We on the left are having a hard time knowing what to do in this particular and hugely significant moment. Emotionally we perch somewhere between still being in shock, the bargaining stage of grief that does not want to believe that this is really what is happening – to being incapacitated by grief for all that has already been lost or will be – to raging anger about it, a further stage of grief. We are also looking for leaders, and right now there are no clear candidates. We are just plain out beyond the last page of our instruction manual.
Adults in the US were raised in or immigrated into a not ideal but functional democracy. People here are deeply trained in the idea that if change is necessary at the national level, it must happen through the channels of Congress and elections—the process of democratic change. Many of us have long been frustrated by how capitalism has captured and poisoned that process. But it was what we had to work with, and we plugged away—either making some changes in the system, trying to reform it, or trying to act around it. But after decades of conservative think tanks having planned this coup, we now find democracy being dismantled.
Inspiration and Strategy
We need to apply nonviolent social change tactics – but these are skills not learned or mastered inside the democratic change process. To the degree we know them, we know them as skills to win civil rights, end a war, or protect the environment. We do not know them in terms of how to overthrow a dictator or stop a fascist coup.
For those familiar with the history of the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy before WWII, that history is predictive of the steps unfolding before us right now. But because Hitler and Mussolini were only crushed after a long, violent world-wide war, that history does not tell us how to nonviolently defeat fascism before it is enthroned. Also, never before in history has there been the sort of power that social media exhibits to replace traditional media and to produce unchecked and biased misinformation – resulting in such deep divisions among the US population.
However, there are many, many examples of nonviolent overthrow of dictators, documented by activists and academics. For example, if you do not know the work of Elizabeth Chenoweth, please familiarize yourself with her research on nonviolently overthrowing a dictator. A quick summary is at https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/how-to-topple-a-dictator/
While these tactics to overthrow dictatorships were successfully used in the 80’s in Poland, the 90’s in the Philippines, and the 00’s and 10’s in various central American and African Countries, these are very small countries or countries where the majority of the population is concentrated in a small area. All of Poland is the size of California’s population. They often did not have even a titular democratically elected leader before having to depose the dictator. So these recent historic examples do not translate easily to the US. However, they do still hold useful information.
Cory Booker in his recent historic Senate floor speech of 25 hours called on his ancestors and mentors: Martin Luther King, John Lewis, and even Patrick Henry. He called on them for inspiration and guidance, and with a battle cry to fight for our democracy.
Why nonviolence?
Many people believe violence is more effective and necessary when the stakes are high. But the most amazing part of Chenoweth’s research findings was that the nonviolent uprising were more likely to be successful, and in a shorter time than the violent ones. Additionally, they were more likely to result in a government afterwards that was democratic.
Similar to Cory Booker, I call out to other progressives. We need to reach into that bag of 101 nonviolent tactics catalogued long ago by Gene Sharp, and we need to think very strategically. As lifelong nonviolent strategist George Lakey has long preached, a protest is a one off – it cannot win anything, no matter how big the number of attendees. We have to have a strategy – one that builds on itself and employs different tactics.
So Why Demonstrate?
Right now we are having a lot of demonstrations: “No Kings” on Presidents Day; a Save Science one, and Hands Off on April 5th. A friend of mine who has gone to few protests in her life declared: “And even I had to go to it.” I asked her why. She said that normally she sees them as pointless, a lot of people yelling, maybe making themselves feel better – but achieving nothing. I asked therefore why she went. She said: “Everything is so awful. I did need to be with people who are also upset.” That, I told her, is one of the purposes of a demonstration, to gather together those who share common cause and to lift their spirits for the work ahead.
A demonstration is also an event to share ideas and information about the issue. If done well, attendees can also learn next steps they can take. It is a way to build a movement by bringing out more and more people with a voice for change. But protest is also to build pressure on those doing wrong.
If one looks at historic examples like during the Vietnam War, the demonstrations got bigger and bigger and spawned more and more groups against the war and eventually pushed over into various acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, such as burning draft cards, refusal of inductions, sit in at the Pentagon, etc. Huge demonstrations also happened in the civil rights era. But they were often only a stepping stone in the arch of a campaign that included boycotts or lunch counter sit ins. However, a whole generation of late Gen Z and early Millennials see protest as pointless because they participated in huge protests against the Iraq war – in about a one month span of time – and those had no effect.
One bright driving line is the media covered the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights protests. They barely and grossly under-reported the anti-Iraq war and pro-Palestinian protests. The George Floyd protests were only covered because they grew bigger and bigger and followed a murder that captured the nation.
For demonstrations to matter now, they will have to grow in size and frequency and be sustained over time. We will have to figure out how to capture the media or create our own. I noted one relatively small April 7th demonstration that got mainstream press was a die-in at Wall Street with quite dramatic tomb stones naming everything that is being lost.
Taking Next Steps Beyond Demonstrations
But more than anything else we need to be being able to offer next steps to demonstrators. For this reason Part II of this two-part opinion piece reviews other tactics of nonviolent resistance and how they can be applied to this moment in time. That review describes: non-compliance and over-compliance to laws; boycotts; general strikes; actions that create the world the world we would rather see; alternative institutions, and the successful nonviolent overthrow of dictators. See Part II.
Lynn Fitz-Hugh founded and works with Restoring Earth Connection. For over 16 years, she has worked in various capacities fighting climate change.
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