The Need for a Phased Strategy and Cause Consciousness

        Day 6 of my analysis of Gene Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part Three: The Dynamics of Nonviolent Struggle, applied to the climate movement. Reading Sharp’s books are a prerequisite for anyone who is serious about stopping climate change. Please go to Dr. Sharp’s website, buy these books, and study them.

Sharp:  “Nonviolent action…participants are able to advance their cause in proportion to the degree that the opponent’s desire and ability to maintain the objectionable policy are weakened, and that the nonviolent group is able to generate the will and power to give it the internal strength  to effect the change.  The skillful choice of the point of attack is important in this connection.”

         We Pissed-Off Polar Bears saw the 2012 election, on the heels of this disastrously hot summer, as a breathtaking opportunity to get a lot of people talking about climate change and demanding action.  We considered an international treaty to be the best, fastest framework for change (still do), so we wanted to elect as many climate-friendly senators as possible to ratify such a treaty.  The rest of the movement did not show up for the fall campaigns at all, so our strategic thinking was for naught.

         Bill McKibben, in fact, started his Do the Math campaign the day after the election.  As best as I can tell, the divestment campaign he’s calling for are designed to hurt industry’s bottom line (although some doubt that it will have that effect), and to attack a key fossil fuel weakness: they’re jeopardizing young people’s entire futures.  This could, in fact, weaken industry’s ability to maintain the objectionable policy by rousing a lot of protest on campuses across the country.

Sharp:  “The planners choose the point of attack…which symbolizes the “evil” which is least defensible by the opponent and which is capable of arousing the greatest strength against it.  Success in such limited campaigns will in turn increase the self-confidence of the actionists and their ability to move effectively toward the fuller achievement of their larger objectives as they gain experience.”

         We Pissed-Off Polar Bears had a “staged campaign” in mind, but we couldn’t get past the first hurdle, getting the movement on it’s feet, so we’re back to square one:  How to get a movement up and at ‘em.  Whether McKibben or Gore or any other organization in the movement has a staged campaign in mind is unknown to me.  It would actually help the movement quite a bit if they could come out with an overall plan.  I, for one, am not comfortable just assuming that they are with the fate of the world at stake.  They haven’t had one before now, why should we assume they’ve got one now?

Sharp:  “It is necessary to publicize the facts, the issues and the arguments advanced by the nonviolent group…The need for such a period of motivational preparation has been long recognized as important to a well-supported and sustained nonviolent movement.  For example, in 1769, in correspondence with George Washington…his neighbor James Mason argued it would be necessary to publish ‘something…to warn the people of the impending danger and to induce them to the more readily and cheerfully to concur in the proper measures to avert it.'”

         Here’s where Bill McKibben and Al Gore have done a better job than anyone else in the movement.  Still, though, as a society we’re a long way away from completely coming to grips with how bad climate change could be. It’s very important that this movement does a much better job of publicizing the worst-case scenarios, which most Americans are completely unaware of (because they get no air-play), and which happen to be highly plausible, by the way.

Sharp:  “Inform the public in general of the grievances, encouraging people to feel that nonviolent action is needed to correct them, and finally to enlisting participants for the coming struggle.  A very important part of this activity is aimed at arousing the feeling that something can and ought to be done.”

         People who think that the president will handle it don’t understand how little political will there is to implement something on a scale that will be necessary to really make a dent in the advance of climate change. Nonviolent action, in the streets on a massive scale, is the only thing that will create that kind of political will. 

Sharp:  “A properly conducted journal can be of immense help in such a campaign…’Cause consciousness’ must be placed on quality rather than speed or quantity, and strict efforts must be made to avoid exaggerations, distortions, or falsehoods.  Neither should feelings of hatred or intolerance be aroused…’Many people are only looking for an excuse not to support the movement.’”

         With the need for action on climate change being so urgent, it’s tempting not to put anything before speed, but nonviolent action is most effective because it can work so quickly.  Remember what Ivan Marovic of Otpor said, “If it is carefully planned, by the time they start, everything is over in a matter of weeks”.  

