Thank you, Philippe, for this critical analysis of the 'Diversity of Tactics' ideaology. I appreciate the challenge you have put forward to human rights activists - reinventing 'feisty' nonviolent tactics instead of tainting the struggle of the human rights movement. 

What do others think?

Kristin Antin, New Tactics Online Community Builder

I found this post on a friends facebook account. I appreciate the effort that you are putting forward in making a change, however I think exclusion of tactics is not the answer. I wrote a rambling response to my friend that I will paste below. Please remember that self expression is one of the only pieces of our natural selves that we have left. Thank you for your work and opinion.

Still sounds like you are opting for police control! if we agree to work within their restrictions, we get nowhere. A diversity of tactics is just as essential as the diversity of people! How can you represent yourself if you have to conform to an overall group think ideal? I don't always support violent protest ...but I understand it, and it is necessary at times. If you tell people they can't voice their concerns in a confrontational way, then you ARE the police. If you say there is only one way to protest, you ARE the police (free speech zones!). We need to stop policing each other. Nobody is out there to hurt another person EXCEPT for the police. They come with that as their primary intention, whether or not they have agents in the crowd, they are there to show off the huge grants of money they recieve to show that they know how to set up and control a concentration camp within hours. I don't have the answer, but I sure as shit know it is not furthering the military agenda by trying to control our brothers and sisters. We have to remember nobody is out there telling "non-violent" protesters that they have to throw rocks , smash windows, or throw tear gas back at the police.  It is also important to remember that the police are the perpetrators of violence in EVERY protest where violence erupts.  Throwing a rock never justifies the amount of force that is used. If you work within their parameters, you are also doomed to live within them, no matter your overall intentions (or numbers). Lastly, how easy are we to defeat if they know in every situation that we have taken a pledge of non-violence? How hard is that to control? You're just gonna keep getting pissed off, like they give a shit about that! What if, when invading Russia, Napoleon had known that they were standing arm and arm at the border with no weapons chanting "we will overcome"? Sometimes you do have to fight? That doesn't mean that it is always right, but NEVER commit to never fighting, especially when our federal system is putting so much of OUR money in to fighting against us. Instead, when you see a masked protester, pull them aside, ask them what they think, motives, ideas etc...you may learn something. Organize with them, debate with them and that will bring solidarity and a building of UNITY among the repressed masses. Do not condemn them! We cannot feed in to the constant policing of each other, and we need to embrace free thought. That's the end of my ramble, damn I wish my name wasn't on this thing!

"condemnation without ivestigation is the height of ignorance" -Einstein

"the
more confrontational politics of Malcolm X forced privileged whites to
take the non-violent civil disobedience of Martin Luther King, Jr.
seriously"

Did the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott succeed because local whites were scared of the Nation of Islam? Were the businesses of Greensboro, Richmond, Nashville and Atlanta desegregated by some powerful threats in Malcolm's speeches? Arguments that rest on historical cluelessness are hard to take seriously.

MP>>This is too ignore the changes in both Malcom X's & Martin Luther King's beliefs shortly before they were assassinated. Both came around towards a more class based view of inequality & racism in America. Malcom X was no pacifist, sure, but just like the Black Panthers his views were more about the right of self defense than offense...

While we can debate tactics between Pacifists & non Pacifists, to restrict tactics to the non-violent in all circumstances is to close the debate. Many would disagree with your analysis of France & Denmark in WWII.

The main point should be around 'efficacity' of tactics wrt each context; this is especially true when ones distinguishes between self-defense & offense...

Win or Witness?

Reflection on the 2008 Protests at the Republican National Convention

By George Lakey (Founder: Training for Change – www.trainingforchange.org)

Many critics dismiss routine nonviolent demonstrations and civil disobedience gestures as irrelevant to the injustices they are meant to protest. Writers Peter Gelderloos and Ward Churchill, who have a following among anarchists, are among these critics.[i]  They have a good point. Some tactics that in another situation might be effective have lost their value in contemporary U.S.

