Everyone wants to take a stand and make a difference in the world, but it doesn’t necessarily need to come in the form of violence. Nelson Mandela once said, “When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.”

What people don’t realize is that being an outlaw can be peaceful. A non-violent protest has been defined as “the doctrine, policy or practice of rejecting violence in favor of peaceful tactics as a means of gaining political objectives.”

In history, there have been countless peaceful protests. Whether it be for women’s rights, gender and marriage equality or any movement led by Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr., they were all done in a peaceful manner. Everyone involved took a stand for what they believed in, without the intention of using violence, and they made a huge impact on society.

Back then, it seemed like people cared more about one another and cared about making a difference for the better. Today, that’s not the case. Just take one look at the news. There are all of these riots: Baltimore. Ferguson. Westboro Baptist. All of these are protests, but they don’t have the same intentions. People being harassed, property destroyed, buildings burned to the ground, innocent lives lost, people committing crimes because they’re angry or just joining in so they aren’t left out. This isn’t what a protest is about. It shouldn’t be about hate, yet that’s exactly what it has become.

The very thing that King and Mandela strived to avoid has become the downfall, when in reality, it’s an easy fix. Mandela had a theory that people respond to how others relate to them. “If you approach them on the basis of violence, that’s how they’ll react. But if you say, ‘We want peace, we want stability,’ we can do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.”

In a world where people are going to respond more to something done peacefully rather than by people becoming violent, why is it even a question on which to choose? These are the current events that kids are growing up with, living and seeing on a daily basis. If hate and violence is all they’re seeing, than that’s all they’re going to know. They aren’t going to know how to deal with situations other than with the use of violence. Is this the environment they need to be in, or do they need to be in one modeled like the past?

We can’t end violence with violence. There are other, more peaceful, options. Just like Bob Marley once sang, “ Get up, stand up: Stand up for your rights! Get up, stand up: Don’t give up the fight!”