Politico: Harvey Milk’s First Crusade: Dog Poop

Originally published on Politico.

As a former leader of the youth movement that overthrew Slobodan Miloševic—and now as somebody who shares his passion about non-violent struggle with everyone from street activists in the Middle East to students at Harvard and NYU—there’s one thing I’ve learned: A big part of a movement’s success will be determined by the battles it chooses to fight, and a lot of that has to do with how well it understands its opponent. Many centuries ago, Sun Tzu reflected on this idea when he told readers of The Art of War how important it is to always put your strong points against your enemy’s weak points. Take Gandhi, who went up against the British army, the most powerful in the world, by attracting 10,000 Indians to march for tax-free salt—a mineral essential for human survival and found in almost every household, no matter how poor.

That’s the reason you see so many activists campaigning for better and healthier food: Because no matter what a person’s religion, skin color or political belief may be, there isn’t a single human being out there who doesn’t need to eat. Whether it’s food or some other basic necessity, activists who can identify some everyday thing that speaks to as many people as possible will always have an advantage over those who cling to a much narrower platform.

Which brings us to Milk. Harvey Milk, that is. Apologies for the pun, but you may have heard about this pioneering politician who was the first openly gay public official in America. If you haven’t, he is wonderfully portrayed by Sean Penn in an Academy Award-winning movie called Milk that you may want to check out. Milk’s story is about many things: courage, conviction and dedication. But most of all, it’s about how important it is to start with the small stuff. And by small, I mean dog poop-level small.

Nothing in the first four decades of Harvey Milk’s life suggested that he would one day become an inspiration to anyone seriously interested in human rights and equality. Born on Long Island to a conservative, middle-class Jewish family, he’d known he was gay from a very young age, but took great pains to cover up his true identity. He joined the Navy, fought in Korea and then found work first as an insurance actuary and then as a researcher for a large Wall Street securities firm. This future icon of liberal America even campaigned for the archconservative Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. Milk was hardly a revolutionary, and in fact he once broke off with a boyfriend he dearly loved because he felt the young man was too likely to challenge authority and get in trouble with the police. Milk was successful and respectable, with neatly cropped hair and a closetful of fine suits. He was also miserable, living a lie. Eventually he got fed up: In 1969, at the age of 39, he quit his job, got rid of the tie, let his hair grow and moved west to San Francisco.

The city he found was one busy being reborn. By 1969, it had the largest gay population of any major metropolitan area in the United States. Neighborhoods like the Castro, where Milk eventually settled, were shedding their old residents—working-class Irish Catholics—and welcoming in new ones, young men and women who had come to San Francisco seeking tolerance, free love and flower power. Here Milk felt liberated. Having spent a lifetime keeping his sexuality a secret, he was now accepted openly and wanted to help other gay men and women not to be ashamed of themselves.

Milk, who ran a popular camera shop, soon became involved in local politics. His first stop was the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, the most powerful—and only—gay political organization in town. Milk showed up, smiling widely and talking bravely. He was like so many other young, talented and hugely passionate men and women who decide to make a difference. The way to victory, he and his closest friends believed, was to tell the truth, raise good points, offer sensible solutions and count on good people to come out and vote for change.

But it wasn’t so simple. Back then, even in San Francisco, homosexuality was still a taboo subject. Today, with the advance of gay marriage and the growing acceptance of homosexuality in American society, it’s easy to forget how different the cultural landscape was when Harvey Milk ran for office. In the early 1970s, when Milk was first mobilizing, gay sex was still a felony in many places and a legitimate cause for eviction from rented apartments. As late as 1973, the American Psychiatric Association categorized homosexuality as a mental disorder. Being gay wasn’t something that people were comfortable with. So Milk was running a principled platform that confused, turned off and even revolted plenty of ordinary voters.

His campaign was, of course, a disaster. Milk had no money, no staff and no idea how to run an effective campaign. He did manage to get the support of some gay business owners tired of police harassment, and his personal charm helped win over a handful of converts. But when he finally ran for city supervisor in 1973, he came in 10th out of 32 candidates. But Milk persevered. He discovered a talent for rousing speeches and gave them frequently, talking about persecution and the injustices of anti-gay legislation. He wanted to represent his community, and thought the best way to do that was by organizing all the gays together as one political bloc with a few key allies.

Again he failed. While he had managed to go more mainstream, making inroads with labor unions and firemen and meeting with regular people at bus stops and movie theaters, it still wasn’t enough. This time, although he came closer to victory with a seventh-place showing, a margin of 4,000 voters still guaranteed that Milk would remain little more than a well-meaning and talented niche activist.

Milk needed to attack from a different angle, and even though hard-core evangelical Christians across the country were using San Francisco’s gay community as a stand-in for all that was evil in America, he sought to stand up for his community by focusing on something that all San Franciscans lived in fear of: dog shit.

Turbulent London: Book Review: ‘Blueprint for Revolution’

Originally published on Turbulent London. By Hannah Awcock.

Srdja Popovic and Matthew Miller. Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Non-Violent Techniques to Galvanise Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World. London: Scribe, 2015. £9.99

Srdja Popovic is particularly well qualified to give advice on the use of non-violent protest tactics. One of the leaders of Otpor!, the non-violent movement that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, he then decided to use his experience to help others and founded CANVAS, a non-profit organisation that gives advice and training to activists all over the world. Blueprint for Revolution is part how-to guide, part memoir, in which  Popovic uses stories of successful activism to illustrate his advice. Many of the stories come from his own experience as an “ordinary revolutionary” (p vi) and protest guru.

