Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.
BARBARA DEMINGGandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resort to physical strength? Who better than we should know all the power that resides in noncooperation?
More Barbara Deming Quotes
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Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people’s minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide.
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Punishment cannot heal spirits, can only break them.
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This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern.
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We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women-whose stories, for all our differences, turn out, if we listen well, to be our stories also.
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Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.
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After the revolution, let us hope, prisons simply would not exist – if by prisons we mean places that could be experienced by the men and women in them at all as every place that goes by that name now is bound to be experienced.
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The longer we listen to one another – with real attention – the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.
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A great many of us must move from words to acts – from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.
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Vengeance is not the point: change is.
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It is one thing to be able to state the price the antagonist paid, another to be able to count you own real gains.
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Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.
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All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away.
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Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try – by punishing the troublesome – to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.
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People may find it more comfortable to listen to us if we equivocate, but in the long run only words that discomfort them are going to change our situation.
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I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision. . . is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive.
BARBARA DEMING