What They Did to Her Demands a Response—But Not What You Think.
A Next Level Human field manual for moral courage, nonviolent power, and disciplined resistance
**Note: This piece draws from my original ideas, research, hooks, and metaphors. For editing and some wording, I’ve used AI tools trained on my own books and style, always blending technology with my hands-on curation and oversight. Thank you for being here—Jade.
It never starts with a Molotov cocktail.
It starts at the dinner table.
A half-joke that dehumanizes.
A lie that goes unchallenged because “it’s not worth it.”
A quiet retreat into comfort while something essential erodes.
History doesn’t usually collapse in a single dramatic moment.
It decays through a million small acts of comfort and cowardice.
And then one day people ask, How did it get this far?
What history also shows, again and again, is something harder to accept…
Outrage is justified.
But outwardly expressed outrage aimed at others only moves YOUR team while mobilizing the OTHER team just as powerfully.
People get so caught up in how they are right and why the other is wrong…. but resistance that works is not about who is wrong.
It is about what works.
Because change requires those who are currently wrong to start doing what is right.
The Big Idea
Resistance is not a personality trait.
It’s a skill, a discipline, and a sequence.
Based on decades of empirical research, especially the work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, the most effective resistance movements in history follow a predictable progression.
Not from rage to riots.
But from courage → coordination → mass participation → moral pressure.
And here is the part that feels emotionally backward but empirically true:
Nonviolence is not weakness.
It is a force multiplier.
That is the key distinction any change agent must remember at all costs.
The Breakdown
What the Data Actually Says
Chenoweth and Stephan analyzed hundreds of resistance movements across the 20th and 21st centuries. Lucky for us they compiled this research in a book (reference below).
Their core findings are not philosophical. They are statistical:
Nonviolent movements succeed roughly twice as often as violent ones (about 53% success for major nonviolent campaigns versus about 26% for violent ones).
Successful movements almost always reach active participation from about 3.5% of the population.
Introducing violence, looting, or a “violent flank” reliably reduces participation, fractures coalitions, and legitimizes repression.
This is not a moral argument.
It is an effectiveness argument.
If the aim is lasting change, violence usually backfires.
These findings are reported in Chenoweth & Stephan’s peer-reviewed research.
But here is the brutal addition the data implies, and most people will not want to admit or hear:
The most troubling thing is that, more often than we might like, for change to occur… “good people” may have to die.
The data show that when regimes violently repress nonviolent protesters, this often backfires: it can increase mobilization, generate sympathy for the movement, and erode the regime’s legitimacy. In many major campaigns, people who were peacefully resisting suffered injury or death, and those visible sacrifices played a role in shifting public opinion and elite support.
That is not an argument for people dying; it is a recognition of a brutal pattern in history: nonviolent movements often succeed despite brutal repression, not because they avoid it.
The Stepwise Pattern Most People Feel but Can’t Name
Step 1: Small Acts of Courage
This is where every real movement begins.
Not with marches.
With individuals refusing to outsource their conscience.
Speaking calmly when cruelty is normalized.
Refusing to laugh at dehumanization.
Correcting lies without humiliation.
Showing up to local meetings, school boards, city councils.
Calling representatives. Writing. Standing.
These acts do two things simultaneously:
They retrain the individual nervous system away from fear-based compliance.
They signal to others that silence is no longer the social norm.
This is identity before ideology.
Step 2: Coordinated Nonviolent Action
When courage clusters, it becomes visible.
Marches.
Sit-ins.
Strikes.
Civil disobedience.
Sustained pressure campaigns.
The objective here is not emotional release.
The objective is participation density.
Nonviolence allows the elderly, parents, workers, veterans, clergy, and skeptics to stand together. This is how movements approach the 3.5% threshold that repeatedly marks real turning points.
This is also where many movements fail… because they confuse outrage with effectiveness.
Outrage aimed outward feels righteous.
But it also activates threat responses in everyone watching.
Which means it mobilizes both sides.
Step 3: Absorbing Violence Without Returning It
This is where the conversation turns uncomfortable.
As discussed, historically, successful movements often win after violence is inflicted on peaceful resistors.
