“They Will Call You Violent”

At PAAU, we have a firm commitment to nonviolence in everything we do. Nonviolence is more than just not hurting anyone. It’s a tactic and a strategy of using peaceful resistance to achieve change and reduce harm.

We know from history that oppressors will use the label of violent as a means to suppress the attention on the violence they themselves perpetrate. We reject these claims and move forward with boldness and courage!

“Violence” in Social Movements

The elastic concepts of criminality and violence, as controlled by the powerful, will always be bent against us.

From Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba:

“’Violence’ is an elastic term often deployed to vilify people who threaten the status quo… Conditions that the state characterizes as ‘peaceful’ are, in reality, quite violent. Even as people experienced the violence of poverty, the torture of imprisonment, the brutality of policing, the denial of healthcare, and many other violent functions of this system, we are told we are experiencing peace, so long as everyone is cooperating.”

“In-state actors refer to ’peace,’ they're really talking about order. And when they refer to ‘peaceful protest,’ they are talking about cooperative protest that obediently stays within the lines drawn by the state. The more uncooperative you are, the more you will be accused of aggression and violence.”

“When laws encode violence and law enforcers maintain it, those who attempt to prevent this violence are indeed breaking the law and challenging its enforcers.

“Such is the perversion of “violence” under imperial and colonial rule: the maintenance of state-sanctioned violence is considered peaceful, while the disruption of those death-making processes is deemed violent.”

“If we are serious about supporting people who rebel, we must understand that support as a long-term project. We must never abandon our co-strugglers who’ve been cast as “violent” and thereby subjected to the violence of the state.”

- KH&MK

DC FACE Case

For Example: This week, 7 peaceful pro-life Rescuers were sentenced to multiple years in prison each for a non-violent act of civil disobedience. The State has labeled this principled and committed activists as “violent” felons, because they disrupted the murderous death-centered abortion industry — the current status quo in the United States.

King Bay Plowsharers

In 2018, 7 peace activists completed a non-violent act of protest vandalism at a Georgia navel base by using police tape on the Navy logo, spilling blood around it, and “disarming” a fake replica of a nuclear missile.

The activist were indicted and convicted of conspiracy, depredation of government property, destruction of government property and trespassing. These peace activists were painted as violent criminals for taking action against the mass destruction.

These peaceful activists, who were labeled as violent, were each facing 25 years in prison and received sentences consisting of lengthy jail time and thousands of dollars in fines.