Entry 76. Preparations

Lon Weston had taken Imaginary Structures from, well, a figment of his imagination to one of the larger businesses on Sirius 4 and certainly the economic engine of Ganges Pass. He was not an imposing man physically, but he had a quiet energy that simmered under the surface all the time and frequently bubbled over.

Usually that energy was expressed in enthusiasm and encouragement; now the best words seemed to be anger and frustration. He and his associates, 15 hundred strong, had decided to show up for work as usual the next morning, and now Weston had asked me to coach them on passive resistance.

“We’re scientists and programmers, not activists,” he said. “I need you to give us all a short course on how this works.”

As I had said so many times over the years, and especially to the thousands more who would back up the workers in the morning, I stressed the importance of nonviolence.

“Presuming there will be a security force there to turn you back, you should be firm in your resolve but not raise a hand to them,” I said. “One of the basics of civil disobedience is being willing to accept the consequences of your disobedience. I’m guessing they will either let you through the gates or arrest you; our goal is to fill the jail and clog up the system. But don’t resist arrest – try very hard to get in and don’t stop until they bring you into custody, but let them bring you into custody. There’s a component of raising public sympathy here, and believe me it’s all on your side, but that can shift if you slug a cop or do anything else to hurt them.”

“Why if they try to hurt us?” someone asked from the middle of the group. “Don’t we have a right to defend ourselves?”

I told them about Gandhi’s march to the sea, about how the protesters were urged not even to raise their hands to defend themselves if the police started beating them, about how wave after wave of people did just that, and how the result was a revulsion so universal that the British government agreed to relax its restrictions and, more important, never had the power it once had over the Indian people.

“Gandhi called it satyagraha – satya is a word meaning a truth that equals love, and graha means force. If you do this with a spirit of love, you will accomplish amazing things,” I said. “I don’t think they will try to hurt you, but if they do, if you don’t try to hurt them back, your power will increase exponentially.”

What smug assurance I had when I said, “I don’t think they will try to hurt you.”

Entry 77

Entry 54. The assassin comes calling

Mahatma Gandhi, who freed his nation with nonviolent civil disobedience, died Jan. 30, 1948, shortly after being shot in the chest while walking  onto the prayer grounds at his home in New Delhi.

A few days before his death, the 78-year-old Gandhi said, “Should I die by the bullet of a madman, I have to do so with a smile. There must be no anger in me. God must be in my heart and on my lips, and you must promise me one thing: Should such a thing happen, do not shed a tear. I have done my deeds for humanity not requested by any human and I cannot stop on request of anybody. I am like God wanted me and I do as he advises me to do. Let him do with me as he pleases. If he wants to, he may kill me. I believe that I do as he orders.”

Martin Luther King, who used Gandhi as a model in his efforts to free his people, died April 4, 1968, shortly after being shot as he stood on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis.

The night before he died, King concluded his last speech by saying, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

Ramsey Sardonicus was shot by a sniper during the inaugural ball marking his second term as president of the free nation of Colorado; he was 41 years old. Jesus was crucified at age 33. Real life is not so gentle with those of us who seek to lead nonviolent revolution.

It gave me little comfort to know Henry David Thoreau died at home in bed, seeing as Thoreau first contracted tuberculosis when he was 18 years old in 1835 and spent the next 27 years suffering from it on and off before the damn bug finally killed him at age 44. I figured I had a four-out-of-five chance of dying a violent death and a four-out-of-five chance of dying before I hit 45.

And since Thoreau was not an especially public figure until years after he died, I figured the main reason old Henry David wasn’t shot was because he wasn’t famous enough to kill. It was only a matter of time, I figured, before some nutbag came calling at the door. I only hoped I had a chance to talk to the guy before he pulled the trigger.

So, yes, it’s true that when Frederick Miles Masterson stepped in front of me that day as John Hemlock and I strolled along my familiar beach on Lake Ptolemy, I  raised my eyebrows and told the stranger with a smile and just the slightest gasp of recognition, “Oh! It’s you.”

Oh, dear, I think I’ve gotten ahead of myself again.

Entry 55

Entry 36. March to the sea

Tyranny often manifests itself in silly ways. Laws against dark-skinned people using the same facilities as light-skinned people are somewhat nonsensical, for example. Another silly law prohibited the people of a land called India from making their own salt. Really.

The remote government, based several thousand miles away on a different continent, passed a law that prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt. The idea was to force people to buy their salt from businesses sanctioned by the government, which also levied a heavy salt tax on the purchases.

Mohandas Gandhi, who had studied Thoreau, reasoned that defying the silly Salt Act would be an ideal way to fight the government in nonviolent fashion. In EY 1930, tens of thousands of people led by Gandhi gathered on the shore of the Arabian Sea to make their own salt from the salty ocean water.

The act of defiance set off a wave of mostly nonviolent demonstrations, and the remote government arrested 60,000 people, including Gandhi – a healthy start on Thoreau’s goal of crowding the jails to the point of jamming the wheels of government.

I said “mostly nonviolent.” The violence, however, was initiated by the government.

Gandhi had feared what eventually happened, warning his followers that they must be prepared for the worst, even death, in their effort to throw off the salt tax – just as Thoreau in his much milder protest was prepared to go to jail for his belief.

While he was in jail, a group of 2,500 peaceful marchers outside a salt factory allowed themselves to be brutally beaten by a group of police officers acting under government instructions.

