Nonviolence wins with patience

I was in E. Germany in 1976 talking with a nonviolent activist. We were sitting on the porch of his apartment on the 2nd story overlooking Dresden. He said, and he felt depressed and discouraged, heartsick: “There aren’t 30 people in Dresden now willing to oppose this evil regime.” Given the violence of the E. German government and the Soviet Union behind them, arguably one of the most violent in history, he could have sought to resort to coercion. Sabotage, whatever. He didn’t.  Just thirteen years later, in 1989, he was playing the trumpet at the head of hundreds of thousands of nonviolent protesters in Dresden. They overthrew that evil empire, but not with coercion. The power of the people won out. I believe that was the way of Gandhi.

— Richard Johnson