I'm an organizer fighting a development company that's displacing hundreds of low-income families in my neighborhood. They've bought off city council members, their lawyers are crushing us in court, and our peaceful marches get covered for one news cycle then forgotten. Some younger activists want to escalate. Block construction equipment. Occupy buildings. Make it too expensive and embarrassing for them to continue. "The system doesn't respond to niceness," they say. "It responds to power and disruption." The older members of our coalition are horrified. They marched with Dr. King. They believe nonviolent moral witness is the only legitimate path. They say if we break the law, we become the villains. But the families are being evicted *now*. Every month we spend on incremental progress, another building is demolished. At what point does commitment to peaceful means become complicity with the violence being done to us? — Peaceful Protest or Hardball in Portland

From Historical Figures Collection

"Nonviolent resistance is more powerful than violence—the means are as important as the ends"

I understand the urgency—I watched my people beaten, imprisoned, killed, while the Empire moved slowly toward justice. But hear me: the moment you adopt your enemy's methods, you become your enemy. Disruption without violence is possible. Fill their jails. Shame them with your dignity. The arc bends slowly, but it bends—and only if you do not break it yourself.

From The Life of Bismarck, Private and Political: With Descriptive Notices of His Ancestry

"Politics is the art of the possible—power concedes nothing to those who won't exercise it"

The Mahatma had an empire with a conscience to shame. You face a corporation with lawyers. These are different enemies requiring different tactics. I do not counsel violence—violence is expensive and unpredictable. But disruption? Economic pressure? Making it costlier to continue than to compromise? This is simply politics. Your moral purity will not house a single family.