The easier story would be the violence of recent weeks. The shattered windows. The smoke-dark language of hatred. The ancient human instinct to turn fear into fire and direct it towards the vulnerable.

But that is not the story I want to tell.

Because beneath the noise of those early June nights, something quieter and infinitely more powerful was unfolding. Something the headlines rarely know how to hold. Nonviolence.

Not as theory.

Not as performance.

But as lived, breathing practice.

I think of the children first.

Children sitting cross-legged on living room floors, their small hands stained with marker ink and paint, making signs to place in windows and on doors. Bright drawings declaring that refugees and asylum seekers were welcome here. There is something almost sacramental about a child choosing colour in the face of hatred. A holy refusal to let fear become the loudest voice in the room.

And then the women.

Women who organised gatherings in community centres. Women who walked alongside their Muslim sisters, their Black sisters, not with grand speeches but with ordinary tenderness — cups of tea, shared food, laughter rising gently above anxiety. The kind of care that rarely appears in political analysis but without which communities collapse entirely.

There is an ancient strength in women gathering. A form of resistance rooted not in domination, but in protection.

And then the volunteers.

And threaded through all of it were the volunteers. More than one hundred people, coordinated largely by two women from Sudan, quietly sustaining over six hundred people every single day. Grocery runs. Pharmacy collections. Lifts to work. Safe transport out of dangerous situations. Helping families move between temporary accommodations carrying little more than bags and exhaustion.

This too is nonviolence. Practical. Organised. Fiercely attentive.

And perhaps this is what gives me hope. Because violence is always loud. It needs spectacle. It feeds on visibility. But nonviolence often works beneath the surface, like roots strengthening unseen beneath winter soil. It survives through ordinary people choosing care over contempt again and again and again.

I have come to believe that the universe bends itself quietly towards justice through these acts. Through stubborn human tenderness.

And there is something else we must remember too: rest is part of this work. Joy is part of this work. Creativity is part of this work. The systems of hatred and violence depend upon exhaustion. They thrive when people become hardened, cynical, disconnected from beauty and each other. So every act of laughter, every shared meal, every song sung loudly in community halls, every badly painted banner held proudly by children becomes its own quiet rebellion.

To choose joy while protecting others is not frivolous. It is resistance. Perhaps nonviolence is ultimately this – the refusal to let the human spirit become smaller in response to cruelty. And for all the darkness that tried to descend, that is the story I want remembered.

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Kate Laverty is director of Forthspring Inter Community Group https://www.forthspring.org/