The power of the people: some defining strategies in the rich history of nonviolent action—and the people behind them

New Internationalist, August, 2005

   Rise like lions after slumber
  In unvanquishable number--
Shake your chains to earth like dew
 Which in sleep had fallen on you--
   You are many--they are few.

WITHDRAW YOUR CONSENT

Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi and the people of India. (1) India--1930. Fewer than 100,000 British troops control 350 million Indians. Mohandas Gandhi identifies that the British 'have not taken India from us--we have given it to them'. At the beginning of what would be a 17-year campaign of non-cooperation to oust British colonial rule from India, the 60-year-old undertakes a 384-kilometre walk to the beach to gather salt--illegal under British law. After 24 days' walking, on the eve of the law-breaking, he meets with 12,000 supporters on the beach and tells them: 'Hold the salt in your fist and think it is worth 60 million rupees. That is how much the [British] Government have been taking from us through their monopoly on salt.' At dawn on 6 April 1930, Gandhi picks up a fist of mud and salt. Later, he declares: 'We will practise such non-cooperation that finally it will not be possible for the Administration to carry on.' By midsummer, even with Gandhi and most of India's 'leaders in jail, the Government has lost control of most major cities. In the years that follow, Gandhi proves a master strategist, advertiser and motivator. His strategies form the foundation upon which many of today's nonviolent actions are built.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

STRATEGIZE

James Lawson and the students of Fisk University, Nashville, US. (1) When the well-dressed black students of Fisk University first sit at lunch-counters reserved for white Americans one Saturday afternoon, they are regarded as a curiosity. This is Nashville in 1960 where white and black Americans are totally segregated so, of course, they are refused service. But by the third Saturday of their sit-in, white tolerance has faded. Police--out in force--beat and arrest the Afro-Americans who are at the lunch counters ... only to find a second, then a third wave take their place. Trained for months beforehand to withstand white taunts and physical violence, the students--who have broken no law other than convention--refuse bail. Their imprisonment provokes national sympathy, draws a deluge of recruits--white and black--from throughout the country and leads to a crippling boycott of white stores in downtown Nashville. Their actions start the process of desegregation of all city services that occurs over the following four years. This is an outstanding example of what people-power can achieve through disciplined training based on a carefully planned strategy that anticipates, then neutralizes, the response of the oppressors. Unlike the Indians who responded to Gandhi, these Afro-Americans are in a minority who take on a majority--and win.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

USE WHAT YOU'VE GOT

Lysistrata and the women of Athens. (2) It is 411 BC. The Peloponnesian war between Sparta and Athens is in its 21st year. The Greek women from opposing sides meet and decide that the war must stop. 'We must refrain from the male altogether,' says their chief strategist, Lysistrata. And, if forced into intercourse, Lysistrata advises them to 'yield to their [men's] wishes, but with a bad grace; there is no pleasure in it for them when they do it by force.' And so the sex-strike is born, the men's resolve crumples and a treaty of peace is signed.

That, of course, was fiction--a political satire by Greek dramatist Aristophanes (447-385 BC). Had Lysistrata's grand plan materialized, Athens might not have needed to surrender the war to Sparta in 404 BC. But the idea is still active--employed by women in a Turkish village in 2001 to get a decent water supply; by Icelandic women in 1979 to help the passage of equal opportunity laws; and in Colombia at a violent moment in the country's drug wars to achieve a brief ceasefire in 1997. The play Lysistrata is itself used as a worldwide act of dissent against the war on Iraq with 1,029 productions staged in 59 countries--all on 3 March 2003.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

IDENTIFY OPPORTUNITIES

Mkhuseli Jack and the Port Elizabeth resistance against apartheid. (1) By 1985, violent resistance is failing black South Africans. Even though millions of South Africans are demanding an end to apartheid, the white Government's security forces are widespread, well armed, and dealing out death on a daily basis. 'Let us expose this violence and bring it right to the doorsteps of the whites,' Mkhuseli Jack tells the black townspeople living around Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape Province. After two months' preparation, Jack urges a huge crowd on 13 July 1985 at a funeral to boycott the white-owned businesses in Port Elizabeth where nearly half a million blacks normally shop. And on Monday, the streets are empty. There is nearly 100 per cent compliance with the boycott in the weeks that follow. When a state of emergency is imposed and the black leaders arrested, the desperate white store owners pressure the Government to have them released. Another boycott, another state of emergency and another spate of arrests follow over the next 12 months. And although the boycotters' demands--which include withdrawing Government troops and opening public amenities to the black population--are not met immediately, the boycotts shift power to the black communities and help undermine the white regime and its system of apartheid that will collapse eight years later.