CH   

Please muster up the $34.85 (plus shipping) and purchase The Politics of Nonviolent Action.  You can order it HERE.

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Power Shifts in Nonviolent Movements are a Roller Coaster Ride

            Day 3 of my analysis of Gene Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part Three: The Dynamics of Nonviolent Struggle, applied to the climate movement. Reading Sharp’s books are a prerequisite for anyone who is serious about stopping climate change. Please go to Dr. Sharp’s website, buy these books, and study them.

Sharp:  “The variations in the respective power of the contending groups [in nonviolent conflict} are likely to be more extreme, to take place more quickly, and to have more diverse consequences…The nonviolent group may, by it’s actions and behavior, control the increase or decrease in the relative strength of the opponent group.”

         That’s why you do nonviolent struggle.  It’s obvious by now that the conventional political activism route has had zero effect upon the power of the fossil fuel industry and their allies.  If you want to seriously make an impact, you have to be willing to go “all-in” with a completely different technique.  I think Bill McKibben is well-poised to do this.  His 350.org supporters always astound him with their tremendous response to his calls-to-action. But he and his lieutenants don’t seem to have broken completely free of the regular political activism model.  In their Do the Math presentation they asked for everyone to text them so that then they could reach out to us when needed, but only with the promise that that they won’t be annoying about it.

         I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t be worried about annoying us.  The fossil fuel industry is what annoys us, we’ll do anything you ask, so don’t hesitate to ask as often as is needed!  And if you don’t ask often enough you’re probably not doing enough.  Don’t hold back on our account, remember how astounded you always are and give us some credit!

Sharp:  “The conflict is therefore not one between two clear-cut groups of fixed composition and strength.  Instead the  power of both groups varies…The strength of the nonviolent group will be strongly influenced by the people who are actually carrying out the action…If they participate fully, and persist despite the punishments meted out to them, the nonviolent movement is likely to be strong."

         The struggle group needs to be fully committed.  The leaders and the participants.  It’s actually a sin to be shy about "annoying" us.

Sharp: “In a given nonviolent campaign the active participants are usually a relatively small percentage of the whole population…The attitudes and activities of that wider population associated with the nonviolent struggle are, however, highly important: its approval or disapproval of the nonviolent campaign may influence the morale and hence the behavior of the active participants.  If sympathetic, the wider group may provide funds, facilities, and supplies, take less dangerous symbolic actions of support, or provide new volunteers.”

         This is a big problem for the movement.  While a majority of the population at large gives lip-service to the problem of global warming, very few think it’s worth getting worked up about.  Our peers don’t seem all that concerned.  To them, we seem a little crazy, misguided, or even unrealistic.  Right now I’d argue that this is our opponent’s greatest source of strength.  As long as the wider population is largely unmoved by climate change, industry's strength shall remain unchallenged.  Awakening the wider population is job one.

Sharp:  “The importance of national and world opinion to the outcome of the struggle varies considerably and can be highly exaggerated.  Such opinion may…influence the morale of the respective groups, and hence the outcome of the conflict.”

         In our conflict world opinion will play a key role.  True, world opinion will not factor as importantly as does American public opinion toward creating political action in this country, but this is a global problem and will require global action.  We need the citizens of the world on our side.  We need them to be every bit as active in pushing their governments to act as we must be here.

CH   

I’m including little snippets, but if we’re going to break the fossil fuel industry’s stranglehold upon our government's climate  policy, you need to read Gene Sharp’s stuff.  Please muster up the $34.85 (plus shipping) and purchase The Politics of Nonviolent Action. You can order it HERE.

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To Make the Climate Movement Great, We Need to Cast Off Our Fear

Day 2 of my analysis of Gene Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part Three: The Dynamics of Nonviolent Struggle, applied to the climate movement. Reading Sharp’s books are a prerequisite for anyone who wants to help save our life-support system. Please go to Dr. Sharp’s website, buy these books, and study them.

