Foundations of Fierce Vulnerability: Unity matters
The strategy and spirituality of working across difference for a common future
Today’s newsletter is the second in my January series on Foundations of Fierce Vulnerability, featuring the first member of the holy trinity of nonviolence: unity. You can read last week’s newsletter on power here.
On Monday, pro-Palestinian activists interrupted President Biden’s speech during a campaign event at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina as they cried out: “20,000 dead Palestinians; their blood is on your hands.” While Biden appeared somewhat rattled, the vocal response of many in the congregation was swift and decisive: “Four more years,” they chanted.
At this church, where a white supremacist shooter killed nine Black Bible study attendees in 2015, activists had what was likely a more sympathetic audience to the plight of Palestinians undergoing genocide at the hands of an apartheid government than, say, a white Evangelical church in suburbia. Yet their chosen tactic appeared to quickly create a chasm between the young, non-Black activists and many members of a pro-Biden, predominantly older, Black audience. While the tactic targeted Biden, the whole congregation was, inadvertently, cast as an opponent for its support of the president.
None of this is intended to cast aspersions on the activists, nor do I presume their hoped for outcomes. Biden absolutely needs to be called on the carpet for his complicity in this genocide and his responsibility to bring it to a close. Likewise, disruptive tactics that interrupt business as usual, especially in the midst of a genocide, are crucial. Rather, I highlight this example in the spirit of curiosity and solidarity, as it has catalyzed questions for me about coalition-building in this fraught social moment. When feelings are riding high and the work of justice is so urgent, how can people be strategically called into the movement as allies? How can unity be built — especially across different social locations and generations?
Unity is a word often rendered anemic by calls to civility that presume a flattening of difference and a setting aside of urgent priorities in favor of just getting along, all of which simply upholds the status quo.
Yet along with nonviolent discipline and strategic planning, unity is one of the three most important elements needed for a movement to be successful. This unity has nothing to do with going along to get along. Rather, it is hard-won, clarified through candid conversations that identify the least common denominator of agreement as to what a movement is about and how it will meet its goals. This unity involves a rigorous commitment, together, to engage and empower people to get on board with that shared vision.
Consider Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, whose research showed that when just 3.5 percent of a population is engaged in sustained nonviolent intervention and noncooperation, that group has never failed to achieve success. Coalition-building is necessary to get a movement to this statistical threshold and sustain its collective action. If we want to see our movements for justice achieve their stated goals, then unity — this primary predictor of movement success — must be prioritized as a serious element of strategy.
Strategically prioritizing unity means:
Moving from a binary Us vs. Them mentality to seeing people as existing along a spectrum of allies whose interests can be appealed to based upon where they reside in relation to your cause. (This is closely related to the social view of power I wrote about last week). The above graphic can be helpful in understanding Monday’s events at Mother Emanuel: while the tactic targeted a leading opponent to ceasefire, it also unintentionally provoked some members of the congregation into oppositional action. All the while, there were likely passive and perhaps even active allies in the congregation who ended up lost in the mix. When we get curious about where people fall along the spectrum, rather than assuming that they are with or against us — which can be as simple as asking a few questions — we can then become strategic about their role in the work for change. We may be surprised to discover more allies than we thought we had.
Casting a shared, compelling vision of tomorrow (as this video from the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategy unpacks). This vision should be clear and specific. Getting there involves discovering where, exactly, disagreements lie and then finding the least common denominator of agreement. Writes Beatrice Bruteau, “When we seek the common ground, the more basic humanly shared values, we at least put ourselves in a more creative position for finding new approaches.”1 One of the greatest payoffs of working for unity is the creativity generated by a diverse group of people. One of the reasons nonviolent movements are two times more successful than violent ones, according to Chenoweth and Stephan, is the tactical diversity afforded by a diverse membership. Unity means more options for creative resistance to the status quo.
Recognizing that the success of any given tactic is highly contextual. Prioritizing unity can help when we need to decide whether a tactic of mobilization (with recruitment and coalition-building as its goal), would be most strategic, or a tactic of disruption (intended to reveal the motives of opponents and make their actions backfire) would be more effective. The Beautiful Trouble Toolbox is one of many useful resources for strategically generating tactics that speak to people at various points along the spectrum of allies.
At the root of all this strategic work for unity is a spirituality of unity. That is, the foundational belief that everyone and everything is bound together in what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called an “inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” All struggles for liberation are linked. Our strategic actions to build unity within our movements both enact and make visible the underlying reality of a world in which no one is disposable and everyone belongs.
Vitally, unity is built on relationship and it is our relationships with one another that sustain our hope for not only a just future, but a joyful one. When we take action to build coalitions, to win allies, to clarify our cause for the sake of unity, we participate in the joyful movement toward wholeness that is already afoot.
I wonder: Have you had experiences of hard-won unity? What are practical ways in which you could contend for hard-won unity in the spaces you inhabit? What clarifying conversations do you need to have? What questions could you ask?
Bruteau, Radical Optimism: Practical Spirituality in an Uncertain World, p. 6