Nonviolence Demands Sacrifice

Nonviolence is not a way of avoiding personal sacrifice. It requires that we take that sacrifice on ourselves rather than inflict it on others. It demands a heroism that a surprisingly large number of people are prepared to shoulder.

“In this cause I, too, am prepared to die. But there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.” - Gandhi

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"Tank Man" temporarily stops the advance of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, in Beijing, in what is widely considered one of the most iconic images of the 20th century. This photograph (one of four similar versions) was taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press. The Tiananmen Square protests were student-led demonstrations in Beijing in 1989; part of the popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests during that period.

Dharasana salt works raid & lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville. Gandhi believed that “nothing could be done with a coward but that from a violent person one could make a nonviolent one.”mHe also believed that “it is impossible to move oppressed people directly from submission to active nonviolence. They need first to own their feelings of rage and even hatred and be willing to fight against their oppressors.”

Walter Wink says battered women should not simply give into their abusive husbands. Having them arrested may help the wives *and* the men get out of the spiral. Source: Wink, Walter, “Practical Nonviolence” in The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium, Doubleday; 1999. ISBN-13: 978-0385487528

Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, and social activist. He was a political science professor at Boston University. Zinn wrote more than twenty books, including his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States.