A
Force More Powerful
"When people decide they want to be free. There is
nothing that can stop them." -Desmond Tutu
A Force More Powerful is a two-part documentary series on
one of the 20th century’s most important and least known
stories—how non-violent power overcame oppression and
authoritarian rule. In South Africa in 1907, Mohandas Gandhi
led Indian immigrants in a nonviolent fight for rights denied
them by white rulers. The power that Gandhi pioneered has
been used by underdogs on every continent and in every decade
of the 20th century, to fight for their rights and freedom.
- In the 1960s, Gandhi’s nonviolent weapons were
taken up by black college students in Nashville, Tennessee.
Disciplined and strictly nonviolent, they successfully desegregated
Nashville’s downtown lunch counters in five months,
becoming a model for the entire civil rights movement.
- In India in the 1930s, after Gandhi had returned from
South Africa, he and his followers adopted a strategy of
refusing to cooperate with British rule. Through civil disobedience
and boycotts, they successfully loosened their oppressors’
grip on power and set India on the path to freedom.
- In 1985, a young South African named Mkhuseli Jack led
a movement against the legalized discrimination known as
apartheid. Their campaign of nonviolent mass action, most
notably a devastating consumer boycott in the Eastern Cape
province, awakened whites to black grievances and fatally
weakened business support for apartheid.
- In April, 1940, German military forces invaded Denmark.
Danish leaders adopted a strategy of “resistance disguised
as collaboration”- undermining German objectives by
negotiating, delaying, and obstructing Nazi demands. Underground
resistance organized sabotage and strikes, and rescued all
but a handful of Denmark’s seven thousand Jews.
- In 1980, striking workers in Poland demanded independent
unions. Using their leverage to negotiate unprecedented
rights in a system where there was no power separate from
the communist party, they created a union, Solidarity. Driven
underground by a government crackdown in 1981, Solidarity
re-emerged in 1989 as Poland’s governing political
party.
- In 1983, Chilean workers initiated a wave of non violent
protests against the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto
Pinochet. Severe repression failed to stop the protests,
and violent opposition failed to dislodge the dictatorship-
until the democratic opposition organized to defeat Pinochet
in a 1988 referendum.
Reviewing a century often called the most violent in human
history, this series is the story of millions who chose to
battle the forces of brutality with nonviolent weapons-and
won.
Contents: 1 DVD or 2 VHS tapes; Color, Stereo, Full Screen,
Closed-Captioned
VID-102B A Force More Powerful, home version (DVD)……$39.95
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