Fight with Nonviolence.
March with Morality.
Realize the Dream.
“It's just paying attention and then getting involved. When you do that, then you become an organizer, you become an activist.”
- Dolores Huerta, 2021
The power of Nonviolence is unequaled in its ability to effect large scale change, for it is conviction unblemished by guilt, and strengthened by Love. We must not direct hate towards any person or people, for we recognize they are simply humans – terrified and misguided by a system and history of beliefs built upon hate and fear.
Nonviolence and Justice prevail not through force, insults, belittling, or threat – but through showing the people caught in those systems that they, too, have the power to stand up, speak out, and not cooperate. Nonviolence works, neither through destruction of property, nor through insurrection, but through well-organized and well-trained petition of countless feet, voices, and hearts shouting out as one, and always from a place of Love for those who seek equality, never superiority.
Education and Training
Without a foundation to stand upon, we may make our voices heard, yet never listened to. SNAU receives resources, guidance, and courses by working with Local, State, and National organizations like the ACLU, M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, Texas Civil Rights Project, Albert Einstein Institution, and many others. These organizations have paved the way through decades of evidence-based best practices, decades of experience fighting injustice throughout the world.
Petition and Diplomacy
The first steps in fighting for justice is not just protesting against something, but petitioning for something. Nonviolence is a positive, active force, and SNAU initiates Diplomatic avenues prior to engaging in Noncooperation or Civil Disobedient movements. All SNAU movements will be communicated directly to those in positions to effect the necessary legislative changes.
Diplomacy must remain open at all times, with an open heart willing to receive and reconcile. Nonviolence is a movement of reconciliation, of giving those lost in an immoral system of hate and fear the compassion and courage to stand against any system which preys on those it is empowered to protect.
Noncooperation and Civil Disobedience represent a spectrum of tools available to a well-disciplined and fully-committed Nonviolent movement. These methods represent the full force of what Mahatma Gandhi called Satyagraha, and what Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called Agape.
When Diplomacy falters, actions to bring attention to injustices must be taken. When communities are shown - not told - the Truth about what is happening to their neighbors, hearts open and minds change. This is how every great change in every society in humankind has taken place.
Desegregation occurs in a courthouse, but Integration lives in the community.
Noncooperation & Civil Disobedience
All people have the capacity for violence. To coerce change through physical means, or through degrading, insulting, or belittling can never create meaningful change. To have the capacity for Nonviolence is not less than, it is a vastly superior force which assumes the capacity for violence as a prerequisite. One who has chosen to use Nonviolence as a moral means to a moral end, already stands above those shouldering the weight of broken values.
Nonviolent movements gave India independence from British Colonial Rule. It ended South African Apartheid, Collapsed the Berlin Wall, restored inherent Civil Rights to Black and Hispanic Americans, and won independence from colonialism for Ghana.
Violence is a tool of conflict - from an argument to war - meant to cause the opposing side enough suffering that they will concede, giving the abuser short-lived satisfaction. Nonviolence is a tool of understanding, of empathy, of compassion. Compassion means ‘to suffer together,’ and injustice may never win against those willing to suffer, with Love, and without retaliation.
Why Nonviolence?
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
— Mahatma Gandhi, 1920
Contact
Your voice matters, and SNAU wants to hear it.
Email
President@SNAU-TX.com
Phone
(555) 555-5555