoy. In his youth, the Russian wrote two
Speaker 1: of the most famous novels ever written. Then he underwent
Speaker 1: an awaken one that led him to a means for
Speaker 1: translating spiritual love into a force for political resistance. He
Speaker 1: didn't want to really have to deal at all with
Speaker 1: coercion at any level. And this is really the sort
Speaker 1: of heart of the idea of non violence and what
Speaker 1: so inspired him about William Lloyd Garrison too, the American
Speaker 1: abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, the man who influenced Tolstoy, was
Speaker 1: really the first thinker to realize the potential of mass
Speaker 1: nonviolent resistance. But the launch of Garrison's big idea and
Speaker 1: his influential anti slavery newspaper depended up on another made.
Speaker 1: In this final episode of the Thread, we'll learn about
Speaker 1: that man and the single act of love for an
Speaker 1: enemy that kick starts our entire thread. We'll also tie
Speaker 1: together some of the themes that unite our history of
Speaker 1: non violence and find out about some of the surprising
Speaker 1: traits shared by the historical figures we've covered this season. Finally,
Speaker 1: we'll look at the history of non violence in the
Speaker 1: fifty years since Dr King's death and how this revolutionary
Speaker 1: idea continues to change the world. In the last episode,
Speaker 1: we learned about how William Lloyd Garrison founded a newspaper
Speaker 1: called The Liberator. In one historian Bruce Laurie, Garrison's Liberator
Speaker 1: is the most important anti slavery newspaper in the United States,
Speaker 1: some would argue, in the world. In the pages of
Speaker 1: The Liberator, the white abolitionist argued not only for the
Speaker 1: end of slavery in the United States, but also for
Speaker 1: improving the treatment of all African Americans. To get his
Speaker 1: messag joubt, Garrison depended heavily upon local black communities. At
Speaker 1: least three quarters of readership is black, very unusual for
Speaker 1: the time because he was one of the few whites
Speaker 1: who openly espoused the quality. Garrison also cultivated relationships with
Speaker 1: prominent black intellectuals, business leaders, and activists in northern cities,
Speaker 1: and what would become the most important anti slavery publication
Speaker 1: in American history would never have made it off the
Speaker 1: presses if not for one prominent black businessman, in particular,
Speaker 1: a salemaker from Philadelphia named James Forton. The twenty five
Speaker 1: year old Garrison reached out to Forton for help in
Speaker 1: December eighteen thirty. The mock up of the very first
Speaker 1: issue of The Liberator was ready to print, but Garrison
Speaker 1: had a big problem. He could not afford the paper
Speaker 1: required for its first print run, and so had to
Speaker 1: pay for it on credit. The day the bill came due,
Speaker 1: Garrison still did not have the money, but that very
Speaker 1: same day Garrison and received a letter from the wealthy businessman.
Speaker 1: This is Forton biographer Julie Wench. He sends Garrison a
Speaker 1: draft for fifty four dollars, which is a substantial amount
Speaker 1: of money for Garrison. It was a life raft at
Speaker 1: a critical moment in his new venture. He often credited
Speaker 1: Forton with making the Liberator possible. But fort in support
Speaker 1: of Garrison, did not stop with that first issue. And
Speaker 1: he is just always there for Garrison, and that is
Speaker 1: so important. Garrison doesn't have that many friends, black or white.
Speaker 1: He is from a fairly poor background himself, so he
Speaker 1: does not have inherited money and inherited connections to rely on.
Speaker 1: And that is what Forton really comes out for for
Speaker 1: him and assists him with. And not just once, but repeatedly.
Speaker 1: Garrison and Forton became close friends, and fort never refused
Speaker 1: his friends please for help. So this is somebody who
Speaker 1: gives everything he has, uh just being generous in terms
Speaker 1: of money, but giving energy and moral support and friendship
Speaker 1: two people black or white, whose support what he thinks
Speaker 1: will make America a better place. Forton had been a
Speaker 1: leading figure in Philadelphia's black community and had been fighting
Speaker 1: to end slavery before Garrison was even born. He had
Speaker 1: overcome incredible odds as a black man to make his
Speaker 1: way in the business world in a mass of fortune.
