Social justice is about working together to heal the heartbreak caused by social structures beyond any individual’s control. As we face problems in the world that feel overwhelming, like war, poverty, racism, etc., it’s helpful to remember we have been here before.
I’ve been wanting to talk about Gandhi for a while now. Mohandas Gandhi is perhaps best known as a spiritual figure. He is credited as a central actor in the world of nonviolence, a term he did not like. He used the term satyagraha, which is usually translated as “truth force.” It’s fascinating that Gandhi did not just promote “people power,” but instead promoted the idea that there’s a force of truth, of reality, of history and people can act for this force or reject it.
Less often Gandhi is acknowledged as a strategist and fighter who embraced conflict and disruption. Gandhi led a resistance movement against British imperialism. He and other Indian nationalists pursued a range of actions, from marches to boycotts to producing homespun clothes to fasts to factory occupations. All were united under a common goal of Indian independence, pursued through a strategy of noncooperation with British rule. These actions escalated over time, until the “salt satyagraha,” where masses of Indian people broke the law prohibiting them from manufacturing salt. Manufacturing salt was a simple accessible act, and the British could not enforce their rule in the face of mass noncooperation.
Gandhi shows an example of someone without official power who used strategic action to make change. Our world depends on more people following this model, and this is a role faith communities must embrace to be relevant in the future.
One of my social justice role models is Rev. James Lawson who traveled to India to study Gandhian nonviolence, with the intent to apply those lessons to Black liberation in the United States. Rev. Lawson trained college students, including the late Congressman John Lewis, to challenge Jim Crow segregation in Nashville, TN. Black and White students sat at segregated lunch counters and nonreactively faced harassment and repression. More than 150 students were arrested before city leaders agreed to desegregate lunch counters. But the goal was not only to desegregate lunch counters. The goal was to model replicable actions that would occur across the country, and to create an organization that would lead those actions – the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). SNCC was one of the major organizers of the civil rights movement. Responsible for the Freedom Rides, they followed a strategy of nonviolent direct action. In civil rights, just as with Indian Independence, there was also a strategy of escalation. Smaller localized actions built up over time to massive confrontations that drew everyone in. The same general pattern has repeated in the Black Lives Matter movement and other transformative social justice efforts.
As we go forward, facing the challenges of today, let us remember the roads that were traveled before, often in the face of severe oppression, and carry forward lessons that still resonate. As Unitarian Universalists, not just at UUCF but as part of an international spiritual movement, there is much we can do in the name of truth force.
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