Obviously, the purpose of repression is to induce fear, so people will give up fighting injustice. The power holders have a range of tactics up their sleeves: one example is setting a million dollar bail on Philadelphia protesters charged only with misdemeanors. Power holders are counting on the feeling inside us -- our fear -- to change our behavior so as to make us less effective.

That's why one of the most fundamental choices any social movement makes is what kind of attitude to have toward repression. (7) It's natural for us to fear punishment, deprivation of liberty, losing our jobs -- we're only human, after all. It is so natural to be fearful in the face of repression that we may not know movements make choices about how to the threats of the state. In the workshops for the Republican Convention protests, many participants didn't know that there was a choice. They believed that all movements have the same attitude toward repression, which is far from true.

Some movements see power holders inviting them to play what I call "the Fear Game:" authorities punish and threaten so that activists will respond fearfully. These movements choose a different strategy.

For example, during the Montgomery bus boycott the power holders decided to play the Fear Game by leaking the word that they had a list of black leaders who were going to be arrested. The leaders decided to take a powerful, proactive attitude; they went to City Hall as a group and demanded to be arrested at once. They carefully expanded their numbers so that, more than likely, some individuals would not be on the list and could indignantly demand to be arrested rather than be insulted by not being considered a leader. More recently labor unions in Decatur, Illinois, made a similar move: hundreds of workers filled City Hall and refused to leave until the intended arrests were actually made.

Consider the difficulty this puts the power holders in. If the people refuse to fear them, the power holders have lost one of their most powerful weapons! Another example comes from Poland, where after many years of Communist dictatorship a radical group of workers and intellectuals decided to depart from their activist tradition and create an open, above-ground organization for human rights. The move was a breakthrough which supported the growth of the mass Solidarity movement, resulting by the end of the '80s in the nonviolent overthrow of the dictatorship. (8)

The choice to adopt a discipline of secrecy in which activists work may at some times and places be useful, but it is a choice that needs careful thought, especially when we consider that it is often not necessary even in full-blown police states. In the US., playing the Fear Game seems to be hurting the movement.

One consequence is the withholding of trust. To win, movements need to expand. To expand, activists need to trust -- themselves, each other, and people they reach out to. Think of the last time someone succeeded in persuading you to act. Did you pick up a vibe that they didn't trust you? You probably picked up the opposite energy, that of optimism and confidence that, once you got the information, you'd want to participate.

A major dynamic I've personally seen in our movement is trustlessness. The Fear Game operates in worries about who might be an agent, who might betray us, who cannot be relied on. People don't tell their names, censor their interaction, hold back. The wariness is toxic because activists feed each other's fear. I've seen a black man who was on his way out of the movement in disgust because of what he perceived as white racism; the hostile vibe he perceived might instead have been because "He might be an agent!" This example shows how secrecy complicates movement life. White racism does of course exist where white activists gather, because we have been socialized by a racist culture. When white activists put up other barriers to entry into the movement, like fear of strangers, the barriers can easily be perceived as racism (which is also connected with fear of strangers!).

Even within the boundary of color, trustlessness reduces the movement's growth. A woman of color cried as she told me about the refusal of a meeting of people of color to proceed until each new person, including her, had been vouched for by two others -- an institutionalization of trustlessness. When trustlessness is institutionalized, a movement is very easy to contain because it can't recruit outside the circles of those who define themselves as victims. Since many talented and effective people don't find it useful to define themselves as victims, they are unlikely to stuff themselves into the confining circles of conspirators however radical their views.

The Fear Game also reduces the ability of direct actionists to develop and sustain alliances. Successful direct action movements develop an ability to attract allies. The role of ally is different from the role of campaigner. The job of campaigners is to take the initiative, to get the ball rolling; the job of allies is to come in and help push once it's rolling. In the U.S. we find a lot of activists who simultaneously are campaigning on one issue and are allies to other campaigns around other issues. This flexibility works well.

Because the Fear Game generates trustlessness, protesters have a hard time trusting allies, even less than they can trust each other. They sometimes enter the confrontation stage politically isolated, having failed to reach out and open up the communication channels with people busy on other projects. Where all this comes crashing down is at the moment of state repression, which is when allies are often most needed and also when there is most confusion in the air. That's when activists, who refuse to trust the allies, say to the allies: "Trust us and do X, Y, and Z!" Then the protesters become disappointed and even furious when the allies don't immediately come to attention and salute!

If playing the Fear Game initiated by the state reduces the internal morale of the movement, reduces its growth potential, and hurts relationships with allies, what's the point of the secrecy and stealth? For one thing, it makes possible certain direct action tactics that rely on surprise. We may be reluctant to give up those tactics. I also enjoy the emotions that go with plotting and scheming, and I may not be alone on that! Another reason why secrecy and stealth may appear in our movement is that they strengthen the boundary between Insider and Outsider. (9)

Unfortunately, the security agencies also know the negative impact of secrecy on the movement, and work it to their own advantage. (10) They start out with abundant resources to put into spies and electronic surveillance, and the more covert we are, the more resources they can demand (thereby increasing the already obscene size of the security state). Not only is it an advantage to them in terms of increasing the power and affluence of their apparatus, but it also justifies their putting more people in our ranks, who help make decisions and sometimes exercise leadership. And the more aware we are of this, the more scared we become and the less we can trust each other, which is wonderful from their point of view. The basic reason they like the Fear Game so much is that they know they are sure to win it.

Fortunately, we can make other choices. We can draw inspiration from the choice of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1963-64 to organize openly in Mississippi, perhaps the most violently racist state in the U.S. at the time. The largely-black SNCC workers dealt with men who were police by day and KKK by night; SNCC often lived in Freedom Houses that were unprotected in the countryside; they had no guns and everyone knew it; the federal agents refused to protect them; the Mississippi media were against them as were most clergy. SNCC knew they would be hurt, jailed, tortured, and some would die; they were not naive in choosing their attitude toward repression.

At the very beginning of 1964 Freedom Summer, three SNCC workers were murdered -- James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman -- to scare away others who had volunteered. SNCC refused to go underground; they had a better strategy. SNCC's choice expanded the movement dramatically both in Mississippi and nationally, won powerful allies, and broke the political stranglehold of racism in that state. I would challenge anyone in today's movement to study SNCC's attitude toward repression in Mississippi in the summer of 1964 and then explain why our movement should play the Fear Game. The more powerful choice is openness.