Speaker 1: But despite the obstacles he had encountered in his life
Speaker 1: and his hatred of slavery, Forton was a devoted patriot
Speaker 1: who believed in the ideals of the young nation he
Speaker 1: had grown up in. When the American Colonies went to
Speaker 1: war with the British, Forton enlisted to fight. He was
Speaker 1: just fourteen years old, and it was during the Revolutionary
Speaker 1: War that the man who made William Lloyd Garrison's career
Speaker 1: possible nearly became a slave himsel elf. Indeed, Forton's fate
Speaker 1: and that of our entire thread, turn on a single
Speaker 1: game of marbles. When the Revolutionary War began, the young
Speaker 1: James Forton joined the war effort as a sailor in
Speaker 1: the ship he was aboard was pursued and attacked by
Speaker 1: a British vessel just off the coast of Virginia Julie Winch. Again,
Speaker 1: the British vessel is bigger, more heavily manned, and the
Speaker 1: American vessel is forced to surrender, at which point Foughton
Speaker 1: and all the other people on board become prisoners of
Speaker 1: the British. Fort knew fullwell what happened to most black
Speaker 1: men who were taken as prisoners of war by the British.
Speaker 1: They were shipped off to the West Indies and doomed
Speaker 1: to a life of slavery. Luckily, for the teenage Forton,
Speaker 1: Captain John Baisley, the man in charge of the British
Speaker 1: ship that had taken him prisoner, had his own problem,
Speaker 1: his twelve year old son, Henry. And apparently the twelve
Speaker 1: year old is board and his father is trying to
Speaker 1: find somebody just to keep an eye on him. He
Speaker 1: cannot have any of his own sailors do this. He
Speaker 1: can't take men out of a gun crew and have
Speaker 1: them babysaid as kid. So he's going to use one
Speaker 1: of the prisoners to do it. And he's obviously looking
Speaker 1: for somebody close to his son's age, and he lights
Speaker 1: upon Forton, and so Captain Baisley enlists Forton to keep
Speaker 1: his son company and keep him out of trouble on
Speaker 1: the warship. The two youngsters hit it off and fought
Speaker 1: in apparently, cements his friendship with the young British boy
Speaker 1: through a game of marbles on the gun deck. That
Speaker 1: game of marble's captures the boy's imagination, and the captain
Speaker 1: is impressed by the good influence that Forton is having
Speaker 1: on his son. The friendship between Forton and young Henry
Speaker 1: aboard the ship deepens in the coming weeks, and when
Speaker 1: it comes time for the British prisoners to be offloaded,
Speaker 1: and the black ones among them to be shipped off
Speaker 1: to the West Indies. Captain Baisley intervenes to ensure that
Speaker 1: Forton is not among them. He never forgot Captain Baisley's kindness.
Speaker 1: The story that James Funton tells friends and relatives is
Speaker 1: that he really believed that had the baseless not taken
Speaker 1: a liking to him and this friendship that's really cemented
Speaker 1: by this play of a game of marbles, uh that
Speaker 1: he could have been sold into slavery in the West End.
Speaker 1: Is So, this is something he really sees as one
Speaker 1: of those events in his life that's absolutely pivotal, and
Speaker 1: it's pivotal to our threat as well. Think about it.
Speaker 1: In a game of marbles between two boys takes place
Speaker 1: aboard the deck of a British warship in the Atlantic Ocean,
Speaker 1: a friendship ensues. As a result, a young black man,
Speaker 1: James Forton, is given in his freedom through a single
Speaker 1: act of love and understanding from a sworn enemy, sparking
Speaker 1: a series of events that will culminate two centuries later
Speaker 1: with another young black man, Martin Luther King Jr. Becoming
Speaker 1: the embodiment of the idea that loving one's enemy is
Speaker 1: the best way to achieve one's freedom. In that way,
Speaker 1: our story comes full circle from the American colonies of
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century to the civil rights movement of the
Speaker 1: twenty Indeed, the non violent idea that James Forton helped
Speaker 1: unleash did more than just change the way that ordinary
Speaker 1: citizens protest injustice. It helped to redeem the promise of
Speaker 1: an entire nation. Up next, we find out about some
Speaker 1: of the surprising traits shared by the historical figures we've
Speaker 1: covered this season. From its beginning, the history of America
Speaker 1: has been one that is steeped in blood and violence,
Speaker 1: and in the end, the question of slavery in the
Speaker 1: US could only be resolved to the massive loss of
Speaker 1: human life. Martin Luther King, by Ed Rustin, and the
Speaker 1: leaders of the U s Civil rights movement chose to
Speaker 1: pursue widespread social change in a different way, one that
Speaker 1: required the difficult decision to jettison violence and choose love
Speaker 1: over hate. This is King in nineteen sixty six talking
Speaker 1: about the message that non violence sends to one's opponents.
