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Thinking About Movement Strategy and A Few Tactics To Get Us Started
How do we change and save the world? Start small, but make every effort part of a bigger strategy.
One of the most famous and successful movement tactics in history consisted of a bunch of unarmed citizens marching to the sea and boiling water to make salt. It doesn’t seem like much and it wouldn’t have been — except it was designed to fit into a bigger strategy. In the end, the people of India ousted the occupying force of the mighty British Empire — without firing a shot.
Today, we are faced with a planet-wide crisis. Leaders and systems everywhere have failed to prevent climate collapse — indeed they are actively protecting and promoting it! And people live under exploitive systems, used like chattel by either plutocrats or despots, depending on where they live. Neither the destruction of Earth’s biosphere, nor the abuse of human beings and the cruel waste of lives can be allowed to continue.
These actions of destruction are both evil and stupid. Neither is necessary and the benefits — even to the exploiters — is illusory. There is no “victory” for anyone when the outcome is a destroyed biosphere and an inhospitable planet upon which it’s a struggle for anyone to survive. In a very real sense, our foolish oppressors should be rooting for us. Because WE are their children’s only hope.
By WE, I mean the sane and caring people of Earth, people who are in fact or simply in spirit, Saners — members of the movement to protect the planet and establish a humane and sustainable society, one very much unlike the one we have today.
By “WE”, I mean YOU.
The Bigger Strategy and Some Tactics
Gandhi and the Indians did not start their effort to free their country from British rule with The Salt March — an effort that ultimately garnered direct participation of tens of thousands of people. Some early effort centered on just a few people, and sometimes even one — Gandhi himself.
Today we are enamored of big visible events — rallies or marches showing hundreds of thousands of people (ideally) out in public together making noise for their cause. But effective movements use a variety of tactics and large public gatherings are…