Sharp:  “Nonviolent action is not a safe means of struggle; there is no such thing.   People are liable to be hurt and to suffer in various ways, including economic loss, physical injury, imprisonment, and even death….There are, of course, risks in passivity.”

         Like, for instance, having the world overheat to the point that rivers run dry and civilization can’t feed itself.

Sharp: “A high degree of courage is required of nonviolent actionists.”

         There are those in the movement who think we can win with “slacktivism”.  That somehow by clicking “like” on a facebook page people are doing their bit to help defeat the forces of industry.   These people are steeped in the old paradigms activists have been using, unsuccessfully, for the past thirty years.  Until people really start putting themselves on the line, this movement will continue to be ineffectual.

Sharp:  “The coward seeks to avoid the conflict and flees from danger, the nonviolent actionist faces the conflict and risks the dangers involved in pursuing it honorably.  ‘Cowardice is impotence worse than violence,’ concluded Gandhi.

“The nonviolent actionist must have confidence in the right and strength of his cause, in his principles, and in his technique of action.”

         That should not be hard, when you’re attempting to save the world.

Gandhi:  “The Government takes advantage of our fear of jails.”

         In America, businesses refrain from hiring people who have any kind of a criminal record.  Think of it, fighting to save the world can give you a “criminal” record.  We cannot be afraid of that! We can not let a system designed to do something else work against our saving the future for everyone, including the very businesses that supposedly won’t be hiring us. 

In his Do the Math tour, Bill McKibben correctly pointed out that older Americans, especially tenured professors, can be the first ones to be arrested, jail fodder, as it were.  But younger Americans can make a great statement by fearlessly being willing to risk jail.  During the Freedom Rides, Mississippi’s jails became flooded with idealistic young people from all over the country who flocked to the state to take on segregation laws, until Mississipi’s system couldn’t handle it anymore and the Freedom Riders won a change in the unjust laws.  During the Otpor struggle, it became a point of pride to be arrested, as it was in Montgomery, Alabama, during the bus boycotts.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:  “Those who had previously trembled before the law were now proud to be arrested for the cause of freedom.”

We can’t be afraid of jail guys, just remember to be nice to the police, we’re fighting for their futures too.

Sharp:  “Gandhi repeatedly emphasized the importance of this inner psychological change from fear and submission to fearlessness and self-respect as a necessary prerequisite of real political freedom… Gandhi wrote: ‘We have to dispel fear from our hearts.’…Also, participation in nonviolent action often seems to lead to a loss of fear….

         “Courage in this technique is not simply a moral virtue; it is a practical requirement…Courage is required if the nonviolent struggle is to…lead to the increasing strength of the nonviolent group and an undermining of the opponent’s power.”

Rachel pointed out in her Save Face or Save the Planet post that the biggest roadblock we in the movement face is simply putting ourselves out there, for the world to see, as very visible activists.  That does take courage. Don’t hide behind “slacktivism”.  Get fearless and get active.

CH   

I’m including little snippets, but if we’re going to break the fossil fuel industry’s stranglehold you need to read Gene Sharp’s stuff.  Please muster up the $34.85 (plus shipping) and purchase The Politics of Nonviolent Action. You can order it HERE.

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Chris Parenti’s Excellent Rx to Save the Planet

         How did I miss THIS?  What was I doing on November 29th?  Rachel and I have been lone voices in the climate wilderness that expressed doubts about Bill McKibben’s battle plan from his Do the Math tour.  Nothing against Bill McKibben, who is rightfully revered in this movement, but it’s our planet too, and if we feel like his big plan will fall short, we feel compelled to differ.

Apparently Chris Parenti feels the same way.  In this excellent article Parenti points out serious flaws in McKibben’s plan, but also comes up with a very impressive plan of his own.  First of all, he points out that in the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency decision, the laws are already in place to start fixing the problem immediately.  President Obama’s EPA is sitting on 30 rules it must issue as a result of that decision.  As Parenti points out, “the (climate) movement has not pressured for action on this front.”  (Note to Chris Parenti: we weren’t even aware of said decision, but, as part of the movement, the Pissed-Off Polar Bears will see what we can do to pressure for action.)