Speaker 1: We will match your capacity to inflict suffering our capacity
Speaker 1: to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with
Speaker 1: soul force. Do to us what you will, and we
Speaker 1: will still love you. King had a name for the
Speaker 1: redemptive potential of non violence, the power of love to
Speaker 1: redeem not only the oppressed, but the oppressor as well.
Speaker 1: He called it quote a double victory. And one day
Speaker 1: we will win our freedom, but we will not only
Speaker 1: win freedom for ourselves. We will show appeal to your
Speaker 1: heart and your conscience that we will win you in
Speaker 1: the process, and our victory will be a double victory.
Speaker 1: And that is what made the nonviolent protests of the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement such a remarkable force for change in
Speaker 1: American history. King Ruston and others succeeded where previous activists
Speaker 1: had failed, and what they accomplished through non violence, imperfect
Speaker 1: and incomplete as it was, was in many ways more
Speaker 1: impressive than any American war victory because it was a
Speaker 1: double victory. Indeed, those who fought and struggled peacefully to
Speaker 1: win both their rights and the hearts of their oppressors
Speaker 1: deserve a special place in history. King and the famous
Speaker 1: letter he wrote while imprisoned in the Birmingham jail claimed, quote,
Speaker 1: one day the South will recognize its real heroes. He
Speaker 1: did not mean its Confederate war heroes. King meant the
Speaker 1: grand mothers who walked miles to work rather than to
Speaker 1: ride on a segregated bus, The students who refused to
Speaker 1: give up their seats at a lunch counter, the demonstrators
Speaker 1: who faced down the hoses and the police dogs. What
Speaker 1: King and Rustin and before them William Lloyd Garrison accomplished
Speaker 1: through non violence was not just the redemption of their
Speaker 1: immediate opponents, but the redemption of the very idea of
Speaker 1: a nation dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal.
Speaker 1: So where does such a capacity for helping others, including
Speaker 1: one sworn enemies come from? How did Gandhi, King, Rustin
Speaker 1: and other leaders managed to adhere to their message of
Speaker 1: love even when confronted with overwhelming violence and hatred. Well,
Speaker 1: it starts with a trait that we don't usually praise,
Speaker 1: one we even stigmatize, maladjustment. King often talked about this.
Speaker 1: Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more
Speaker 1: than any other word in psychology is a word maladjusted.
Speaker 1: This is King at U c l a in n.
Speaker 1: Certainly we all want to live the well adjusted life.
Speaker 1: In order to avoid new rotican schizophrenic personality. And I
Speaker 1: must honestly say to you this afternoon, my friends, they're
Speaker 1: some things within our world, in our nations, of which
Speaker 1: I'm proud to be maladjusted, but I never intend to
Speaker 1: become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. King would go on
Speaker 1: to add the quote human salvation lies in the hands
Speaker 1: of the creatively maladjusted. He was right, and even more
Speaker 1: than he ever knew, Martin Luther King Jr. Believed that
Speaker 1: being maladjusted to the world and to the status quo
Speaker 1: was essential to the fight against injustice. But it was
Speaker 1: also a big part of what made King the leader
Speaker 1: he was. This is the Seer Gami. He's a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: at Tufts University and Harvard Medical School who studies depression
Speaker 1: and bipolar illness, and who has written about leaders who
Speaker 1: have suffered from manic depressive illnesses. So I think King's
Speaker 1: idea was that we need to be maladjusted enough with
Speaker 1: the world to want to change it for the better.
Speaker 1: My view is that this is not a purely intellectual
Speaker 1: concept or even a purely spiritual one, although it certainly
Speaker 1: has aspects of both. I think it's also emotional and
Speaker 1: psychological in that King himself, being depressed as well as
Speaker 1: having manic symptoms as part of his personality, was maladjusted
Speaker 1: to the world as it was as a human being.
