Our protest isn't enough

And why that doesn't scare me

tldr… I’m a special guest for the Blueprint for Revolution bookclub kicking off this month, along with artist and activist Andre Henry and Serbian nonviolent revolutionary and author Srdja Popovic! Learn more and sign up here.

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Dear Soulful Revolutionaries,

With the passage of the Big BS Bill on Friday, the devastating floods in Texas over the weekend, and the military marching through MacArthur Park in LA yesterday, I am hearing a lot of folks express despair. Specifically, I’m seeing people saying that it feels like the No Kings marches and other protests have been devoid of impact.

I feel the grief of this weighing on my whole body, and have an essay in the works about how we navigate change from within the waves of grief.

For now, I wanted to share a really pragmatic piece in response to this refrain to those who fear our protests aren’t working.

They’re not entirely wrong. It’s true: our protest isn’t enough. But this doesn’t have to lead us to despair. It should catalyze our creativity and challenge us to escalate our efforts.

I want to offer a gentle and brief reminder (and a teaching for those who may not yet be aware), about the nature of nonviolent struggle:

Protest is not the only tool in our toolkit…

And it’s not even the most powerful one.

Actions like marches, letter-writing, and calling your reps are all tactics of Protest and Persuasion. Tactics of Protest and Persuasion are most effective at building movement, but these tactics don’t actually impose real costs on the powerful. They push, they don’t pull, on the pillars of power. And when we’re looking at a massively militant, hyper-funded, super-entrenched system like the one we are facing, pushing at the system doesn’t make it budge.

To get the system to yield to our demands, we need to withdraw our consent from it. We have to stop giving power by withholding our cooperation — that is, by disobeying — socially, economically and politically. We have to impose high costs on the powers that be. And we do that with tactics of Intervention and Noncooperation.

These categories of Protest and Persuasion, Noncooperation and Intervention come from Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action. Sharp wrote the first systematic books about nonviolent struggle, but many have come after him, and you can find a much more visually appealing and narrative-driven way of exploring nonviolent action at the Beautiful Trouble Toolbox.

Tactics of Noncooperation include:

• All manner of boycotts and strikes (including some you may not have considered before, like lysistratic nonaction, AKA the sex strike; the sick-in; and only doing work that is explicitly demanded and no more);

• Sanctuary (offering haven to people being persecuted);

• Protest emigration (all those folks who say they’re thinking about moving to Canada? This is a form of withdraw from the social system);

• People in government positions can engage in deliberate inefficiency, refusal of assistance and even mutiny.

Tactics of Intervention include:

• Sit-ins, stand-ins, die-ins, pray ins (basically anything where your body is getting in the way of business as usual);

• Overloading facilities (as we’ve seen with brilliant tactics like people calling ICE hotlines with silly or useless information);

• Creation of alternative transportation (think of how during the over year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott, Black folks with cars, like the local funeral director with his hearse, gave rides to those without) and economic institutions (this is where Mutual Aid is invaluable);

• Even establishing a parallel government!

These are just a few of many examples of what has been used effectively in this country and around the world to exert pressure by removing consent from the system.

The data from nonviolent movements is that when 3.5% of the population has been engaged in a sustained way IN TACTICS OF INTERVENTION AND NONCOOPERATION, that movement has NEVER failed. (Folks often cite this statistic erroneously, thinking that we just need 3.5% in the streets. Not true. We have to withdraw consent from the system to exert the kind of pressure required).

It’s important to remember that these tactics are most effective when done 1) at scale, 2) strategically and 3) sustainably.

This means we have to plan.

We have to stop reacting haphazardly to all the chaos and start talking about the kind of world we want to live in (our “Vision of Tomorrow,” which I wrote six months ago after the fires in LA), and how we will use what we have to get us where we want to be. There’s a lot more I could say about strategy, but I’ve written about that previously, and I’ll put some links below.

This doesn’t mean we stop protesting. On the contrary, protest is how we gather like-minded people and catch hope. Protest also demonstrates to potential allies (because this fight, as much as it may feel like it, is not an Us V. Them binary battle), that they have a place to land should they become activated or choose to defect from the opposition.

We also need to think more creatively about how to protest. Tactical diversity has been demonstrated to play a vital role in building power. This is partly because it catches powerful people off guard. It’s also because humans get bored of doing the same tactic endlessly, and people will stop showing up if you keep doing the same thing with no results.

A movement that combines protest with intervention and noncooperation will be a force to be reckoned with. This also creates a lot more opportunities for people to engage, including those who may not be able to go out into the streets, but can create disruption in other creative ways. And nonviolent movements are twice as successful as violent ones because of this participation advantage.

If you are feeling the strong temptation to go numb in the face of perceived helplessness, please hear this: there is a place for you and your work is not in vain. I would love to help you plug into organized struggle, get out of creative ruts you may be experiencing, and bring your full self into this work. We need everyone engaged in the movement, exercising their gifts and employing their skills for the sake of liberation. Helping folks discern their unique role is one of my greatest joys. You can always email me: lauren@laurengrubaugh.com.

Here are a few resources for going deeper:

• Blueprint for Revolution Book Club: I’ll be one of three special guests at a monthly study of the hilarious, pragmatic book Blueprint for Revolution. This group is being hosted by

  Mike Kinman
  and will also feature artist and activist
  Andre Henry
  , as well as the book’s author, Srdja Popovic, who helped lead the Otpor student movement in Serbia that nonviolently overthrew the dictator in 2000. These FREE conversations will be opportunities to consider how to turn what you learn into action in your context.

• Andre Henry
  and I have a forthcoming strategy guide, so follow us to be apprised of when that drops.

• I wrote a series 18 months ago called Foundations of Fierce Vulnerability. It is all about the building blocks of nonviolent movement. Here’s the first essay in that series.

• The data I cited (the 3.5% “rule” and the fact of nonviolent movements being twice as successful as violent ones) come from Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan’s groundbreaking research in Why Civil Resistance Works.

Onward and upward, friends. Til all are free.