Hi everyone,

I'd like to start off by highlighting the enormous and exciting developments over recent decades in not only nonviolent strategic theory but the plethora of training programs, tools, resources that have been produced to make this strategic theory available and accessible to people around the world.

The lessons and successes of recent large scale popular movements are being transmitted across movements and regions by case studies, books, documentaries, video games, manuals and a seemingly large number of trainer's running small to large scale training programs for activists throughout the world. It seems that the shifts in popular perceptions of the relative effectiveness of nonviolent or unarmed struggle is being matched by an increased willingness and capability to provide training and resources for movements. It seems to me more likely that movements today will be exposed to the concepts and potential of radical nonviolence in creating change and noticably easier for activists in the majority world to access tools, resources and information on nonviolent struggle than it was a few decades ago.

The study of strategic nonviolence is increasingly being integrated
in undergrad and graduate international relations and peace/security studies programs. Mainstream acceptance of the theory and concepts of 'people power' seems to be slowing expanding, (particulary after each example of brave and defiant nonviolent resistance is broadcast around the world), and the quality of our training resources, manuals and hopefully our skills is improving. As more activists are inspired by the success of struggles in other regions the more interest is generated in developing simmiliar and nonviolent strategies.

So whether all this is enough, how other people are seeing this and what else we can do to help support and build effective nonviolent movements for change are questions I'd like to explore further. But before we delve into the lessons, learnings and challenges of training for nonviolent action, I'd acknowledge the work of so many activists, trainers and movement builders on this dialogue and elsewhere who have contributed to these incredibly exciting developments.

Anthony Kelly

(Australia)

www.thechangeagency.org

In response to the first question in this theme:

What would you recommend as a core package of knowledge and skills on theory and application for nonviolent action? (e.g., understanding strategy, tactics, power relations, etc)

In my opinion, when doing a workshop, the most important basic ideas to get across are:

1. To make change, nonviolent movements need people to support them. Therefore, it is beneficial to a movement to build an inclusive vision that attracts many people in society to support the movement. Movements are at their most powerful and are most transformative when they are able to achieve widespread participation by people in society.

2. Movements plan strategy from the top downwards: First they develop their vision (which is an articulation of what they are struggling for, not just what they are struggling against), then they develop their strategy and individual campaigns to achieve that vision, and then they develop tactics to implement their strategy.

3. Power is based on people’s obedience and consent, and therefore power can shift when people shift their obedience and consent patterns.

4. The targets (whether individuals, organizations, or institutions) that a movement wants to influence all depend on the continued obedience of people in order to function. Therefore, if the individual or leader of the organization or institution that the movement wants to influence does not want to listen to the movement, the movement can gain leverage by gaining the support of the people that the individual or leader of the organization or institution depend on in order to their maintain power.

These are the most fundamental ideas in nonviolent action that I think apply to virtually all struggles. These might constitute the “core package” of concepts that need to be delivered in a training.

Beyond those concepts, I think the rest of the material for each individual group should be customized according to what that group needs. Some groups may benefit from an intensive lesson on communications, others from a lesson about soliciting third party support, others from a lesson on negotiations or conflict resolution, and another from a lesson on capacity building actions, for example. There is significant variation between what a group struggling for minority rights may need, as opposed to a group struggle for self-determination. Or a group fighting for democracy, as opposed to a group fighting for labor rights or women’s rights. Or a group facing major repression versus a group facing far less repression. Therefore, trainers need to be flexible and be able to customize the content of what they teach to whatever best serves the audience that they are training.

You can find lesson plans that relate to a number of these areas in the curriculum (entitled: A Guide to Effective Nonviolent Struggle) that I co-authored with the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS)

In response to the second questions in this theme: What is the importance of having a strategic plan/vision?

There are many reasons for a movement to have a vision and strategic plan. First, let’s define what a vision and strategic plan is.

A vision is a picture of what the movement wants some part of society to look like when the struggle is complete. For example, “we are struggling for a society in which all people are treated equal, regardless of the color of their skin”. Or, “we are struggling for a society in which human rights are universally recognized, and each person’s vote is counted”. Or, “we are struggling for a society in which a person who works is paid enough and receives enough benefits that they can support their family”. A vision tells what a movement is struggling for (human rights, democracy, freedom, justice, accountable government, transparent government, a clean environment, etc.), not just what it is against (dictatorship, war, corruption, discrimination, oppression, racism, etc.). A vision is also designed to appeal to as many groups as possible so that the nonviolent movement can gain those groups’ support.

A strategic plan is a plan for how to realistically achieve that vision (or to achieve as much of that vision as is realistically possible). The strategic plan can be broken down into different parts. It consists of campaigns and tactics. A campaign is a plan for the conduct of a major phase of a nonviolent struggle. For example, a group that wants the right to unionize and better working conditions may have several campaigns as part of their strategic plan. One campaign may be aimed at influencing consumers. Another campaign may be based around organizing workers. A third campaign may based around building coalitions and appealing to external groups for support. All of those campaigns work together to support the group’s vision of a labor force that has the right to unionize and fair and safe working conditions.

Each of these campaigns requires certain tactics, which are actions that a movement takes to achieve particular objectives. For example, the consumer campaign may involve tactics such as consumer boycotts, writing letters to management, and divesting money from the corporation. The workers campaign may involve tactics such as striking, picketing, and establishing a strike fund for workers. And the coalition building campaign may involve tactics such as appearing at churches, meeting with other unions, and supporting new legislation.

There is a lot more to strategic planning (such as setting objectives, developing communications, targeting actions, etc.) and developing a vision than I have mentioned above. But based on the simple definitions and examples I’ve given above, here is my answer to why a vision and a strategic plan are so important.

1. First and foremost, what I see based on history is that movements that engage in strategic planning tend to be more effective than movements that rely on improvised or spontaneous nonviolent action.

2. Movements that strategize and develop a vision maximize the impact of their human resources, material resources, and time. Because they are organized around common goals and a common vision, they perform tactics and campaigns that all mutually reinforce each other. They concentrate their strengths on winning achievable objectives. And they are resilient when they are faced with opposition because they have done the analysis ahead of time for how they will handle opposition.

Hi everyone,

glad to participate in discussion unveiling such an important issues, regrading forst one i would like to give some short comments.

...pretty complex question, which should be explained on four levels - principles, vision, strategy and tactics

PRINCIPLES

If you analyse dozen of succesfull nonviolent movements you may think that every single struggle is unique, and you would be right! Still people like dr Peter Ackerman has researched into these struggles searching for more or less universal PRINCIPLES of succes. After a years of discussions, seems that three principles for succes in ALL of the cases (from India in the beginning of century, through Movements i have had personal experiences with, Like Serbian OTPOR or Georgian Kmara, to Lebanon movement after Harriri`s assasination, which we may consider as the last public succes of nonviolent movement recently), seems that we may define three principles

1. Unity (which may be breakdown as Unity of purpose, Unity of People and Unity within the organization)

2. Planning (including defining Vision of tommrow, Grand strategy, Campaigns, Individual tactics, their clever selection and linking)

3. Nonviolent discipline (train and maintain nonviolent discipline within movement helps build momentum and make opponents oppresion Backfire.

You may observe (and Robert Helvey has written about it in his great book "NVS - Thinking about the fundamenttals" avaliable on this dialogue, that this three principles together with simple rools dating from Sun Tzu "Art of War" creates the impression that principles of succes are simmilar, wether you examine the nonviolent struggle, or millitary struggle.

 You may find more about this issue in CANVAS Core curriculum, effective guide to nonviolent struggle" avaliable on this website

Hello everyone! I am one of the interns for New Tactics in Human Rights for this summer and I have loved reading this dialogue so far, but I have a question for any of the practitioners or other participants:

I am a college student and I have had a couple human rights classes and none of them addressed non-violent action and I was wondering if you think nonviolent action should be addressed in human rights classes and in what capacity? In my classes we discussed a lot of human rights abuses but not much about how to stop or prevent them, is this something human rights classes should focus more on?

Thanks everyone, I appriciate it!

-Alexa

I would like to initiate a discussion on this point because
it’s fundamental to successful nonviolent campaigns and struggles in general, and
it’s a difficult yet important aspect to be included in training. Strategic
selection means creating or identifying a nonviolent action that:

Ø
flows from the campaign or struggle’s strategic
objectives,

Ø
is something that the group has the capacity to
organize and resources (human, material, financial, etc.) to carry out. For
example, if a new group is attempting to launch a campaign, it probably has a
few members, a limited number of people who will come take part in the action,
and limited organizational and resource capacity. Thus, if such a group decides
it wants to carry out a march to City Hall culminating in a rally, this might
involve more than the group can handle at this early juncture.

