International Journal of Nonviolence, Volume II, Number 1, Why Training for Nonviolent Action?

George Lakey

Question: What do some revolutionary soldiers in a Burmese jungle, Act Up members in New York, environmentalists in Germany, coal miners in West Virginia, and aboriginals in Taiwan have in common?

Answer: Participation in nonviolent action training workshops.

These groups as well as many others around the world are turning to training to increase the likelihood of accomplishing their goals. Students in Central America, steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, Buddhist monks in Thailand, environmentalists in Russia, Mohawks in Canada, peace activists in Scotland, pro-democracy activists in the Philippines, homeless people in Philadelphia -- these are just some of the groups involved in the past few years.

Is training making a difference in achieving movement goals, in fact, or is it simply a ritual helping participants feel better in an uncertain and scary world? Scientific studies are lacking at this point. In some places, however, movements are so convinced of the value of training that all participants in major confrontations are expected to participate in training workshops first. And we know of at least one dictatorship which felt so threatened by training that it held a training team at the airport to prevent entry.

By "training" we mean learning formats leading to changed behaviors in action situations. Training is different from liberal education because of the emphasis on behavior-in-action; similar to people being trained to be a doctor or engineer, the activist learns the skills and knowledge that prepare her or him to act. By "nonviolent action" we include these major applications: (a) struggle by social change movements, (b) social defense of communities and institutions, and (c) third party intervention in conflicts.

Why training?

To deepen participants' understanding of the issues. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., initiated in 1968 a "Poor People's Campaign" to reduce poverty in the U.S. Teachers and students at the Martin Luther King School of Social Change designed workshops to explore racism, poverty, and direct action to prepare participants to join the campaign. People who have been victimized by injustice may have a limited (though vivid) understanding of oppression, and need a "bigger picture" to enable them to struggle more effectively for change.

To prepare participants psychologically for the struggle. The Pinochet regime in Chile depended, as dictatorships do, on fear to maintain its control. In the 1980s a group committed to nonviolent struggle encouraged people to face their fears directly in a three-step process: small group training sessions in living rooms, followed by small, "hit-and-run" nonviolent actions, followed by de-briefing sessions. By teaching people to control their fear, trainers intended to prepare the way for the fall of the dictatorship.

To develop group discipline, morale, and solidarity for more effective action. In 1991 members of ACT-UP (a militant group protesting U.S. AIDS policy) were beaten up by Philadelphia police during a demonstration. The police were found guilty of unnecessary force and the city paid damages, but ACT-UP members realized they could reduce the chance of future brutality by acting in a more united and nonviolent way. Before their next major action they invited a trainer to conduct a civil disobedience workshop; they clarified the strategic question of nonviolence and then role-played possible scenarios. The result: a high-spirited, unified and effective civil disobedience action.

The power of nonviolent action is related to the group morale of the participants. Training workshops are often designed to assist a group to make a tighter bond, or even for strangers to develop a new sense of group spirit. In 1964 the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other civil rights organizations called upon college students from all over the U.S. to register voters and organize freedom schools in "Mississippi Summer." Two week-long training workshops were held in succession in Ohio, each for 400-500 students; community-building was a major focus of the training. Midway in the second workshop the news broke that two of the participants in the first workshop were already found murdered in Mississippi. Despite the almost palpable fear among the students, nearly all of them stayed with the community, completed the training, and went to Mississippi.

Solidarity issues can come up at many points in preparation for action. Trainers can

• introduce the option of "jail solidarity:" noncooperation with the system in order to protect all members of the group and get demands met;
• sensitize participants to the possibility of "special treatment" by authorities of people of color, non-citizens, juveniles, gays, people with AIDS, etc.;
• stimulate dialogue on the tactic of refusing bail after arrest as having classist implications;
• make sure support people are affirmed (not only those who have been jailed or beaten);
• ask how the action will remain accessible to people with disabilities;
• introduce the notion of violence as going beyond physical force to include poverty, racism, sexism, etc.

