I want to address a misinterpretation I see often. Nonviolence isn't passivity. It is highly disruptive and confrontational.

Gandhi rejected the phrase "passive resistance" and coined satyagraha, meaning truth-force. King named his Birmingham campaign "Project C," and the C stood for confrontation.

Nonviolent strategy works via aggressive pressure. Boycotts bankrupt bus systems. Breaking the law in public and at scale, like making salt, occupying lunch counters, and filling the jails, makes the current system more expensive to keep than to change.

Power is reliant on the cooperation of ordinary people; and this is a strategy to remove cooperation en masse.

The rule against violence is much more strategic than it is moral (although the moral framing is key to bringing people in).

• The state wins any fight decided by force. It has a monopoly on legal violence.

• Crackdowns on disciplined, unarmed people backfire. Birmingham. The Pettus Bridge. Dharasana.

• Unarmed campaigns let everyone take part, which is a big reason they succeed at roughly twice the rate.

• Violence from the resistance movement lets the story shift from justice against injustice to order against chaos.