A force more powerful "Nashville"

1. How do you feel about the film?

The film have me amazed and made me realize how a nonviolent action can be used
as a peaceful seed of revolution to fight against discrimination, oppression, inequality,
injustice, slavery and manipulations.

2. What insights have you gained?

From the film, it opened my mind that nonviolent campaigns have been more
successful than armed campaigns in achieving ultimate goals in political struggles, even
when used against similar opponents and in the face of repression. That nothing is
unachievable with nonviolent action and the cooperation of the mass. The film reminds me
of the People Power Revolution where mass people gather and pray to expel Marcos
dictatorship. I admire of what a student from Nashville says, “You cannot wait for someone
else to do it. You cannot wait for government to do it. You must make it happen for your our
efforts and action and vision.”

3. What does nonviolence mean as suggested by the film?

As what the film suggested, nonviolent action is active, it involves activity in the
collective pursuit of social or political objectives—and it is non-violent—it does not involve
physical force or the threat of physical force against human beings. More specifically,
nonviolent action involves an active process of bringing political, economic, social,
emotional, or moral pressure to bear in the wielding of power in contentious interactions
between collective actors.

4. How were the students able to meet their goal? What strategies did they use?

Gandhi’s nonviolent weapons were taken up by black college students in Nashville,

Tennessee. The students use the nonviolent “sit in” strategy, an act of civil disobedience,
was a tactic that aroused sympathy for the demonstrators among moderates and
uninvolved individuals. African Americans (negro or black people), usually students, would
go to segregated lunch counters, sit in all available spaces, request service, and then
refuse to leave when denied service because of their race. In addition to creating
disruptions and drawing unwanted publicity, the action caused economic hardship for the
owners of the businesses, because the sit-in participants took up spaces that normally were
filled by paying customers. Although the first lunch-counter sit-in began with just four
participants, the attention paid to the protest created a movement that spread across the
South in 1960 and 1961 to include thousands of Black and white participants. It affected
many states and resulted in the desegregation of many local businesses in those
communities.

5. What was the context that merited action from the students?

In the southern part of USA racial segregation is rampant and as if it is part of their
culture, a culture of inequality. Restaurants, shopping centers, salons, fast food chains and
restroom are segregated according to color of your skin. This discriminative culture merited
the students to act in order for the Nashville Town to be desegregated where people of
colors are free to eat, shop and exercise their human and civil rights without any
discrimination.

6. Why do you think did they opt to use such strategies?

I think they opt to use such strategies because it has been proven successful in India
in the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. Nonviolent campaigns are more likely to win
legitimacy, attract widespread domestic and international support, neutralize the opponent’s
security forces, and compel loyalty shifts among oncce opponent supporters than are
armed campaigns, which enjoin the active support of a relatively small number of people,
offer the opponent a justification for violent counterattacks, and are less likely to prompt
loyalty shifts and defections. Also Nashville is a Christian town in which the sit in strategy
fits into the Christian teaching of nonviolent movement.