Gene Sharp's Occupy the World

Monday, December 19, 2011

Gene Sharp, Nonviolent Warrior

When Everett Gendler, an 80-year-old rabbi from New England, asks the
class of Tibetans to describe what the word "power" means to them, the
students hesitate at first. But as they go around the circle, they warm
to the task and come up with some telling responses. Power means
"something frightening," says one young woman in soft English. Power
means "bad or evil"; it means "violence" and "someone who monitors
things," some other students offer.

These Tibetans, in their late teens and 20s, are recent refugees who
fled their homeland to this city in neighboring India, home to some
140,000 Tibetan exiles. Some of the young men sport trendy
haircuts--spiky, tinted red or slacker shaggy--that must be fashionable
back home. They hail from Tibet's cities as well as from farming and
nomad families.

Although it is their winter holiday, about sixty Tibetan students are
attending this two-week workshop on "active nonviolence," led by Rabbi
Gendler, his wife, Mary (a psychologist), and staff from the Active
Non-Violence Education Center (ANEC) in Dharamsala, the northern Indian
hill town that has been home to the Dalai Lama for nearly fifty years.

Over the next few days ANEC will lead a workshop based on the teachings
of Gene Sharp, who outlined 198 methods of nonviolent action in his
1973 book, The Politics of Nonviolent Action. What are two Americans
doing teaching peaceful resistance to Tibetan Buddhists, of all people?
Rabbi Gendler, who has long white hair and a resonant voice, admits
Tibetans already know about nonviolence. But ANEC provides something
more. "We're teaching them how to do it," says Gendler, who founded
ANEC with his wife in 2007 after retiring as Jewish chaplain at
Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the Dalai Lama's exile in
March, freedom for Tibet remains elusive. The Chinese government has
tightened a clampdown in Tibet that began last March after pro-Tibet
demonstrations erupted across the country. About 120 Tibetans and
several Chinese were killed last year in the worst violence in China
since Tiananmen Square in 1989. The most dramatic headlines have
subsided, but arrest and sentencing of Tibetans quietly picked up after
the Olympics, says the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in
Dharamsala. In anticipation of this year's fiftieth-anniversary
milestone, China launched a "Strike Hard" campaign in January; it has
led to a sharp rise in arrests, raids and interrogations as authorities
tighten control in Tibet.

Despite the deadlock in talks between the Dalai Lama's envoys and their
Chinese counterparts, pro-Tibet momentum outside China has increased.
In recent years, activist groups have become more organized, media
savvy and technologically sophisticated, allowing them to harness
broader support among Tibetan exiles as well as international
sympathizers. Mohandas Gandhi famously said, "I have nothing new to
teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills." But
for the pro-Tibet movement, better nonviolence training and education
have been critical to stepping up the campaign in the hills of
Dharamsala and far beyond.

Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, a New
York-based nonprofit, points out that Rosa Parks did not spontaneously
refuse to give up her seat on that bus in Alabama in 1955. "She was
trained. She had attended training institutes and learned some
brilliant strategies and methodology," says Tethong from New York. "The
lesson for me is that just because we have this strong Buddhist
culture...doesn't mean we just know how to wage a battle against a
powerful force."

Yet if you walk through the winding streets of this town in the
foothills of the Himalayas, you will see peaceful resistance on full
display. Walls are plastered with fliers advertising pro-Tibet
candlelight vigils, discussions and films. Young Tibetans casually
sport T-shirts with slogans declaring Justice Has Been Raped in Tibet.
Stooped elderly women wear trendy zip-up sweatshirts with Team Tibet 08
stenciled on the back, as do foreign backpackers.

In the week before Losar, the Tibetan new year (which began February 25
this year), the streets of Dharamsala were covered with black posters
declaring No Losar Celebrations, to Express Our Solidarity With Tibetan
Martyrs. This year there will be no concerts, dance performances,
fireworks or guzzling of chang (Tibetan barley beer). Instead, Losar
will be marked by marches, solemn prayers and a hunger strike. Tibetan
exiles are following the lead of compatriots inside Tibet who refuse to
celebrate Losar even though Chinese officials offered money to
encourage festivities, according to blogs in Chinese within Tibet. The
boycott comes even though China has declared March 28 "Serf
Emancipation Day"--a new holiday celebrating the abolition of the
Tibetan government in 1959.

