These Are Our Training Grounds, Not the Military’s Playground
By Walden Wright
There’s a dangerous phrase echoing in our headlines: “training grounds.”
Not whispered in a war room, but declared openly about our own cities.
It is not the first time those in power have mistaken communities for camps, or neighbors for enemies. But every time it happens, it reveals the same truth: when a government begins to see its people as obstacles instead of citizens, it has already forgotten the difference between republic and empire.
đź“š The Long Arc of Student Resistance
History tells us something different about “training grounds.”
In 1960 Greensboro, college students trained themselves in courage at a Woolworth’s lunch counter, staying seated when the whole world told them to move. (Greensboro sit-ins)
In 1970 Kent State, students paid with their lives for daring to resist a war they knew would consume a generation. (Kent State shootings)
In 1980s South Africa, young people on campuses turned boycotts and divestment campaigns into weapons against apartheid.
In 1989 Tiananmen Square, students built a model of democracy in the open before tanks crushed it.
These were the real training grounds: not places of violence, but classrooms of conscience.
🌱 What We Choose to Practice
I walk past a campus green today and see students with clipboards, handing out flyers for October 18. They are smiling, stumbling over speeches, finding their voices.
That is practice. That is training.
Not the kind you measure in pushups or platoons, but the kind that holds a republic together: learning how to speak, how to argue, how to stand together when standing is dangerous.
A library, a union hall, a church basement — these have always been our boot camps for democracy.
⚠️ When Leaders See Enemies Instead of Citizens
When leaders call your street a “training ground,” they are not speaking of you as a citizen. They are speaking of you as a subject, a target, a prop.
History warns us of where that goes.
In Rome, Caesar’s generals quartered troops among the people, turning villages into marching camps.
In 20th-century dictatorships from Chile to China, “training” meant rehearsing repression on one’s own population before unleashing it elsewhere.
Even here, when National Guard troops were deployed against striking workers in the 19th century, “training” was a euphemism for breaking bones.
We cannot mistake this language for anything less than what it is: preparation for rule by force.
✊ These Grounds Belong to Us
But here is the counter-story.
Every step you take across a campus lawn, every time you gather outside a courthouse, every flyer you hand to a stranger — you are training, too.
You are training in freedom.
You are training in solidarity.
You are training in the oldest discipline this republic has: self-government.
And on October 18, when thousands fill the streets under the banner No Kings, No Training Grounds, we remind them that these cities do not belong to kings, and these people do not bow.
🕯️ Beauty in Resistance
I write not to frighten, but to remind. Resistance is not only duty; it is beautiful.
There is beauty in a line of students holding hands outside their campus.
There is beauty in a mother walking with her child to a rally, saying: This is what courage looks like.
There is beauty in neighbors who disagree on nearly everything else, but agree that no man is king here.
That beauty is what will carry us. Not anger alone, not outrage alone, but the stubborn loveliness of people who refuse to be treated as pawns on a training ground.
🛠️ Civil Disobedience: Proper and Effective in These Times
But beauty must be matched with wisdom. Civil disobedience is not chaos; it is discipline. Done well, it shines a light on injustice so brightly that even those who deny it must squint. Done poorly, it gives authoritarians the excuse they crave.
1. Root It in Conscience, Not Convenience
Civil disobedience is not about making noise for noise’s sake. Thoreau wrote his famous essay when he refused to pay taxes funding slavery and war (Civil Disobedience, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Gandhi marched to the sea not for spectacle, but to break unjust salt laws. Dr. King sat in Birmingham Jail because he refused to obey injunctions designed to silence Black voices (Letter from Birmingham Jail).
Effective civil disobedience begins with a clear moral stand: This law, this order, this policy is unjust — and we will not comply.
2. Stay Nonviolent, No Matter the Provocation
History is clear: violence plays into the hands of those in power. It justifies crackdowns, militarization, and propaganda.
Gandhi’s marches worked because the world saw the contrast: peaceful marchers beaten by armed police.
The Civil Rights Movement’s power came from teenagers being dragged out of diners by mobs while refusing to raise a hand in return.
In Eastern Europe’s Velvet Revolution, candles, songs, and silence undid tanks and rifles.
Nonviolence is not weakness. It is strength. It demands more courage to remain still while insulted than to strike back.
3. Make the Injustice Visible
The point of civil disobedience is not to hide. It is to expose.
Sit-ins at segregated lunch counters made the absurdity of Jim Crow visible to the world.
Die-ins during the AIDS crisis forced the public to confront the human cost of indifference.
Climate strikes make visible the urgency that leaders bury in reports.
October 18 should not be silent, but it should be strategic: marches, teach-ins, candlelight vigils that remind the world what is at stake.
4. Link Arms Across Lines
Civil disobedience is strongest when it crosses boundaries. Students with veterans. Faith leaders with labor unions. Parents with their children.
As Dr. King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. When communities come together, authoritarians cannot dismiss the movement as “just students” or “just radicals.” It becomes undeniable.
5. Plan, Train, Protect
Effective resistance is disciplined. It prepares for the worst and hopes for the best.
Legal aid hotlines should be known to all participants (National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense).
De-escalation training helps marchers respond to provocation without spiraling into violence (ICNC Nonviolent Action Guide).
Mutual aid structures — food, water, safe rides — remind everyone that movements are sustained by care as much as courage.
Civil disobedience is not only about standing against injustice, but about modeling the community we want to build in its place.
đź“ť Closing the Circle
When I was a boy, my grandfather told me: The republic will never end with a bang. It will end when we forget how to practice it.
So here we are, practicing.
On porches, in classrooms, in court squares, in marches.
These are our training grounds. And they belong to us.
October 18. Be there.
Related Post: Porch Talk Grit: Our Cities Are Not Your Training Grounds
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