Parenti continues: “Another tool that the government could use is to reorient government procurement away from fossil fuel energy, toward clean energy and technology -- to use the government's vast spending power to create a market for green energy. After all, the government didn't just fund the invention of the microprocessor; it was also the first major consumer of the device. For most of its first three decades of activity, IBM-- which lead the creation of computers -- got more than half of its business from federal contracts.

‘In other words, government consumption (not just its R&D investment) is a powerful force that has created whole markets and new technologies.

“Elsewhere I have called this strategy the Big Green Buy. Consider this: Altogether federal, state and local government ("total government expenditures") constitute more than 38 percent of our GDP….

“A redirection of government purchasing toward wind, solar power, etc., plus robust action by the EPA - that is, imposition of a de facto carbon tax (if you emit too much you pay a fine) -- would create massive markets for clean power, electric vehicles and efficient buildings, and would simultaneously drive private investment toward that market.

“This strategy -- call it cap and buy -- could and should happen at the state and local level as well. I hope that 350 campaigners and others will add these ideas to their strategy. Activists can pressure their universities, churches and towns, as well as their state and local governments to buy clean power and electric vehicles, retrofit buildings for efficiency, and pressure the federal government to allow the EPA to do its job and enforce the clean air act, very vigorously.

“Let's be honest. The only force on earth that can really control Exxon is the U.S. government.”

         Well done, Chris Parenti.

CH

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Before You Start a Nonviolent Struggle, Read Your Gene Sharp

It’s amazing how few climate organizations have read Gene Sharp, therefore it’s also no wonder so many of them are so clueless.  Nonviolent movements have a great history.  They haven’t all been successful, but considering that virtually all of them were making things up as they went along, it’s astonishing how successful these movements have been.

Some 50 years ago Gene Sharp dedicated his life to studying nonviolent struggle groups, and he’s amassed an incredible body of knowledge regarding just how these groups have been able to succeed and what tactics they’ve used.  His pamphlets have helped train not only nonviolent struggle groups, but also were instrumental in helping tiny Baltic states with histories of being occupied draft into their constitutions methods designed to make their nations more unconquerable through noncooperation.

Next summer in Turkey, 350.org will be training youth from around the world in how to successfully create a movement.  In Sharp’s latest book, Self-Liberation (read it yourself here), he and his assistant Jamila Raquib note that “groups that received…lectures, courses and workshops have remained themselves unable to plan grand strategies for their conflicts.  Those groups have usually been unable even to to prepare strategies for smaller limited campaigns intended to achieve modest goals.”

(I recognized I’ve been a little hard on Bill McKibben and 350.org of late, but we’re running out of time to SAVE THE WORLD, and if I see them moving too slowly or proposing things that people with experience say doesn’t work, I will call them on it.  In McKibben’s Do the Math presentation, he includes a film clip of Van Jones saying McKibben's activists “did not come to Washington to pull the president down, but they did come to push him to be who he said he could be”.  I’d say we Pissed-Off Polar Bears have the same attitude toward McKibben, we’re rooting for him, and pushing him as best as we can to be a more effective leader.)

The analysis in Self-Liberation continues “The training the trainers approach is highly questionable for advanced purposes…this approach trivializes the amount of knowledge needed by a person who attempts to plan strategies. It also assumes that the necessary knowledge and understanding can be successfully trained verbally twice and then applied in strategic planning.”

What does work?  “Careful study of printed presentations and analyses…Printed materials can be studied slowly when needed, repeated, and reviewed…Significant study is required of selected printed studies of the operation of nonviolent struggle and the analyses of its potential…wide dissemination and study of the recommended public texts on nonviolent action is encouraged.  Such wide dissemination and study can counteract any possible tendencies toward elitism…This alternative route to knowledge, if followed carefully, should eventually enable persons and groups to become capable of self-reliantly preparing a grand strategy for a major conflict.”