There is a false notion that only the elites in our societies matter and that all change, progress, or setbacks emanate magically from within their dark and greedy souls…The world we live in worships and respects the strong and the mighty. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that nobody gives enough credit to the weak and the humble. But, as we have learned, even the smallest creature can change the world.” (p260)

Some of Popovic’s advice might look more at home in a business manual than a protest one- branding is crucial, for example, and find out what the people want instead of trying to make them care about the same things you do- but it’s good advice nonetheless. As Popovic explains, Harvey Milk was elected on a promise to crack down on dog poo, not because of his stance on gay rights.

Otpor logo

The logo of Otpor!, the Serbia social movement which toppled Slobodan Milosevic (Source: b92).

Popovic is a strong advocate of what he calls ‘laughtivism’ (he admits it isn’t the best name!); undermining authority through comedy and laughter. Those in power, particularly despots and dictators, are used to being taken seriously, and making fun of them can be a powerful weapon- “the only thing that could trump fear is laughter” (p100). My favourite example (which made me laugh as I read about it) was Otpor!’s idea of painting Milosevic’s face on an old barrel and putting it in a busy public street with a baseball bat and a sign inviting people to “smash his face” (p101-3). Popovic’s love of laughter shines through in his writing; Blueprint for Revolution is a fun and light-hearted read. He comes across as a genuinely nice guy, and even gives his personal email address at the end of the book, asking readers to “please keep in touch” (p261).

On occasion Popovic’s relentless positivity can grate slightly. He hopes that the book will inspire some to take action, “to get you on your feet and moving” (p ix). Call me cynical, but I’m not convinced a book can make an activist out of someone, no matter how good it is. This is a minor gripe however; overall the book’s tone is uplifting and did make me feel hopeful, which is not a common occurrence when it comes to politics. Also, the captions for all the illustrations are at the front of the book, so you have to flip back and forth for information about a picture (again, I am nitpicking).

Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Non-Violent Techniques to Galvanise Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World may not be winning any prizes for short titles, but it is a fun read, which cannot be said for a lot of books about overthrowing violent dictators. It may not turn you into a non-violent revolutionary, but it certainly is an enjoyable way to spend a few hours.

The Politic: A DIY Guide for Overthrowing Dictators

Originally published in The Politic. By Yifu Dong.

AFTER RECEIVING A copy of Blueprint for Revolution, my top concern was bringing the book home. If the customs officials at the Beijing airport chanced to order my luggage into the X-ray machine, they would surely ask what books I was carrying. Last December, I told them, “textbooks,” smiling a little, looking confident, a Beijing kid pretending his best. This time, I knew I would say, “novels,” and I rehearsed the line in my mind every day. But as a necessary precautionary measure, I decided to put the book in a plastic bag with clothes, leaving some harmless English novels and Spanish dictionaries on the surface for inspection. Any book named Blueprint for Revolution would definitely not be welcome in Mainland China today, unless the author was Godfather Marx, Comrade Lenin or Dear Leader Mao. Fortunately, my luggage was not inspected this time.

The author of Blueprint, Srdja Popovic, is not particularly well-known, but when I heard him speak at Yale’s College Freedom Forum last semester, I knew I had to read his Blueprint for Revolution: How to use rice pudding, Lego men, and other nonviolent techniques to galvanize communities, overthrow dictators, or simply change the world. (There goes the best subtitle of the year.) Unlike scholars or dissidents, Popovic is first and foremost a victor. In 2000, a movement he helped found, Otpor! (Resistance!), successfully overthrew one of the most notorious dictators in recent memory––Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic––who was later tried at The Hague in 2006 for genocide. Moreover, Otpor! achieved its goal through nonviolent means. In this book, Popovic explains how Otpor! succeeded and lists the necessary elements of successful and peaceful social revolutions.

Listening to Mr. Popovic at the Freedom Forum, I was somewhat glad that “revolution” was finally not a US-centric or Euro-centric topic. Even if those living in free societies care deeply about the plight of those under dictatorships around the world, many experiences of the oppressed are not easily relatable.

However, oddly enough, the book is written in English and sold in the “free world.” What seems quite strange to me, but perhaps encouraging to Popovic’s intended audience, is that the book tries to ignore the differences between revolutions in democratic and undemocratic societies. Popovic assuages his readers whose countries allow this book to appear in bookstores: “[You] don’t have to be groaning under a dictatorship to apply the principles of people power; they are universal, and they apply no matter who you are and what your problem may be.” In the last chapter, Popovic provided the fictional example of “Kathy,” who lobbied persistently and peacefully to achieve her goal. He notes that he has met many Kathys during his travels in the United States.

Unfortunately, while Popovic emphasizes that the principles are the same, there are not many Kathys elsewhere. The book, after all, pertains more to revolutions against dictators than lobbying in American towns; it covers  movements from Tahrir Square to Tiananmen Square, from Burma to Belarus, from Moscow to the Maldives, from Kyiv to Kenya, from Serbia to Syria, just to name a few. Despite the excitement and energy Popovic brings to the pages, few revolutions mentioned in the book ended up successful. Popovic sums up the painful lessons of these failed revolutions, reminders of the continuing hemorrhage in undemocratic regimes.

The style of the book, however, is a wonderful break from the droning tone of some academics. As insincere and random as Popovic sometimes sounds, his messages are clear and his points sharp. This approach diffuses the tension surrounding the mere thought of revolutions, convincing more people to believe that they, too, can use nonviolent revolutions to change the world.

The book walks the readers through many tactics of organizing social movements. Popovic suggests that revolutionaries start with winning small victories, always have a vision in mind, understand the opponent’s support network, employ humor to absorb force, make oppression backfire, unite different kinds of people, plan every small step, avoid falling into the trap of violence and, finally, declare themselves winners at the right time. (The book’s website includes a more thorough summary of each chapter, a treat few other books offer.)