We all know groups that have made a habit out of ineffectual political action, full of politeness and conflict aversion.  I call such activities “witness;” they express a point of view but don’t focus power for change.

Witness is often honored among the historic peace churches and is typified by the silent vigil. When I was working with Britain Yearly Meeting of Friends I met a disillusioned Quaker who defined witness as “standing up to be counted, then sitting down so you don’t rock the boat.”

More than one way to witness

The militant protests at the 2008 national conventions of Republicans and Democrats show another way to do witness.  Replacing middle-class Quakers, the witnesses were staged mainly by middle-class anarchists who predictably troop from location to location where powerholders can be found, doing their routine thing.   I’ve worked with protesters in some of those spots, especially the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

My experience is that most of the militant young anarchists that go from place to place to hold their ritual bashes (and not all militant young anarchists do so) are as non-strategic and unconcerned with social change as are most pacifists who hold signs at the county courthouse every Wednesday at noon.

Neither the tame nor the militant kind of witness advances social change in any way I can see.  In fact, I would argue that the mobilizations-where-the-powerholders-meet usually set the revolution back.  First, they don’t win allies for our cause because their message is hopelessly muddled by the character of the actions they do.  Second, the mobilizations are giant machines for burning out activists.  Many young people get disillusioned when they see that they haven’t accomplished anything despite the sound and fury.  And third there is the trauma: how many (even if they continue their activism) fail to heal from the violence they endure, and then bring their traumatized selves to future activist efforts?

Two ways of being powerless: “diversity of tactics”

I know despairing activists who got fed up with the tame version of unstrategic and ineffective witness, and then joined the militant version of the same thing!

One friend of mine at the RNC in 2008 ended up voting for the worst of both worlds by embracing “diversity of tactics—“ both the permitted march and the window-breaking.  Both of those tactics, in that context, were witness actions – routine expressions of a point of view with no strategic value.  One was tame and one was militant, but neither made sense for achieving concrete change goals.

With “diversity of tactics” we end up with twice the ineffectiveness in a three word phrase. Is this really our fate: to endure the rest of the twenty-first century in endless repetition of ineffective militancy and ineffective non-militancy?

The third way: using tactics in a powerful strategy

The United Farm Workers of America did what seemed impossible -- win power for some of the most oppressed workers in the country.  The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee prevailed against the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, against all predictions.  The Woman’s Party forced a president against his will to put suffrage on his priority list while he was waging a war.  They all did this by going beyond witness.  They chose instead to wage highly strategic, nonviolent campaigns that were both militant and out-of-the-box.

Cesar Chavez, Robert Parris Moses, Alice Paul (and many other women and leaders of color) empowered their constituencies by going beyond the mere expression of a point of view.  They used tactics that, to use trainer Betsy Raasch-Gilman’s criteria, incorporated “drama, tension, uncertainty, humor, beauty and danger.”  Their tactics worked because they were used in the context of ongoing campaigns rather than weekend ejaculations.

In fact, if you made a list of social movements in the U.S. that actually accomplished specific objectives, you’d find they put their precious energy not into witness (either tame or militant) but instead into campaigns.  That’s how they won.  They set achievable goals, mobilized activists, chose tactics that both clarified their issue and sent a clear message.  (That’s why they usually didn’t bother with violence, which confuses the issue and muddies the message).

For successful movements it wasn’t enough to “come out against racism” – they wanted to end racial discrimination at this lunch counter or that movie theater!  It wasn’t enough to “come out against sexism” – they wanted to end discrimination against women on the job or at the ballot box.

While you’re making a list of movements that actually got results, ask yourself: would diversity of tactics have helped?  Would the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) have won those sit-ins if they’d used diversity of tactics?  No.  Would their Freedom Houses have survived with diversity of tactics in 1964 against the Klan in Mississippi?  Actually, they would have been massacred; they truly were up against terrorists.

In a book I’m writing I’ll give many examples of campaigns of people of color and other oppressed groups that won something, who would have lost if they’d used diversity of tactics -- because they would have played into the hands of their opponents.  In those campaigns, activists were usually too interested in winning to divert themselves with witness – either the tame kind or the militant kind.

