This weekend, tens of thousands of people will gather at Fort Benning, Georgia to advocate for the closure of the School of the Americas, a US army training facility that has trained some of the most ruthlessly violent dictators and military leaders of recent history. They also gather in memory of the six Salvadoran Jesuits who were murdered by the Salvadoran soldiers because of their stance against the repression by the military.

These lived nonviolently, and in the end died because of their stance against violence. It is likely that their beliefs about nonviolence and justice were very similar to the beliefs of those of us who practice nonviolent living in the Western world today. The drastic difference, of course, is that these men were killed for being nonviolent; what is more, they lived nonviolently knowing that they very well might die because of it.

This begs the question of us, what level of commitment to nonviolence do we have when it really comes down to it? Would we be willing to die before giving up our principles of nonviolence? I know that, as a white man living in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most “liberal” parts of the United States, I can openly practice nonviolence and experience little persecution for doing so. In fact, many people that I know would complement me and support me for practicing civil disobedience or some other form of nonviolent action. I wonder how well I would stick to nonviolence if everyone around me were telling me I was a fool for doing so…or worse, if people around me were threatening to kill me.

I think our commitment to nonviolence starts to show when living nonviolently requires personal risk for us. I can go to a march for a couple of hours on a Saturday and not risk anything; but it is much harder for us to take nonviolent action when it means risking our job, our reputation, or our relationships.

Recognizing this, I look again to these Jesuit martyrs from El Salvador. They were not superheros, but ordinary people who were incredibly convicted of what they believed. Seeing how far they took their nonviolence gives me encouragement that we in the Western world also can stand up to injustice, even if it means going outside of our comfort zones and even risking part or all of our beings and what we hold dear.