Speaker 1: That's right, Martin Luther King Jr. Almost certainly suffered from
Speaker 1: manic depression. He was clinically maladjusted. King experienced depression during
Speaker 1: his adolescence, which manifested itself in two suicide attempts, but
Speaker 1: it went beyond that. He had periods of depression throughout
Speaker 1: his life where he would, for a few days to
Speaker 1: a few weeks, often need to go into a medical hospital.
Speaker 1: He was hospitalized for exhaustion was the diagnosis that was
Speaker 1: frequently given, but he never had any physical medical cause
Speaker 1: for his hospitalizations. King was often in despair. Near the
Speaker 1: end of his life. He lamented that his dream had
Speaker 1: turned into a nightmare and he was likely in the
Speaker 1: grips of a deepening depression when he was murdered fifty
Speaker 1: years ago in Memphis, Tennessee. King was not alone in
Speaker 1: his battles with depression. Mahandas Gandhi also suffered several bouts
Speaker 1: of severe depression in his life, starting in adolescence when
Speaker 1: he was around twelve years old. He decided to kill
Speaker 1: himself and went with a friend to a temple with
Speaker 1: poison and was on the verge of taking it until
Speaker 1: he backed out at the last second, and as with King,
Speaker 1: it did not end there. And then later in his
Speaker 1: life he would have periods of time where for a
Speaker 1: week or a couple of weeks, he would just take
Speaker 1: to his bed. He would feel very sick physically, and
Speaker 1: doctors would tell him that there was nothing medically wrong
Speaker 1: with him, but he would describe how he would go
Speaker 1: to bed at night and be convinced that he was
Speaker 1: going to die. Another champion of non violence who could
Speaker 1: identify with such experiences was Leo Tolstoy. This is Tolstoy
Speaker 1: biographer J. Parini Tolstoy was bordering on bipolar. He he
Speaker 1: seemed to have, you know, periods of extreme exhilaration with
Speaker 1: periods of very dark depression, and he often talked to
Speaker 1: his friends about wanting to commit suicide. Tolstoy's own psychological condition, however,
Speaker 1: is also arguably what made him such a good novelist,
Speaker 1: and like Gandhi and King, it gave him a profound
Speaker 1: sense of empathy. Why is empathy so important? Because it
Speaker 1: is the secret ingredient of non violence. Gandhi once said
Speaker 1: three four of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world
Speaker 1: will disappear if we step into the shoes of our
Speaker 1: adversaries and understand their standpoint. Stepping into the shoes of
Speaker 1: your adversary is not an easy thing to do, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't as hard for individuals like King Gandhi and Tolstoy.
Speaker 1: And we are starting to understand why that's the King.
Speaker 1: So there's research that shows that people who have depression
Speaker 1: are more empathic than people who don't have depression. The
Speaker 1: year got me again. We know that. What we don't
Speaker 1: really know the how and why we know that people
Speaker 1: are depressed or more empathic. Um. Now, if I were
Speaker 1: to speculate about it, I've talked to patients of mind
Speaker 1: who have had depression, and they describe that when they're
Speaker 1: depressed and in amount a great deal of psychological pain,
Speaker 1: and they can understand the pain of others more they
Speaker 1: feel the pain of others. One patient of mine once
Speaker 1: said that when she was really depressed, she could barely
Speaker 1: walk outside because she could feel every blade of grass
Speaker 1: crumble under her feet. And um. Most of us who
Speaker 1: are not depressed most of the time, just ignore those things.
Speaker 1: In other words, dealing with depression is painful, but in
Speaker 1: some ways, depressed people see reality more clearly than others do,
Speaker 1: and that experience deepens their natural empathy for those around them.
