Foundations of Fierce Vulnerability: Strategy (aka planning to win)
Spontaneous or successful -- choose your revolution
Today’s newsletter on strategy is the fourth and final of my January series Foundations of Fierce Vulnerability. You might find it helpful to read the previous installments on power, unity and nonviolent discipline.
I’ve always been a passionate person. That’s probably part of why, since I was a kid, I have been fascinated with mass movements.
As a teenager, my imagination was especially captured by the abolition of slavery in the US, women’s suffrage, civil rights, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. Sometimes, I wished I could have been alive at the time of those movements, which seemed so enlivening, clear-cut and almost magical in their capacity to realize change. From where I stood, it seemed as though a bunch of passionate people came together out of a shared sense of injustice to cry out for change. It appeared that with a clear message and some brave public protest, their cry was heard, and things changed.
Today, with years of studying nonviolent social movements under my belt, I still am inspired by the passion of historic movements. And, I have a deeper appreciation for the strategic planning that went into making these movements successful.
“There are two types of revolutions: spontaneous and successful.”
So says Srdja Popovic, author of Blueprint for Revolution. A founding member of Otpor, the student movement that helped initiate and spearhead the nonviolent overthrow of the brutal dictator of Serbia, Popovic now coaches nonviolent revolutionaries around the world in planning to win their respective struggles for social change. During a 2018 Harvard class with Popovic, I learned that there’s a simple difference between movements that are a flash in the pan and movements that make a significant and lasting contribution to the DNA of a society: planning.
With historical distance, successful movements can appear to simply be the result of the zeitgeist of an era propelling an inevitable change. For example, a superficial reading of women’s suffrage might suggest, “Enough women were sick and tired of not being taken seriously that they rose up to demand equal rights.” This characterization is not inaccurate, per se. But its broad brushstrokes obscure important details, Monet style, in favor of a memorable, big-picture representation of history. That we can tell the story at all is only possible because of the intricate, long-term planning of movement artists, whose creativity was strategically applied.
If we want to understand why historical movements were successful, and how our own might become so also, we have to look at the details.
Strategic planning 101
One helpful model often used in planning for nonviolent social change is the Strategy Pyramid. This model helps us work our way backwards, from a clear vision of the world we want to live in, to the specific actions we will take to get there.
Successful movements have in common:
A hopeful vision of tomorrow that answers the question, “How will society look different when we win?” This includes reckoning with the least common denominator of shared vision between you and the spectrum of allies with whom you are building movement. The more people can find themselves in the vision, the more compelling it becomes.
A grand (or general) strategy, which includes the values and principles that will guide your work toward the vision, your methodology (e.g. nonviolent struggle), and an analysis of the conflict situation (including the strengths and weaknesses of your group and those of the system you’re trying to change).
A strategy, which looks more closely at realizing your movement’s objectives by clarifying the groups your movement needs to focus its energy on, and what their self-interests are, as well as the type of actions to which they will best respond.
Campaigns, which are time-limited series of actions to achieve particular objectives. (This campaign-planning guide from Otpor alum Ivan Marovic is an invaluable resource).
Tactics, which include hundreds of potential creative actions — including boycotts, protests, sit-ins, slow-downs, etc. — that can be sequenced and escalated during a campaign.
The historic movements we look at today as shining examples of success didn’t emerge merely because of passion, but rather from careful planning. They had leaders who both catalyzed and capitalized upon the passion of the public in order to power strategic, sustainable social change.
The dance of passion and planning
Trainers at Momentum — a grassroots organization which gathers and equips nonviolent organizers — have a way of talking about this interplay between passion and planning. They teach hybrid organizing, a model that recognizes the power of integrating mass protest with structure-based organizing. This model recognizes that there are moments when public passion suddenly crescendos into mass protest— think of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the monumental worldwide protests for racial justice that followed. This collective energy can be channeled into strategic work for sustained change. The trick is learning to take advantage of the heat of the moment to fuel future organizing. In effect, this is about making protest a practice, rather than waiting until it spontaneously happens because of passion alone.
The aftermath of a mass protest event is the time to do the work of structure-based organizing — helping people find their roles in the movement (absorption), so they can bring their gifts to the work of planning and engaging in nonviolent campaigns (escalation), which then galvanize the public to take action (active popular support).
All of these things are happening at once in some form. But there is an ebb and flow to movement energy, and we can feel these collective waves in our bodies and spirits.
Learning about this movement lifecycle has given me hope that as the passion of the moment fades, when people (including me) are getting tired and the sense of urgency (including my own) is dissipating, there is clear and important work to do. In fact, it is in the quieter moments, as the whirlwind slows and the dust begins to settle, that the real organizing begins.
This is the time for the work of community building, or what Matthew and Paul Engler call “nurturing dissidents.” It’s about cultivating curiosity about the stories and experiences that bring people into movement together, in order to build deeper solidarity and unity.
It’s about empowering folks to develop and share the skills that come naturally to them. (In the Christian communities I’ve been part of, this is often described as “discovering spiritual gifts”). This involves asking questions like: Who are the storytellers? Who are the teachers? Who are the strategists? Who are the artists? Who are the connectors? Who can care for children or make meals or open their homes for meetings and mutual aid (hint: not just women!)? And then gathering them together to dream about and plan for change.
“The time is always right to do what is right,” said Dr. King.
NOW is the time collectively imagine the future, to cultivate trust with allies, to ensure commitments to shared strategy, to plan and execute robust campaigns for social change… To plan to win.
Questions for reflection: Consider reflecting on a social movement that inspires you. Is there an aspect of planning you’d like to learn more about, from vision crafting to strategy to campaign planning? You might find the toolbox at Beautiful Trouble helpful to get your imagination going!