What the Movie "Rustin" Gets Right About the Many Faces of Violence

George C. Wolfe's 2023 film Rustin tells the story of Bayard Rustin, a crucial but frequently overlooked leader of the American Civil Rights Movement. Rustin was a primary organizer of the 1963 March on Washington and a pathmaker for the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, despite facing harsh discrimination as an openly gay Black man. Beyond just tracing his commitment to nonviolence, the film is worth watching for how deliberately it depicts different kinds of violence — acute, structural, and cultural — echoing peace researcher Johan Galtung's typology, and the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.

Within Rustin's experiences as the film portrays them, you can see all three forms of Galtung's typology at play. Structural and cultural violence show up in the systemic racism and homophobia he confronts; acute violence shows up in the physical threats he faces directly. Structural violence — the ways social structures systematically disadvantage people — is clearest in the institutional obstacles Rustin runs into because of his race and sexuality. Other movement leaders marginalize him despite his enormous contributions, bringing up his ties to communism and his sexuality as reasons to sideline him. Roy Wilkins' dismissal of Rustin in the film is a near-textbook example of how societal institutions, even ones nominally on the same side, maintain exclusion from within. Cultural violence — the parts of culture used to justify or legitimize the other two forms — shows up in the constant uphill fight against stigma and bias Rustin faces throughout the film. One particularly jarring moment: Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. threatens to claim publicly that King and Rustin are lovers, weaponizing homophobia not just to discredit Rustin, but to damage King by association. That's cultural violence doing exactly what it's built to do — sustaining oppression by leveraging what a society already fears or looks down on. And the film doesn't shy away from acute violence either: activists live in constant fear of physical harm, scenes of police brutality appear throughout, and Rustin himself is shown being beaten during a demonstration.

Rustin's Quaker faith and admiration for Gandhi are the foundation of his commitment to nonviolence. In his opening speech to his team of organizers, he says: "Thirty years ago, Gandhi walked to the sea, picked up a handful of salt, and inspired a movement that brought down an empire. The time has come for us to do the same." That's not just rhetoric — his approach to training volunteers and planning the March on Washington mirrors Gandhi's concept of satyagraha, moral civil disobedience applied with real discipline and order.

But the film is careful not to let Rustin's nonviolence tip into complacency. At a party, Rustin visibly bristles overhearing a man say, "I go south again, it's gonna be with a gun in my hand and brother Malcolm in my heart" — he clearly doesn't respect that approach, and takes pride in having convinced King to get rid of his own guns. Yet when a fellow activist, Muste, tells him, "Every day, we agree to surrender that which makes us different so that together we might forge a more humane world," Rustin refuses: "I can't surrender my differences. The world won't let me. And even if I could, I wouldn't want to. Not today. Not today." Nonviolence, for Rustin, was never about erasing himself to keep the peace.

What makes Rustin worth watching isn't a single triumphant march or speech — it's how honestly it portrays the gritty, often thankless work of organizing a movement that has to be both morally airtight and logistically flawless at the same time. It shows how violence can wear the face of bureaucracy, silence, and prejudice just as easily as it wears the face of a fist or a gun, while also showcasing the sheer strategic brilliance it took to pull off what Rustin pulled off. His commitment to nonviolence, in spite of both personal and societal obstacles, is a genuinely compelling case for what peaceful resistance can accomplish — and the film does his legacy justice.

Sources: Wolfe, George C., dir. Rustin. Netflix, 2023. · Galtung, Johan. "Violence, Peace, and Peace Research." Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167–191.