It is easy to take the show of resistance in Dharamsala for granted,
but such coordinated action is relatively new. At the ANEC office,
decorated with portraits of the Dalai Lama, executive director Tenpa
Samkhar says Tibetans know that "Buddha advocated nonviolence for all
sentient beings." But peacefulness can also lead to passivity. Praying
alone won't cut it. Samkhar, a former official in the Tibetan exile
government who has a bowl haircut and large glasses, laughs at the idea
of "waiting for karma after thousands of years" and letting your
enemies be the victor. "You can't wait for things. You have to do
something. You can't just wait patiently!"

Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) is channeling that impatience. It
helped train Tibetans in how to stage nonviolent protests last year in
the months before the Beijing Olympics. In a video of last year's
training, a Tibetan activist warns participants--including red-robed
monks--that the "Indian police will use rude language to make us
angry.... We will win the police over through our peaceful approach."
Another activist shows Tibetans how to wrap their legs around each
other to form a sitting human chain that will be hard for police to
break up. "Cross your legs like this and hold the legs of the person
behind you," he demonstrates while tugging at a participant's ankles.

Tenzin Choeying, the 30-year-old national director of SFT in India, has
been arrested several times for participating in peaceful protests.
Choeying, sporting a goatee and a black jacket, sits on a sofa in SFT's
office in Dharamsala beneath a whiteboard listing documentaries about
Tibet that are for sale on DVD. He describes how far pro-Tibet activism
has come since his days at Delhi University, when just a handful of
Tibetans would show up to protest visits by Chinese leaders. In 2007 a
rally in Delhi organized by the Tibetan Youth Congress drew an
estimated 25,000 Tibetans from across India.

Last year the five major Tibetan NGOs in Dharamsala came together for
the first time when they organized a four-month March to Tibet, from
Dharamsala to the Tibet border--a trek of 745 miles. Before the march,
participants debated whether they needed training. "The elder Tibetans
said, 'We don't need it. It's inherent.' The younger Tibetans knew
training was essential," says Choeying.

The message of the march was amplified through e-mail and text-message
alerts, a website, blog and live satellite video of the march. Media
training helped with holding press conferences and writing news
releases. The Internet is essential for getting information to those
within Tibet, where savvy computer users still manage to get around
government blocks.

SFT has matured with help from Greenpeace and the Ruckus Society, the
group that helped shut down the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting
in Seattle. SFT created its own ruckus in 2007 when activists boldly
unfurled a Free Tibet flag at Everest Base Camp in Tibet and broadcast
the proceedings live on the Internet via satellite streaming video.

Tibetan activists are also well aware of Gandhi's legacy in their
refuge home of Dharamsala. Gandhi's photo often hangs alongside that of
the Dalai Lama in Tibetan offices. Swaraj Peeth, a Gandhian NGO in
Delhi, has co-led training camps for SFT on Gandhian thought and
philosophy. Legacies of the world's nonviolent resistances overlap in
India. Martin Luther King Jr. studied Gandhi's legacy in India and
brought lessons back to the United States. In late February Martin
Luther King III finished a tour of India that retraced his father's
pilgrimage here fifty years ago to learn about Gandhi's use of
satyagraha, or "truth-force," to win independence for India. In another
nod to history, the Tibetan Youth Congress sings "We Shall Overcome"
after its meetings.

Last year's March to Tibet was stopped by Indian police at the Tibet
border, within sight of the snowcapped Himalayas, and its leaders were
jailed. At 54, Bumo Tsering, president of the Tibetan Women's
Association, was one of the oldest participants in the march. Tsering,
a bespectacled former biology teacher, was especially moved that many
of the organizers were her former students from the Tibetan school in
Dharamsala. Out of forty leaders, thirty were alumni from the school.
"More young people are joining working committees" of pro-Tibet NGOs,
says Tsering. "Young people still hold on to their identities strongly."

