Prison Notes
Author | : Barbara Deming |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 200 |
Release | : 1966 |
ISBN-10 | : UVA:X000054380 |
ISBN-13 | : |
Rating | : 4/5 (80 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: Barbara Deming spent nearly two months in a jail in Albany, Georgia, where the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo March for Peace on which she was embarked with thirty-four other demonstrators was halted by the local authorities. Their use of non-violent means of protest did not terminate with their internment. Their principal weapon was a refusal to eat -- so drastic that some required force-feeding in the hospital. Barbara Deming writes of the philosophy behind this noncooperation or non-violence as a dramatic technique, a method of persuasion. The decisions of each prisoner on how to proceed in the face of his conviction and their collective stamina force the reader as well to consider the stakes. The demonstrators won a victory and were freed to march on through the town where they had been arrested.