Tag: strategy

This article was originally published on Campaign Nonviolence’s Community Page on Waging Nonviolence. It is reposted with permission. “Aren’t we supposed to sing beyond the choir?” This question recently came up during a training, the person’s eyebrows drawing down into a perplexed expression. On the screen, a diagram of the Spectrum of Allies – a […]

by Rivera Sun It’s rare to hear business magazines admit the power of nonviolent action. As the editor of Nonviolence News, a service that collects and shares 30-50+ stories of nonviolence in action each week, I often see business journals minimizing the effect of activism. Usually, industry tries to conceal the impact nonviolent action has on […]

A Review by Rivera Sun “When everyone knows how to plan, you start to get strategic behavior.” These words from Ivan Marovic serve as my mantra as I facilitate trainings in strategy for nonviolent campaigns. When I met Marovic at the James Lawson Institute in 2014, he impressed upon me that everyone should understand strategy, […]

Good news for humanity: the NRA is weakening. The gun-lobbying group is in “deep financial trouble,” Fortune Magazine reported, and warns that the NRA may not be able to keep going. “The group says it is under such financial distress because New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has convinced a number of financial service providers, banks, […]

Protest. Petition. Call your senators. Nothing changes, right? No matter how large our demonstrations get, no matter how many millions of people write and petition politicians, no matter how many people get arrested in front of the White House or at our state capitols, it seems that our (supposedly) elected officials keep turning a blind […]

The secret to successful nonviolent struggle lies in understanding strategy and systems. All systems require participation and resources to survive. Deny those things, and the system will wither away . . . or concede to meet your demands. Strategy can be that simple. Cut off the water and the plants will die. Block all other […]

You must believe that pockets of resistance exist. As America plunges into darkness, some people burn with resistance like fires in the night, aglow with respect for the civil liberties that define the modern ideal of freedom. The quiet murmur of their impassioned voices will call to you as they discuss nonviolent strategy and struggle, […]

When truth and reality are shattered into a thousand shards of deception, skewed and slanted into vicious weapons for power and control, how can we in the Dandelion Insurrection move forward? Cautiously. Gandhi said, “We all have a piece of the truth.” Ideally, we would use our diverse perspectives to build a home for all […]

It takes more than a single action to make a movement. And, who’s to say YOU won’t launch, organize, and carry out a series of effective nonviolent actions that build into a set of powerful campaigns that form the arc of a world-changing movement? Find a couple friends, dust off your strategic thinking caps, and […]

There are over two hundred methods of nonviolent action. Gene Sharp categorized them into three major groups: acts of protest and persuasion, acts of noncooperation, and acts of intervention. Acts of intervention literally interrupt business-as-usual and disrupt the functioning of systems. Usually (though not always) these types of nonviolent actions involve people physically putting their […]

Grand Strategy is a plan of action to achieve the major or overall goals of your movement. It’s different than campaign-level strategy, or strategy for specific nonviolent actions (which should include dates, times, location, weather, people, contingency plans, signage, etc. and so forth.) Grand Strategy is a broad view of the arc of the movement. […]

Too often, our movements find themselves reacting instead of initiating the dynamic events of the struggle. Take back the escalation curve by engaging in strategic thinking, foresight, and planning. Don’t wait for your opposition to attack you . . . organize and mobilize in advance of the crisis. Easier said than done, right? We often […]

Many of us know about protests and marches, there is also a whole other side to nonviolence: constructive program. The phrase was coined by Gandhi whose famous salt and spinning campaigns combined both direct action and constructive program into powerful forces for change. A constructive program is more than a positive project; it should have […]

Acts of concentration are those that assemble human bodies in geographic areas together. Acts of dispersion are nonviolent actions that do not bring bodies into the same space. Why is this important? Because when violent repression is likely to occur, using acts of dispersion can keep people safe while still carrying out effective action. Think […]

Civil disobedience is an art … and there’s more to it than simply “getting arrested.” The term comes from an essay by Henry David Thoreau, whose classic, “On Civil Disobedience” was written in relation to slavery and the Mexican-American war. Thoreau felt it was the duty of citizens to resist through noncooperation and disobedience the […]

If I could make one wish come true on a silver-headed dandelion, it would be to instill a deeper understanding of strategy for nonviolent movements into every single person working for change. As my friend, Philippe Duhamel told me once, “Strategy without action is futile . . . but action without strategy is fatal.” So, […]

I teach and write in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies, with a special focus on strategic nonviolence. It is a rich field, growing in its scholarship and its widespread usage. I’m so enthused by this—the more we wage our conflicts with nonviolence the lower the costs. Counting the costs of conflict, we normally […]

We have been losing ground. Corporate politics has invaded many sectors of our lives. In times of tactical retreat (in preparation for later advances), the military uses a tactic called blowing up the armory to describe a situation in which they will destroy any unsecured weapons and munitions to prevent their opponents from capturing them and using […]