Women from a slum in Medellin, the capital of Colombia, repeatedly asked their mayor to extend the water pipes to their neighborhood. More than once, they received promises, but no action was ever taken. One day, some of them who had taken a seminar on active non-violence led by Jean and Hildegard Goss called the women to a meeting. They decided to intensify their struggle but in a non-violent way, that is to say by deciding explicitly, that whatever happens, they will exclude all means of violence which degrade the one who commits them as much as the one who undergoes them.
They formed groups of 10 women, each with her smallest child. The first group went to the central square of the city where a beautiful fountain was pouring out its abundant waters. They began to bathe their babies in the puddles beside the fountain. When shocked middle-class women intervened, it allowed the group to explain to them the lack of clean water they were suffering from and the indifference of the authorities. The police took them to the station, but they were followed by a second group which did the same. The police had to come back to chase them away, and so it continued. In the fifth group, an angry policeman raised his baton to hit a woman but a well-to-do woman grabbed his arm stopping him, and said, « If your wife lived up there like these women, would you hit her? “
Following this incident, women from the middle and upper classes joined the women from the slums and they returned together to address the administration. A solution was found in which each side took a step towards the other. The many unemployed men from the slums dug the trenches and the municipality financed the water supply.
Extract from my article published on May 13, 2000, available at http://etiennechome.site/outils-pour-de-meilleures-relations-humaines/
article n° 6.
