A People Walking in Darkness… Reflecting on Hope with a Tale of Two Years (1968 & 1989)

Isaiah 9 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

Some kinds of darkness Personal – being wounded, rejected Meaningless lifestyles and uncaring surroundings Despair for the world

1968 – the background

Berlin Wall – begun in 1961

Two recent assassinations JFK Malcolm X

Civil Rights Protests

Civil rights protests

Martin Luther King Assassinated

Peak of the Vietnam War

Atrocities from Vietnam are becoming public

My Lai Massacre

Anti-war protests grow and spread

Napalming Draft Records: The Catonsville Nine

Best Hope to Stop Vietnam

Also assassinated…

Instead the world gets…

The war, and the protests, don’t stop (Kent State, 1970)

Interlude – My 1968

“The Troubles” begin in N. Ireland

Prague Spring First hope as some freedoms return…

Prague Spring …then the tanks come

Prague Spring Leaving death and demoralization

The Cold War Continues…

Nuclear Testing Continues….

After 1968 – Hope?

Solidarity movement transforms Poland

Lech Walesa "No one throughout the world gave us the least of a chance to break Communism down," the Nobel laureate said. "It happened quite simply," he added. "We knelt down and prayed.”

Tiananmen Square

Paneuropean Picnic - Hungary

South Africa – President Botha meets with Nelson Mandela… …who is then freed in early 1990, becoming president in 1994

Peace for Vietnam and Cambodia

The Baltic Way

Birth of the Internet

Velvet Revolution – Vaclav Havel

Freedom comes to Romania

Berlin Wall Falls

Celebrating on the Berlin Wall

Cold War is over

In 1989, there were thirteen nations that underwent nonviolent revolutions. All of them successful except one, China. That year, 1.7 billion people were engaged in national nonviolent revolutions. That is a third of humanity. If you throw in all of the other nonviolent revolutions in all the other nations in the twentieth century, you get the astonishing figure of 3.34 billion people involved in nonviolent revolutions. That is two thirds of the human race. No one can ever again say that nonviolence doesn't work. It has been working like crazy. - Walter Wink