A reporter who observed the “raid” on the salt factory recorded what happened after the marchers refused to obey a police order to disperse:

Police charged, swinging their clubs and belaboring the raiders on all sides. The volunteers made no resistance. As the police swung hastily with their sticks, the natives simply dropped in their tracks.

Less than 100 yards away I could hear the dull impact of clubs against bodies. The watching crowds gasped, or sometimes cheered as the volunteers crumpled before the police without even raising their arms to ward off the blows. With almost unbelievable meekness they submitted to the clubbing and were carried away by their comrades who had collected a score of stretchers.

As the attacks continued, stretcher bearers were overworked. Other volunteers joined, using blankets as stretchers for the injured who were falling so fast that the volunteers established a clearing station a hundred yards from the pans.

I counted 42 injured lying on the muddy ground and a few others who were unconscious and writhing in pain.

After police had driven the raiders back, leaders altered their tactics and started stretching themselves on the ground or sitting in front of the police as closely as they could press to the entanglements. They were warned repeatedly by police, who then struck the men sitting in front of them. The volunteers who were hit simply reeled over on the ground – without making a cry or an effort to defend themselves.

The incident caused a worldwide outcry against the government’s actions, and although it would be more than a decade before India became free, Gandhi showed how effective nonviolent protest could be in shaming the tyrant into ending the tyranny – assuming of course that the tyrant is capable of shame.

But it must be said that India remained independent for many years after that, while violent regimes came and went in surrounding countries. To me it was a demonstration that violence begets violence, while freedom won without violence seemed more lasting.

Entry 37. The man from Greeley

Entry 21

What I am anxious to show is that non-co-operationists must be true as well to the spirit as to the letter of their vow if they would gain Swaraj within one year. They may forget non-co-operation but they dare not forget non-violence. Indeed, non-co-operation is non-violence.

We are violent when we sustain a government whose creed is violence. It bases itself finally not on right but on might. Its last appeal is not to reason, nor the heart, but to the sword. We are tired of this creed and we have risen against it.

Let us not ourselves belie our profession by being violent. Though the English are very few, they are organised for violence. Though we are many we cannot be organised for violence for a long time to come. Violence for us is a gospel of despair.

Mahatma Gandhi

from "The Greatest Thing"

Entry 22. Giant, gentle hands

Entry 12. They all ended up dead

The first time I ever suggested passive resistance as a solution, I was prepared to be mocked, and I wasn’t disappointed.

I was between my sophomore and junior years in college, and my childhood friend Badiah Sinclair had already begun to make his name as one of the youngest people ever to be elected to the legislature. He had won on the strength of his persuasive passion for an independent Sirius 4, and his faction succeeded in  getting a meeting with the governor and a representative of Earth to negotiate the possibilities.

As college friends do, a group of us were debating the issues of the day while well stocked with beer. And as college students, we were filled not just with brewskis but with ourselves, confident that we were the most insightful observers of the human condition ever to connect two dots.

The independence talks were the main news of the day, and we naturally all had opinions about it. Ralph Emerson was sure they would fail and glad of it – he thought we were still too small a colony to survive as a unified people. Nate Maples was for independence but convinced it could not be won without a war. I was knee-deep in my studies of nonviolence and believed lasting freedom could be won without bloodshed. Ed Raven didn’t believe much of anything; he got his pleasure in finding the flaws to shoot down everyone’s beliefs.

“What, you never heard of Liechtenstein? or Andorra? They did OK,” Ed teased Ralph in one of his weaker efforts.

“Those are little countries on Earth, moron,” Ralph replied. “I’m talking about a whole planet with barely more than  a half-million million people trying to stand on their own against the universe.”

“Why does it have to be ‘against’ the universe?” I jumped in. “Civilization advances faster and farther when we’re not blowing each other up or slicing and dicing people.”

“You really think Earth is going to give up Sirius 4 without a fight?” Nate said. “We have the natural resources to sustain ourselves, including every scarce and precious commodity that Earth is afraid will run out soon. They’re not going to let go unless we cut off their grabby little hands and make it deadly to challenge us.”

“I thought I wasn’t free because I had no gloves, so I beat up a guy who had no hands,” Ed intoned as if he was quoting some famous proverb. Clearly the beer was winning its war against his brain cells.

“Violence just begets violence,” I said. “The best way to win a battle is by using your mind and soul, not your fists. Look at people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jesus, Ramsey Sardonicus –”

“They all got a lot of people killed,” Nate snapped back.  “Oh, and one more little problem, Mr. Let’s Have Peace – they all ended up DEAD. All those people who said ‘I want to talk this out, I’m unarmed’? Somebody said ‘Good!’ and blew them away.”

For some reason everyone else found that hysterical. Even I had to laugh, although I don’t know why – must have been the brew.

“But they all won, Nate. Don’t you see that? Gandhi and Sardonicus won lasting independence for their countries, King got equality for his people, Jesus founded a whole religion –”

“More people have been killed in Jesus’ name than just about anyone in history,” Ralph said. I had no real answer for that one; I hadn’t met John Hemlock yet.

“Hey, it’s brilliant if you want to try winning wars without hurting anyone,” Nate said with a conciliatory tone. “I’m just saying don’t be surprised if somebody decides to blow you away for it.”

It was kind of a grim thought. Like Moses and the promised land, the leaders who led their people to a nonviolent solution often didn’t live to see their goal achieved.

“I guess that’s the price I’d have to pay,” I said as confidently as I could. I admit I wasn’t eager to march into martyrdom, but there was one positive about the idea. “It would be worth it.”

Entry 13. After class