Guilt is as much a tool as pride. I think the way Martin Luther King, Jr. frames the goal of direct action in “A Letter from Birmingham Jail”[1] is helpful in u

Guilt is as much a tool as pride. I think the way Martin Luther King, Jr. frames the goal of direct action in “A Letter from Birmingham Jail”[1] is helpful in understanding the power of internal guilt in changing things: > You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. You can then use both the stick (tension that leads to confronting a crisis) to lead people to the carrot (pride for confronting that crisis). It does depend on the community’s ability to internalize that tension, though. I’m concerned that is much harder than it used to be. I think for many American Republicans in particular that is no longer possible, because they’ve created parallel information streams that scrubs out all of that tension. If that’s true, I don’t actually know what the right tactic is to help them understand the tension that exist in so many issues, or even if there is a plausible tactic. [1]: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....