How often has nonviolent conflict happened in history?
A. More frequently than is commonly realized. The British gave up their occupation of India after a decades-long nonviolent struggle led by Gandhi. The Nazis were resisted effectively by Danes and other occupied peoples of Europe in World War II. African Americans opted for nonviolent action to defeat segregation in the United States in the 1960s. The Polish Solidarity movement used strikes to win the right to organize freely, a historic first in communist Poland. Filipinos and Chileans resorted to nonviolent action to bring down dictators in the 1980’s. The nonviolent civic movement in South Africa employed boycotts and other sanctions to weaken the apartheid regime to the point of forcing negotiations on the country’s political future. East Europeans and Mongolians organized mass nonviolent campaigns to topple their communist governments. And Serbs ousted Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 after a nonviolent student movement helped co-opt the police and military and undermine his base of sup
