Calls For Nonviolence Can Be Calls for Violence

Simply put, and de-twitterized:

Not every reaction and testimony to the suffering of violence is a form of organized non-violence, but neither is every call to "non-violence" a form of organized non-violence. As an advocate and, to this day, a teacher of nonviolent civil resistance and nonviolent revolutionary organizing, and as an activist trained in nonviolence in the 1990s as part of Queer Nation Atlanta with the King Center, I am disgusted by the superficial appropriation of nonviolent terminology to police false and facile respectability politics and enable privileged beneficiaries of systematic violence to indulge in self-congratulatory castigations of sufferers of that violence. Nonviolent critique and resistance exposes normalized violence and creates and transforms crises to elicit collaboration from the sufferers and beneficiaries of violence alike to overcome that violence. Collusion in the violence of the status quo is the furthest thing from non-violence, it is violence. White supremacy itself is a riot that has come to be mistaken in the long centuries of its relentless and catastrophic life for law and order.

1 As an advocate and, to this day, a teacher of nonviolent civil resistance and nonviolent revolutionary organizing,

— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 28, 2015

2 and as an activist trained in nonviolence in the 1990s as part of Queer Nation Atlanta with the King Center,

— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 28, 2015

3 I am disgusted by the superficial appropriation of nonviolent terminology to police false and facile respectability politics and

— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 28, 2015

4 enable privileged beneficiaries of systematic violence to indulge in self-congratulatory castigations of sufferers of that violence.

— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 28, 2015

5 Nonviolent critique and resistance exposes normalized violence and creates crises to elicit collaboration to overcome violence.

— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 28, 2015

6 Collusion in the violence of the status quo is violence, not non-violence. White supremacy is a riot mistaken for the law and order.

— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) April 28, 2015