Something that especially concerns Ward Churchill is the ruling out of certain tactics dogmatically. He says that, if we want a goal, like revolution, sincerely enough, we won't want to rule out in advance any means of getting there. We need to be open to all tactics, from petitioning to civil disobedience to street fighting to open warfare -- whatever it takes.

When I'm in my tactical head, Ward's advice seems sound to me. After all, if I'm building a house, why not assemble the largest possible kit of tools?

When I start thinking strategy, though, the advice doesn't add up. Here's an example. The Danish people didn't expect to be invaded by the Nazis during World War II. They improvised as best they could, and in a very, very high-stakes struggle they engaged in a "diversity of tactics." In the first phase their tactics ranged from collaboration to petitions to sabotage. The diversity didn't work: some tactics worked against each other. The Danes moved on to another set of diverse tactics: sabotage, nonviolent demonstrations, and labor strikes. Again, the tactics undermined each other; each act of sabotage gave the Germans fresh excuse to come down hard on the workers and the demonstrators.

What really worked in maintaining Danish integrity and undermining the Nazi war effort was the strategy which emerged: it included the underground press, major strikes (even at one point a general strike), nonviolent demonstrations, and smuggling the Jews out to a safe haven in Sweden. (11)

The strategy that emerged was internally consistent, and the tactics therefore supported each other instead of subtracting from each other.

Here's an example closer to home. A small group of activists in the Movement for a New Society threw a monkey wrench into a U.S. foreign policy objective by designing a campaign strategy that was internally coherent. The U.S. was supporting, as it often does, a military dictatorship that was killing thousands of people. In fact, Pakistani dictator Yayah Khan was killing hundreds of thousands of people in East Bengal who wanted independence. The U.S. government lied about its support, but the activists learned that Pakistani ships were on their way to U.S. ports to pick up military supplies for the continuing massacre. The group also realized that if longshoremen refused to load the ships, the U.S. government would be foiled.

The problem was, the East Coast longshoremen were, if anything, politically inclined to support the government, and wanted to feed their families. The activists repeatedly tried to persuade the longshoremen to act in solidarity with the East Bengalis, without success. It was time for direct action. The group announced a blockade of the port which was expecting the next Pakistani freighter, and began practicing "naval maneuvers" with sailboats, rowboats and the rest of its motley fleet. The media gave ongoing coverage, and longshoremen witnessed on television as well as in person the strange antics of protesters who seemed to believe they could stop a big freighter with tiny boats. The tactic raised the longshoremen's motivation to listen and discuss, and they agreed that, if the activists created a picket line, the longshoremen would refuse to cross it!

When the campaign succeeded in that city, the activists took it to other port cities and finally the International Longshoremen's union agreed workers would not load Pakistan-bound weapons anywhere in the U.S. The blockade, initiated by a small group, succeeded because the group crafted direct action tactics specifically geared toward the part of the public that most needed to be influenced. (12)

The campaign would have failed if some of the activists had decided to do property destruction at the docks: such action would have driven away the longshoremen who were the key allies that made the campaign successful. Further, campaigners who would have been tolerant of "diversity of tactics" that included property destruction would have been irresponsible, because they would have been letting down the Bengalis who were under attack. In today's climate among the anti-globalization activists, some activists might give up effectiveness in order to stay on good terms with their friends in the movement, but that is a difficult choice to defend if you really care about sea turtles and poor people in third world countries.

Diversity of tactics open to all possibilities is like trying to build a house without a strategy, a house that includes solar panels, a woodburning stove, a massive oil furnace, electric baseboard heating, huge windows facing north, asbestos insulation, a jacuzzi in every bedroom, a meditation room dedicated to simplicity, and so on. When we build a house we do make choices, guided by some overall concept. That's what makes sense when building a house or when building a revolutionary movement.