This suffering, when disciplined and non-retaliatory, shifts legitimacy.
Not because suffering is good.
But because it exposes moral asymmetry.
Nonviolent discipline works partly because it fractures institutional loyalty, erodes public support for repression, and activates empathy in undecided populations.
What does not work, repeatedly:
Looting
Vigilantism
Random property destruction
Antagonizing the very population required for majority participation
The moment resistance mirrors the aggression it opposes, the middle disappears.
And the middle decides outcomes.
If you want to help you must make the angriest of your sympathizers… and those most prone to violent retaliation understand this.
The most courageous of resistors seem to be the ones who put themselves in harm and sacrifice their lives on camera. I can tell you nothing is more sad and difficult for me to write… but it seems to be the case.
A Modern Tragedy and a Missed Inflection Point
There is a recent story that captures this dilemma in its rawest form.
The killing of Renee Good.
Accounts describe Renee as calm in the moments before her death, reportedly saying something like “I’m not mad at you, man,” seconds before she was shot.
In the aftermath, some have pointed to earlier verbal taunts from her wife as a kind of moral offset… as if sharp words from someone else could somehow explain away, or justify, what happened.
And emotionally, that instinct makes sense. People want conflict to feel balanced. They look for symmetry in blame, even where there is none.
But here’s the hard truth: those who want to justify harm will cling to any excuse they can find.
That’s why nonviolent resistance is not just about presence. It’s about discipline. About denying those who deal in violence even a single foothold.
Not because oppressors are owed silence… but because the story that gets told after matters just as much as the moment itself.
Imagine if everyone had stood in that same calm… clear, composed, unflinching, unflappable.
What excuse would they have had left?
But imagine the potency of that moment if it had been entirely conciliatory.
History shows us something deeply unfair:
The heroes of change are not the most outraged.
They are the most controlled.
They take it on the chin for the rest of humanity.
A Clearer Path: Four Stages of Resistance
What we need now isn’t just outrage. It isn’t performance, either.
What we need is a resistance that’s grounded. Disciplined. Compassionate. Relentless. Unshakable.
Below is one way to think about that… a four‑stage framework, not perfect, not complete, but rooted in what one could call compassionate courage or even Christ Courage.
Let me be clear: I don’t consider myself a Christian. But I read the philosophy of Christ… at least as I understand it… as compassion under pressure (the “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” stance in the face of a cross).
And to be even clearer: anyone, Christian or not, who supports what’s happening now is acting in violation of that teaching. That doesn’t make compassionate courage… or Christ Courage… any less relevant. If anything, it makes it more urgent.
If anything, it is exactly what the world needs.
Stage 1 — Small Acts of Compassionate Courage
We speak truth to lies.
When you hear people speak falsely, you correct them.
When people use language that divides or dehumanizes, you interject and gently correct.
You use your social media to say what’s true.
You call people in to compassion… you don’t call them out.
You see those with different views not as dumb or evil, but as scared.
You seek to allay their fears while still speaking truth.
This is Christ Courage at its most basic level.
Stage 2 — Stand Up Firmly, Calmly
Firmly calmly matters.
This means helping others.
It means calling out loudly and compassionately.
It means standing up and in the way with steadfast conviction while holding, at the same time, an energetic of understanding and acceptance for all involved.
Think of it as: I love you and fuck you.
Think of it as: You are doing the wrong thing and I know you want to do the right thing.
Call your representatives.
Email.
Record.
Speak reason and calmness simultaneously while not being afraid to say: You are wrong here. This is not justice. This is not right.
This is get out of the way unless it finds you.
This is also: don’t spend your money on these people.
Turn off all economic connections to those who can’t hold this position.
Any organizations that are constantly tuning into the bullshit… turn those off.
Don’t give your attention.
Don’t give your dollars.
Don’t give your time.
Encourage all to do the same.
Stage 3 — Get in the Way
This is where you go to where you are needed.
March.
Protest.
Sit in.
Donate money.
You do so while living the rules of Stage 2.
While in these places, don’t escalate and look to deescalate.
