New Tactics Meet New People

Power flows from a transaction between the ruler and the ruled. If power were a liquid, it would find its source in the consent of the governed. Civil resistance is consent removed, striking at the core dynamics of power. Is this how civil resisters channel power for change?

Just like riots, spontaneous acts of defiance and improvised strings of actions are mere brush fires: quickly ignited, quickly extinguished. When you’re always reacting, you end up disempowered.

Civil resistance is not magic. It may succeed, or it may fail. But don't leave it to chance.

Powerful opponents seem to have everything: money, guns, supplies, the army and police, institutions and prisons. How can simple citizens, with scarce resources and unarmed, succeed against opponents wielding deadly weapons? “Look at us,” you say, “we are no match.”

Find out about how nonviolent struggle can achieve victory, in large part by shifting alliegeances among three main groups of people.

We offered a practical definition of nonviolent struggle earlier in this series. We now turn to "civil resistance", a term often used as a synonym of nonviolent action. Is there a difference between the two? Why use one over the other? Drawing from a new release on the subject, find out what the rationale is for using "civil resistance" as a term that covers most of the ground associated with nonviolent action, without some of its unwanted aura of ascetic faith or doctrine.

From the 1960's to this day, the Sharpeville massacre under apartheid
South Africa has been regularly cited as a clear-cut example of why nonviolent action doesn't work. As part of our series on nonviolent struggle, we take a closer look at what happened on that fateful day when women, children and men were shot dead by police, and its aftermath. Was the only possible conclusion that armed struggle was going to be the only option? What might such levels of repression mean
for the relevance of unarmed methods of fundamental change?

In this fourth posting in our series on nonviolent struggle, we tackle a frequent argument that nonviolent methods were
tried and found lacking. What arguments and facts can you use when people argue that riotous or armed actions are the only options left, that only violent force has been shown to be effective? Well, turns out there's a trap waiting for you to step in, a fundamental fault in logic that you all might want to be armed to fight off with sound argument and scientific facts.

“An apostle of nonviolence.” “Preaching nonviolence”. We hear these
expressions so often, we don’t question them. But there is a crucial
difference between soporific preachifying and nonviolent action. So
let's clear this up.

How can this thing called "nonviolent action" work?
Over the last 100 years, against seemingly insurmontable odds and
always to the surprise of official analysts and media pundits, unarmed
civilans have prevailed over the power and weapons of some of the
world's worst human rights abusers and most brutal dictatorships.
There's a long list, but highlights include the Shah of Iran, Poland's
Jaruzelski, Marcos in the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile, P.W. Botha
and apartheid rule in South Africa, not to mention a few Soviet-style
regimes behind the Berlin wall.
Now how did THAT happen?
Does power not come from the barrel of a gun? Is violence not the most
potent arbitrer of human conflict? How could unarmed populations win
against ruthless opponents equiped with the most sophisticated
weaponry, intelligence networks, and trained police and armies?
In this series of blog posts, I'd like you to join me in an experiment.

Al Giordano says the most threatening thing to the ruling elite is
people working together across race, religion, and class. But the Left,
he says, is one of the most segregated places in America. While
segregation used to be enforced by law, it is now consumer culture,
through market segmentation and advertising niches, that...