Too many of the official tributes to Martin Luther King, Jr., have piously praised his nonviolence, the praise often coming from political leaders who themselves have committed great violence against other nations and have accepted the daily violence of poverty in American life. But King's phrase, and that of the southern civil rights movement, was not simply "nonviolence," but nonviolent direct action. In this way, nonviolence does not mean acceptance, but resistance - not waiting, but acting.
- Howard Zinn, from Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1990).
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