Tag: nonviolent social change

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Lifelong activist Emily Levy made a short video outlining 10 reasons why protests matter. In less than 15 minutes, she explores these benefits of participating in protests. Protests:

  1. Raise the cost to politicians of doing the wrong thing
  2. Heighten awareness both of the issue and that the issue has a constituency of people who care about it enough to take time out of their day
  3. Build momentum toward change, even systemic change (she notes Erica Chenoweth’s research that shows that a government will crumble if just 3-1/2 percent of the population engages in nonviolent resistance)
  4. Help participants feel less isolated
  5. Inspire others to show up, especially if you carry signs about why you’re marching
  6. Provide cathartic release: what she calls “a national scream”
  7. Create opportunities to get involved with organizations working on causes that matter to you
  8. Offers a voice to oppressed and powerless groups that would risk to much if they were actively protesting
  9. Allow even very small numbers to bear witness (I personally have conducted some one-person protests, so this resonates deeply with me)
  10. Facilitate ways to harness your skills, beliefs, and connections to make bigger and more lasting change

It’s a great list, but it’s only the beginning. Here are ten more that I came up with very quickly. I’d love you to add to the list as well:

1) Sometimes, demonstrations and protests actually change things. A few among many examples:
• The 1963 civil rights March on Washington (the “I Have a Dream” march, which my late mother attended)
• 1977’s occupation of the Seabrook nuclear plant construction site, which birthed the modern US safe energy movement. I participated, and I wrote extensively about HOW this action changed the world (that link takes you to part 1 of a 5-part series I wrote about it, and each one links to the next installment at the end)
• Arab Spring brought down multiple repressive governments within just a few months
• The Save the Mountain movement I co-founded resulted in thirteen months of continuous public opposition to a development project–and succeeded! I expected to win, but even I thought it would take five years.
2) Not only do protests show the demonstrators we are not alone, but it emboldens sympathizers who have not taken action before to do so.
3) We don’t always know the effects of our actions in influencing others until afterwards–but later we may have found that we created a shift in public opinion and in willingness to take action.
4) Demonstrations offer chances to learn about not-very-visible parts of your own community–some disenfranchised and needing to tell their stories, others doing great work but out of the limelight.
5) Protests reinforce the idea that powerful, well-thought-out nonviolent action can create sustained change.
6) Sometimes, amazing performers and speakers participate. I have heard John Lennon and Yoko Ono Lennon (several times), Paul Winter, Stevie Wonder, Holly Near, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary, Orleans, Jackson Browne, and many others. I learned news and ideas from speakers that changed my way of thinking. In fact, at my very first peace demonstration on October 15, 1969, 12-year-old me heard a speaker say that the Vietnam war was undeclared. When I discovered he was correct, it changed my whole way of looking at the world and turned me into an activist–because everything I’d been led to believe about the US system of checks and balances came crashing down around me.
7) Participation is empowering! You know you’re working for peace, justice, a green planet, etc.–and you feel ready to take on the world.
8 ) You get to enjoy the creativity of signs, puppet shows, songs and chants, etc. that spotlight the issue of the day.
9) It’s a way to build your personal community. If you’ve been doing this a while, you get to catch up with your friends. If you’re new to protesting, you can make new friends.
10) More often than not, participating in a protest is actually fun.

While Emily wrote her list back in 2019, it’s all still not only true but relevant. A few things have changed, though–some good, some bad:

  • Dozens of new ways of protesting were invented or popularized during the pandemic, adding to more than 200 we already had
  • Repressive right-wing governments have been forced from power in countries such as the US and Brazil–but took or consolidated power in Israel, Hungary, Turkey, and India
  • Putin has started a criminal and brutal war against Ukraine
  • In the US, the ultra-right has taken over the Supreme Court and several state legislatures, catalyzing a whole new generation of activists–and in election after election, progressives are winning big in places they weren’t expected to
  • Black Lives Matter and reproductive rights protests reached critical mass
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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Environment, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
George Lakey, nonviolent theorist, author, and activist, speaks on “How We Win, 2018

I listened to a great 2018 talk, “How We Win,” by one of my many mentors, nonviolence theorist George Lakey (that’s the first chunk. You’ll see a link on that page to Part 2.). How We Win is also the name of his latest book at the time.

Lakey sees the increasing polarization of modern US society as a forge: a way of generating the heat necessary to create lasting social change (toward freedom and equality or toward authoritarianism—“the forge doesn’t care”).

This is not a new trend. The Scandinavian countries had their huge social revolution of the 1930s in times of great polarization (something he chronicled in his earlier book, Viking Economics). The trick is to harness that energy and channel it toward gaining mass support. He walks his talk, too; in the summer and fall of 2020, he led or co-led numerous workshops on what to do if the Trumpists tried to seize power after losing the election, training thousands of people.

He charges us to express our best concepts—not just what’s wrong with the system but the vision to make it better—in ways that feel like common sense to working-class people who want the system to work for them, too. After all, most of us actually do want a system that promotes equal access, a fair economy, and real democracy. We have to show them that our vision “has a spot for you,” even if that “you” finds the movement’s tactics disruptive and uncomfortable.

But he says progressives have largely lost that vision since the 1970s; we need to get it back. If we can get the diverse movements working together to confront their common opponents, we foster an intersectional “movement of movements” capable of creating real change—as the Scandinavians did then, with farmers, unionists, and students joining together to drive the moneyed elite from power. He warns us that polarization will get worse, because economic inequality is built so strongly into the culture. He says that we should consider organizing campaigns as “training for [nonviolent] combat.”

And we should expect those campaigns to take a while. Campaigns are well-planned (but adaptable) and sustained over time. It might take years, but you can win. One-offs (like the Women’s March at Trump’s inauguration) don’t typically accomplish change on their own. Traffic disruptions don’t make change; they just piss potential allies off. Disrupting banking operations is much more strategic because the bank is the perpetrator of the evil. How is the specific goal of the campaign advanced by this action? If it doesn’t advance the cause, don’t do it. A campaign he was involved with moved $5 million into credit unions and cooperative enterprises in one campaign that started in a living room and grew to encompass 13 states.

Oppression is only one lens we can look at things through—there are many others (he didn’t elaborate). The elite seeks to divide us (by color, gender, values, etc.)—but canny organizers look for the cracks in those divisions, and expand them. And stays optimistic, not getting stuck in “can’t be done” but figuring out how to do it.

Campaigns often start small. We can build our skills when the stakes are lower and make our mistakes then. Later, as the big challenges arise, we know how to handle them. You can lose a lot of battles and still win the campaign (eventually). And any tactic will be greeted with “this will never work” skepticism. But “Anyone who is arguing for impossibility” should remember the Mississippi Summer volunteers. When news got out of the abduction of Goodman, Schwerner, and Cheney, Lakey (a trainer of volunteers for trhat movement) expected most of the next volunteer wave to abandon their commitments—but nearly all of them stayed, mentored by Black SNCC activists who had been living with the overt racism for decades.

The best-known antidote to terror is social solidarity. Get close to people. Organize campaigns not just with those who share your goals but those who are “willing to be human with you.” Make your peace with the personal risk, face it head-on. We risk by driving on the highway, we risk by NOT meaningfully addressing climate change. Accepting the possibility that you might die in service of the common good is liberating (and it’s not the worst way to die).

SNCC survived in the Deep South without guns; they would not have survived with them. Erica Chenoweth shows us that nonviolent movements have twice the success rate of violent ones.

Framing is crucial. The Movement for Black Lives put out a mission statement that was so well framed, even American Friends Service Committee signed on [I think it might be this one].

If you want innovation, conflict helps to get you there. Yet, conflict resolution is a crucial skill, and it’s expanded enormously in recent decadesWe need those tools and people who will jump into the fray (to use them). But if our tools are too highly structured, you need to add interventions in informal settings.

Lakey expects surveillance and isn’t worried about it: “I think it’s a wonderful thing. We take that as pride: we are so important that they put staff time and energy into knowing what we’re up to—so we’re making a difference. Gandhi told India, if you gave up fear of them, the British would be gone. If people spread fears about Trump, invoice him for the hours because you’re doing his work.”

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