Plan B

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:09 -0500

Plan B

By Zorana Smiljanic

Download full notebook below.

The Otpor! Student movement in Serbia is an example of an organization that used a strategy of continuously innovating and combining tactics in order to break down the fear of its people to speak out against the government. Because of this, they were able to build a broad constituency of support. They mobilized a disenfranchised population, used mass demonstrations and creative nonviolence, and leveraged international support to help bring down a dictator.

This notebook focuses on "Plan B," a tactic to ensure the safety of volunteers and overcome their fear to participate in actions. This tactic turned one of the regime’s strengths against it. When Serb authorities began arresting demonstrators, Otpor!’s support base could have disintegrated out of fear. But Plan B – organizing secondary demonstrations outside police stations where demonstrators were being held – allowed people to overcome their fear of participation and keep activists involved, especially at a crucial point in their struggle.

People in many countries must be concerned about and ensured some degree of safety if they are to participant and must be able to overcome the fear of speaking out or of participating in order to ultimately overcome a repressive regime. Otpor!’s experience allows us to learn about one tactic used to do just that–ensure a degree of safety and overcome fears to participation.In the year 2000, after a decade of horrible wars and internal repression in the former Yugoslavia, the international community was tearing its hair out trying to figure out how to get rid of Slobodan Milosevic. Negotiation, sanctions, and bombing all appeared only to have tightened his hold on power. But inside Serbia, change was brewing. Ten years of war, poverty and isolation had left a generation of young people feeling like they had no future if things continued as they were. They were fed up. And they had nothing, really, to lose. The courageous students of Otpor! ("Resistance!" in Serbo-Croatian) helped turn these sentiments into a powerful national movement. They rallied resources from abroad, including funding, training and manuals, and – just as importantly – drew on the extensive reserves of energy and creativity of the young people of Serbia.

In September and October 2000, much to the world’s surprise, the Serbian people first defeated Milosevic at the polls, and then took to the streets in a nonviolent revolution to force him from power. Otpor! built a national campaign throughout the country, holding hundreds of events, putting up thousands of posters, distributing millions of leaflets. While they did this, they faced a relentless response from the state, including over 2000 arrests of activists. How did they manage to build a movement against such a powerful regime? This notebook focuses on one of Otpor!’s tactics for maintaining momentum and supporting activists in the face of arrests: "Plan B." Plan B is conceptually simple: whenever the police arrested activists in their demonstrations, Otpor! would instantaneously launch a second operation, mobilizing more people to show up at the police stations and protest the arrest. The events at the police station became media showpieces, calling attention to the injustice of the arrests and the illegitimacy of the regime. They also provided moral support and encouragement to the arrested activists, turning them into local and national heroes, rather than forgotten victims. Otpor! thus turned the regime’s policy of arrests to its own advantage and continued to build a movement.

Police arrests of nonviolent activists, and repression in general, are seldom if ever accidental state strategies. Their objective is to deliberately weaken, frighten and disempower resistance. And it often works. Getting arrested is a frightening, isolating and traumatic experience. If a regime uses such psychological tools strategically, it can often cripple the growth of opposition movements. Repression is thus a common state tool of political-psychological warfare. It is our hope that Otpor!’s success in turning this on its head will provide both lessons and inspiration for other activists around the world. Zorana Smiljanic was one of Otpor!’s student organizers. She lived through the arrest process herself, and she helped Otpor! mobilize Plan B for many other activists. Since the overthrow of Milosevic, she works as a National Democratic Institute (NDI) Regional Trainer. She works with political activists around Serbia and abroad teaching techniques for managing political campaigns.

The Turkish translation of this notebook is provided to us by the Helsinki Citizen's Assembly.

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