EXCERPT FROM THE FREEDOM SEDER: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
ON NON-VIOLENCE
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"For as one of the greatest of our prophets, whose own death by violence at a time near the Passover we remember in tears tonight-as the prophet Martin Luther King called us to know:
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`The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But the principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-acquiescence and violence. The nonviolent resister rises to the noble height of opposing the unjust system while loving the perpetrators of the system. Nonviolence can reach men where the law cannot touch them.
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So-we will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering.
We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. And in winning
our freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.'"
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