Besides listing tactics, Popovic provides in-depth analysis on why the underlying principles are universal. For example, some Syrian activists, who received training from Popovic and his Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), never thought humor could be part of the Syrian revolution. Popovic told them about how Serbian activists once put out a barrel with Milosevic’s picture on it and instructed innocent passers-by to smack the barrel while activists retreated to a nearby café to watch the spectacle. Ultimately, the police could arrest no one but the barrel, an act showing the foolishness of the authorities. The Syrians could not have possibly used a barrel, for anyone smacking at it might be arrested. So instead, the activists inscribed anti-regime slogans such as “Freedom” and “Enough” on thousands of ping-pong balls and rolled them down the hilly avenues of Damascus, forcing the police to chase after the balls.

Although these tactics seem useful and even fun, what the book doesn’t mention (though Popovic emphasized it during the College Freedom Forum at Yale), is that many regimes around the world seemed to have studied the revolutionaries’ blueprint, and in turn strengthened oppression and devised countermeasures.

Take China for example. When I read about nonviolence and unity, I thought about a moderate Uighur scholar and professor, Ilham Tohti, whose calls for ethnic unity and creating blogs were enough to land him a life sentence. While reading about starting with small victories, I thought about China’s famous “Feminist Five,” who planned to distribute leaflets against sexual harassment on public transportation on International Women’s Day. But two days before their planned action, they were detained and released on parole more than a month later. (Chinese law allows the police to detain people up to one month without pressing charges.) Someone must have brought a copy of Blueprint into Beijing without putting it in a bag of clothes.

After reading the book, I realized that Blueprint for Revolution may first and foremost be a guide for dictators, providing them with all the wisdom of successful revolutionaries so that they could in turn deliver more delicate, better-targeted oppression. Furthermore, Popovic reminds readers that “luck matters,” meaning that the revolutionaries will have to put principle into practice and possibly learn from trial and error.

Above all, practice is the essence of Blueprint for Revolution, and the methods covered in the book will only come in handy with it. Anyone seeking inspiration from the book should not be deterred from trying out the feasible methods Blueprint introduces toward shaping a better world. Although dictators may first capitalize upon the advice of the book and gain even more advantage over dissidents, activists and revolutionaries are more creative, more resourceful, and more resilient. With the guide of Blueprint and sufficient practice, the oppressed might hope to prevail in the long run.

Scientific American: Selma’s Timely–and Empirically Sound–Message of Nonviolence

Originally published on Scientific American. By John Horgan.

Americans are flocking to a film that celebrates a soldier who killed lots of people during the U.S. war in Iraq. Meanwhile, a growing number of Americans want the U.S. to send ground troops back into Iraq to fight ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Scholarship shows that nonviolent tactics, like those depicted in the film Selma, which focuses on the struggle of Martin Luther King and others in the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, have been more effective than violent ones.

So now is the perfect time for people to see Selma, which like American Sniper has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Selma celebrates a genuine hero, Martin Luther King, and it delivers a message—backed up by empirical evidence–that our violence-intoxicated era badly needs to hear.

Selma dramatizes one of American’s history’s most inspiring episodes, when King and other courageous activists banded together to challenge violent, state-sponsored bigotry and injustice and changed our nation for the better.

The inaccuracies that some critics have griped about are nit-picky. Selma hews to the historical record more closely than most historical films (even though the estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., refused to allow Selma’s director, Ava DuVernay, to quote from his speeches). Compared to American Sniper, Selma is True as a Euclidian proof.

The film recreates the horror of “Bloody Sunday,” an incident in 1965 when Alabama police beat 600 civil rights protesters marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge (named for a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan). After the bloodied activists retreat to a church, one declares that it’s time to fight the police with guns.

A protest leader, Andrew Young, insists that violence is not the answer. “You can’t win that way,” Young says in the film, which closely tracks Young’s own recollections in a 1985 interview. “I’m not talking about the Bible, I’m talking facts. Cold, hard facts.” Young, who went on to become an eminent politician and diplomat, argues that nonviolence is not just morally superior to violence; it is more effective, especially for people struggling for justice against a more powerful group.

King emphasized the pragmatism of nonviolence too, of course, and so does political scientist Gene Sharp, whom I have discussed previously on this blog and in my book The End of War. Drawing upon the careers of King and Gandhi as well as other historical episodes, Sharp argues that violence, even in the service of a just cause, often precipitates greater injustice and suffering; nonviolent movements are more likely than violent ones to prevail and to lead to democratic, non-militarized regimes.

The scholars Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan present further evidence of the effectiveness of nonviolence in Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. The 2012 book asserts that between 1900 and 2006 “campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals.”

Another recent book on nonviolent activism is Blueprint for a Revolution, by the Serbian activists Srdja Popovic and Slobodan Djinovic. The two were leaders of Otpor, a movement that helped topple Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and they went on to found the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (Canvas).

Journalist Tina Rosenberg, who frequently writes about human rights, recently lauded the Serbians’ work in The New York Times. She wonders “what Syria could have been now, had the nonviolent activists in the opposition movement prevailed.”

I wonder what the world could have been if the U.S. had pursued less violent strategies for countering Muslim extremism after 9/11. The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 have been catastrophic failures. They have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, cost trillions of dollars, made Afghanistan and Iraq even more violent and chaotic and exacerbated rather than quelling Muslim extremism.

Martin Luther King opposed U.S. militarism as well as injustice. Selma shows him briefly, privately, expressing doubts about the Vietnam War in 1965. King hesitated to oppose the Vietnam War publicly, fearing that an antiwar stance could undermine his authority as a civil-rights activist.