As marchers straggled over hilly roads last year, carrying posters of
the Dalai Lama and Gandhi, they met blockades of khaki-clad Indian
police.

"We don't mean to disrespect you," said a monk to an Indian police
officer as he sat with a mass of Tibetans in the middle of a mountain
road. The monk clasped his hands beseechingly, and tears welled up in
his eyes. "We are going back to Tibet to struggle for our freedom."

GENE SHARP AND THE ART OF NONVIOLENT WAR

The man who wrote the playbook for the nonviolent revolution in Egypt is Gene Sharp, a meek, unassuming Professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Sharp is the "Machiavelli of nonviolence" and the "Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare.” In addition to Egypt, Sharp’s work has influenced non-violent struggles the world over, including that in Tunisia, Georgia, the Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, and Serbia. To study Sharp’s methods is to know the awesome power of nonviolence. One learns “Political Ju-Jitsu”: application of nonviolent leverage to take down the opposition using its own force against it. His methods would have made the great Sun-Tsu shake in his armor.

In Waging Non-Violent Struggle, Sharp lists four different mechanisms or “broad processes” by which non-violent resisters can achieve success: conversion, accommodation, non-violent coercion, and disintegration. The choice of which mechanism depends on what conditions already exist or what conditions the resisters can create. The number of the nonviolent troops available to deploy obviously is a major factor.

CONVERSION

With conversion, the opponent, as the result of actions by the non-violent group, comes around to a new point of view that embraces the ends of the group. Conversion seeks to free not only the subordinate group, but also free the opponents whose own system and policies imprison them. The non-violent group by its own attitudes and actions seeks to separate the “evil” from the “evildoer”—to remove the”evil “and salvage the “evildoer.“ (Waging Non-Violent Struggle at p. 416)

The group’s suffering is its greatest weapon in converting the opponent. The suffering attacks the rationalizations and overcomes the indifference of the opponent. It neutralizes and immobilizes the opponent’s repression.

The greater the social distance—the degree of separation of “fellow feeling,” mutual understanding, and empathy—between the contending groups, the less the possibility of conversion. Some non-violent resisters may take steps to reduce or remove the social distance between contending groups. In other words, resisters should cultivate sameness and avoid “otherness” with the opponent.

ACCOMODATION

“In accommodation, the opponents are neither converted nor non-violently coerced.” (Id. at p. 417) Without the opponent having fundamentally changed their way of thinking about the issues, they agree to yield to at least part of the resister’s demands to avoid a possibly more unsatisfactory result. When the opponent no longer sees violent repression as appropriate, they believe they are eliminating a nuisance or minimizing losses, or they are yielding to what they see as an inevitable result, they will accommodate the non-violent resisters. The opponents make accommodations when they still have a choice. The same influences that might that resulted in conversion or non-violent coercion are involved.

NON-VIOLENT COERCION

“In nonviolent coercion, the opponents neither are neither converted, nor do they decide to accommodate to the demands. Rather, the shifts of social forces and power relationships produce the changes sought by the resisters against the will of the opponents, while the opposition remains in existing positions.” (Id. at p. 418). This approach assumes that the change sought is not ouster of the leaders or overthrow of the government. Non-violent coercion takes place in three ways: 1) Opponents cannot control defiance because it has become too huge; 2) Noncooperation and defiance has made it impossible for the system to operate unless the resister’s demands are met; 3) The opponent’s ability to use repression is impaired because of the police or military has become unreliable.

Essentially, the resisters block the opponent’s will, despite the opponent’s continued attempts to impose it. The enemy loses its sources of power: legitimacy of authority, human resources, and the cooperation of key personnel such as technicians, officers, and administrators. Habits of obedience are broken. The opponent may lose access to material resources. The ability of the tyrant to apply sanctions is reduced or removed.

DISINTEGRATION

“Disintegration results from the more severe application of the same forces that produce nonviolent coercion. However, those forces operate more extremely in disintegration, so that the opponents ‘regime or group falls completely apart.” (Id. at p. 419). Egypt and Tunisia are great examples of nonviolent coercion and disintegration.

