…to any who would make noise about using force to effect change, please grow up. You may have guns. Maybe you’ll buy yourself an AR-15 and learn how to shoot it. Yay. The U.S. Army has tanks and bombers and a nuclear arsenal. You’re not going to win. When violence has been resorted to as a means of effecting change in American society, it has invited a harsh crackdown on those very people it was intended to help. Dr. King’s embrace of nonviolence was not only the principled acting-out of his radical Christian vision; it was also the very pragmatic realization that to engage in violence would be to invite a bloodbath which would be supported by a white America afraid of black men with guns. We are embarking on at least four years in which the Justice Department will have little interest in investigating or addressing police brutality–and major law enforcement organizations have expressed their sympathy for Trump’s approach and rhetoric. Whom do you think would most be hurt by any turn to violence?
Rivka Press Schwartz, “A Cold and Broken Hallelujah”, Tacit Knowledge (20 January 2017) [https://rpschwartz.com/2017/01/20/a-cold-and-broken-hallelujah/]