Ø
takes into consideration risk for the movement
and for those who will take the action.

There is more on tactical selection in the CANVAS book: “A
Guide to Effective Nonviolent Struggle.” Hardy Merriman also has some good
ideas he may want to share.

Tactics aren’t inherently effective or ineffective, or low
risk versus medium versus high risk. It depends on the context in which the
nonviolent struggle operates. For example, organizing citizens to turn off
their lights every night at the same time for one minute may be very effective
in one context (Turkey, 1997 http://www.newtactics.org/en/ACalltoEndCorruption),
but not effective in different context where the majority of people don’t have
a predictable supply of electricity or if many people don’t even have
electricity. The lesson learned is not that people should turn off their lights
at the same time, but that the campaign identified an easy, low-cost, low-risk
action that virtually anyone could do.

The same applies to risk. For example, during the Solidarity
movement in Poland,
in 1980 workers in the shipyards went on strike for the right to have free
trade unions. The nonviolent, civic power they exerted on the regime pressured
it to accommodate to their demands and they won significant achievements.
However, in 1983 the Chilean National Workers Committee decided to launch a
strike in the copper mines and a “people’s walk-out.” When the mines were
surrounded by tanks, troops and military helicopters, Rodolfo Seguel, the
Committee’s head realized “…there was going to be a bloodbath. So just four
days before the strike was scheduled we changed it into a National Protest Day.”
(Ackerman, Peter and Jack DuVall, “A Force More Powerful: A Century of
Nonviolent Conflict, p. 285) So the same nonviolent tactic – worker’s strike –
was relatively low risk and successful in one context and high-risk in another.
Information about these cases can be found in the documentary series and
companion book called “A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict.”
They are available from the International
Center on Nonviolent
Conflict (www.nonviolent-conflict.org).

Even within an ongoing nonviolent struggle, a tactic can be
high risk at one point or geographical location and low-risk at another point
in time or location. Srdja Popovic may tell us more about OTPOR’s strategic
choice of tactics in this context. It’s interesting that in the early stages, OTPOR
didn’t attempt mass demonstrations in the capital of Belgrade. But at the end of the struggle they
did and these actions were successful.

In terms of teaching this, it’s important to give real
examples, but perhaps what can be most effective in training is to have
participants come to this insight themselves rather than be told. One can do
this through a guided discussion after viewing segments of “A Force More
Powerful” or discussing historical cases. One can also help participants learn
how to design nonviolent actions. There is a good group exercise in the CANVAS
book: “A Guide to Effective Nonviolent Struggle.” One can also do a group
exercise that has participants design a low-risk, nonviolent action. The groups
can be asked to:

Ø
Identify what should be accomplished with the
action.

Ø
Decide on the issue.

Ø
Decide if the action would hypothetically be small-scale
with a limited number of committed activists or a larger, mass action involving
regular citizens

Ø
Assess the degree of difficulty of maintaining
nonviolent discipline. Will it be difficult for the people involved to maintain
nonviolent discipline? If so, this needs to be factored into the choice of
tactic.

Ø
Participants cannot pick protests,
demonstrations, marches or rallies – in order to encourage them to think “out
of the box” and learn that there are many more kinds of nonviolent actions
beyond these “traditional” ones.

Ø
Each group must address these considerations to
design a low-risk nonviolent action.

Ø
Give the groups an allotted amount of time to
work on this, and then have each group present their work to everyone.

One form of this exercise to understand and design “dilemma
actions” can be found in the above-mentioned CANVAS book. Dilemma actions put
the nonviolent movement in “win-win” situation and the opposing side in a
“lose-lose” situation. For example, during the Indian independence movement, Gandhi’s
Salt March to the ocean to make salt was a dilemma action for the British
colonial occupiers. Gandhi identified an issue – the necessity of the human
body for salt and the British practice of unfairly taxing salt while forbidding
people to make their own salt from the ocean. In 1930, after marching hundreds
of kilometers with thousands of supporters, Gandhi reached the shores and
scooped up mud, a signal to the “salt resisters” to begin boiling sea water. This
mass act of civil disobedience put the British in a dilemma. “If they arrested
the salt lawbreakers, they would create martyrs for the national movement and
confirm Gandhi’s claims about their oppressive intent. If they let the salt
resisters alone, they might sow doubt that they had the will to enforce their
own laws in the face of Indian resistance” (Ackerman, Peter and Jack DuVall, “A
Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, p. 88) Another good
presentation on dilemma actions was developed by Philippe Duhamel and maybe
he’ll want to talk about it more detail (http://www.newtactics.org/en/TheDilemmaDemonstration).