Sharp cautions that for nonviolent coercion or disintegration to succeed, the resisters need large numbers and must be skilled in applying nonviolent struggle. It will also be necessary to maintain defiance and noncooperation for significant periods. It is most effective when the opponent is dependent on the resisters for sources of power (e.g. police, army, civil service, courts), or when the opponent source of supplies is interrupted (e.g. through strikes or boycotts). Conversion of key members in the opponent’s group can also contribute to the coercion or disintegration.

SHARP’S WORK IS A GREAT RESOURCE

Sharp’s works contain an exhaustive list of nonviolent methods as well as a historical compendium of nonviolent movements. This brief summary of just some of his concepts of nonviolent resistance does not do justice to him. OWS activists should study him as military cadets study Clausewitz, Sun-Tsu, and Patton.

Tibetan Exiles: 'We Shall Overcome'

The People Out of Doors: Change You Can Believe In

The occupation movement that began on Wall Street and is now spreading across America is part of a tradition known in the American Revolution as the “people out of doors” – marches, demonstrations, and impromptu assemblies that historian Gordon S. Wood described as “extra-legislative action by the people” who “could find no alternative institutional expression for their demands and grievances.” The movement has provided new hope for progressive social change. But it also raises many questions about how such movements can be sustained and grow powerful while retaining the democratic impulse that inspired them in the first place.
From Tahrir Square to Madison, Wisconsin, to Wall Street, few things are more predictable than unexpected social movements. While the new electronic social media facilitate their emergence, the history of such movements is far older than the Internet. Indeed, the startling appearance of social movements has played a crucial role in shaping modern history from the Great Upheaval of 1877, whose strikes and general strikes closed America’s railroads and more than a dozen American cities, to the Russian Revolution of 1905, to the Montgomery bus boycott, to the general strikes of Polish Solidarity. When and how such movements will arise may be unpredictable, but their patterns and dynamics can be better understood by studying their history.

More than a “Tea Party of the Left”?