Speaker 1: I think of non violence as radical empathy. And Um,
Speaker 1: you can turn the other cheek and not strike back
Speaker 1: because you care about the other person who's hitting you. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a very hard thing for a human being to achieve. Gandhi,
Speaker 1: King and Tolstoy not only shared a philosophy of non violence,
Speaker 1: but also a very similar psychological profile. My thinking is
Speaker 1: that that these aren't coincidences, that the reason they took
Speaker 1: this political philosophy of nonviolent change has to do in
Speaker 1: part with the fact that they had experienced depression repeatedly
Speaker 1: in their lives. Enhanced empathy, though, is only part of
Speaker 1: the equation. J Parini again, people who live on the
Speaker 1: edges like Gandhi, Um, Martin Luther King. These are people
Speaker 1: who are visionaries and who can see both the very
Speaker 1: bright sun and the very dark sky. And I think
Speaker 1: that they they swing between yes and no all the time.
Speaker 1: And I think Tolstoy was always hovering between the yes
Speaker 1: and the no. And if the no side of things
Speaker 1: led such visionaries into a greater sense of empathy, the
Speaker 1: yes side, the manic side drove them to excel in
Speaker 1: an entirely different way. Many people don't understand what mania means,
Speaker 1: or the term to them is um pejorative. All it
Speaker 1: really means is that you talk fast, you move fast,
Speaker 1: you think fast, you have a lot of energy. Usually
Speaker 1: such persons are very productive. Take Martin Luther King. Usually
Speaker 1: Dr King was very high energy, both physically and sexually.
Speaker 1: He only needed about four hours of sleep at night
Speaker 1: or buyer d resting, So generally he was a high
Speaker 1: energy person with a high sexual drive, who spent a
Speaker 1: lot of money, who was very flamboyant and very talkative,
Speaker 1: and very creative. In fact, steadies show that having manic
Speaker 1: symptoms as part of your personality can help make you
Speaker 1: both more creative and more resilient. You are less likely
Speaker 1: to experience major traumas or stress even in the face
Speaker 1: of incredible adversity, and that is precisely what you need
Speaker 1: in a nonviolent leader. One thing you can say about
Speaker 1: all of them is that they had a lot of courage,
Speaker 1: and you can especially say that about Dr King perhaps
Speaker 1: the most, but also Gandhi certainly and Rusten. They had
Speaker 1: a lot of personal courage. They were not scared by
Speaker 1: people easily um or if they were scared, they didn't
Speaker 1: let that fear stop them from being true to their principles.
Speaker 1: And they were able not only to channel their own
Speaker 1: energy and aggressive impulses into the courage needed to resist violence,
Speaker 1: they were able to show their followers how to do
Speaker 1: the same. But their examples teach us about much more
Speaker 1: than just how to battle injustice. So Gandhi and King
Speaker 1: and Rusten are important because they were trying to to
Speaker 1: change our mindset on race and and sexuality. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, if we understand them well, we have
Speaker 1: to change our mindset around psychiatric illness. And I think
Speaker 1: that's an important, important aspect of really knowing who they were.
Speaker 1: The legacy of non violence continues to be felt today.
Speaker 1: Up next, we look at some of the most powerful
Speaker 1: examples of non violent protests in the fifty years since
Speaker 1: Dr King's death, and here about new scientific research confirming
Speaker 1: just how effective non violence is as a means for
Speaker 1: accomplishing social change. The twentieth century was an extremely violent one,
Speaker 1: almost two million people died in war by the end
Speaker 1: of it. But the century also witnessed the emergence of
Speaker 1: non violent protests on a whole new scale, and well
Speaker 1: beyond those we have covered in our particular Threat of History.
Speaker 1: This season, in the wake of Gandhi's Indian Independence movement
Speaker 1: and the Civil Rights Movement, peaceful demonstrations seemed to break
Speaker 1: out everywhere. This is Bayard Rustin talking about the impact
Speaker 1: of the Civil Rights movement. I think the movement contributed
Speaker 1: this nation a sense of universal freedom. The fact that
Speaker 1: the people who were against the war in Vietnam saw
Speaker 1: us go into the street and win made it possible
Speaker 1: for them to have the courage to go into the
Speaker 1: street and win. Thousands of demonstrators opposed to the Vietnam
Speaker 1: war assembled in the nation's capital for a mass protest,
Speaker 1: convinced they could take to the streets and win. Millions
Speaker 1: of American women started a new movement during the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies to demand change. Across the world, non violent scored
Speaker 1: major victories. During the late nineteen eighties, non violent protesters
Speaker 1: in the former Soviet Union gathered in the streets to
Speaker 1: sing band patriotic songs and defiance of their occupiers. It
Speaker 1: became known as the Singing Revolution and it worked across
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe. Millions of people from the Baltic States to
Speaker 1: Hungary and Czechoslovakia also refused to cooperate in their own oppression.
