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fandomhigh2011-01-18 10:08 am
sake-shinigami.livejournal.com) wrote in fandomhigh2011-01-18 10:08 am
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The Art of Pacifism; Tuesday, Fifth Period [ 01/18 ].
"Ahh, thank you to all my little ducklings who braved the cold to be here again this week ♥!" Shunsui said with a bright smile at all his students who had extra large mugs of cocoa today in their little circle. "Some of you may have been aware, and I'm sure some of you didn't, but yesterday was a day reserved to honour a very important man in the modern history of pacifism, and we will talk about that man today ♥. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr., and he inspired an entire nation, as well as the world, to achieve civil rights through nonviolence and nonviolent protest ♥. King himself was inspired by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, who will will be discussing much later ♥."
"A minister of the Baptist church, Dr. King started his work as a civil rights activist young, and he always did it with nonviolence. In 1955, he lead the Mongomery Bus Boycott, in protest to the racial segregation of the public transit system in that city, and he helped to found the Souther Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 ♥. And he is probably most well known for his incredibly iconic 'I Have a Dream speech, delivered in 1963 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. I have for you all a transcript of the speech, which I'll pass around, since I don't believe I can give it the justice it deserves. You are all attending this school in an age of impressive technology, though, and so I recommend to all of you to take advantage of it to look up videos of the speech and I dare you not to be moved ♥. I am not American; I am not even of this century or the one before it, but I still find this to be an incredible, beautiful, hopeful speech ♥. Very powerful in text, but the conviction from which Dr. King speaks is worth volumes in itself ♥. Dr. King was also the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1964, for all of his contributions to civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience. His focuses also shifted to ending poverty and ending the war going on at that time in Vietnam.
"But, as if often the heartbreaking end to great men of nonviolence, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. To have a man of such peacefulness and nonviolence end his life in a violent way is a harsh irony rooted too much in truth, but, if there is a silver lining to that dark cloud, it is that Dr. King's message still rings in the hearts of people today ♥. He helped to inspire a nation toward nonviolence when it was all too easy to suffer at the hands of violent, powerful people, or to respond to that violence in kind with more violence, perpetuating more hate than solving it.
"'A man,' he said, 'who won't die for something is not fit to live.'
"And that is one of the core beliefs under pacifism. That no matter how much violence is acted upon you, you never act back. You never stoop yourself down to the level of those who feel pain and hatred is a more effective weapon than love and kindness. This may mean, of course, that these people can take from you your life, but they can never take from you your message. If anything, they will only make it ring out clearer ♥. There was more to that in Dr. King's message, however. He understood that, sometimes, violence is the only way people, especially the oppressed and unheard, knew how to react to their oppression and their forced silence. And he believed in educating those oppressed people to the fact that there was another way, a more peaceful way, a better way, and that way was nonviolence, even in the face of the hardest oppression and violence ♥.
"'All progress,' he said, 'is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem. '
"'Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.'
"'An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.'
"'An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.'
"'Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.'
"And, of course, 'At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.' ♥. 'Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.'
"I could go on forever quoting this incredible man, but, alas, we do not have forever! We still have a task ahead of us, as well ♥. I hope you all brought your coats, because we are going to take a little field trip out into the snow and to Luke's Diner ♥. You see, we are going to conduct a sit-in ♥. We live in a place that is wonderfully free from any sort of race discrimination, so our enactment of a diner sit-in will not quite have the strong repercussion of the ones during the American Civil Rights Movement, where protesters would come into restaurants to protest either discriminatory hiring processes or service, fill up all the seats in the diners, and purchase nothing more than a five-cent cup of coffee, but remain there as long as they could. This would deny other patrons a place to sit, but it was to prove a point without the use of violence, even when violence was acted upon them. We will have some...trouble with the local authorities with this sit-in ♥. Your task is to not buckle under them and to remain strong and nonviolent in the face of adversity ♥.