Why is it possible for social movements to emerge, often at the very point that people seem most disorganized and hopeless? The answer usually lies not in the clever tactics of organizers (though they can help), but in the realization of common problems and the often surprising human capacity for self-organization in response to them. As people feel increasingly outraged at the conditions they face, they begin to mutually recognize each others’ discontent and potential readiness to act. In such contexts, an exemplary act like walking off the job or refusing to leave a segregated lunch counter -- or occupying a park near Wall Street -- can dramatize for large numbers of people their common situation and their ability to act in response to it. Once people recognize that, the action of a few hundred protesters can “spread by contagion” across boundaries of geography, subculture, and even nation and in a few days draw in thousands of people in hundreds of distant locations. It’s happened over and over again.
We know that social movements ranging from abolitionism to the American civil rights movement to the Women’s Liberation Movement to Polish Solidarity have had made genuine social change. But how can they have such powerful effects when they are made up of people who appear — and feel — so powerless within existing institutions and when they are opposed by such massive concentrations of power?
As the theorist of nonviolence Gene Sharp, channeling Gandhi, has made so clear, the answer lies in the fact that governments, corporations, and other powerful institutions depend on the people who cooperate or acquiesce in their power by providing labor, resources, civility, and consent. Social movements can be powerful because they embody the possibility that people may withdraw their acquiescence and consent, undermining the “pillars of support” that governments and institutions need to survive and realize their goals. Social movements can present a significant threat to those who hold power – and thereby compel them to change. As Bertolt Brecht put it in his poem “From A German War Primer,”
General, your tank is a strong vehicle.
It breaks down a forest and crushes a hundred people.
But it has one fault: it needs a driver.
How this potential “power of the powerless” can actually be mobilized depends on the specific pillars of support. For example, in the civil rights era many Southern businessmen swung from “massive resistance” to encouraging acquiescence in desegregation because they feared the reactions of Northern business investment to racist violence. The Kennedy Administration moved to support civil rights, albeit tepidly, in part from its fear of foreign disapproval of US racism, especially in newly independent African countries courted by the Soviet Union. Democratic Party politicians were highly dependent on large black voting blocs in Northern cities like Detroit and Chicago, but their support was jeopardized when Democrats in the South perpetrated and Democrats in the White House and Congress tolerated highly visible racial oppression. While the civil rights movement was a direct confrontation with the evil of segregation, it actually drew much of its power from the “indirect strategy” of putting pressure on the forces whose acquiescence made it possible for segregation to persist.
Occupy Wall Street dramatically illustrates the withdrawal of acquiescence in the domination of American economics, politics, and life by the 1 percent economic elite. It also represents the withdrawal of consent from the silence of politicians and the media about the realities of class in America and their impact on the 99 percent. Indeed, it represents a withdrawal of consent from Barack Obama and the leadership of the Democratic Party who colluded in the bailouts and other economic policies that made the rich richer and the poor poorer.
In the long run, the “anti-Wall Street movement” can be more than simply a “Tea Party of the Left” that perhaps influences elections but fails to make significant social changes that address its participants’ problems. But to do so it will need to develop concrete ways the “99 percent” can undermine the pillars of the “1 percent.” Stimulating the 99 percent to self-organize on their own behalf is the crucial first step in that direction.
We know that, despite their contributions, social movements have sometimes come to a bad end. Some have flared up brilliantly, only to peter out after their initial flash in the pan. Others have become the bases for new hierarchies: Some Communist movements became totalitarian tyrannies; some labor movements became corrupt bureaucracies. Some movements for liberation have been like William Blake's "iron hand" that
“crush'd the Tyrant’s head
And became a Tyrant in his stead.”
The current generation of youth movements around the globe is often characterized – by themselves and others – as “anarchist” or “horizontalist.” Whatever the term, the key idea is opposition to hierarchy not only in society but in the movement itself. They are often mocked for their sometimes extreme opposition to leadership in any form. But their insistence that, as the old-time Wobblies of the Industrial Workers of the World used to say, “We don’t have any leaders – we’re all leaders” provides a partial antidote to the danger of liberation turning to domination and to the interminable ego-driven battles among would-be leaders and leadership groups that scorched Students for a Democratic Society and the New Left.

The global 99 percent

While much of the discussion of the occupation movements has focused so far on their relation to upcoming contests in American politics, the occupiers themselves have a far broader, indeed global perspective. From its inception, the Occupy Wall Street movement consciously modeled itself on the “Arab Spring” and the movements that subsequently spread around the world from Spain to Chile and from Wisconsin to Tel Aviv.
In a statement produced by consensus after days of discussion, Occupy Wall Street’s General Assembly declared, "We acknowledge the reality: The future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members." They urge "the people of the world" to "create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone."
The problems faced by the “global 99 percent” are indeed global. We face a globalized economy whose problems cannot be solved by any one country alone. We face a global climate catastrophe that requires radical carbon reductions by all countries in the world. The same goes for hunger, destruction of the oceans, weapons of mass destruction, and so many of the other problems we face. Behind them all is a crisis of global self-government in which the last vestiges of global cooperation are being replaced by a war of all against all and in which international economic, political, and military forces systematically defeat efforts for national democratization.
Even problems that appear primarily national like health insurance or education or unemployment are aggravated and made intractable by globalization and global neo-liberalism. The banks and other corporations that Occupy Wall Street is protesting are, after all, global. More than half of the profits of S&P companies come from outside the US, according to Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at The Economic Outlook Group. Similarly the solutions will have to have a global dimension.
National organizations and movements faced a similar situation in the 1990s as neoliberal globalization hit full speed. Labor, consumer, environmental, and other organizations that were overwhelmingly focused on national issues came up against the emergence of NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, and the globalization of corporations and labor markets. What happened, unexpectedly, was a kind of self-organization on a global scale. Different groups in different countries began getting to know each other, backing each other’s campaigns, reading each other’s analyses, passing joint declarations, and organizing joint actions. The result was the Battle of Seattle – and a plethora of other international campaigns around debt, AIDS drugs, food policy, genetically modified organisms, capital markets, and myriad other global issues. The global climate protests that accompanied the Copenhagen climate summit represent their most recent progeny.
The big difference is that Occupy Wall Street and its kin are already part of a global movement with many common themes and objectives. Their global self-organization is well under way. And they can only achieve their objectives if they can make governments cooperate to meet the common interests of the global 99 percent.

