Yesterday Bill Ayers came and spoke at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. His main point was that people should open their eyes and not ignore the injustices that are occurring in the world around them. On top of that he stressed that non-violent direct action was the only proper way to respond to injustice. The question I had hoped to ask is how would he apply his theory to a tank. Meaning how are the people that are protesting their respective governments in the Middle East. The regime that is currently in the news for taking direct violent action is Libya.
Colonel/Dictator Gaddafi has ordered tanks and fighter jets to open fire on defenseless civilians in hopes of crushing their protests that have been spreading throughout the country for days now. Although the military is split on the issue of whether or not to follow their orders given by Gaddafi, there are still members of the armed forces that have been killing civilians with million dollar war machines supplied mostly by the United States (which raises many more questions that I am not willing to address).
Discuss...
Unfortunately, I was unable to attend Bill Ayers speech yesterday, but I have read a lot about him. Your question about how to apply non-violent direct action to face tanks is really interesting. I think that his main point is that the awareness of what is going on in the world is the starting point for being socially active. I agree that the only way to respond to injustice is non-violent direct action and activism, because it is the best way to build something really stable and based on true consensus.
ReplyDeleteI also think that we should distinguish among completely different circumstances: activism and non-violent direct actions are the voice "tools" in democracies during normality periods. In Libya nothing seems to run normally, therefore I think that the voice tools should be adapted to the particular current circumstance.