We Are Power: How Nonviolent Activism Changes the World

WE ARE POWER begins with Gandhi, whose philosophy of nonviolence is a thread that runs throughout the book and influenced all the other activists who are profiled. His story starts in South Africa, where Gandhi's belief in the power of nonviolence evolves against the backdrop of the government's racist laws against Asians living in the country. Returning to his native India, Gandhi leads the now-famous campaigns of civil disobedience that result in Indian independence. Suffragette Alice Paul took the campaign for a woman's right to vote directly to the home of President Woodrow Wilson. In 1917, Paul organized the Silent Sentinels, women who would picket outside the White House for 18 months. As hundreds of women were arrested and jailed, new volunteers would take their place. Paul and her Sentinels became one of the keys to Wilson's eventual support for suffrage and the passage of the 19^th Amendment. The chapter on Martin Luther King Jr. focuses on his belief in "the power of love," his adoption of Gandhi's nonviolent methods, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the violent response by police and citizens to the marches and Children's Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama. Caesar Chavez left school in seventh grade to begin working in the cantaloupe fields of California for eight cents an hours. A fierce advocate for the rights and fair wages of farm workers, he organized the largest most successful boycott in U.S. history (against California-grown grapes) and co-founded what would become the United Farm Workers union. Vaclav Havel, a Czech playwright and dissent, was a leader of the 1989 "Velvet Revolution," the nonviolent transition of power that ended 40 years of communist rule and saw Havel become President of a democratic Czechoslovakia. The chapter on Greta Thunberg is the briefest in the book and tells how she became inspired by young gun-control activists in the U.S., her proud declaration of being a climate activist on the autism spectrum, and the 2019 school strike in which she was joined by 1.4 million students, making it the biggest single day of climate activism in history.