Thread by @bopinion

Exactly one century ago, Gandhi made a decision.

He decided that the British would not loosen control of India unless Indians themselves took direct and decisive action. He pursued only non-violent means of protest trib.al/ZY75IK8

Plenty of Indians who agreed with his goals disagreed with his ideas and his tactics. Some of them resorted to violence.

Today’s debate in the U.S. over whether violence is ever acceptable in the fight for change is hardly a new one trib.al/ZY75IK8

Many justifiably angry Americans point out that multiple forms of non-violent protest haven’t been successful:

✊🏾Earlier Black Lives Matter marches
🏈Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling
trib.al/ZY75IK8

Other Americans look at Martin Luther King Jr. and say, he talked about non-violence, but wasn’t he murdered? For that matter, wasn’t Gandhi?

With video evidence on their side, they ask: “When we are non-violent, they hit us anyway. What’s the point?” trib.al/ZY75IK8

But Gandhian protest isn’t about stopping your oppressors from hitting you: It’s about provoking them into doing so publicly.

Non-violent protest can't be chosen by the weak. Dr. King said it is the only effective alternative to “cringing and submission” trib.al/ZY75IK8

When Americans debate non-violent protest, they look at it as a purely moral question. But it’s not – it's also about tactics.

Gandhi and King recognized that they needed to create demonstrations of moral superiority if they wanted to change minds trib.al/ZY75IK8

Choosing violence instead, Gandhi and King argued, would only justify — in the oppressors’ minds — further repression.

Of course, they understood the anger that leads to violence: Dr. King famously said that “a riot is the language of the unheard” trib.al/ZY75IK8

Yet Dr. King’s same speech also included a defense of “militant, powerful, massive non-violence” as the most effective agent of change.

Violence “merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt” trib.al/ZY75IK8

Morally and tactically, non-violence forces the perpetrators of violence — particularly state-backed violence — onto the defensive.

Drama is key: It is through an obvious, dramatized contrast that the violence of the oppressor is delegitimized trib.al/ZY75IK8

Opinion polls show there’s an audience to be won over through non-violent protest:

49% of white Americans say that police are more likely to use excessive force against a black culprit, which is nearly double the number (25%) who said the same in 2016 trib.al/ZY75IK8

When you see police officers kneeling beside protesters and police chiefs apologizing, you may choose to describe it as tokenism or hypocrisy.

But Americans shouldn’t lose that opportunity. When the audience disappears, things get rapidly worse trib.al/ZY75IK8

Minds are being changed and still can be changed.

Don’t allow Dr. King to be forgotten in the land of his birth trib.al/ZY75IK8