Loving activism is not just sitting back and saying, “Oh it’s great, just
ruin me or kill me.” Loving activism can be quite harsh in some cases,
in actual action like getting arresting, or bluntly saying, “You’re crazy,”
or, “You’re wrong.” Something with force, but more like the force of a
martial artist. Like good old Grasshopper [from the TV series “Kung
Fu”], he would throw the cowboy out the window with a smile on his
face in a relaxed manner.
So that’s loving activism where, even though you’re opposing this
policeman or this person and you’re in front of them, you are not
thinking that they automatically have to be evil. You are seeing the
opponent not as an object of hatred, but as an object of concern – you
want them to be better off, and you feel to oppose them is helping
them getting better off in a particular case.
The Pussy Hat thing, those marches were happy occasions. And this is
the key, I think. Try to find the sources of happiness within yourself
and around you, and then help the people who are unhappy, and
therefore causing evil. You may have to share that happiness with
someone who’s about to do some terrible thing, to help stop them from
doing it. You may even have to be forceful sometimes, like a mother
will be forceful with a child who’s hurting itself or going to hurt
something else in some careless way. But they don’t hate the child.
They just love the child. But you can have fierce love. You can have
fierce compassion.

~ Robert Thurman ~