“Nonviolence transforms hostility”–Daily Metta

December 30:

“Nonviolence to be worth anything has to work in the face of hostile forces.”

–Gandhi (Harijan, March 20, 1937)

It was a tense situation. The Meta Peace Team was at work at an annual Neo-nazi rally in Ann Arbor, and there were always people who hated Nazis who could get extremely worked up. This year was no exception, and all of a sudden, a man in the crowd took off his leather jacket to reveal arms and a chest covered with swastikas. With that act of escalation he was duly jumped by the protesters, and one of them – an anti-Nazi, note — took a bottle and broke it over his head. The peace team members rushed over to break it up, throwing themselves on top of the injured man and getting his attacker to calm down. They called an ambulance and sent the man whose head was bleeding profusely to get medical attention. But as he was getting into the ambulance a peace team member said to him, “I just want you to know that a black woman, a Jew, and a gay man saved your life today.” He was in no condition to answer, but his girlfriend turned to them and said, “You know, all my life I’ve hated you people; but now I see that the same blood runs in all of us.”

Experiment in nonviolence:
Explain why the peace team was successful in this situation.