That’s what Sue’s dad made her promise after the Kent State shootings. When the Iran protests started, she said, don’t they know what’s going to happen, that the government will come down on them hard, smashing heads and killing people.
Do I think the government will eventually fall? Yes. But ‘I see dead people’ too.
So, how do you fight for change when the other side are thugs?
70 academics arrested in Iran….Obama becomes propaganda target….Mousavi under virtual house arrest….protest numbers dwindling…..
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/world/middleeast/26iran.html?hp
The Kent State comparison is an apt one.
If often quote Crosby and Young – What if you knew her and, found her dead on the ground, how could you run when you know? Occurring on my sixteenth birthday, Kent State had a profound effect on my life, and led to my service in the immediately following years – service in-country while GW Bush was AWOL from the National Guard, and Cheney et al “had better things to do”. Not out of any “patriotic duty” but to learn how to fight back. I didn’t know her, but I couldn’t run. Sadly, Bob, I think the answer to your query is we have to become like them. Maybe not all, but some will have to, and have, sacrifice something for the greater good.
I agree with Ten Bears. My service came later and in a less formal way– working with a peace organization in Sri Lanka over the course of 14 years. I still have nightmares from the things I saw.
When you look at the movements that HAVE changed things, from the American Revolution to Gandhi to the nuns marching in East Germany to Boris Yeltsin defying the military, it takes a WILLINGNESS to die for what you believe in. If they’re willing to kill for what they want, we’ve got to be willing to die for what we want. (Risk assessment for various members of my team was a regular exercise for us in Sri Lanka.)
The use of violence is more often than not counterproductive. Some of the successful movements have been violent, but more often they have been nonviolent. For example, there were two ways to end the Sri Lankan war: our way (2002) and the violent way (2009). Too often, even when violence is successful in creating change, it merely ushers in a new oppressor. “Meet the new boss: same as the old boss.”