But in a major speech in 1967, King spelled out moral as well as practical objections to the Vietnam War. The U.S. military buildup, far from suppressing North Vietnam aggression, had exacerbated it, he suggested. North Vietnam “did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands.”

King did not condone the violence of the North Vietnamese, but he argued that they had legitimate political goals. U.S. actions, he contended, had already killed as many as a million Vietnamese, “mostly children.” The war was hurting poor Americans, too, by diverting resources away from social programs. King urged the U.S. to stop bombing North Vietnam and set a date for withdrawal of its troops.

King’s speech (well worth reading in its entirety) enraged President Lyndon Johnson, who had supported civil rights legislation sought by King, and was denounced by major media, including The New York Timesand Washington Post. King was right that the Vietnam War was both immoral and unwinnable.

Last fall, I reported on non-military proposals for dealing with ISIS. Can such strategies work against a group that seems intent on using violence to provoke violent responses from the U.S. and other nations? I don’t know. But clearly our military strategies have not worked; in fact, they have made bad situations worse. So why not try nonviolence?

In the meantime, please root for Selma to win Best Picture, and for American Sniper to lose.

Thoughtful Campaigner: Book Review – Blueprint for Revolution

Originally published on Thoughtful Campaigner. By Tom Baker.

One of the things I most enjoy about going on holiday is the opportunity to dip into a good book or two.

Over the last week I’ve really been enjoying Blueprint for Revolution – How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men and Other Non-Violent Techniques to Galvanise Communities, Overthrow Dictators or Simply Change the World by Srdja Popvic.

Popvic is one of the leaders of the CANVAS (The Centre of Nonviolent Actions and Strategies), the Serbian based organisation that was behind the movement overthrowing Slobodan Miloševi?, and has taken these lessons to help other movements around the world (this is a good read on the work of CANVAS).

It’d be easy to think that the book is only intended for those who are interested in learning about overthrowing dictators, but it’s not. I found the book packed full of practical insight and brilliant stories that are relevant to anyone involved in campaigning.

It’s an easy and enjoyable read, with Popvic mixing a range of stories from his personal experience with lessons from history.

I’ll be recommending it to anyone who asks me about what makes a good campaign as it’s packed full of practical wisdom that could be applied to anyone involved in movement building.

Here are a few lessons I’m walking away with after reading the book that I’ll be looking to apply in my campaigning;

1 – Focus on small victories to build your movement – those campaigns that focus first on small achievable battles that they can win are more likely to succeed. They understand that victories can help to give your supporters confidence that they’re part on a winning side, and also help to attract others to your cause.

2 – It takes time to plan your strategy – Popvic shares a lot about the time Otpor! in Serbia took to plan and build for the actions that they then took. He’s at time critical of movements that he feels have moved to action too quickly. To be successful you need to be meticulous as you can in your planning and preparation. Leave nothing to chance.

3 – Change comes when two or more groups come together for mutual benefit – campaigns can’t be won if they just reflect the views or worldview of just one group with a community – they need to bring together different groups. Throughout the book is the message that building unity, community and trust with others is central to anyone who wants to win.

4 – Focus on the ‘Pillars of Support’ – remembering the work of Gene Sharp, who suggested that every regime is held in place by a handful of pillars – apply enough pressure to one or more pillar, and the whole system will soon collapse. But this means thinking laterally and considering what the pillars are – for example for using businesses which have close connections with those you’re looking to target. See this for how the concept has applied to the campaign for equal marriage.

5 – Make it funny – campaign can be a serious business, but Popvic is a big advocate of using ‘laughtivism’ as a tool for change, using humor as a way of undermining your target, but having some fun at the same time.

The book is, as they say, available from all good bookshops – I’d highly recommend it.

New York Times: How to Topple a Dictator (Peacefully)

Originally published in the New York Times. By Tina Rosenberg.

Several years ago, before their protest movement was co-opted by violence, a group of young Syrians looking for a way to topple President Bashar al-Assad traveled to an isolated beach resort outside Syria to take a weeklong class in revolution.

The teachers were Srdja Popovic and Slobodan Djinovic — leaders of Otpor, a student movement in Serbia that had been instrumental in the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. After then helping the successful democracy movements in Georgia and Ukraine, the two founded the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (Canvas), and have traveled the world, training democracy activists from 46 countries in Otpor’s methods.

These two Serbs start with the concepts of the American academic Gene Sharp, the Clausewitz of the nonviolent movement. But they have refined and added to those ideas. In a new book, “Blueprint for Revolution,” Popovic recounts Canvas’s strategies and how people use them.

Photo

Srdja Popovic
Srdja Popovic. Credit Darko Vojinovic/Associated Press

“Blueprint” strains a bit too hard to be funny, but the title is no exaggeration. Otpor’s methods and signature — a stylized graphic clenched fist — have been adopted by democracy movements around the world. The Egyptian opposition used them to topple Hosni Mubarak. In Lebanon, the Serbs helped the Cedar Revolution extricate the country from Syrian control. In Maldives, their methods were the key to overthrowing a dictator who had held power for 30 years. In many other countries, people have used what Canvas teaches to accomplish other political goals, such as fighting corruption or protecting the environment.

I met Popovic and Djinovic in Belgrade five years ago, wrote about Otpor in a book and later met them in an Asian city to watch them train democracy activists from Burma.

I have lived in two dictatorships and seen dozens of democracy movements in action. But what the Serbs did was new. Popovic cheerfully blows up just about every idea most people hold about nonviolent struggle. Here are some:

Myth: Nonviolence is synonymous with passivity.

