Sixteen competitors will engage in a single elimination battle-to-the-death tournament to determine the greatest nonviolent activist of all time. Let's meet the competitors.
1. Mohandas K. Gandhi - The Mahatma. Gandhi led the march towards India's independence from the British Empire which was finally achieved in 1947. Throughout Gandhi's movement, he preached ahimsa, nonviolence, in the face of Britain's barbarous colonial rule. He is famous for leading the Salt March, where Indians protested a new law making it illegal for them to make salt. Gandhi also made many trips to prison for his role in the independence movement. He fasted numerous times, risking his life, to create peace in India. He was assassinated by a Hindu fundamentalist because he called for unity among Hindus and Muslims.
2. Martin Luther King Jr. - The Rev. Dr. King led the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s by using nonviolent means to overturn racial segregation in the United States. He dreamed of a world where blacks would share social, political, and legal equality with whites. His oratory prowess shifted the silent masses onto his side. He also utilized marches and boycotts. He endured prison terms and beatings for his cause. He was assassinated because of his beliefs.
3. Nelson Mandela - Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years for advocating against Apartheid in South Africa. He envisioned a South Africa that was not divided by race. His imprisonment brought worldwide attention to his cause. He was finally released in 1990. He became president of a democratic South Africa in 1994. Since, he has been Africa's most prominent statesman, mediating numerous conflicts that have occurred on the continent.
4. Rigoberto Menchu - An indigenous Guatemalan peasant, Menchu has spoken out against the military's repression in her country. She is an advocate for the indigenous peoples of the world. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and has written books about her life.
5. Harriet Tubman - Born a slave in the early 1820s, Tubman escaped to freedom. She then created the Underground Railroad, a system of escape for other enslaved black people in the southern United States. Her involvement in helping others escape slavery came at considerable risk to her own life. She later took on the cause of women's suffrage.
6. Oscar Romero - An archbishop in El Salvador, Romero was initially a proponent of the Salvadoran elite. When his friend, a priest, was assassinated, Romero took up the cause of the Salvadoran poor in the face of overwhelming violent oppression during the late 1970s. Romero developed a oneness with the poor of El Salvador. He was assassinated in 1980 after criticizing the army.
7. Steven Biko - Biko fought against South Africa's Apartheid state, espousing nonviolence and black consciousness. He led protests, including the Soweto Uprising of 1976, which was protesting the exclusion of African languages in schools. Biko was assassinated in 1977.
8. Petra Kelly - Kelly founded the Green Party in Germany in 1979, which became the first prominent Green Party in the world. She campaigned for nonviolence and took up the cause of the voiceless throughout the world. She was murdered in 1992.
9. Kwame Nkrumah - Nkrumah led a nonviolent movement for Ghana's independence against British colonialism. Ghana became the first independent African state in 1957 when Nkrumah became president.
10. The women of the Rosenstrasse protest - In February 1943, in the heart of Berlin, Germany, a group of gentile women protested the deportation of their Jewish husbands to concentration camps by the Nazi regime. The protest was successful and the men were returned to their wives.
11. Tank Man - Sometimes identified as Wang Weilin, the Tank Man stood in front of numerous tanks in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China in 1989 as part of a pro-democracy protest taking place there. Virtually nothing is known about him. Rumors say he was executed shortly after the protest, but he could still be alive.
12. Mohamed Bouazizi - Bouazizi was a vendor who was harassed by the police in Tunisia in 2010. As a protest of the humiliation of the repressive regime, Bouazizi lit himself on fire. His courageous sacrifice sparked the nonviolent revolution in Tunisia which overthrew the government. This sparked other revolutions and protests against oppression throughout the Middle East.
13. Morgan Tsvangirai - Tsvangirai is a former trade union head, who founded a new opposition party called the MDC in Zimbabwe. He ran in two presidential elections in Zimbabwe in the hopes of ousting Robert Mugabe, the nation's violent dictator. Despite being victimized by vote rigging, beatings, and a treason trial based on fabricated evidence, Tsvangirai continued campaigning against Mugabe. He became Prime Minister in a government of national unity in 2009 and is credited with slowing the country's hyper-inflation.
14. Leo Tolstoy - Tolstoy was a 19th century writer from Russia who wrote novels that influenced Gandhi and King.
15. Susan B. Anthony - Anthony, from the United States, called for women's rights and for women's suffrage. She was once arrested in 1872 for attempting to vote. She gave speeches and wrote essays for her cause.
16. Albert Einstein - Though the discoverer of the atomic bomb, Einstein was avowedly nonviolent and di not know the purpose of his discovery when he split the atom. A genius, Einstein advocated a world with one government in the hopes that doing so would make war obsolete.
Please join us tomorrow for the First Round contests. Sixteen nonviolent heroes enter the death tournament, but only one will leave as the greatest nonviolent hero of all time!
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