Speaker 1: This is Mark Kurlansky, author of non Violence, The History
Speaker 1: of a Dangerous Idea. The whole downfall of the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union was done without violence. You know, the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: was a powerful and violent force that was completely destabilized
Speaker 1: and overthrown without the use of violence. By non cooperation.
Speaker 1: In some places, non violent protests has become the new norm.
Speaker 1: Most of the political movements in the US since the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Movement have been essentially non violent movements. There
Speaker 1: has become a pretty deep tradition in this country of
Speaker 1: resisting non violently, and in an age of information and
Speaker 1: social media, those non violent protest movements continue to evolve.
Speaker 1: This year, after a school shooting at a high school
Speaker 1: in Parkland, Florida, a group of students banded together to
Speaker 1: push for gun control reforms. Then it's time for victims
Speaker 1: to be the change that we need to see. The
Speaker 1: Parkland protest movement, which became known as the March for
Speaker 1: Our Lives drew on past American protest movements, but it
Speaker 1: also transcended them in new ways. I don't think it
Speaker 1: was a conscious choice that, you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: be non violent because it's effective. This is reporter Alex Dockerty,
Speaker 1: the Washington correspondent for the Miami Herald. What I think
Speaker 1: makes the advocacy that the March for Our Lives students
Speaker 1: engaged in so unique was that it didn't come from
Speaker 1: a Martin Luther King or an older figure saying, look,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be a very powerful message to
Speaker 1: have the kids on our side and to have the
Speaker 1: kids conveying our argument. It was the kids themselves driving
Speaker 1: that argument. Another recent example of new voices driving an
Speaker 1: argument through non violent resistance is the group of professional
Speaker 1: football players led by Colin Kaepernick, that began kneeling during
Speaker 1: the national anthem to draw attention to police brutality in America.
Speaker 1: It's the rare occasion when sports and politics collide at
Speaker 1: an NFL quarterback has has certainly ignited a firestorm. We're
Speaker 1: talking about Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick's protest has been called divisive
Speaker 1: and unpatriotic, and he has been criticized by everyone from
Speaker 1: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to President Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners
Speaker 1: when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, get that son
Speaker 1: of a drop the field right now out. He's fired.
Speaker 1: But one thing that nobody has done with respect to
Speaker 1: Kaepernick is ignore him. The non violent protests that leaders
Speaker 1: like King and Rustin let in places like Birmingham, were,
Speaker 1: like Kaepernick's kneeling, designed to be divisive to get people's attention.
Speaker 1: Kaepernick is a troublemaker, and as we have learned this season,
Speaker 1: non violent troublemakers can accomplish a surprising amount. Why it
Speaker 1: turns out that non violent is a very effective tactic
Speaker 1: for achieving social change, and we are only now starting
Speaker 1: to understand just how profound its impact can be. Love,
Speaker 1: the soul force, whatever you want to call organized nonviolent resistance,
Speaker 1: is not only a moral force, it is also a
Speaker 1: highly effective one. Gandhi realized this fact early on Mark Kurlansky.
Speaker 1: He said, we don't have to worry about people who
Speaker 1: don't believe it will work, because it's like gravity. It
Speaker 1: will work whether we believe in it or not, and
Speaker 1: recent research by two American political scientists appears to back
Speaker 1: up Gandhi's intuition. Kit Miller, there's a substantial research study
Speaker 1: that was done by Erica Chenowit and her colleague Maria
Speaker 1: Stephen studying two hundred and six occurrences of of non
Speaker 1: violent when it was used to deal with issues of
Speaker 1: conflict between the years and two thousand six. The study
Speaker 1: found the campaigns of non violent resistance were more than
Speaker 1: twice as effective as their violent counterparts. Non violent campaigns
Speaker 1: were more likely to usher in peaceful, democratic governments and
Speaker 1: to ensure that nations did not relapse into violence or
Speaker 1: civil war. Why do these campaigns work. The research suggests
Speaker 1: that non violent protests not only attract more people into
Speaker 1: their ranks, but a more diverse set of people. The
Speaker 1: fact that protesters don't resort to violence also means that
Speaker 1: they are more likely to receive broad public support, not
Speaker 1: to mention sympathy from the soldiers or police officers whose
Speaker 1: job it is to put down the resistance. Non Violence, however,
Speaker 1: is no silver bullet when it comes to achieving freedom
Speaker 1: and reform. Mark Kurlanski, and you know doesn't always work.
