Poet Maya Angelou once said that courage is “the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” It takes courage to “stand your ground” and I am nottalking about the law in Florida (or others like it around the country) which cruelly allows a person to commit murder without meaningful legal accountability. Standing your real ground is a powerful act; we can find that ground by refusing to be guided by our fear and refusing to lose sight of the other’s humanity.
One of the main misconceptions that surround laws like Stand Your Ground is that somehow violence is an adequate, effective response to a threat; that violence is the only form of power that the individual can exercise. However, peace researcher and economist Kenneth Boulding believed that power had more than one face. He acknowledges that there is ‘threat power’, the kind of power released in when one party says to the other, “do what I want or else.” He also notes that there is ‘exchange power’ where one party will say to the other, “you give me what I want and I’ll give you what you want.” The third face of power is ‘integrative power,’ the kind of power released in a nonviolent interaction. In this dialogue a person will say, “I will not shrink out of fear from you, but I will not harm you, either, and this will bring us closer together.” When we draw upon integrative power, we offer our authenticity, our supposed vulnerability of not striking back, and we hold ourselves up in dignity in the face of a threat, injury or insult. This actually has transformative results.
Fear is often a product of our imaginations, while case studies of nonviolence show us, time and again, the power of nonviolence is quite real, even if we are conditioned by the mass-media not to believe it. I am thinking of David Hartsough. During the Civil Rights Movement he participated in a lunch counter sit-in in Virginia. He had been sitting for a while, quietly praying, when a segregationist walked up to him, placed a knife at his throat and threatened to harm him if he did not leave. David stood his ground, however, and said, “You do what you feel you have to, brother, and I will try to love you anyway.” The man’s hand began to visibly shake; he dropped the knife and walked out of the restaurant with his eyes tearing up. David did not submit to a threat and he was not moved to respond to his fear in an irrational manner. Yes, it was dangerous; yes it was a risk, but imagine what might have transpired if David chose to respond with violence.
Another, more recent example of a nonviolent response to a threat happened in a Walmart parking lot in Tennessee. 92 years old at the time, Pauline Jacobi put her groceries in her car and was ready to leave the premises when a man opened up her passenger-side door, entered the car and pointed a gun at her. He demanded that she give him her money or he would shoot her. She refused outright. She instead told him that she was not afraid of death because she “would go straight to heaven.” Pauline then calmly spoke to him for 10 minutes about what she cared about the most before the man broke down in tears and said he wanted to change his life. Before getting out of the car, he was startled when she voluntarily gave him all the money she had–10 dollars. Pauline refused to be coerced by a severe threat and clung to her innate sense of dignity, power and yes, faith. Her act not only saved her life, it brought her closer to her would-be-attacker and transformed his life, not to mention inspiring countless others who hear her story, perhaps even to act with similar courage in the face of such contingencies.
Let’s not forget to mention the extraordinary–though still not isolated– case of 16 year old Malala Yousafzai who was shot in the head by gun-carrying extremists in Pakistan. In her recent address at the United Nations she firmly maintained that violence did not diminish her determination or scare her into passivity:
“They thought that the bullets would silence us. But they failed. And then, out of that silence came, thousands of voices. The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born. I am the same Malala. My ambitions are the same. My hopes are the same. My dreams are the same. (…) This is the philosophy of nonviolence (…).”
David, Pauline, Malala: three faces to innumerable daily acts of courage, faces of ordinary people like you and me. They do not possess some exceptional power that is the luck of the draw among human beings. They do not experience less fear than you and I would. No, they have every natural capacity that we have for both violence and nonviolence; for either bitterness and hatred or detachment and creative action as we do.
What their stories show us, if we are willing to hear it, is that the nonviolent response is the only solid ground we have. It creates acommon ground where we are all invited to inhabit and move beyond the shaky ground of our violent institutions, laws and systems that tend to allow, if not encourage, people to act on their fears and insecurities. Think about it–has there been a time in your life when you responded to a threat with a threat or with violent force in kind? Ask yourself: Did it lead to the long-term results you expected? Did it make you feel safer? Did it increase your independence? And what about the other person: Did it add to their safety and security, leading to better and more secure community? Ask yourself the same questions about a time when you or someone you know accessed the power of nonviolence.
Let our stories be heard. Security is not a zero-sum, winner-take-all, game. We cannot make others insecure in search of our own safety without consequences. When we realize that we will evolve the kinds of institutions worthy of a human being, institutions that draw upon our natural ability to convert fear into what Gandhi calls “a power that can move the world.” We are called now to stand our ground for one another in the face of “realists” who say that a less violent world is not realistic. In the words of Rabbi Michael Lerner, we have to be the new realists. Let us draw upon our courage and not be disheartened in our struggle toward beloved community.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy