barbara deming

To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek. The most effective action both resorts to power and engages conscience.

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Think first of the action that is right to take, think later about coping with one's fears.

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Nonviolent actions does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.

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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 . . .

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We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women -- whose stories, for all our differences, turn out, if we listen well, to be our stories also.

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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.

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Make it impossible for the authority to operate within the system as usual . . . making it impossible for him simply to strike back without thought and with all his strength.

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I learned always to trust my own deep sense of what I should do, and not just obediently trust the judgment of others - even others better than I am.

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A great many of us must move from words to acts - from words of dissent to acts of disobedience.

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Vengeance is not the point change is. But the trouble is that in most people's minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide.

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Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.

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Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.

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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.

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This is the heart of my argument We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern.

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People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.

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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.

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After the revolution, it might very well remain necessary to place people where they could not do harm to others. But the one under restraint should be cut off from the rest of society as little as possible.

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After the revolution, let us hope, prisons simply would not exist - if by prisons we mean places that could be experienced by the men and women in them at all as every place that goes by that name now is bound to be experienced.

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After the revolution, surely the only good reason for institutions that could still be called prisons - because they take people and place them under restraint - is this reason wanting to keep people from harming others.

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After the revolution, when one person injures another, society would concern itself most immediately to give help to the person who has been injured.

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All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away.

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But if institutions of restraint might still be necessary, they should no longer be institutions of punishment at the same time.

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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.

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Punishment cannot heal spirits, can only break them.

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The free man must be born before freedom can be won, and the brotherly man must be born before full brotherhood can be won. It will come into being only if we build it out of our very muscle and bone - by trying to act it out.

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