Conflict skill #4: Strategic planning

Transforming a conflict from destructive to constructive, the heart of nonviolence, is a great thing to do. But it is only going to work, generally, with careful strategic planning. What are the basic elements of a strategic plan?

One, achieve unity.

Two, maintain nonviolent discipline.

Three, be resilient.

Achieving unity with a tiny group of true believers in exactly the vision you have for a solution is fine if you prefer a life of fruitless struggle, or of what Jonathan Schell rejected when he said, "I'm tired of going down in noble defeat." When you build a coalition you don't need to look for your clonal replicates, but rather for all those who can agree on one simple, definable, achievable goal. When we were stopping the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources from spraying a Dow chemical, Tordan 10K, in our state forests, we didn't perform litmus tests to make sure that only vegan treehugging organic crunchy granolaheads were standing with us. We lined up with hunters, loggers, the tribes, the trout fisher folk, the trappers and everyone who normally fought against us on some issues and with us on others. Unity on one issue and focus on only that gave us a swift and decisive victory. Plan for this.

When we resisted Honeywell in Minneapolis in the Vietnam War era for their production of anti-personnel (civilian killer) cluster bombs, police agents infiltrated our ranks and were violent. Our leadership was not committed enough to nonviolence to insist that it be maintained. We lost and were effectively disbanded. Some years later we found out via the then-useful Freedom of Information Act (the one Reagan and Bush destroyed and which is now more or less useless) that the police had done this. It's one of the reasons I tell those in any movement who advocate "diversity of tactics" or "violent self-defense" that, "I am sure you are not a police agent, but you may as well be, since this is what our opponents would like us to do." Maintaining nonviolent discipline, as we saw in the Civil Rights movement, in the United Farmworkers movement, in the Philippines, in Serbia and in other places where nonviolence prevailed, is key. You will be tested. It will feel unfair and in fact that is exactly when it is crucial to recommit to that discipline or risk escalation and high costs and loss. Plan for this.

Knowing that you may lose again and again is part of the struggle. If you aren't resilient, that is, if you don't persist and adapt, your loss becomes permanent. Diane Nash, one of the original Sit-In Kids in the South, told author David Halberstam that they were always trying to anticipate what the possibilities and obstacles and potential solutions might be as they proceeded. Cesar Chavez said that each step forward, as they held the candle of freedom, lighted the way for the next step. The analytics and realistic alternative plans will help you face difficulties together much less hysterically with more disciplined assurance. Plan for this.

Plan to create and defend your image.
Plan to raise all necessary funds.
Plan to recruit internally and externally.
Plan to support your participants.
Plan to win.

Consensus: When it counts

Consensus is not a nonviolent phenomenon all the time. Achieving consensus to bomb Libya from amongst the political players who tend to use violence was not a nonviolent exercise or outcome, obviously. But if we hope to achieve significant political victories, we will learn that consensus is the basis of coalition and unity and is sine qua non to a challenger movement.

My father and I took a trip from Minneapolis to Vancouver Island in 1993 and it was a hot year for nonviolence on the route. In the mountains in British Columbia, we met the Sri Chimnoy runners and the next day I ran with them on the island. Then we went to Clayquot Sound on the Tofino side, the west of Vancouver Island. The lumber companies were about to log off the magnificent Old Growth there and folks were arriving from all over Canada to offer nonviolent resistance. The resulting actions of blockade, tree sits and trespass produced the largest mass trial in Canadian history with some 932 defendants (Walter, 2007, p. 249).

Some scholars see the heart of social movements as interest-based, that is, who gets what resources and how do we get our fair share? Others interpret such large social movements as expressions of identity-based grievance. Walters (2007) offers a good literature review of these two approaches and their respective roots and champions. In the field of conflict resolution, we would welcome the consideration and acknowledgment of both strong factors. Either perspective shows the possibilities for unity on the one hand, division on the other, and from the standpoint of strategic nonviolence, we want to maximize the unity by producing a consensus with clear boundaries. So, if we wish to preserve the ancient forests because we are interested in the forests as a scenic resource for our vacation time, we are interest-based. If we are tree-hugging, wind-kissing prairie fairies, we are an identity group and will engage as identity conflict with the lumberwagon bar oil, cleat stomping skidder driving loggers, the identity group who wants to desecrate our woodland temple.

