Jonathan Edward Schell the 68 year old US author in an interview with Andy Kroll for Tomdispatch tackled the question of what exactly is nonviolent action? Schell stated “…I was led to see that there were forms of nonviolent action that could unravel and topple the most violent forms of government ever conceived — namely, the totalitarian. This went entirely against the conventional wisdom of political science, which taught that force is the ultima ratio, the final arbiter; that if you had superior weaponry and superior military power you were the winner… So I asked myself what exactly is nonviolent action? What is popular protest? How does it work? …a peaceful protest led by Mohandas Gandhi at the Empire Theater in Johannesburg, South Africa, on September 11, 1906. It’s rare that you can date a social invention to a particular day and meeting, but I think you can in this case.  Gandhi called himself an experimenter in truth. He’s really the Einstein of nonviolence.…before the Occupy movement here… We didn’t know how to drop a bucket into our own hearts and come up with the necessary will to do the things that needed to be done.”

 

Inspired by Andrew Kroll http://ow.ly/9AXSQ image source David Shankbone http://ow.ly/9AYzV