The playbook of every successful nonviolent struggle

This article The playbook of every successful nonviolent struggle was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Democracy is being tested in our communities. Cities from Charlotte to Memphis face escalating threats from the deployment of military troops and immigration raids. States like Maryland and Vermont are being denied federal funding for disaster recovery and response. However, there are also many signs that resistance is building. Federal courts have become an important tool to protect against federal overreach, and Americans are increasingly getting activated — and yes, radicalized, in the best sense of the word. They’re recognizing that business as usual is no longer an option and that they have a role to play in protecting our communities and political systems.

This is a time of great urgency, and the strategies being used against us are meant to overwhelm us, instill fear and confusion, and make us feel helpless. Authoritarians like to present the oppressive reality as a fait accompli, one that cannot be undone, thus undermining the will to resist.

In America, however, resistance is widespread and growing, and there’s an urge to act quickly. Recent research out of Harvard shows that protests this year have reached “a wider swath of the United States than at any other point on record.” This is an important development, but how we act also matters. Now, the goal should be to use tactics and strategies that will increase our effectiveness in the short term, while ensuring our achievements are durable. 

What’s happening in America closely follows an authoritarian playbook common throughout history and around the globe today. But we have a playbook too — one that offers frameworks and lessons from people who have successfully resisted invasions, occupations and authoritarianism.

These four steps enable us to think holistically about nonviolent resistance — a powerful tool in the fight for democracy and human rights — and ensure that all pieces of the puzzle are put in place.

1. Assess the situation to understand the conflict landscape

Movements often jump into action without a clear picture of the terrain they’re navigating. We must resist the impulse to respond to every outrage with immediate mobilization. Instead, we should pause to assess the situation, our objectives and the capabilities of the groups we are mobilizing against, as well as those of our movements.

This kind of strategic assessment is a necessary prerequisite to action. We need to know what harm is being done or planned and who is doing it. And we need to know what systems and institutions enable this harm through their cooperation and obedience, and which are vulnerable to persuasion or pressure. It’s at that point that we can assess our movement’s numbers, capabilities, resources and people’s level of training and discipline.

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This kind of analysis, carried out before mobilizing people, has been crucial in past movements. It’s revealed untapped power and enabled groups to target their actions in a way that makes success more likely. For example, the Otpor movement in Serbia which was successful in removing the Slobodan Milosevic dictatorship from power in October 2000 relied on strategic assessments to prepare actions. One of its key objectives was to convince police to shift their allegiance to the resistance, which seemed impossible. However, the movement realized that appealing to and recruiting police officers’ family members could prove effective given their proximity and influence. At the final showdown, when hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Belgrade, most police officers simply refused orders to open fire on the crowd.

It’s this kind of clear-eyed, strategic assessment that comes first. Then we build, and not just power in numbers, but also in skills, strategy and infrastructure.

2. Build the power to carry out effective action

Once we understand the strengths and weaknesses of the groups we’re mobilizing against, as well as those of our movement, we need to build power.

This means developing a strategy to recruit and train people beyond the usual suspects. And ensuring that they have nonviolent discipline so that our response to repression is strategic, not reactive, and we’re not provoked into violence and other counterproductive behavior. It also means building parallel institutions to meet our needs as existing systems weaken, collapse or are used for repression.

Sudan’s neighborhood committees, which emerged in the 2019 resistance and helped bring down Omar al-Bashir’s regime, were decentralized, grassroots structures that coordinated protests, disseminated information and organized mutual aid — creating parallel centers of power grounded in local legitimacy and trust. In Lithuania, during the final years of Soviet rule, citizens built alternative communication networks, coordinated economic resistance and prepared for civilian-based nonviolent defense. And during the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, street committees and people’s courts played a crucial role in both resisting apartheid policies and building new forms of democratic participation, effectively undermining the regime’s authority and replacing it with localized self-governance.

In the U.S., faith groups, garden clubs and tenants’ unions could be similarly utilized as pockets of power and organizing hubs. Supported by a decentralized training infrastructure, any group in America, anywhere, could design and carry out action, even if centralized leadership doesn’t emerge or is disrupted.

When these alternative capacities are built and integrated into resistance struggles and movement work, they become potent tools in our nonviolent arsenal and can better facilitate the next step: carrying out powerful actions.

3. Act to shift power

Our default, too often, are marches and rallies. Yes, these can be symbolically powerful, but unless they’re part of a broader strategy to shift power — by withdrawing cooperation, applying economic pressure and disrupting key functions — they rarely force change on their own. Actions must not only express outrage, but help bring about specific shifts in power.

There’s a reason why the list of 198 methods of nonviolent action created by Gene Sharp is organized in three strategic buckets: protest, noncooperation and intervention. The most effective movements sequence these methods deliberately. That’s why timing, sequencing and clarity of objective are key.

In Chile, civil resistance against Augusto Pinochet’s regime involved student boycotts, labor strikes and underground media, all of which were working in concert. In Israel, antiwar protesters recently moved from street protests, involving military reservists, to a general strike that carried the potential to create substantial economic and political pressure.

Effective action builds momentum by involving a growing cross-section of society and increasing costs for the regime or institution. In the U.S., similar actions could include a coordinated tax resistance, sustained student walkouts, rent strikes or labor disruptions — all tied to specific demands, sequenced and scaled over time.

Any of these actions will need defending, which is the final step.

4. Defend our wins to ensure long-term resilience.

Every movement that wins a policy change, campaign or struggle must ask how it’ll be defended. Without the capacity for defense, every gain can be reversed.

This is where civilian-based defense is essential. It involves preparing society for decentralized nonviolent resistance in the face of attacks against our communities, institutions and political systems. It means building the muscle not just to mobilize once, but to sustain mobilization.

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In Latvia and Lithuania, for example, while declaring independence from the USSR, leaders prepared their entire societies, including neighborhood committees, for civilian-based defense. They trained people how to resist occupation without taking up arms. And it worked. During Bangladesh’s recent nonviolent student uprising that removed their authoritarian leader, when police vacated the streets, students took over many of their functions, such as directing traffic and providing security.

In the U.S., this means embedding resistance training in civil society groups, civic education, labor unions and professional associations. It means preparing city councils, schools and unions to reject unconstitutional directives, and establishing watchdog groups to monitor and respond to democratic backsliding. And it means preparing for what comes after victory, so we’re not left scrambling during the transition.

This is how decentralized, disciplined and strategic resistance can topple oppressive regimes, prevent coups and transform societies. Civil society in the U.S. is waking up: the No Kings protests on Oct. 18 brought 7 million Americans into the streets, making it one of the largest mobilizations in U.S. history. Now we need to act with both urgency and strategy. A decentralized and empowered civil society is one of the most resilient forms of democratic defense. This moment calls for us to assess wisely, build steadily, act strategically and defend relentlessly. The time is now.

This article The playbook of every successful nonviolent struggle was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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