What will the "revolution" look like when people have had enough?

[marions ghost]

158. People Power

and the idea that non-violent revolution is possible. Here's a little general essay on it (2008)--doesn't get down to specifics, but makes the basic case for it.

http://www.crmvet.org/info/nvpower.htm

People-power. The power to organize protests that affect public opinion and change the cultural context. To elect or recall politicians. To engage in boycotts and other forms of economic pressure such as strikes. To create and deploy our own "alternative" media to challenge the lies and present a different vision. To use cultural forms such as song, theatre — and in today's world, video and the internet — to speak truth to power (in the Southern Freedom Movement, for example, our freedom songs were as powerful a force for change as were our protests and the two were inseparably linked).

In a democracy, the primary wielders of people-power are membership organizations, mass movements, and unorganized individuals acting in concert. People-power is the only real power that those of us who are neither rich nor at the top of government have.
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People-Power

Our mass-produced corporate-marketed culture glorifies and exalts both violence-power and money-power while ignoring or discrediting people-power. But most of us have little access to Money Power and even less access to Violence Power. Yes, we of the 99% can work hard and buy a car, maybe a home, and maybe earn a comfortable life. But few, if any of us, will ever have the kind of wealth from which flows money power in the political sense. Yes, we can use violence against each other, and today's popular music and media glamorizes individual violence. But we have no access to Violence Power in the political sense. We cannot use a pistol to to put a corporate poluter in prison, or to prevent a lover from being deported, or to force a slumlord to repair substandard housing. What we can use is People Power.

Most people do not believe that ultimately government rests on consent of the governed and therefore they remain unaware of the potential power they hold. This idea was articulated in the Declaration of Independence.
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The Freedom Movement fundamentally changed our cultural context so that what was normal in the 1950s is now utterly unacceptable. The Walt Disney company, for example, made a movie called Song of the South, a feature film filled with racial stereotypes that are so offensive today that since the early 1970s Disney has never re-released it in its entirety in the U.S, nor made it available for domestic home video or DVD.

Other people-power movements have made similar profound changes in how our society views women and women's roles and how we view the global environment. And today, ongoing people-power movements continue to struggle over issues as varied as immigration and sexuality in its many varied forms.

But since the '60s, efforts to mobilize people-power have been only partially effective in some areas — women, environment, and gay issues, for example — and largely ineffective in other areas — foreign policy, war, economic justice, covert racism, etc. In part, this is because money-power is constantly active in influencing government, while people-power is intermittent and most of the time largely latent. And in part it is because people-power today has become weak and divided. One reason for that weakness is our failure to fully use the power of Nonviolent Resistance.

Both wealth and government do everything they can to maintain their power by making us feel helpless and confused. One way is by telling us that in a democracy it is only through elections that we the people wield power. But for the most part, candidates are chosen, and issues framed, by money-power. Political parties and candidates for office are influenced by money when before they are running for office , when they are running, and after they are elected. Few of the many volunteers who actively work in electoral politics have any actual voice in selecting the candidates, crafting their positions, or shaping the subsequent legislation. The only real role most of us have is voting on election day. The result is that today we have two money parties that both represent the interests of the giant corporations and the wealthy few — one of those parties supports "liberal" social policy such as a woman's right to have an abortion, and the other opposes those rights. But no party represents our interests against those of the wealthy.

Yet, people-power can be exercised through elections — at times people-power has been powerful at the ballot box — but only when there are organizations and movements that educate and mobilize people around their interests OUTSIDE of the electoral process.

People-Power and Nonviolent Resistance

Which brings us to direct action and Nonviolent Resistance. By and large, the strategies of the Freedom Movement — and the strategies of most successful reform movements — were the strategies of Nonviolent Resistance.

In modern times elsewhere in the world there have been instances where revolutionary Nonviolent Resistance was used to overthrow authoritarian governments, but Nonviolent Resistance is more commonly used to reform some aspect of government or society — the U.S. Civil Rights Movement being a case in point. Whether the goal is revolution or reform, the purpose of nonviolent tactics and strategies is to create a political dynamic that organizes and mobilizes people-power while at the same time limiting and restricting the ability of opponents to suppress the movement with violence and money-power. The weakness of money-power is the illegitimacy of actions and policies designed to benefit the wealthy and powerful few at the expense of the many. The strength of nonviolent people-power is inherent in the word "NO." "No" is the most powerful word in the English language:

No, we won't accept segregation
No, we won't silently stand by in the face of injustice
No, we won't believe the lies of President Bush
No, we won't submit to corporate domination our lives

By mobilizing nonviolent popular action, we use our strength against their weakness.