Speaker 1: The Tibetans have been non violently resisting the Chinese for
Speaker 1: decades and seemed not to be getting anywhere. And sometimes
Speaker 1: such movements don't even get off the ground. And Israeli
Speaker 1: general said to me, you know, you're just never going
Speaker 1: to convince anybody of the here because it's the Middle East.
Speaker 1: It's really too bad. I mean, the Palestinians could be
Speaker 1: so effective against the Israelis with non violence. It is
Speaker 1: not easy to love one's enemies. Anger is a powerful force,
Speaker 1: and overcoming it requires each of us to engage in
Speaker 1: a personal transformation. That is something that are ruined. Gandhi
Speaker 1: learned from his grandfather when he came to stay with
Speaker 1: him as a teenager. If we want to put out
Speaker 1: that trial of physical violence, we have to cut off
Speaker 1: the fuel supply. And since the fuel supply comes from
Speaker 1: each one of us, we have to become the change
Speaker 1: we wish to see in the world, and change begins
Speaker 1: with individual acts of sacrifice and kindness, not mass social movements.
Speaker 1: This is civil rights leader Timothy Jenkins think one of
Speaker 1: the things we need to remember is that small efforts
Speaker 1: can become big efforts if they're persistently followed. When dr
Speaker 1: king and by arresting and others UH were able to
Speaker 1: get things started. They were not a majority, they were
Speaker 1: not even a movement. They were just individuals who were committed.
Speaker 1: It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,
Speaker 1: and they lit a candle and they were able to
Speaker 1: overcome the darkness. And one of the big reasons that
Speaker 1: King and others were able to overcome that darkness and
Speaker 1: the power of the organized violence aligned against them was
Speaker 1: because of the fact that the candle they were using
Speaker 1: was lit by the flame of love. Less than a
Speaker 1: year after the successful Montgomery bus boycott, doctor King delivered
Speaker 1: a sermon at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery
Speaker 1: called Loving Your Enemies. He talked about how responding to
Speaker 1: injustice with violence creates more problems than it solves. But
Speaker 1: according to King, there was another way. That is to
Speaker 1: all the nine math non violent resistance based on the
Speaker 1: principle of love. It seems to me that this is
Speaker 1: the only way. Its eyes look to the kitten. As
Speaker 1: we look out across the years and across the generation,
Speaker 1: let us develop and move right here. We must discover
Speaker 1: the power of love, the power of the empty power
Speaker 1: of love. And when we discover that we will be
Speaker 1: able to make them this old world a new world.
Speaker 1: We will be able to make men better. Love is
Speaker 1: the only way we are solgers in. We had to find,
Speaker 1: We had to all God. We got to all up.
Speaker 1: The Thread is produced by Libby Coleman, Robert Coulos, Sofia
Speaker 1: Perpetua and me Sean braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show.
Speaker 1: This episode features the Montgomery Gospel Choir with a song
Speaker 1: called We Are Soldiers. To learn more about The Thread,
Speaker 1: visit ausi dot com, Slash the Thread all one word,
Speaker 1: and make sure to subscribe to The Thread on Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: follow us on I Heart Radio or listen wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Check us out at Aussie dot com
Speaker 1: or on Twitter and Facebook. If you love surprising, engaging
Speaker 1: stories from history, look no further than the flashback section
Speaker 1: of ausy dot com. That's o z y dot com.
Speaker 1: I'm a soldier, I've got my hands on the gospel.
Speaker 1: One day, gett and a cat fought anymore, but Austin,
Speaker 1: we are so in the amy. We got to find
Speaker 1: out all we have to find. We've got to all
Speaker 1: up the blast. Stay bab got t to all eat
Speaker 1: up until he die.