No, nonviolent struggle is a strategic campaign to force a dictator to cede power by depriving him of his pillars of support.

In the first hours of the Syrians’ workshop, some participants announced that violence was the only way to topple Assad. Every workshop begins this way, in part because some people think the Serbs are going to teach them to look beatific and meditate. Popovic said out loud what many were thinking: “So you just ask Assad to go away? Please, Mr. Assad, please can you not be a murderer anymore?” Popovic whined. “It’s not nice.”

Just the opposite, said Djinovic: “We’re here to plan a war.” Nonviolent struggle, Djinovic explained, is a war — just one fought with means other than weapons. It must be as carefully planned as a military campaign.

Over the next few days, the Serbs taught the young Syrians the techniques they had developed for taking power: How do you grow a movement from a vanload of people to hundreds of thousands? How do you win to your side the groups whose support is propping up the dictator? How do you wage this war safely when any kind of gathering can mean long prison terms, torture or death? How do you break through people’s fear to get them out into the street?

Myth: The most successful nonviolent movements arise and progress spontaneously.

No general would leave a military campaign to chance. A nonviolent war is no different.

Myth: Nonviolent struggle’s major tactic is amassing large concentrations of people.

This idea is widespread because the big protests are like the tip of an iceberg: the only thing visible from a distance. Did it look like the ousting of Mubarak started with a spontaneous mass gathering in Tahrir Square? Actually, the occupation of Tahrir Square was carefully planned, and followed two years of work. The Egyptian opposition waited until it knew it had the numbers. Mass concentrations of people aren’t the beginning of a movement, Popovic writes. They’re a victory lap.

In very harsh dictatorships, concentrating people in marches, rallies or protests is dangerous; your people will get arrested or shot. It’s risky for other reasons. A sparsely attended march is a disaster. Or the protest can go perfectly, but someone — perhaps hired by the enemy — decides to throw rocks at the police. And that’s what will lead the evening news. One failed protest can destroy a movement.

So what do you do instead? You can start with tactics of dispersal, such as coordinated pot-banging, or traffic slowdowns in which everyone drives at half speed. These tactics show that you have widespread support, they grow people’s confidence, and they’re safe. Otpor, which went from 11 people to 70,000 in two years, initially grew like this: three or four activists staged a humorous piece of anti-Milosevic street theater. People watched, smiled — and then joined.

Myth: Nonviolence might be morally superior, but it’s useless against a brutal dictator.

Nonviolence is not just the moral choice; it is almost always the strategic choice. “My biggest objection to violence is the fact that it simply doesn’t work,” Popovic writes. Violence is what every dictator does best. If you’re going to compete with David Beckham, Popovic says, why choose the soccer field? Better to choose the chessboard.

The Syrians who came to the workshop, needless to say, had little influence over the strategies that were later chosen by other groups opposed to Assad. Violence eventually prevailed — with devastating results.

But that is Popovic’s point: violence often brings devastating results. The scholars Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan analyzed campaigns of violent and nonviolent revolution in the last century (their book, “Why Civil Resistance Works,” uses Otpor’s fist as its cover image) and found that nonviolence has double the success rate of violence — and its gains have been more likely to last.

Only a handful of people will join a violent movement. Using violence throws away the support of millions — support you could have won through nonviolence.

Milosevic’s base of support was Serbia’s senior citizens. Otpor won them over by provoking the regime into using violence. Once Otpor’s leaders realized that its members who were arrested were usually released after being held for a few hours, it staged actions for the purpose of getting large numbers of members detained. Grandparents didn’t like having their 16-year-old grandchildren arrested, or the regime’s hysterical accusations that these high school students were terrorists and spies. Old people switched sides, becoming a key pillar of the Otpor movement. If there had been any truth to the accusations that Otpor used violence, the grandparents would have stayed with Milosevic.

Myth: Politics is serious business.

According to the Pixar philosopher James P. Sullivan, laughter is 10 times more powerful than scream. Nothing breaks people’s fear and punctures a dictator’s aura of invincibility like mockery — Popovic calls it “laughtivism.” Otpor’s guiding spirit was Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a television show its members had grown up watching, and its actions were usually pranks.

Popovic writes about a protest in Ankara after the Turkish government reacted with alarm to a couple kissing in the subway. Protesters could have chosen to march. Instead, they kissed – 100 people gathered in the subway station in pairs, kissing with great slobber and noise. You are a policeman. You have training in how to deal with an anti-government protest. But what do you do now?

Myth: You motivate people by exposing human rights violations.

Most people don’t care about human rights. They care about having electricity that works, teachers in every school and affordable home loans. They will support an opposition with a vision of the future that promises to make their lives better.

Focusing on these mundane, important things is not only more effective; it’s safer. In their Canvas workshop, the Burmese knew it was too risky to organize for political goals — but decided they could organize to get the Yangon city government to collect garbage. Gandhi wisely began his campaign of mass civil disobedience by focusing on Britain’s prohibition on collecting or selling salt. Harvey Milk failed in several campaigns for the San Francisco City Council. He won when he campaigned not on gay rights, but to rid the city’s parks of dog poop. A benefit of such campaigns is that their goals are achievable. Movements grow with small victory after small victory.

Talking about the miseries of life under a dictator is also a bad strategy for mobilizing activists. People already know — and they react by becoming cynical, fearful, atomized and passive. They might be angry, but they’re not going to act on it. Anger is not a motivator.

This was Otpor’s biggest obstacle. Most Serbs wanted Milosevic out. But the vast majority believed that was impossible to accomplish, and too perilous to attempt.

