Barbara Deming
Barbara Deming
Barbara Demingwas an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change...
strength movement liberation
A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
determination opportunity thinking
Balance and control come from healthy anger. This is just as aggressive as the unhealthy kind. But it is based on a belief and hope for change in social roles and institutions. Healthy anger demands change and creates the confrontations needed for change to occur. It also gives the other an opportunity to help make that change. “Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.
christian jesus love-you
Manliness has been defined as assertion of the self. Womanliness has been defined as the nurturing of selves other than our own - even if we quite lose our own in the process. (Women are supposed to find in this loss their true fulfillment.) But every individual person is born both to assert herself or himself and to act out a sympathy for others trying to find themselves - in Christian terms, meant to love one's self as one loves others ... Jesus never taught that we should split up that commandment - assigning 'love yourself' to men, 'love others' to women. But society has tried to.
vengeance
Vengeance is not the point: change is.
our-lives
We cannot live without our lives
mail censorship should
There should be no censorship of mail.
jail doubt trying
Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.
thinking choices enemy
I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision. . . is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive.
peace effectiveness wife
Gandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resort to physical strength? Who better than we should know all the power that resides in noncooperation?
spiritual pulse stranger
Our own pulse beats in every stranger's throat.
peace real diversity
The longer we listen to one another - with real attention - the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.
giving emotion masters
The point is to change one's life. The point is not to give some vent to the emotions that have been destroying one; the point is so to act that one can master them now.
determination anger thinking
Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.
believe names acting
We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power.