Videos

A Force More Powerful

Two-and-a- half-hours
Produced 2000 by York Zimmerman, Inc.

The past 100 years are often called the most violent in history. However, time has shown that human rights can be secured by using non violent means rather than by war or militarism. A FORCE MORE POWERFUL explores one of the most important but least understood stories, the story of how millions chose to battle the forces of brutality with nonviolent power and won.

Episode One: 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 the 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, awakened whites to black grievances and fatally weakened business support for apartheid.

Episode Two: 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 nonviolent 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.

Rights: We have public performance and educational rights for these videos. They can be shown in almost every venue, but no entry fee can be charged.