To revise and develop strategy. In 1973 the New Zealand anti-apartheid movement was divided on how to protest the scheduled rugby tour of the white South African rugby team. Three workshops were scheduled with a visiting trainer both to learn more about how other social movements have used nonviolent action and also to develop their own strategy and tactics. Top leadership of the movement participated. The result: a strategy (and coordination among leadership) which led to the government cancelling the South African tour.

One way that workshops support smarter strategy is through increased understanding of the opponent and other parties to the conflict. Many of the strategic mistakes made by nonviolent movements have been caused by lack of understanding of where the other players "are coming from." Through strategy games and other training tools, participants stretch their knowledge base and their imaginations.

To revise and clarify tactics. For success nonviolent strategies usually require tactical flexibility; campaigns often need creative and bold tactical maneuver. Through training participants learn the overall goals of the action, important logistical and legal information, and share guidelines so people know what to expect from each other. Often in the workshops themselves "affinity groups" are created, which become the fundamental action units or teams. These elements of training set the tone for the action and optimize the chance of tactical flexibility within the larger strategic framework.

To prepare participants for decisions they need to make. Although strategies and tactics are chosen by the organization or campaign, some decisions must be made by individuals -- for example, whether to risk arrest. Workshops provide legal information, set up support systems for notifying families etc., and assist individuals to decide how to participate in the action.

To develop understanding of the dynamics of nonviolent struggle. In 1989 the United Mine Workers of America decided to go beyond a conventional strike in its dispute with the Pittston Coal Company, launching a nonviolent civil disobedience campaign. The union called together 50 field staff who would be the "lieutenants" in the struggle for a training workshop. While roleplaying, the staffers acted on the widely-held belief that direct action is a contest with police to hold "turf" -- for example, the road where the coal trucks drive. Through repeated roleplays and careful de-briefing, the staffers learned that nonviolent methods operate through dynamics which are more political than material -- that power is too complex to reduce to who physically occupies what at a particular moment. The coal miners went on to win their campaign against heavy odds, and set a new standard for labor action in the U.S.

Scholars and researchers in nonviolent action, social movements, group dynamics, and related fields can regard training as a "transmission belt" for conveying knowledge to the field for application and feedback. They can also can use workshops as places to learn from activists and generate new hypotheses.

To build skills for applying nonviolent action. In Haiti a "hit squad" abducted a young man just outside the house where a foreign peace team was staying. The team immediately intervened and, although surrounded by twice their number of guards with weapons, succeeded nonviolently in saving the man from a hanging.

Successful campaigns and interventions need more than sound strategy and high morale: they also need specific skills -- which are rarely taught in schools! For example: from the independence campaigns of colonial India of the 1940s to the civil rights marches in Northern Ireland of the 1960s to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa of the 1980s, movement leaders have faced the challenge of violence erupting, inviting repression, and dividing the movement. (Often agents will even be hired to stimulate violence, as the British did in India and the FBI did in the U.S. movement against the Vietnam War.) A specific skill for such situations is marshalling (also called peacekeeping), and many movements have trained marshalls with specific skills to handle such incidents.

To build alliances across movement lines. In Seattle a workshop drew striking workers from the Greyhound bus company and members of the militant AIDS protest group Act Up. The workshop reduced the prejudice each group had about the other, and led some participants to support each others' struggles.

One block to uniting potential allies can be the lack of common experience; another can be lack of common understanding of strategy and tactics. These blocks as well as projudice can be reduced through action training workshops which bring potential allies together.

To increase democracy within the movement. In the 1970s the Movement for a New Society developed a pool of training tools and designs which it shared with the grassroots movement against nuclear power. The anti-nukes movement went up against local electrical companies, and some of the largest corporations in America, and the federal government itself -- and won. The movement delayed construction, which raised costs, and planted so many seeds of doubt in the public mind about safety that the near melt-down of the Three Mile Island plant brought millions of people to the movement's point of view. The industry's goal of 1000 nuclear plants evaporated. The environmentalists succeeded without creating a national structure around a charismatic leader and even without centralized leadership, because they learned the tools of shared leadership and democratic decision-making, through countless workshops, practice, and feedback.

