"In our struggle against racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, I came to see at a very early stage that a synthesis of Gandhi's method of nonviolence and the Christian ethic of love is the best weapon available to Negroes for this struggle for freedom and human dignity. It may well be that the Gandhian approach will bring about a solution to the race problem in America. His spirit is a continual reminder to oppressed people that it is possible to resist evil and yet not resort to violence."
by:
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929-1968) US civil rights leader
Date:
1958
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 -- Mike, Norwalk      
The power of MLK's appraoch to civil rights was the perfect method at an advantageous historical moment. Many forces were at work that made his contribution the pivotal device to shift power and public sentiment in the direction of justice for the oppressed black population in America at that time. Coupled with the musical revolution, the high profile of Malcolm X and the moral rectitude of the Islamic Brotherhood, Thurgood Marshall, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, the Summer of Love and the Rainbow Coalition, and then above all the strength of people willing to go to the streets for their cause and convictions, the non-violent steadiness of Martin Luther King had the most fertile ground that could have existed for the successful outcome of his approach to social action.
 -- EGL, LA     
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    Nonviolent resistance like Ghandi's and MLK's will only work against a society of people who have a conscience. If he had tried something like that in Mao's China or Breshnev's USSR, no one would have ever known his name. In the US at that time and place, it was very effective.
     -- Ken, Allyn, WA     
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    Ken has a point. But if the US no longer has a conscience then is it worth saving anyway?
     -- E Archer, NYC     
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     -- Joe, Rochester, MI      
    The occupying statist theocracy infesting this land, with its vast majority of patrons, divides itself into two major categories — both are mere elements of immoral socialism. For nonviolence to work, substantive love, truth and conscience must replace the P.C. and mindless / feckless illusions of a fallacious utopia. Ghandi's approach was in the face of a society that claimed a moral / nonviolent administration (in reality, actual or otherwise — socialism makes no such claim). The nonviolence of MLK's message was in Christ's day mostly underground with great sacrifice. Socialism's overcoming of liberty, inalienable rights, individual sovereignty, prosperity, truth, love, law, justice, etc. in this land was in great part done nonviolently (ecclesiastical seminaries / government schools, ecclesiastical missionaries / MSM, ecclesiastically self aggrandizing gods / politicians complete with police state implemented theology supporting canons {as is averse to statute defining law}. A threat of violence and war being constant while the actual physicality of such being only occasionally used.
     -- Mike, Norwalk     
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    While resisting the current evils of the democratic party, we must not resort to violence as the leftists do.
     -- jim k, Austin     
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