Nonviolence

Nonviolent activists win justice around the world by exposing injustice morally without fighting physically against oppression which actually dramatizes the rightness of their cause.

Nonviolence Training: Preparing To Face Repression

People taking high-risk actions like civil disobedience for the sake of important principles must prepare to face consequences ranging from harassment to arrest to death. They must master COMSEC to secure themselves against attack and conduct threat assessment.

In a group that faces a high risk of coercive repression from government or other powerful interests, have a frank and open discussion with every participant new and old alike. Make sure everyone understands the risks. There is a red pill and there is a blue pill and each person should declare their decision. Either they agree to face the consequences of taking high-risk action however harsh it might become or they shouldn't participate no matter how much they want to help.

Identify those who are too risk averse or too responsible for dependents to face the worst repression. Make sure everyone feels comfortable admitting their risk aversion because if someone feels peer pressured enough to commit and gets in over their head, they become a liability to everyone else. Keep them involved in only low-risk activities.

In some cases, hostile interests will arrest or harass susceptible individuals to threaten them with punishments or entice them with bribes in exchange for selling out their friends. You may want to ensure that everyone who commits pledges that they are prepared to go to jail for however long it takes and never to betray the trust of the group, even if offered a plea bargain.

Those who do commit should train in how to deal wih law enforcement.

Role-Playing

Role-playing is an important part of nonviolence training. 

Repression History

CIA Training manuals for coercive repression

Nonviolence History 

The Indian indipendence movement

The American Civil Rights Movement

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Learning From Experts

"Thousands of Burmese watched the Steve York documentary Bringing Down a Dictator about the overthrow of Serbian ‘President’ Slobodan Milo©evi© in 2000 (also mischaracterized as a spontaneous ‘mob’ despite its careful advance planning). Ever since dozens of India’s freedom fighters came to the United States, and vice versa, to help shape the Civil Rights movement, civil-society leaders around the world are realizing that they are not alone and do not have to reinvent the wheel. This is making a qualitative difference in the growth of nonviolent consciousness around the world. And one result for this movement, as an eye-witness reports, is that “nothing that the regime has done was unexpected by the movement, but everything that the movement has done has come as a shock to the regime.”

—http://gnn.tv/articles/3325/Burma_and_the_Press

Multiple Lines Of Leadership

"2) While monks have been deliberately chosen to be the public face of the movement, the leaders organized multiple “lines” of student leadership (a Gandhian tactic, from the famous Salt Satyagraha of 1930) so that when the first group was arrested or otherwise neutralized, a new group would step up in its place – as is happening as I write."

Prisoner Support becomes an important activity for those who do get arrested.

Links

http://www.actupny.org/documents/CDdocuments/NV%20Training.html

http://www.nonviolence.org/