Two types of nonviolent actions can be effective under
conditions of repression: the abovementioned dilemma actions, and simple, mass
actions. An example of the latter can be found in the abovementioned Turkish
Citizens Initiative for Constant Light (http://www.newtactics.org/en/ACalltoEndCorruption).

I like the points that Shaazka made on the topic. Here are some other thoughts on how movements can think about the issue of repression.

Costs of repression

When facing a repressive opponent, an important question for nonviolent movements to consider is what costs the opponent pays when it uses repression.

In particular:

1. What material costs does the repression have for the opponent?

2. What human resource costs does the repression have for the opponent?

3. How much time does the opponent require to organize and carry out the repression?

4. Does the repression reduce the opponent's legitimacy?

These are four potential major costs that the opponent may pay for committing acts of repression.

Increasing the costs of repression

Once these four costs have been identified, a movement may want to ask itself the following questions:

1. How can we (the nonviolent movement) make our opponent use more of its time and material and human resources when it engages in repression?

2. How can we cause the opponent to lose the maximum amount of legitimacy when it engages in repression?

In other words, how can we (the movement) raise the cost of repression for our opponent? If a movement is able to significantly increase the costs of repression for the opponent, the opponent’s repression will becomes ineffective.

Tactical considerations: Tactics of Concentration and Dispersion

In terms of increasing the time, material and human resource costs of repression, movements have many options. One simple consideration is choosing which tactics to use. Tactics that are public and that concentrate people in a small area (such as protests) usually are the easiest actions for an opponent to repress—they don't require much of the opponent’s time, human, or material resources.

On the other hand, tactics that disperse people over a wide area and that involve small, low-risk, anonymous actions often require more time and material and human resources to repress. Examples of these kinds of dispersed tactics are a consumer boycott or writing symbols on walls, buildings, or on some other objects or places that people choose. These actions cost a lot of time, human, and material resources for the movement’s opponent to repress. Furthermore, even if the opponent does spend a lot of time and resources to try to stop these tactics, it is still very difficult for it to identify and arrest everyone who is engaging in low-risk, dispersed actions.

Therefore, probably the simplest way for a movement to deal with repression is to make sure that it does not provide an easy target for the opponent to repress. Unless there is a strategic reason for allowing the opponent to repress a movement’s activists, it is often wise for a movement to avoid repression when possible and to make it difficult for its opponent to use repression. Tactics of dispersion help to do that.

There is also a category of tactics called "dilemma actions" that are important to understand and that can help raise the cost of repression for the opponent as well. Although I won't go into detail about them here, you can learn more by downloading the curriculum I co-wrote (A Guide to Effective Nonviolent Struggle) and reading lesson 12.

Legitimacy

In some cases, using repression can also cost the opponent a lot of legitimacy. For example, in the above case of a consumer boycott, even if an opponent is able to identify all of the boycotters, it may look unreasonable if it arrests people who are simply choosing not to buy a certain product. Or, in the case of a concentrated action such as a protest, the opponent may pay a high price in legitimacy if it uses repression against a protest in which respected leaders and celebrities are present, or a protest in which the people who are protesting have a lot of sympathy from the general public and/or certain powerful groups in society.

Increasing the legitimacy cost to the opponent usually requires that the movement figure out how to communicate about the repression. In some places, formal independent media may be able to communicate about the repression, but in other cases, digital media, photography or video or even simple word of mouth can be enough to spread the news.

The next question is what should a movement communicate about the repression. This is a complex issue, but you can find some simple guidelines for communicating by downloading the document below:

http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/bf/bfbasics.pdf

This document, entitled “Backfire Basics”, gives the fundamental principles of what actions and communications movements can do to make repression backfire. It was developed by the Professor Brian Martin (University of Wollongong [Australia]). Martin has written extensively about the backfire process, and if people are interested, he has other information available about backfire on his website as well.

http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/backfire.html

The issue of how to avoid and reduce the impact of repression is complex and there are a lot of variables involved, but I hope the ideas above provide a helpful way to think about this issue.

Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR), Cluj-Napoca

Hi everybody,

Among the first meetings with representatives of civil society I had in Tiraspol, Transdniestria region of Moldova - currently separated and self-proclaimed independent from Republic of Moldova, one of the so called "frozen conflicts", also brought forth some of the challenges that some NGOs face in their relationship with the de facto authorities.

This is not uncommon there, but what I would like to share with you is some approaches of these people, many quite young, in sometimes difficult situations facing them.

A woman NGO leader was sharing with us how during one of the "interviews" with the Informational services she was attempting to present the work of her NGO using the TRANSCEND diagram, showing them how the work of the NGO is not threatening and actually is aiming towards the transformation of the situation in the society beneficial on all sides. She found it very important to be able to meet with other NGOs and create a guide with useful tips from each NGOs' experiences on how to deal constructively and peacefully with the authorities who place obstacles in the work of NGOs.

Currently, this kind of cooperation happens at some levels, through joint meetings in different NGOs.

I mention that since 2006 PATRIR is working with local partners in the Moldova-Transdniestria conflict for civil society capacity building for conflict transformation through peaceful means and peace building. You have more info on the Cooperative Peace Project website.

The PATRIR Team

 P.S. All of us (myself, Bianca and Zsuzsa)are working in projects in Moldova-Transdniestria conflict and would be open to share by email in the future if wanted.

hard to know where to start on this theme, so i thought i would seaparate the different threads.

there are a number of organisations contributing to this dialogue that do strategy in powerful ways and i am keen to hear more about how you approach this work. the Change Agency has made some attempts to compile a suite of resources that cover some of the key elements of strategy [http://www.thechangeagency.org/01_cms/details.asp?ID=4 and [http://www.thechangeagency.org/01_cms/details.asp?ID=57]. Of these I guess there are  a couple of tools that we know people find very useful.

1. critical path analysis
http://www.thechangeagency.org/_dbase_upl/critical_path.pdf
this is a tool that we facilitate/share with groups to support a shift in thinking from tactics (what we do) to outcomes (what we want). Our experience is that many activists are much more comfortable focusing on what they will do (what tactic they will employ) without necessarilly thinking about how it connects with the vision, goals and objectives they are hoping to achieve. Critical path is one tool that asks us to articulate our vision and then break it down into a series of outcomes or changes that would be necesary for our vision to be realised. Do others have tools like this or others that help us think through what we want? that help us develop a theory of change?

2. power mapping
http://www.thechangeagency.org/_dbase_upl/tCA_power_mapping.pdf
this is another tool that we have found useful in terms of strategy building and especially in terms of supprting our thinking about mapping players/political actors, their position in relation to our issue and their level of influence over our campaign objectives. In some movements, there is not a clear focus on the need to identify 'targets' (decision makers who can give you what you want), and we have found this to be one simple way for activists to start analysing political actors -- beyond 'the government', 'the community', 'the media', etc. Again i am interested to hear more about the tools others use when analysing power and players.

sam la rocca 

I am interested here in learning about how others 'educate/facilitate/teach/train" about experiential methodologies -- what activist education theories, models and experiential processes do you use to provoke thining about leanring methods?

One that i have always found inspiring and well received (in terms of experience and learning) is Training for Change's "water glasses exercise" http://www.trainingforchange.org/content/view/177/39/index.html

In terms of learning models, the Change Agency's approach is shaped by the work of one of our directors, James Whelan. James' PhD explores "Education and training for effective environmental advocacy" http://www.thechangeagency.org/_dbase_upl/JWhelan_PhD.pdf . And while he was focused on the environment movement in Australia, the chapter on education theory is applicable to activist education in all movements. One model i find useful in terms of methodology and design is The ‘spiral model’ by the Doris Marshall Institute (no longer active but previously based in Toronto) http://www.thechangeagency.org/01_cms/details.asp?ID=36 , which essentially follows an action learning cycle but with some guidelines for desgning experiential process:
1. Start with the experience of participants
2. Look for patterns
3. Add new information and theory
4. Practice skills, strategise and plan for action
5. Apply in action
and the spiral starts again.

like i said, i am keen to hear about other models and methods, y'all use for creating and talking about experiential learning -- or other activist education approaches.

sam la rocca