Otpor got people into the streets by making the movement about their own identity. Young people flocked to Otpor because it made them feel cool and important. They had great music and great T-shirts, adorned with the fist. Boys competed to rack up the most arrests. Young Serbs stopped feeling like passive victims and started feeling like daring heroes.

Myth: Nonviolent movements require charismatic leaders who give inspiring speeches.

Otpor had no speeches, ever. And while its strategies were meticulously planned, the people who did the planning were behind the scenes. Its spokesperson changed every two weeks, but it was usually a 17-year-old girl. (“Terrorists? Us?”)

In a traditional party, even parties in opposition to the dictator, the leaders’ job is to make speeches, and their followers listen and applaud. Not Otpor. Its messages were tested in focus groups, and its strategies carefully planned. It was not at all anarchic on the strategic level. But on a tactical level, decentralization was critical. Otpor had only two rules: You had to be anti-Milosevic and absolutely nonviolent. Follow those rules, and you could do anything and call yourself Otpor. This kept activists feeling busy, useful and important.

Myth: Police, security forces and the pro-government business community are the enemy.

Maybe, but it’s smarter to treat them like allies-in-waiting. Otpor never taunted or threw stones at the police. Its members cheered them and brought flowers and homemade cookies to the police station. Even the interrogations after arrest were an opportunity to fraternize and demonstrate Otpor’s commitment to nonviolence.

It paid off. The police knew that if the opposition won, Otpor would make sure they were treated fairly. During the last battle, police officers walked away from the barricades when the opposition asked them to. A dictator who can’t be sure his repressive orders will be obeyed is finished.

I lived in Chile when the opposition to Augusto Pinochet made mistake after mistake; advice from Otpor might have shortened the dictatorship by years. Had the Occupy movement in the United States adopted these tactics, it might still be a relevant force.

But nothing is more tragic than contemplating what Syria could have been now, had the nonviolent activists in the opposition movement prevailed — and followed Popovic’s blueprint.

Boston Globe: ‘Blueprint for Revolution’ by Srdja Popovic

Originally published in the Boston Globe. By Michael Andor Brodeur.

As calls to revolution go, history has offered more compelling examples than the one which led Srdja Popovic into a career of political activism. As he recalls, “[W]e just wanted a normal country with cool music.”

In the late ’90s, Popovic was a founder of the Serbian activist group Otpor!, armed with only a hammy sense of humor and the goal of toppling dictator Slobodan Milosevic, whose ceaseless campaigns of war, terror, and repression through that decade had brought his country to economic and cultural ruin.

Rather than attempt to assemble armies and fight Milosevic head on, Popovic used tactics that were resolutely nonviolent (that is, less brandishing, more branding). In just two years, and under the ubiquitous emblem of a clenched fist, Otpor! grew from a ragtag protest group into a full-blown nationwide movement that used humor, irony, imagery, and imagination to unite scattered factions of the populace against the regime, effectively overthrowing Milosevic in 2000.

For Popovic, salt, tea, and cottage cheese serve as far more effective tools of revolution than blades, bullets, or bombs. In “Blueprint for Revolution,’’ he offers a short history of nonviolent protest (from Gandhi’s marches to the sea to harvest salt in defiance of British taxation, to the Putin-punking performances of Pussy Riot) as well as an ideological starter kit for understanding how nonviolent movements can be effective against highly militarized regimes.

Throughout, Popovic weaves in bits of his own experience leading Otpor! in Serbia and later as a founder of CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies), helming training sessions in Otpor! methodology to burgeoning dissident groups from Egypt, the Maldives, and Syria — all of whom initially share the same doubts that stickers of fists can pack the same punch as actual fists but eventually are mostly won over.

There’s the Israeli insurance salesman who responded to a price hike in cottage cheese (a major dietary staple in the region) by using Facebook to spark a nationwide boycott — an effort Popovic describes as “politically motivated lactose intolerance” — and launch a much broader dialogue about the country’s economic imbalances.

Or Harvey Milk, the legendary San Francisco politician and pioneer of modern gay rights activism, who realized after several failures that to reach a position of power he would have to build unity against a common plight, which he found in dog poop.

Popovic’s penchant for absurdity and troublemaking is balanced by his criteria for effectiveness. He celebrates the initial impact of the Ukrainian women’s rights collective FEMEN, but regrets what he perceives as the gradual dissolution of the movement’s message. And he applauds the Occupy movement’s goals while lamenting its hip, urban exclusivity, its liberal, celebrity-weighted tilt, and its misguided branding. (Popovic would have preferred they opted for “The 99 Percent.”)

Violence isn’t completely absent from Popovic’s survey of peaceful protest — it’s hard to see Otpor!’s “laughtivist” placement of a baseball bat, a barrel emblazoned with Milosevic’s face, and a sign that reads “Smash his face for just a dinar” as anything short of a violent indulgence.

Other times, the role that violence can play in triggering change feels so glaringly missing, you might feel compelled to defend it. When Popovic credits recent advances in American gay rights to the “mainstreaming” of the movement — “no longer defined by slogans like ‘We’re here! We’re queer!’ and parades that feature all the members of the Village People, wearing nipple clamps” — he does so at the expense of those who rioted at Stonewall for something more like individual dignity than general homogeneity.

Fortunately, these questionable moments are few , and despite Popovic’s persistent ham factor (at times, the implied laugh track feels out of place), he offers a clear, well-constructed, and easily applicable set of principles for any David facing any Goliath (sans slingshot, of course).

At the outset, as Popovic quotes his hero Tolkein that “even the smallest creature can change the course of the future,” you may feel the same skepticism as the dozens of revolutionaries he’s egged on since his first actions in Belgrade, but by the end of “Blueprint,” the idea that a punch is no match for a punch line feels like anything but a joke.

