Categorical Aperitif

I knew about the coup in Chile. I knew about the re-recording of "Love Me Do." I did not know about BART, the murder of Peter Tosh, or the arrest of Fatty Arbuckle. And until last Friday's Democracy Now!, I did not know about something else that happened on September 11th:

September 11th 2006 has a special significance. It not only marks the fifth anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington, it also marks 100 years to the day that Mahatma Gandhi launched the modern nonviolent resistance movement. Gandhi called it "Satyagraha."

The date was September 11th, 1906. Speaking before 3,000 Indians gathered at a theater in Johannesburg, Gandhi organized a strategy of nonviolent resistance to oppose racist policies in South Africa. Satyagraha was born and since then, it has been adopted by many around the world to resist social injustice and oppression.

Gandhi used it in India to win independence from the British. The Reverend Martin Luther King used it in the United States to oppose segregation and Nelson Mandela used it in South Africa to end apartheid.

Tomorrow, I am going to be trying like hell to think of this rather than of our own godawful path to—or especially from—9/11/01:

We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right.