Making it Real
Action Speak Louder than Words page 3.
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7. Te Whiti o Rangomai
inspired a non violent way for Māori to resist European attempts to take their land. The New Zealand government detained “rebel” Maoris indefinitely, without trial. While Te Whiti and Tohu Kakahi were incarcerated, Maori ploughmen came from all over the country to prevent the building of roads on Maori land. Thousands were arrested and their property confiscated. Reports of the nonviolent struggle in the British media had an impact on the thinking of Gandhi in South Africa (see no. 6 above). Also, click on link for page about The Maori of Parihaka.
8.Dorothy Stang
worked as an advocate for the rural poor for 35 years in the Brazillian rainforest. She sought to protect peasants from criminal gangs working on behalf of ranchers who were taking their plots and destroying the forest. Her slogan was “The death of the forest is the end of our life." She was shot dead in 2005, after telling her killers her only weapon was her Bible, and reading a passage to them from the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor in spirit...”
9. Socrates
was a Greek philosopher who was a social and moral critic, questioning the notion that “might makes right”. Socrates irritated some people with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness. He was found guilty of both “corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens” and of "not believing in the gods of the state", and subsequently sentenced to death by drinking a mixture containing poison hemlock.
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