Pietro Ameglio spoke at the Annual Dinner of the Resource Center for Nonviolence on Friday, October 9th. Ameglio is an activist, teacher and Gandhian organizer in Mexico. He is the author of Gandhi and Civil Disobedience: Mexico Today (2002). He served as the Chair of the Humanities Department at La Salle University in Cuernavaca, and holds special Chairs in Peace Culture and Nonviolent Civil Resistance in the School of Philosophy and Literature at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) in Mexico City. Ameglio received the El Hibri Peace Education Prize in 2014.
Ameglio's topic at the dinner was “Nonviolent Struggle in a Mexico at War.” Ameglio gave us some daunting facts and figures, but what I found most relevant was his observation about what those who oppose oppression, and tyranny, and injustice must do.
The basic thing we must do, said Ameglio, is to "deny normalization" to the conditions of oppression, injustice and tyranny that we confront.
Oppression, evil, tyranny, and injustice are impositions that can only survive if the society at large comes to accept such conditions as "normal." Non-violent and revolutionary resistance must always work to deny the claim that injustice and tyranny is "normal," and therefore acceptable.
When enough of us refuse to accept as normal the conditions that oppress us, then we will change the world!
Ameglio's topic at the dinner was “Nonviolent Struggle in a Mexico at War.” Ameglio gave us some daunting facts and figures, but what I found most relevant was his observation about what those who oppose oppression, and tyranny, and injustice must do.
The basic thing we must do, said Ameglio, is to "deny normalization" to the conditions of oppression, injustice and tyranny that we confront.
Oppression, evil, tyranny, and injustice are impositions that can only survive if the society at large comes to accept such conditions as "normal." Non-violent and revolutionary resistance must always work to deny the claim that injustice and tyranny is "normal," and therefore acceptable.
When enough of us refuse to accept as normal the conditions that oppress us, then we will change the world!
Image Credit:
Personal photo Gary A. Patton
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