Simply be in the way.
Use your voice.
Use your body.
Be the obstacle they must move around.
But don’t incite.
Don’t break.
Just be there.
Chant as loudly as you can—but chant for unity and hold that in your heart.
Block the way.
Get in the way.
Stay in the way.
This is civil disobedience.
Stage 4 — Defend, But Never Attack
You defend yourself and others—but you never attack.
You take it on the chin.
You understand you may get harmed physically.
But you make sure it is documented.
Recorded.
That you are heard.
They must feel and own what they are doing.
This is the hardest part.
This is Christ consciousness at its highest.
Why Rational People Start Arguing for Violence
Recently, many highly intelligent, data-driven people have begun openly discussing retaliation and violence.
They speak the language of logic.
They cite history.
They invoke realism.
And they often fail to notice the contradiction.
Negative emotions narrow cognition.
They create certainty where nuance is required.
Evil’s goal is not to hurt you.
Evil’s goal is to get you to spread more evil.
Once anger becomes identity, even rational minds become blind.
This is not a character flaw. I am simply pointing it out as a human vulnerability.
Why Data Fails and Redemption Works
People do not change because they are shown to be wrong.
They change when the door to redemption stays open.
If that door is closed, the door to betterment never opens.
Research in political psychology supports this. Emotional acknowledgment, shared suffering, and moral inclusion consistently outperform confrontation and humiliation in shifting deeply held beliefs.
This aligns with findings from Drew Westen and George Lakoff.
Resistance that works says:
“I see your fear.”
“I recognize your suffering.”
“And there is still a place for you on the other side of this.”
The Oldest Template We Keep Forgetting
There is an ancient story that captures this pattern with disturbing precision.
Jesus Christ was not a symbol of dominance.
He was not a warrior king.
He was a calm, controlled resistor.
He absorbed violence without mirroring it.
He offered redemption to those actively harming him.
And he paid with his life.
History suggests his impact came not despite that, but because of it.
It is a bitter irony that many of his loudest modern “followers” now behave like the very thing he opposed… they have become the devil in Christ’s clothing.
This is what fear and anger do. This is why flawed leaders use divisive language and dehumanizing tactics. They know full well how fear drives out love.
Practical Takeaway
This is what disciplined resistance actually requires:
Practice daily moral courage without performance (conversations, calls to representatives, social media posts, etc… all done to call people in not call them out).
Build coalitions that include people you disagree with (like it or not you need them and more than you think will join if they have a path to).
Maintain nonviolent discipline even when provoked (the most power you have is to be seen standing up, standing out and doing it with fierce resistance and love).
Appeal to shared suffering, not moral superiority (we all suffer… help them see they are fighting the wrong enemy).
Measure success by participation and legitimacy, not emotional satisfaction (forget your emotions… measure success by numbers you help mobilize).
If resistance ever escalates beyond nonviolence, understand this clearly:
Violence does not win movements.
At best, it exposes them.
And the exposure that changes history almost always comes from calm, controlled resistors who suffer so others finally see.
Closing Thought
History will judge this moment.
But it will not ask who was angriest.
It will ask who kept the door to redemption open long enough for change to cross the threshold.
Resistance begins long before the streets fill.
It begins in refusing to let justified outrage turn into ineffective action…
and in choosing to be dangerous to injustice without becoming its mirror.
Let me say that again. You, me, we… must be dangerous to injustice without becoming its mirror.
PS: If you’re ready to break free of fear-driven reactivity and become the kind of person who can resist without losing your humanity, explore my Next Level Human coaching program today. Spots are limited… don’t wait. 👉 http://www.nextlevelhuman.com/human-coaching
References:
Chenoweth, E., & Stephan, M. J. (2011). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. Columbia University Press.
Westen, D. (2007). The political brain: The role of emotion in deciding the fate of the nation. PublicAffairs.
Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant!: Know your values and frame the debate. Chelsea Green Publishing.
Thank you for breaking this down into manageable pieces. We are certainly living in difficult times, and without a good map, we can easily get lost. This is a great start.
Love this—thank you. Also love “I love you and fuck you.”