“We should be thinking about our individual preparation. And if you are familiar with the Roadmap model, that we have on Metta Center’s website, it will kind of display this in a clear way. There's plenty of room and time for us to strengthen ourselves individually by learning, by spiritual practice, by bracing ourselves for self-sacrifice and suffering. That's one thing we should be doing, and I think it's the most important one."

Given the inexplicable and distressing rise of authoritarianism happening around the world today, including conspicuously here in these United States, I thought it would be a good idea to look at some of the movements of resistance that took place against the rise of the iconic authoritarian movement of our era, which was, of course, the rise of the Nazis.

When we want to restore peace and nonviolence and sanity, we're talking about re-humanization.

“Nonviolence is alive and well, despite the fact that violence is also so prominent in our world today.”

“So, you have gotten the dictator out of power. Then what happens?”

“A lot of positive constructive things can be done, a lot of collaboration can happen.”

In a nonviolent struggle, it's not a, ‘me against you’. It's how do we join forces together to make things better, to back away from unnecessary suffering? And if there's going to be any suffering in this situation, we're going to embrace it ourselves.

The most effective and positive benefit of having a constructive program is that your program becomes the scaffolding on which you're going to build a new society. If your movement has a long-term goal of complete replacement of regime, then you can strategically graduate from issues which are the easiest to succeed at, to issues which are the hardest, gathering strength as you go along.

There's no question that art plays a role. It can affect our imagination and our way of seeing the world. 

Because Gandhi, after all, called nonviolence not only a force, but the greatest power mankind has been endowed with. And I think that this is true. And I think it's true because nonviolence is in some way the core of our nature. It's a core of what makes us human. 

I failed to realize that the vast majority of people, even in a progressive environment, such as what Berkeley claimed itself to be – I sometimes wonder – there was a tremendous fear of disruption without constructive program. And that took me years, really, after the movement to learn. That you have to not only incorporate but lead with constructive program. Meaning, what are you going to build and not just what you are going to tear down?

In these examples, you see how the conversion of a person from a state of anger and fear to a state of what Marshall Frady called a forgiving love, actually does seem to have an impact on the entire emotional-spiritual consciousness environment and affects the outcome of a situation and changes the minds of others.

If you can somehow compass a success without a conquest, you will not have alienated your previous opponent. And that means that you will have built closer relationships, and we should remember that this is always a goal of nonviolent action.

Nonviolence, to be practiced with effect, requires training and preparation and strategy. It requires astuteness in understanding your situation. And underneath, giving life to all of that, an understanding that every one of us has an instinct towards the feeling that what happens to our fellow human beings in some way also happens to us.