Martin Luther King, tactics of protest.

„Letter from Birmingham Jail”, written by Martin Luther King Jr. during one of his

several imprisonments, can be analysed from many different points of view such as the

oratorical mechanisms used, the segregation and injustice present at that time in the life of

Negroes, the metatextual elements, and others depending on the topic of interest. However,

one of the main purposes of the letter was to defend the tactics of protest and nonviolent

resistance used by King throughout his life, which were the reason not only for his

imprisonment in Birmingham, but also of violent and poorly justified backlash, as proved by

King in the letter, against him and against the people which were supporting his ideas. In the

following paragraphs I will try to present how these tactics, popularised in the United States

by Martin Luther King, were not only relevant in the protests in which he was present, or to

which he contributed, and not only in relation to the struggle of Negroes, but are also in the

context of todays politics and struggles.

King’s strategies of protest were mainly influenced by his Christian beliefs and

also by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. Even when the injusticies present in the lives

of Negroes were massive and often very violent, both phisically and psyhically, instead

of reacting in the same manner, King chose to avoid any kind of violence. With this he

was not only succeding in the mobilization of a large number of people, but also proved

that the characterizations that whites often made, saying that black people were beasts,

uneducated and unable to communicate were unfounded and were better suited to

characterize how whites themselves were reacting and treating peole different from

them.
 „IN ANY nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts

to determine whether injustices are alive, negotiation, self-purification, and direct

action”. By looking at the last step mentioned by King in the letter, it can be seen that

nonviolence did not mean passivity or theoretical work. As an oppressed people, Negores

had to react directly against thier oppresors, even when that meant breaking the laws made by

them. Sit-ins, boycotts, marches, protests, were common practice in King’s approach, but

retaliation, hummiliation and phyisical violence were not means to be used if one wanted to

prove that Negroes were not even a bit like they were percieved in the society. Another of

King’s influences was Henry David Thoreau, mainly with his book On Civil Disobedience,

where Thoreau was preachind the opposition to an unjust and evil system. As King himself

stated in the letter from Birmingham, „there are just laws, and there are unjust laws”, and the

latter had to be fought against, even when that meant fighting against society, being jailed

and so on.

A paragraph from Deleuze & Guattari – Mille Plateaux can describe the nonviolent

approach of Martin Luther King very well „In erecting the figure of a universal minoritarian

consciousness, one addresses powers (puissances) of becoming that belong to a different

realm from that of Power (Pouvoir) and Domination.”1 This means that if one is to succeed in

changing his state of minority, he cannot use the tactics and strategies that are offered by the

Power. Violence is power personificated, and by refusing it, King and his followers were able

to obtain major victories when fighting for equallity and civil rights. Refusing to be violent

but also doing direct actions meant that there was another way, one intended towards

negociation and dialogue instead of oppresion and this is an essential characteristic of

nonviolent protests.

1
Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus, translation by Brian
Massumi, 2005, Minneapolis, University Of Minnesota Press.
 When talking about the 21st century, one of the moments when the strategies

popularisez by King were put to work again, but in a different context wast Occupy

Wall Street and all the movements born from it. Here too, the aim was to draw attention

upon a social aspect that is not working well and that is still producing bigger and bigger gaps

in the dreams of equallity among people, without being violent, while acting directly,

physically, in the places of action. Violence and repression will always be strategies used

by the Power when it is in danger. In the 21st century when the state reacts violently

against a person or a group of people, it means that it’s status of Power is endangered

and that is a key moment when one has to remember the teachings of Martin Luther

King. Instead of fighting back with violence, direct actions against the Power, but from

inside it, with different tactics, are needed in order to be able to negotiate the common

which belongs not only to those in power but to all the people.