"And let us keep in mind, while we are there, the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the very real struggle that people went through just for the right to be able to sit at a lunch counter, or ride on a bus, or be treated like any other human being would expect to be treated ♥."
"So let's take one last good swig of hot cocoa to warm us up, and we'll bundle up and head out ♥! We have quite the march ahead of us with the weather out there, and that in itself will be a testament to our hardships ♥. I doubt they had to deal with blizzards like this in Alabama ♥!"
[[please wait for the OCD is up! ]]
"A minister of the Baptist church, Dr. King started his work as a civil rights activist young, and he always did it with nonviolence. In 1955, he lead the Mongomery Bus Boycott, in protest to the racial segregation of the public transit system in that city, and he helped to found the Souther Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 ♥. And he is probably most well known for his incredibly iconic 'I Have a Dream speech, delivered in 1963 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. I have for you all a transcript of the speech, which I'll pass around, since I don't believe I can give it the justice it deserves. You are all attending this school in an age of impressive technology, though, and so I recommend to all of you to take advantage of it to look up videos of the speech and I dare you not to be moved ♥. I am not American; I am not even of this century or the one before it, but I still find this to be an incredible, beautiful, hopeful speech ♥. Very powerful in text, but the conviction from which Dr. King speaks is worth volumes in itself ♥. Dr. King was also the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1964, for all of his contributions to civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience. His focuses also shifted to ending poverty and ending the war going on at that time in Vietnam.
"But, as if often the heartbreaking end to great men of nonviolence, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. To have a man of such peacefulness and nonviolence end his life in a violent way is a harsh irony rooted too much in truth, but, if there is a silver lining to that dark cloud, it is that Dr. King's message still rings in the hearts of people today ♥. He helped to inspire a nation toward nonviolence when it was all too easy to suffer at the hands of violent, powerful people, or to respond to that violence in kind with more violence, perpetuating more hate than solving it.
"'A man,' he said, 'who won't die for something is not fit to live.'
"And that is one of the core beliefs under pacifism. That no matter how much violence is acted upon you, you never act back. You never stoop yourself down to the level of those who feel pain and hatred is a more effective weapon than love and kindness. This may mean, of course, that these people can take from you your life, but they can never take from you your message. If anything, they will only make it ring out clearer ♥. There was more to that in Dr. King's message, however. He understood that, sometimes, violence is the only way people, especially the oppressed and unheard, knew how to react to their oppression and their forced silence. And he believed in educating those oppressed people to the fact that there was another way, a more peaceful way, a better way, and that way was nonviolence, even in the face of the hardest oppression and violence ♥.
"'All progress,' he said, 'is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem. '
"'Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.'
"'An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.'
"'An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.'
"'Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.'
"And, of course, 'At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.' ♥. 'Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.'
"I could go on forever quoting this incredible man, but, alas, we do not have forever! We still have a task ahead of us, as well ♥. I hope you all brought your coats, because we are going to take a little field trip out into the snow and to Luke's Diner ♥. You see, we are going to conduct a sit-in ♥. We live in a place that is wonderfully free from any sort of race discrimination, so our enactment of a diner sit-in will not quite have the strong repercussion of the ones during the American Civil Rights Movement, where protesters would come into restaurants to protest either discriminatory hiring processes or service, fill up all the seats in the diners, and purchase nothing more than a five-cent cup of coffee, but remain there as long as they could. This would deny other patrons a place to sit, but it was to prove a point without the use of violence, even when violence was acted upon them. We will have some...trouble with the local authorities with this sit-in ♥. Your task is to not buckle under them and to remain strong and nonviolent in the face of adversity ♥.
"And let us keep in mind, while we are there, the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the very real struggle that people went through just for the right to be able to sit at a lunch counter, or ride on a bus, or be treated like any other human being would expect to be treated ♥."
"So let's take one last good swig of hot cocoa to warm us up, and we'll bundle up and head out ♥! We have quite the march ahead of us with the weather out there, and that in itself will be a testament to our hardships ♥. I doubt they had to deal with blizzards like this in Alabama ♥!"
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