“Diversity of tactics” – its real agenda

In my experience the only place where “diversity of tactics” is discussed seriously is where there is no coherent strategy and no sensible goal.  In such an atmosphere, activists have little to discuss except tactics and, lacking strategic criteria, fall back on moralism.  At that point, “winning” has no meaning, and activists try to create meaning by focusing on the issue of inclusion/exclusion of other activists.

Inclusion has its appeal, if one has no hope of changing anything anyway.  One might as well be inclusive!  “Diversity of tactics” ends up being a cover for witness that seeks to maintain activist integrity – the politics of self-expression.

The third way – strategic nonviolent direct action – sets real goals that are politically relevant, wins allies to help achieve those goals, and devises a confrontive strategy to amass sufficient power to win.  It has nothing to do with either the tame or the militant types of witness, because it is about winning and making change.

When you have real opposition, winning requires a campaign, that is, the mobilization of energy over a specific time period to achieve a specific objective.

The recent film about Alice Paul (Iron Jawed Angels) reveals the dynamics of a militant and strategic campaign.  It also reminds us that a direct action campaign often begins as marginal to a particular social movement.  The mainstream woman suffrage organization didn’t like direct action, and Alice Paul therefore had a difficult relationship with the leadership, just as  the young Martin Luther King had opposition from within the mainstream civil rights groups.

To me one of history’s fascinations is the dance between strategic nonviolent campaigns and the rest of the spectrum of allies.  It is a dance of hope.  The dance of the witnessers, on the other hand – whether the militant kind or the mild kind – is a dance of despair.

Is there a generation gap on this question?

Sometimes people of my generation get confused about whether there’s a generation gap that makes it less likely that U.S. young people will passionately join nonviolent campaigns.  Somehow we forget the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (dozens of campaigns), the student anti-apartheid campaigns on U.S. campuses in the ‘80s, the anti-sweatshop campaigns of the ‘90s, the Taco Bell campaign more recently, and the 2006 campaign success by Hispanic groups on the issue of immigration, a campaign that engaged far more young people than ever come to a party convention bash.

Wanting to win is not the property of any particular generation, any more than “witnessing” is confined to one generation. Instead of being a generational thing, wanting to win may be influenced by class.  Middle and owning class young people may be more attracted to witness because concrete results may not be as vital to them.

Masses of people of every generation actually want to win.  Most hold back from acting when organizers don’t start campaigns that are attractive, that have multiple entry points for participation, and that have a strategy that works.  Ask the campus sweatshop organizers: when they create strategic nonviolent campaigns, young people commit.

Something I do hear over and over from young people, on campuses and among young anarchists, is the request for elders to share our experience and perspective.  That insistence was so strong at the Republican National Convention in 2000 that militant students from Colorado set up a debate between me and Ward Churchill; the young protesters wanted the issues clarified through real debate.

I believe that, in their heart of hearts, most radical young people, including privileged young people, want to hope, rather than to flame out in despair.  They won’t get radical change from the Democratic Party, or from witness actions.  The only hope for substantial change in the U.S. is through strategic nonviolent direct action campaigns.

Let the new campaigns begin!

georgelakey [at] yahoo [dot] com, 11/08

Posted with permission

Nancy Pearson, New Tactics in Human Rights Program Manager

Thanks so much Philippe and George for "going there". George, I really appreciate your notion of DOT as a (sometimes) violent version of a basic 'wintessing' action.

I've long felt frustrated by the hyping of DOT in complete contrast to the evidence of any success with DOT. I'm still waiting for the latter.  We are faced by the bizarre problem that the police have learned far more from past protests than activists have. 

I think a lot of it comes down the the hyper-individulaism of our age. 'Discipline' is a dirty word among activists. I should be able to do whatever I want, and any attempt to restrict that is a violation of my rights or something. God help us if these people decide to take on the authoritarianism of traffic lights.

Peace,

Justin