How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning (Activist Citizens Library) - Softcover

Lakey, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1612197531 ISBN 13: 9781612197531

Verlag: Melville House, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

A lifetime of activist experience from a civil rights legend informs this playbook for building and conducting nonviolent direct action campaigns

In an era of massive worldwide protests for racial and economic justice, it is important to remember that marching is only one way to take to the streets. Protest must be supplemented with the sustained direct action campaigns that are crucial to winning major reforms.
 
Beginning as a trainer in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, George Lakey has spent decades helping direct action tactics flourish and succeed on the front lines of social change. Now, in this timely and down-to-earth guide, he passes the torch to a new generation of activists. Lakey looks to successful campaigns across the world to help us see what has worked, what hasn’t, and why: from choosing the right target to designing a creative campaign; from avoiding burnout within your group to building a movement of movements to achieve real progressive victories. 

Drawing on the experiences of a diverse set of ambitious change-makers, How We Win shows us the way to justice, peace, and a sustainable economy. This is what democracy looks like.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

GEORGE LAKEY has been active in direct action campaigns for six decades. Recently retired from Swarthmore College, where he was the Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change, Lakey was first arrested at a civil rights demonstration in March 1963, and his most recent arrest was on March 29, 2018, as a participant in the Power Local Green Jobs Campaign. His previous book was Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got It Right—and How We Can, Too. He lives in Philadelphia.

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How We Win INTRODUCTION WHY THIS BOOK NOW?

Nonviolent direct action is a set of tactics that go outside conventional means of advocacy, like running for office, going to the courts, doing media campaigns, and the like. Community organizers sometimes call nonviolent direct action “street heat”—blocking entrances, boycotting, fasting, tree-sitting, planting gardens where a pipeline is supposed to go, and hundreds of other kinds of actions.

Today, teenagers for gun control, women for equality, African Americans for safety from unaccountable police, indigenous people for respect for their land and traditions, teachers and other workers for a living wage, grandparents for climate justice, and more—millions of people—are going beyond lobbying to insist on change.

Direct action flourished in the 1960s. Martin Oppenheimer and I were then graduate sociology students active in the civil rights movement, and Marty went on to a distinguished career as a teacher and writer led by concerns for justice. In 1963, he and I noticed that some activists were learning very rapidly from others’ experience. Others were not, sometimes making mistakes that were dangerous and even fatal.

With movements expanding rapidly, organizers were too busy to download their wisdom into a manual. Some groups were failing to achieve their goals not because they lacked numbers and heart but because they made needless mistakes.

To assist more people to get in on the movement learning curve, Oppenheimer and I wrote A Manual for Direct Action, just in time for the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer.1 Veteran civil rights strategist Bayard Rustin wrote the foreword. A black organizer in the South told me with a smile it was like a “first-aid handbook—what to do until Dr. King comes.” The book was picked up by other 1960s movements, too.

In the past two years I’ve traveled to over 100 cities and towns in the United States, England, and Scotland with my latest book, Viking Economics.2 I was asked repeatedly for a new direct action book that addressed today’s situation. On both sides of the Atlantic most people are losing ground. That’s also happening literally, in coastal areas where the seas are rising. Governmental legitimacy is declining and trust is evaporating.

It’s a good time to take a fresh look at what has worked in times of trouble, and share what I and my fellow activists have learned about successful campaigning that gives hope for the future.

And so, what follows is a different guide from the one Marty and I wrote over 50 years ago. Then, movements operated inside a robust U.S. Empire that was used to winning its wars and a Britain that, however hesitatingly, was moving toward social democracy.

Now, the U.S. Empire is faltering, the economy is fragile, and even some populations’ average life expectancy is declining. On the other side of the Atlantic, a dis–United Kingdom struggles with major questions of where to go from here. Wealth inequality skyrockets on both sides of the pond, and major political parties are caught in their own versions of society-wide polarization.

The goal of the book is to offer movement-building approaches that win major changes rather than small reforms. At the same time, campaigns need to involve the many participants who hope that sufficient change can come through a series of limited reforms.

In building those movements, it helps to avoid competition between direct action campaigners and those who address problems in other ways, like doing direct service and building alternatives or being policy advocates. This book helps direct action campaigners establish productive relationships with those whose contributions to the movement utilize different skill sets.

I believe that building successful movements now requires fancier dancing than back in the day. This book suggests ways to accelerate movements’ learning—from their own experience and from each other. Because a movement’s learning curve depends on how healthy its organizational forms and processes are, this book is not only about strategy and tactics, but also about what goes on inside the groups that wage the struggle.

One thing is easier now: creating instant mass protests. Social media’s ability to increase our power to mobilize is so dramatic that it can cause us to forget that mobilizing is not the same as organizing. Also, that one-off protests, however large, are nowhere near as powerful as sustained campaigns.

This book also offers a process that supports you, with others, in setting goals that are meaningful for your group. Successful goal-setting takes into account the cultural moment and how the goal fits into the group’s larger vision.

It is possible to wage campaigns that move you closer to bringing about the transformational change you want. This book gives you examples, explains their innovations, and leads you to other resources that will help you start and conduct successful campaigns.

One major resource that contributes to the spirit and information in this book is the Global Nonviolent Action Database (GNAD). While teaching at Swarthmore College between 2006 and 2014, I worked with students to launch a new, searchable source of knowledge about campaigns: the GNAD. So far, the database has published over 1,100 campaigns addressing racism, sexism, and other systematic oppressions, environmental crises, violence, dictatorship and authoritarian abuses, and more. Each case includes the unfolding narrative of the opponent’s response, what happened if violence broke out, and how various allies acted in support of the campaigns.

Campaigns in the GNAD were waged by workers, students, farmers, women, middle-class professionals, and other groups. The campaigns are given scores on degree of success, so it’s possible to note what the more successful campaigns did as compared to less successful campaigns.3 Since we placed the GNAD on the Internet it has been visited by people from almost 200 countries.

A DIVERSITY LENS

This is a how-to book for people who want a diversity lens. In multiple chapters the reader will find ways of thinking and working that take into account human and cultural differences, including how injustice distorts our working together.

A successful social movement includes many different styles and preferences, because to make big change the movement needs to grow and be sustainable. This book supports inclusivity and open acknowledgment of difference.

Take strategizing, for example. Strategizing is the job of developing an overall plan and calling the “moves” as the campaign encounters opportunities—and challenges from the opponent. Different traditions assign this task to a trusted individual, a small group, or a much larger group that gives a wide representation of the entire campaign.

The 2016 North Dakota pipeline campaign’s decisions were made by the host group—the Sioux people who lived there. Others who gathered to participate were expected to carry out those decisions. Other campaigns seek to share decision-making with everyone. Occupy Wall Street expected to make strategic decisions through open assemblies with the cooperation of most participants.

In this guide we allow for such differences by offering a set of strategy tools that have proved useful, no matter who makes strategic decisions and how they make them.

In the writing I’m forthright about my own politics, but the value of the book doesn’t depend on your agreement with where I stand on various issues. It’s okay to take what’s useful and forget the rest.

MY POLITICAL INFLUENCES

My own politics were shaped by the civil rights movement—it was where I...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Melville House
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1612197531
• ISBN 13: 9781612197531
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar