(One in a series of posts on Mark & Paul Engler’s 2016 book, This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping The Twenty-First Century.)
It’s one thing to organize around symbolic demands and win symbolic victories when there are relatively independent means of communicating with one’s followers and with the public at large. But how do you win symbolic victories under a dictatorship? That was the challenge Otpor faced in Milosevic’s Serbia.
“Otpor came up with a novel approach: campaigners themselves publicly laid out their standards for what would constitute a win, and then they loudly trumpeted it when they met those objectives, using the publicity to generate momentum. For example, activists might announce a goal of launching ten new chapters. Whether it took weeks or months to accomplish this, they could then make a major show of having met their goal once it happened. Or Otpor might announce the objective of holding simultaneous protests in at least a dozen different cities on a national day of action. Because they set this target themselves, they could be confident that it was attainable. And once it was attained, they made certain that everybody knew about it. With each completed goal reported in the alternative media or in the movement’s own communications, the fear barrier became that much weaker.” (p. 135)
If that approach seems too glib or facile, consider the alternative:
“If Otpor members had structured their public relations around making a demand of the regime and allowing the media to judge their success or failure based on the government’s response, they would have put themselves at the mercy of their opponents, setting themselves up for failure. ‘Your adversaries are rarely going to grant full acceptance of your demands,’ says (Otpor activist Ivan) Marovic. If people’s attention is focused on the messy back-and-forth of negotiations, naysayers can always find grounds for complaint and movement supporters rarely emerge inspired. Otpor’s method allowed them to avoid that. For publicity purposes, Otpor sought to accentuate when the movement made a show of strength and to let insiders worry about muddling through the aftermath.
The activists sometimes summed up the approach with a crafty aphorism: ‘declare victory and run.'” (pp. 135-36)
Note that an essential piece of this strategy is deciding in advance what the movement’s goal is for any particular action or campaign. This is no place for wishful thinking or “aspirational” goals. Better, for example, to set a goal of turning out 100 people at a demonstration knowing you can turn out 200, than to proclaim a goal of 250 people and fall short.
What’s more, even symbolic victories must be grounded in reality. The Englers emphasize this point:
“Organizers of civil resistance cannot be content with empty declarations of victory or with merely ‘speaking truth to power.’ They must be hard headed in assessing their progress in winning over advocates and sympathizers from outside their immediate networks, always guarding against tendencies to become insular ‘voices in the wilderness.'” (p. 141)
Among the metrics they suggest activists attend to as means of building their campaigns and keeping themselves honest are: “movement in opinion polls, growing numbers of active participants, the ability to generate resources through grassroots channels, and the responsiveness of different pillars of support to their mobilizations.” (p. 141)
It’s virtually impossible to overemphasize the fact that even when you win your opponents (and much of the media) will not give you credit. The habit of defining and claiming your own victories is an essential practice of momentum-driven organizing.
Crossposted at: https:/masscommons.wordpress.com