Creating a process
Many people are asking whether the Occupy Wall Street movement can be sustained. But that may not be the most important question. When historians look at the hunger marches of the early 1930s, they don’t ask how many years they continued, let alone how they affected contemporary elections. Rather, they consider them as part of a process that generated the unemployed movement, the industrial union upsurge, and the leftward swing of the “Second New Deal.”
Of course at the moment it is critical to spread the occupations and provide support and resources to help them continue. But ultimately their significance will lie in what the rest of the 99 percent do. What will the occupations stimulate beyond simply a continuation of themselves?
Occupy Wall Street does not need to be the whole movement of the 99 percent. Occupy Wall Street recognizes this when it calls on people everywhere to form their own assemblies and "create a process to address the problems we face.” It isn’t their job to organize unions, lobby Congress, or run candidates in elections. Their job is to inspire the rest of the 99 percent -- including those who are in non-youth milieus and in educational, political, legal, and other institutions -- to organize themselves and develop concrete strategies to make the entire range of changes that will be necessary to meet “the problems we face.” And they can do that best when they stay true to themselves, retain their own authentic voice, and provide the direct action, street heat expression for the discontent of the 99 percent.
A delegation from Occupy Washington recently marched to join a rally against the Keystone XL pipeline. Street heat support for anti-eviction actions and strikes is a logical next step. Such action builds alliances, show how people can directly affect a situation, and ties the movement more visibly to the needs of the 99 percent.
Social movements have often combined battles on the ground with struggles for change through legislation. In the 1930s, labor struck and organized on the ground and defied local bans on freedom of speech and at the same time fought in Congress for “labor’s Magna Carta,” the Wagner Act. In the 1960s the civil rights movement fought white supremacy one lunch counter and one voting booth at a time, and at the same time campaigned for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. In fact, the two levels were synergistic.
The people out of doors were crucial players in the events that led up to the American Revolution. Encampments like Occupy Wall Street have played a critical role in American politics from the war veterans’ Bonus March encampment of 1932, to the Resurrection City encampment of the Poor People’s Movement following Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, to the 1989 Camp Solidarity where some 50,000 people camped out in support of striking Pittston mine workers. Occupy Wall Street is writing one more chapter in that noble story.
Power to the people out-of-doors!

Ten Things You Can Do to Sustain the Occupy Movement

Angela Davis has noted that one of the failures in our collective memory of the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham is that we have forgotten the names and activist leanings of the four girls—Carole, Denise, Addie Mae and Cynthia—who are often merely reported to be four black girls who died in the bombings. In fact, the burgeoning activists were preparing to give a presentation about civil rights at the church’s annual Youth Day program. Rosa Parks, before she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, had just finished a course on nonviolent action . To neglect the activist background and intention of these women is to believe falsely that historic moments like the civil rights movement “just happen.” In fact, years of organizing and strategizing bring about their birth. Travis Holloway , a poet, political philosopher and activist at Occupy Wall Street, believes this movement has the potential to go beyond mere words and slogans (though, he writes in a recent piece , these help), and like the civil rights movement, to effect real change. Along with suggestions from a wide range of activists, here are “Ten Things” to keep the Occupy movement going and build a foundation for long-term change.

1. We are the 99 percent. A movement of the 99 percent must be inclusive in its makeup and its goals. “The issues of the bottom of the 99 percent have to move to the top of the agenda ,” writes Elias Holtz. Be sure that the movement involves those of all backgrounds, sexual orientations, religious and cultural affiliations and work towards representing the movement through women and people of color. Engage community leaders and ask them what are the most pressing issues they’re facing and fight alongside them. Read organizer Paulina Gonzalez’s experience at Occupy LA .