The Guardian: Blueprint for Revolution, a fantastically readable and useful handbook for activists

Originally published in The Guardian. By .

I’ve just read the new book by Srjdja Popovic, one of the Serbian protestors who overthrew Slobodan Milosevic and then went on to train protest movements around the world, and it’s brilliant. First prize for readability (and length of title – the full version is ‘Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men and other Non-Violent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators or Simply Change the World’).

Popovic describes his “personal journey from a too-cool-to-care Belgrade guitarist to one of the leaders of Otpor!, the nonviolent movement that toppled the Serbian dictator”, and the style is anything but worthy: wonderfully contemporary-European, full of knowing cultural references, witty asides and awareness of the reader. A really fun (and funny) read – and you can’t say that for many books on politics.

His twin sources of inspiration are Tolkien – “If I had to choose one book to call my scripture, it would be Lord of the Rings” (activists are hobbits, ordinary folk allying with a motley collection of unusual suspects – dwarves, elves etc – to take down the Dark Lord) and Monty Python (dictators can’t handle humour, and it makes being an activist fun). His other less eccentric inspiration is non-violence guru Gene Sharp.

Blueprint for Revolution echoes a lot of the advocacy techniques I talk about on my blog – power analysis, quick wins, clear narratives, identify champions, allies, blockers and the undecided.

Although it’s called a blueprint, he shows respect for national roots and difference, building his case on his huge collection of experiences from Serbia, and his subsequent career with Canvas, training activists in some of the hottest political struggles around (Burma, Syria, Egypt).

Some of the ideas he picks out are particularly useful. Branding really matters, he argues. ‘We wanted Serbs to have a visual image they could associate with our movement [so they went for a clenched fist – cheesy, but effective, and it echoed Partisan heroes of WW2]. Struggle becomes a battle of the brands because “Every dictator is a brand” (this is Gramsci for the 21st century). “We need a brand that is better than theirs.”

Dream big, he says, (a compelling and positive “vision of tomorrow”) but start small. Find tactics that will prove “we are the many and they are the few”, without getting you “killed or roughed up too badly”, like taxi go-slows in Pinochet’s Chile; or vaguely subversive ringtones in Iran.

And apparently food is one of the best entry points. Activists have built movements around cottage cheese (Israel), rice pudding (Maldives) and most famously, salt (Gandhi) and tea (US). “Food has a special way of getting people to come together”, and is often low risk – it gets the ball rolling. But there are other small starters too – Harvey Milk’s political career took off when he switched from gay rights to campaigning against dog shit in San Francisco’s parks, recognising “this very important principle of non-violent activism: namely that people, without exception and without fail, just don’t give a damn.” The trick is really listening and finding out what other people care about, even if it’s not top of your priority list. The alternative is “rally the people who already more or less believe in what you have to say. That is a great way for coming tenth at anything” (as Harvey Milk initially did).

Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone in April 1977
Harvey Milk (here pictured with Mayor George Moscone in April 1977) campaigned against dog shit in order to get people signed up for gay rights. 

He argues that you should practice laughtivism. He admits it’s a terrible word, but quotes Mark Twain: “The human race has unquestionably one really effective weapon – laughter…. Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” saying “In the age of the internet and other distractions, laughter was our greatest weapon.” Popovic’s crew released anti-regime accessorised turkeys onto the streets of Belgrade (you had to be there), while Syrian protestors buried loudspeakers broadcasting anti-regime messages in smelly dustbins in Aleppo (so the police made themselves look ridiculous, and less scary, rummaging around to find them).

I think we’ve lost the power of humour in some of our more finger-wagging activism. That is serious because “humour breaks fear and builds confidence. It also adds the necessary cool factor, which helps movements attract new members. Finally, humour can incite clumsy reactions from your opponents – the high and mighty can’t take a joke.”

Be cool, Popovic suggests (not usually an NGO strong point, though the grassroots protestors are cooler). In Serbia, getting arrested apparently turned you into an instant sex magnet, especially if you earned the black Otpor! T shirt awarded only to those arrested 10 times or more.

Stick firmly to non-violence because it works. “If you’re up against David Beckham, you don’t want to meet him on the soccer field. You want to play him at chess. Taking up arms against a dictator is silly.” Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan, identified 323 conflicts from 1900-2006. They found “nonviolent resistance campaigns were nearly twice as likely to achieve full or partial success as their violent counterparts” (53% against 26%).

But make them oppress you. “Making oppression backfire is a skill every activist can and must master – like jujitsu, it’s all about playing your opponents’ strongest card against them.” In Serbia Otpor! turned arrests into events, with elaborate pre-arranged systems for notifying parents and colleagues of arrests, crowds outside the prisons singing pop songs and chanting the prisoners’ names, and “rock star receptions” (and T shirts) when people were released.

Martin Luther King was the master of non-violent strategy. Here he is pictured in Selma, Alabama, with Reverend Ralph Abernathy in 1965.
Martin Luther King was the master of non-violent strategy. Here he is pictured in Selma, Alabama, with Reverend Ralph Abernathy in 1965. Photograph: Flip Schulke/Corbis

Invest everything in building and maintaining unity (of message as well as organisations and alliances).

Know how to win: declare victory too early and it all unravels (Egypt), stay maximalist and you lose the chance of quick wins and building momentum (Tiananmen Square). Be clear on what your aim is (democracy rather than the fall of Mubarak). Keep unity after victory rather than return to infighting (Ukraine). “Successful movements must have the patience to keep working hard even when the lights and cameras have moved on.”

