Since even the most pragmatic among us can't make an informed pragmatic choice until the strategies exist, we're all in the same non-pragmatic boat in the meantime. We'll need to make personal choices based on other considerations. Here's how I personally choose.

I carry tremendous anger because of what's been done to me as a working class man and as a gay man. I can't begin to count the number of times I've encountered the stereotypes of "dumb," "violent," "uncultured," "lazy," or "a sex fiend," "child molester," "dirty," "sissy," "immoral," "weird." Despite years of inner work, healing my wounds in a variety of ways, I still carry self-doubt like a sack on my shoulders.

I've been discriminated against, although I haven't been seriously physically attacked. I've watched friends do terribly self-destructive things from the oppression they've internalized; I've been in movement groups which got stuck because their oppression led them to cannibalize their own leaders; I've cried with friends who humiliated themselves by staying in the closet when there was no need, and with friends who discounted their own impact because of their class background.

This year-in and year-out experience of hurt gives me a bias in favor of violence as a means of self-expression. Although I sometimes rage in the safe company of friends, I would love to rage publicly and "fuck things up."

Given all that, my choice for strategic nonviolent action is an anchor, some solid ground that supports me to be the smart working class man that I really am, that assists me to be the balanced gay man that I really am, and that supports my creativity. Whenever I get lost in the fog of my own upset, I have a principle handy that reminds me that I can reach for a big picture, that I can take a minute to get centered, that I can start creating options.

And it often works. I've been surrounded by a hostile gang on a deserted city street in the middle of the night and my creativity started humming as if I were Einstein. I found a nonviolent way to save myself. I've had a knife pulled on me by an enraged teenager and found a way to get us both off the path of destruction. I got police to stop beating me, right-wingers to pull back after they jumped me -- I could go on but you get the idea. When I volunteered to go to Sri Lanka as a nonviolent bodyguard for human rights activists threatened with assassination, a good friend pleaded with me to accept his gift of a gun and bulletproof vest. I refused, by then confident that, in the moment of confrontation, I would find a better and safer way.

One way to choose is to pay attention to my personal bias, and compensate for it by accepting an anchoring principle that holds me steady. (14)

Another way to choose is to notice the cultural bias, and take responsibility for the way the culture conditions us. I'm a man, and the conditioning of men is very clear. What do John Wayne, George W. Bush, Chairman Mao, and the average male CEO all agree on? Political power grows out of the barrel of the gun. That belief about power is the reigning paradigm for the whole culture, but men have a special job in implementing that paradigm because we're brought up to be willing to kill and be killed. Wherever the patriarchy rules, violence is blessed "when push comes to shove."

The activist Starhawk is far more interesting on power than the patriarchal over-simplification. She describes three kinds of power: power-over (domination, most dramatically expressed in the act of killing), power-with (cooperation with others, teamwork), and power-from-within (psychological and spiritual force). (15) I was brought up as a man to believe implicitly that power-over is the strongest; when the strongest possible force is needed, we are programmed not even to question violence.

The wonderfulness of human beings is that we do sometimes go outside our cultural boxes, and even men will be more creative than the programming expects. Abdul Gaffar Khan of the Northwest Frontier of colonial India was brought up in a nomadic culture even more steeped than mine in guns and the violent version of manly honor. He broke out of his conditioning and organized a movement of his fierce Pathan people to struggle nonviolently against the British. The British fought back more ruthlessly against the Pathan campaigners than against other campaigners, but the Pathans were steadfast and disciplined.

My culture says, "To be a real man, I must be willing to use violence." I choose to noncooperate with that script. The patriarchy has lost its credibility with me. I commit to strategic nonviolence and defy the patriarchy to sway me by playing mind games with my identity.

I do like to be pragmatic, which is why I spent five years writing the book "Strategy for a Living Revolution", a pragmatic framework for starting to create a specific revolutionary strategy here in the U.S. (16) I hope we will soon have competing strategies to debate and discuss. In the meantime, what works for me is to have a place to stand in the unfolding history of nonviolent struggle, while I join with comrades to learn and create.