2. Whose streets? Our streets! Crackdowns on encampments means the movement shifts from holding a space to major public events, actions on the street, and horizontal, online organizing forums. Join a working group  according to your interest and stay updated on major days of action .

3. Imagine all the people. Rallies aren’t the only form of protest. Be creative and don’t forget to surprise. If your opponent is counting on noisy drum circles or big signs, try a silent march or vigil (like the students at UC Davis ) or looking like your opponent by walking the streets in business suits . For ideas and inspiration, read Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action . Some ideas include boycotts, mock awards, mock elections, mock funerals, prayer and worship (as a symbolic public act), silence, teach-ins, refusal of public support, etc. Get more creative action ideas from the YesLab .

4. This is what democracy looks like. The value of top-down organization is no longer self-evident—not only in government, given the lack of trust in political representatives , but also in our everyday jobs and institutions. Consider adopting a horizontal decision-making structure. Here are the principles of workplace democracy  and some people who practice it.

5. Occupy the future. Set major, future events now to define the agenda and the permanence of the movement, then use the winter to network in order to better mobilize in the spring. Community organizations, churches and labor have real connections with the community and add support and energy to existing movements. Go to OrganizingUpgrade for ideas on how to build and maintain connections. And don’t let Facebook leave out your grandma.

6. Occupy your life. Everyone has an opportunity to act out the ideals and goals of the Occupiers in his/her everyday life. We may not be able to leave jobs that are inconsistent with our values, but reflecting on our own feelings and opinions can make us stronger and influence others. Check out Occupy Yourself for the holiday season and beyond. Read this article and watch this video to rethink your allegiance to popular brands.

7. Boycott the 1 percent. Take on a corporation or person that in their actions embody the worst of greed Whoarethe1percent . If you are in a non-union workplace, consider the benefits of worker solidarity when confronting unfair wages or work conditions. Many union organizers are willing and prepared to help you form a union with your fellow workers .

8. Study. Winter is a time to learn more about economic inequality and real strategies for resistance. Schedule a teach-in at an Cccupy event or consider attending one (schedule of NYC teach-ins here ). Read “There Are Realistic Alternatives ” for a crash course on nonviolent resistance and browse the OWS Library .

9. Nonviolent resistance is five parts organizing, four parts media and one part action. One of the major challenges and successes of organizing is to get media to report on an event. Designate a media person whose sole goal is to pitch to reporters, build relationships, update them on actions, and report back to members. Just keep reiterating the main themes of the movement. You may feel like a broken record, but few things are more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Go to Pitching to news outlets for more suggestions.

10. Occupy education. Occupy the DOE  was a great way the movement showed it could shift from the streets to strategic action by protesting the lack in the structures that instruct. Identify student loan corporations and colleges with the most atrocious tuition hikes. If you are a public university student, connect and collaborate with other schools within your network to protest tuition hikes that most state schools are undergoing. Go to Occupy Student Debt Campaign  to learn more.

A Couple More Things:
11. Exit Strategy Always have one. Be imaginative enough to see possible outcomes of the movement and always have a plan for anything that arises.

12. Occupy “Other Things.” Think we missed out on a fundamental piece of advice or suggested action? Think we were utterly wrong about one of them? Send your suggestions, corrections and slams to nationtenthings@gmail.com

Sharp’s Contributions to the Theory of Nonviolent Resistance

Sharp’s contributions to the theory of nonviolent resistance

Gene Sharp described the sources of his ideas as in-depth studies of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau to a minor degree, and other sources footnoted in his 1973 book “The Politics of Nonviolent Action”, which was based on his 1968 PhD thesis. In the book, a “three-volume classic on civil disobedience,” he provides a pragmatic political analysis of nonviolent action as a method for applying power in a conflict.

Sharp’s key theme is that power is not monolithic; that is, it does not derive from some intrinsic quality of those who are in power. For Sharp, political power, the power of any state – regardless of its particular structural organization – ultimately derives from the subjects of the state. His fundamental belief is that any power structure relies upon the subjects’ obedience to the orders of the ruler(s). If subjects do not obey, leaders have no power.