And that last paragraph points to one of the strengths of the book: Popovic is willing to criticise where he thinks movements have got it wrong – the Russian protest movement for sticking to largely middle class concerns and failing to build bridges; Tiananmen square students for failing to accept and loudly celebrate early offers of climbdowns (as Gandhi did) and instead demanding “everything or nothing” – they got the latter. What would Gandhi have done in Tiananmen Square?

He also thinks Occupy is a really badly chosen name, as it describes a tactic, not a strategy or vision – what would have happened if they had called themselves ‘the 99%’?

One whinge – he has an alarming tendency to overclaim on Otpor!/Canvas’ impact – something common to new, energetic insurgents (think Avaaz). Burma’s saffron revolution is apparently all down to someone smuggling an Otpor! DVD into a Burmese monastery. Some Egyptian activists come to a training session and voila, Tahrir Square! Yeah, right.

That aside, it is a wonderful book – make sure you give it to your friends after you’ve read it.

The Telegraph: How to use rice pudding, lego and laughter to overthrow dictators

Review published in the Telegraph. By Nicholas Blincoe.

Srdja Popovic’s manual on non-violent revolution can claim one significant victory; the prize for the most elaborate subtitle of the year: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Non-Violent Techniques to Galvanise Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World.

Popovic cut his teeth in Otpor! (Resistance!), an organisation that led street protests against Serbia’s President Slobodan Milosevic in the Nineties. The exclamation mark suggests they were aiming for Broadway rather than downtown Belgrade, which is not far from the truth. Popovi? is a frustrated rock star and Otpor! specialised in activism as street theatre. In an early action, Otpor! painted a smiling Miloševi? on a barrel with a sign inviting passers-by to pay to whack it with a baseball bat. The barrel became the focus of an impromptu demonstration, and when the police arrived and arrested the barrel, the resulting photographs raised an even bigger laugh.

Today, Popovic is the director of the Centre for Applied Non-Violent Actions and Strategies, or CANVAS. He has advised revolutionaries in Ukraine, Maldives, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere on effective non-violent techniques. He has a mixed record. Ukraine is fighting a war against Russian proxies while the weakened Kiev government has fallen back into the hands of oligarchs. Egypt has returned to military dictatorship. Syria, abandoned by the world, is a hell-hole.

Even the triumphs in Popovi?’s book title were short-lived. Rice pudding parties in the Maldives became the focal point of opposition to the dictatorship of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom; Lego figures appeared at Russian demonstrations after Putin’s police made it too dangerous for real people. Today, Gayoom’s brother is in power in the Maldives and the post-dictatorship president, Mohamed Nasheed, is in prison. Putin remains secure in Russia.

Popovi? and his co-writer have produced a knockabout book that favours terms such as “laughtivism” and cites the influence of Tolkein and Monty Python. I have a reason to be cynical about the effectiveness of non-violence; I was once an organiser of the International Solidarity Movement, which led non-violent protests against settlement building and home demolitions in Palestine. We were always shot at; indeed, the rate of death and serious injury among young Westerners, given the small total of volunteers involved, was worse than that suffered by the Palestinians.

Yet Popovic goes a long way to defusing my cynicism. Civil disobedience implies a bet on a shared political future. It may not be an appropriate strategy for every conflict, yet if a vision of an improved society can be offered, there is always a possibility of peeling supporters away from the dictatorship, whether that is businessmen, as in Ukraine and Syria, an older conservative generation, as in Serbia, or the security forces, as initially happened in Egypt. Popovi? believes in a minimal working democracy, and offers strategies for small winnable victories for the revolutionaries, and reasons to forego violence and negotiate on the part of the authorities.

Blueprint for Revolution frequently cites Gandhi’s Salt March, a protest against British taxation. Mary Elizabeth King, a doyenne of the Civil Rights movements in America, examines an earlier moment in Gandhi’s activism in Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India (OUP, £32.99). In 1925, He brokered a deal which allowed Untouchables to use a highway restricted to higher castes (and, oddly, Christians and Muslims). King demythologises Gandhi’s victory. He arrived in Kerala more than a year into the protest, at the invitation of the Maharajah, and worked with the British police to find a messy compromise.

King shows the original campaign had failed. The leaders had courted arrest in the hope of winning the sympathy of the higher castes, a strategy which left their movement rudderless and close to chaos. Given this failure, Gandhi’s intervention at least provided a kind of solution.

Non-violent activism is often portrayed as a moral choice, and sacrifice as its inevitable corollary. The lesson is, martyrdom never wins friends from the oppressors. Popovi? and King each present a more hard-headed take on non-violence, aimed at incremental wins and long-term persuasion. Gandhi is credited with saying: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It seems his grandson, Arun Gandhi, is the source of the quote, but the truth holds: the appeal of non-violent activism is that it imagines a working civil society, and uses tools which have the best chance of bringing it into reality.

Waging Nonviolence: Why Social Change Needs to be a Laughing Matter By Molly Wallace

Molly Wallace, writing for Waging Nonviolence, examines the role of humor in nonviolent activism, drawing on the recent article published by Majken Jul Sørensen in Peace & Change. Analyzing examples of activism in Sweden and Belarus, Sørensen uses the four dimensions of nonviolent action developed by Stellan Vinthagen (dialogue facilitation, power breaking, utopian enactment, and normative regulation) to show the ways in which humor can contribute to the effectiveness of nonviolent action in some dimensions, while detracting from it in others. Wallace concludes by referencing the contemporary context of activism in the United States since the inauguration of Donald Trump as President, and calls for Vinthagen’s dimensions of nonviolent action to be considered in the era of activism under the Trump Presidency.

Read more here: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2017/06/incorporate-humor-civil-resistance/.

Photo: Sergey Teplyakov/Vkontakte.