In our field of conflict resolution, however, we hope to use adult education to help achieve a consensus that can transform such a complex conflict into something everyone can live with. The worst possible idea is to formulate a complete plan and present it as a fait accompli, as though you are the Mediator Cavalry, riding in to save the day. The first order is to listen, then acknowledge, then elicit, then synthesize, and then seek real consensus.

Listening takes many forms and is best done so that it doesn't further fan the flames. One-on-one listening is time-consuming and still the best. Absorbing the vents and rants professionally without taking sides is far easier in an atmosphere that won't erupt into ad hominem attack. It takes serious preparation to do this in a public session, setting a tone of controversy with civility.

Eliciting ideas is also done in a variety of ways and the important point is to get many of them. This part of the process of seeking consensus cannot be short and generalized. It needs to continue until the well runs dry, at which point the facilitator or mediator may offer a suggested synthesis created entirely from what was proposed by the stakeholders. That is the moment of truth. Can consensus emerge? Can the identities be honored while dividing the resources? If so, the perfect integration of identity-based and interest-based conflict transformation has occurred. Diane Nash and Nashville Mayor Ben West achieved it by the use of many of these methods when they shook hands on the courthouse steps in 1960, ending segregation there. It may be a tough process and may take more insight than we think we have, but the alternatives are all worse.


References

Walter, P. (2007). ADULT LEARNING IN NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CLAYOQUOT SOUND RAINFOREST. Adult Education Quarterly, 57(3), 248-263. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
http://ca.srichinmoyraces.org/node/3645

Nonviolent losers win again

The tendrils of revolution always reach back to the root of unity and the contest between greed and grievance. In 1994, Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler's study of nonviolent civil society gave us 12 conditions that comprised those of a successful nonviolent revolution. Since then, in our bumpersticker, attention-deficient disorder mediated culture, Ackerman has reduced that list to three. One of those is unity.

Coalition has long been the holy grail of movements. Dr. Bernice Reagon, astonishing Sweet Honey in the Rock musician, Smithsonian musicologist, and civil rights movement veteran, said, "If you're comfortable in your coalition, it's not nearly broad enough."

A case study is the long effort to help us move bicycles into transportation prominence from their normal regard as marginal, silly, juvenile, impractical and irrelevant. The bike world actually discovered Ackerman's principle on their own for a minute and stitched together the kind of coalition needed in the moment to get the job done.

In his excellent book Pedaling revolution, Jeff Mapes describes the history of the uprising that took place resulting in the 1991 highway bill, a traditional porkbarrel stew of oil industry, road construction corporations, trucking, car maker and commerce interests. Various cycling associations--Rails to trails, transit activists, environmentalists, and local officials simply trying to preserve what they had without more huge asphalt projects--formed the Surface Transportation Policy Project and one of the founders, David Burwell, says, "We called it the losers' coalition" (Mapes, p. 47)

Over the years this losers' coalition has garnered large increases in fed funding for bike lanes, bike trails, and many other improvements that are beginning to create sections of bike networks. The losers' coalition has helped convince Congress to bring $427 million to that task by 2004, a small amount by highway system standards but a huge help to making bikes a viable alternative for many more Americans.

Whether your wish is to stop the oil industry from wrecking our environment, overthrow a dictator or get your school board to stop allowing military recruiters to access grade schools, there is no substitute for joining together with other losers until your surround and prevail, that is, win.

My coalition criteria are minimalist. Are the potential partners willing to at least operate nonviolently for the course of the campaign in question? If that answer is yes, we can work together. That one question is enough. All the rest is negotiable as we walk the braided path toward victory together--or pedal it in our growing critical mass.

References

Ackerman, Peter and Christopher Kruegler (1994). Strategic nonviolent conflict: the dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers.

Mapes, Jeff (2009). Pedaling revolution: How cyclists are changing American cities. Corvallis, Or: Oregon State University Press.