In Sharp’s view all effective power structures have systems by which they encourage or extract obedience from their subjects. States have particularly complex systems for keeping subjects obedient. These systems include specific institutions (police, courts, regulatory bodies) but may also involve cultural dimensions that inspire obedience by implying that power is monolithic (the god cult of the Egyptian pharaohs, the dignity of the office of the President, moral or ethical norms and taboos). Through these systems, subjects are presented with a system of sanctions (imprisonment, fines, ostracism) and rewards (titles, wealth, fame) which influence the extent of their obedience.

Sharp identifies this hidden structure as providing a window of opportunity for a population to cause significant change in a state. Sharp cites the insight of Étienne de La Boétie, that if the subjects of a particular state recognize that they are the source of the state’s power they can refuse their obedience and their leader(s) will be left without power.

Sharp published Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential in 2005. It builds on his earlier written works by documenting case studies where nonviolent action has been applied, and the lessons learned from those applications, and contains information on planning nonviolent struggle to make it more effective.

For his lifelong commitment to the defense of freedom, democracy, and the reduction of political violence through scholarly analysis of the power of nonviolent action, The Peace Abbey of Sherborn, MA awarded him the Courage of Conscience award April 4, 2008.

A feature documentary by Scottish director, Ruaridh Arrow, “How to Start a Revolution” about the global influence of Gene Sharp’s work was released in September 2011. The film won “Best Documentary” and “The Mass Impact Award” at the Boston Film Festival in September 2011. The European premiere was held at London’s Raindance Film Festival on October 2nd 2011 where it also won Best Documentary.

Sharp’s influence on struggles worldwide

Sharp has been called both the “Machiavelli of nonviolence” and the “Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare.” It is claimed by some that Sharp’s scholarship has influenced resistance organizations around the world. Most recently, it is claimed that the protest movement that toppled President Mubarak of Egypt drew extensively on his ideas, as well as the youth movement in Tunisia and the earlier ones in the Eastern European color revolutions that had previously been inspired by Sharp’s work, although some have claimed Sharp’s influence has been exaggerated by Westerners looking for a Lawrence of Arabia figure.

Sharp’s handbook From Dictatorship to Democracy served as a basis for the campaigns of Serbia‘s Otpor(who were also directly trained by the Albert Einstein Institute), Georgia‘s Kmara, Ukraine‘s Pora, Kyrgyzstan‘sKelKel and Belarus‘ Zubr. Pora‘s Oleh Kyriyenko said in a 2004 interview with Radio Netherlands,

“The bible of Pora has been the book of Gene Sharp, also used by Otpor, it’s called: From Dictatorship to Democracy. Pora activists have translated it by themselves. We have written to Mr Sharp and to the Albert Einstein Institute in the United States, and he became very sympathetic towards our initiative, and the Institution provided funding to print over 12,000 copies of this book for free.”

Sharp’s writings on “Civilian-Based Defense” were used by the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estoniangovernments during their separation from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Iranian government charged protesters against alleged fraud in the 2009 elections with following Gene Sharp’s tactics. The Tehran Times reported: “According to the indictment, a number of the accused confessed that the post-election unrest was preplanned and the plan was following the timetable of the velvet revolution to the extent that over 100 stages of the 198 steps of Gene Sharp were implemented in the foiled velvet revolution.”

This coverage produced a backlash from some Egyptians bloggers including US based journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy:

“Not only was Mubarak’s foreign policy hated and despised by the Egyptian people, but parallels were always drawn between the situation of the Egyptian people and their Palestinian brothers and sisters. The latter have been the major source of inspiration, not Gene Sharp, whose name I first heard in my life only in February after we toppled Mubarak already and whom the clueless NYT moronically gives credit for our uprising.”

However the Associated Press had reported as early as September 2010 more than 4 months before the revolution that Gene Sharp’s work was being used by activists in Egypt close to political leader Mohammed El Baradei. http://www.cnsnews.com/node/75374 The New York Times along with several other international publications reported that Sharp’s book, From Dictatorship to Democracy was available for download from The Muslim Brotherhood’s website throughout the revolution.