So buy your Sharp and read it, all of it.  It’s thousands of pages and his writing doesn’t always jump off the page, but the ideas are sound and we’ve got a world to save, so do it!  

In the coming weeks and months, I will share stuff I’ve highlighted from reading his canon, not as a substitute, but hopefully as inspiration for you to buy the books yourself!

CH

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My Favorite Movement – Part 1

At his Do the Math tour, Bill McKibben talks about how people need to engage in “the hard work” of organizing and that it will be "kind of a slog…the most important slog ever”.

Who wants to sign up for a slog?

Besides, we need to push governments to act on climate change as soon as possible, WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR A SLOG!

You want to build a real movement?  Look to Otpor, the Serbian movement that started with 8 students in a coffee shop and ended less than two years later with the ousting of a dictator.

They were “the only movement in Serbia that tried to make political activity light, hip and fun,,” writes Tina Rosenberg in her excellent book Join the Club.  Said Otpor activist Slobodan Homen “For us it was a great party all the time.”

Here’s a passage from Join the Club: 

“Otpor’s leaders realized that to keep volunteers happy, they needed to feel responsible and important, that their work and achievement really mattered.  They also needed to be constantly busy, not sitting around and waiting for instructions from above.  So while the central organization set overall strategy, each cluster decided how to carry it out and how to best use local talent.  Volunteers were trained in Otpor methods and the principles of nonviolent struggle and then set loose to be the movement in their towns or neighborhoods.  It was…an animal with no central brain; each finger contains the whole idea….

“Activists had to only follow two rules.  Every Otpor action had to be aimed at Milosevic.  And it had to be nonviolent….  Follow the two rules and anything was permissible….

“You could write your own script for street theater, create whatever props you needed, and stage any action, no matter how goofy.  You could design your own leaflet and propose designs for more expensive-to-print stickers and posters, which would receive serious consideration from the marketing team.  You could put up stickers and posters wherever you wanted.  You could recruit anyone you wanted and organize your high school the way you wanted.  ‘If you were anti-Milosevic and nonviolent, you could go naked with “Otpor’ painted on your chest and we wouldn’t denounce you, we wouldn’t say you weren’t Otpor.’ Said (co-leader) Milja Jovanovic.  ‘Our job was to say yes,’ said Stanko Lazendic, one of Otpor’s leaders in Novi Sad.

“If you wanted to, you could become a hero.  You could be an Otpor spokesperson and appear in all the opposition media, or you could…wallpaper your neighborhood and run from the police, heart pounding.  If you didn’t run fast enough, then you would be arrested – but when you finally got out of the police station late at night, a crowd of supporters would be cheering you and you could get your picture in the paper for all your friends to see the next day.

“You were never a part of anything, and you feel all of a sudden that you’re part of something.”

Slog schmog!  Let's make the Climate Movement a PARTY!


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McKibben Issues a "Call to Adventure" on his Do The Math Tour

Sunday night we attended Bill McKibben's Do the Math Tour in Los Angeles.  We were happy to be there, and liked what we heard, including McKibben issuing this Call to Adventure:

"There's really no more important place that you all could be right now.  Very few human beings ever get the chance to say "I'm doing the most important thing I could be doing at this minute.  But if you join in this fight - as you join in this fight - you will be able to say that and it will be absolutely true.  (Climate change) is the biggest thing human beings have ever done... and so standing up to it is the biggest thing human beings can be doing."

We absolutely agree.  This isn't some ordinary issue we decided to get riled up about.  This isn't some "in a perfect world" ideological cause we're making a stand about.  This is about protecting everyone's LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM before it collapses completely.  

In the words of scientist Tim Flannery, "in the years to come this issue will dwarf all the others combined, it will become the only issue."  

That's it.

We need all hands on deck for this, because nothing, EVER, has been this important. 

CH


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