Pete the Pissed-Off Polar Bear Chimes in on Nonviolent Openness vs. Secrecy

So I wanted to talk about Openness and Secrecy in Nonviolent Struggle. 

It basically boils down to this: Openness is smart, secrecy is dumb.  

Let me elaborate.

First of all, anything you write in an email, or say on the telephone, might be read by

government agents.  George W. Bush made sure of this with his so-called Patriot Act. 

 “Oh look at me I’m a patriot!  You now have no privacy, just like the founders intended!” 

That naked picture you sent to your boyfriend?  It’s made the rounds at Langley.

Also, if you really were to become a concern to anyone really powerful, like, say, the

richest companies in the history of the world, they would soon have people joining your

organization.  “Hello!  I want to help!  I have money, what would you do to the richest

company on earth if you could get away with it?  Shoot for the moon, dude!  Let’s do

something illegal.  Hee hee hee!  You can trust me, honest!”

So, you should expect spies.  If you’ve got secrets, then everyone would get all paranoid! 

“Is it you?  Are you the mole?”  “I think it’s him!”  “I think it’s you!”  “I trusted you, ratfink!” 

This is no way to run a popular uprising!  Just be open and honest, “Here’s what we’re

 doing?  Ya hear me, Koch Brothers?”  “Hey Glenn Beck, guess what we’re gonna do!”

Now of course if you lived in, say, Kas-beck-i-stan, you’d need to be secret or your

opponents would kill you!  But the U.S. and Canada, are free!  If you’re a human

anyway.  There are some places polar bears can’t go or they’d shoot us with

tranquilizer darts, which is worse than it sounds.  You don’t just fall asleep, when you’re

out they do anal probes and stuff like that, or put big collars on you.  Try sneaking up on

a seal with a big black collar around your neck! 

Anyway, here no one’s gonna kill you unless some crazy Tea Party dude with an arsenal

decides to take matters into his own hands, but that would really make their side look bad

so they’ll try and discourage that, prob’ly anyway.  It’s hard to figure out that kind of

crazy.

Another thing that’s dumb about secrecy is only the inner circle knows what’s going on

next.  We Pissed-off Polar Bears wanted to help the climate movement with their protests

during the elections last year.  Turned out they had no protests planned.  They’re very

opaque, they don’t do a good job of laying out their strategy, so you don’t know if they

have it handled or not.  These are important things to know!

  

If you want a lot of people to help you demonstrate, you should be really visible!

The point is, Nonviolent struggle is based on bravery and discipline.  When you’re open

about what you’re doing, you become free from the fear of arrest.

In the Indian Independence Jawaharlal Nehru or whatever his name was, I actually

know a walrus named Jawalrus Nehru, anyway this guy Nehru said that once they got rid

of secrecy their feelings of oppression and frustration melted away.  They actually felt

sorry for the guys who were spying on them because they had no secrets to discover.

This movement needs to get rid of it’s feelings of frustration and start having fun!  Ya 

hear that ExxonMobil!  The party’s over!  Gruuumph!  More tomorrow.

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What if People Knew They Could Prevent Unwanted Policies?

Today marks day 10 of my analysis of Gene Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part One: Power and Struggle, applying it to the movement to save the world from a changing climate.

Some of the nonviolent scenarios Sharp writes about aren’t terribly relevant to our situation in trying to save the climate, others are more so.

        

One of my favorite nonviolent struggles defeated the Kapp Putsch in 1920.  A right-wing coup d’etat was defeated "principally by the general strike of the workers and the refusal of the higher civil servants to collaborate with their rebel masters".  When the bad guys took over people all over Berlin simply refused to do their work for days on end.  Even the banks refused to turn money over to the new government.  The coup collapsed within a few days.

Of course it won’t be easy to crack the internal system of Exxon-Mobil.  They’re famous for their corporate discipline and for hiring true-believers (and probably climate deniers as well).  But they’re also part of our culture at large, and, again, they are living in “drought central”.  Yes, they work in air-conditioned offices, but they watch the news and weather reports, they must have nagging doubts about climate change.

Another inspiring nonviolent struggle fought for Indian Independence.

Sharp: “Jawaharlal Nehru’s experience with noncooperation in the Indian struggle led him to conclude:  ‘Nothing is more irritating and, in the final analysis, harmful to a government than to have to deal with people who will not bend to its will, whatever the consequences.’  Gandhi wrote: ‘If we are strong, the British become powerless.’”

         A major difference between their struggle and our struggle was they basically had all the time in the world to get it done.  Climate change is rushing upon us like a tsunami, and our time to break through is very limited. 

         That said, Gandhi was a tactical genius, always testing his movement’s capacity for larger actions and working toward making it stronger and stronger.  Our movement is, at this point, small and weak.  But that can change.

Sharp: “What would happen if people…on a wide scale, knew that they could prevent the imposition on them of unwanted policies and regimes, and were skillfully able to refuse to assist, in open struggle?”

Remember, all of our futures, including the futures of the fossil fuel industry’s families, hinge upon whether we are able to this successfully.

Sharp: “Generalized obstinacy and collective stubbornness are not effective enough.  General opposition must be translated into a strategy of action, and people need to know how to wage the struggle…They will need to understand the technique based on this insight in to power, including the methods of that technique, its dynamics of change, requirements for success and principles of strategy and tactics.  The implementation must be skillful.”

         Read your Sharp, people!

CH

I’m including little snippets, but if we’re going to break the fossil fuel industry’s stranglehold on U.S. Energy 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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