One way to reduce democracy is for leadership to monopolize skills and knowledge. Training, by contrast, spreads the skills and knowledge around, making possible more broadly shared leadership.

Training and a clash of paradigms

Activists start with one arm tied behind them: everyone has been brought up with cultural assumptions which limit the creative use of nonviolent action. The dominant paradigm says: "Power grows out of the barrel of a gun;" "Violence is manly;" "Violence is intrinsic to working class/African American/Latin culture;" "Nonviolent action may have its uses but when more strength is needed, violence is necessary." These limiting beliefs go so deep that even intellectuals have rarely questioned them in a rigorous way. The beliefs are usually held subconsciously even by people who think they have rejected some or all of them on a conscious level. That's what paradigms do: they condition how we see and know the world.

The potential of nonviolent action is a new paradigm, a new framework for understanding power and conflict. The dictatorships which have fallen because of nonviolent action in the past ten years, and a growing body of research, point to the reality of this new paradigm. Millions of people around the world have acted beyond their knowing in recent years -- they've done what intuitively seemed right (nonviolent action), but their beliefs haven't always caught up with them.

Enter: "Training," a way to enable groups and individuals to step into the new paradigm deeply enough so they will be creative and coordinated in their application of nonviolent action.

Training methodologies

Two main training methodologies are in use today: cognitive and experiential.

Cognitive training focusses on concepts and information. The trainer wants to expand participants' options in action situations, and does that through teaching new concepts and sharing case histories from other struggles. If there is limited time for a workshop, cognitive training may consist basically of a briefing: "This is our job and these are things we should look out for." More time enables discussion, case study analysis, scenario development, learning strategic principles -- all in order to internalize basic ideas and plans for action.

Experiential training uses a variety of participatory designs to involve the whole person in the learning process-- emotional, physical, and spiritual dimensions as well as mental. Some of the many training tools are: roleplays, visualizations (used also by athletes for training), simulations. Although we think of experiential training for nonviolent action as fairly new, non-cognitive methods have been used in the past. In the 1930s nonviolent leader Abdul Ghaffar Khan of the Northwest Frontier of colonial India used marching as a major training design in preparing the Pathans to do nonviolent campaigning.

Which kind of training to use -- cognitive or experiential -- depends on the purposes, the participants, the amount of time available, and the skills of the trainer. Usually a combination of the two modalities will be optimal.

Training in what?

Tactical direct action training came to the fore in the '60s, in the U.S. civil rights movement. African Americans used training extensively, especially in the deep South where violence and murder were a daily threat. Largely through roleplay, activists learned to minimize injury and maximize effectiveness. Because of its usefulness in assisting inexperienced people to deal with danger and unpredictability, tactical training is very popular and has now been expanded into the application of third party intervention in conflicts. Ironically, there has also been a partial backlash among some activists who have experienced tactical workshops before demonstrations; having undergone necessarily brief (and sometimes incompetantly led) workshops several times, they write off training as "something I know all about!"

Strategic training is less popular than tactical training. Strategizing is a complex art, poorly understood, and not easily taught. (A handicap is that the research base for nonviolent campaigning is still in early development.) Nevertheless, strategy workshops can often be helpful in sharpening ideas and increasing the sophistication of leaders. The most frequently used tools in strategic training are: scenario-writing, force-field analysis, and (especially for gaining insights into opponent behavior) strategy games.

Team-building and leadership dynamics. A major resource of nonviolent campaigners is the ability to work together. Sporadic isolated acts of heroism do not produce change, however admirable they are. Teamwork, and leadership which builds teamwork, are key areas for training.

Fortunately, nonviolent action as a technique of struggle is diversity-friendly. It can be used across the demographic spectrum (unlike the Marines who look for "a few good [young] men"). A group choosing nonviolent action can with high consistency train with diversity consciousness, bringing out racial, cultural and other differences and using them to enrich the united team needed for effective action.

Trainers have a rapidly-growing set of approaches for team-building, including methods of conflict resolution within the group and decision-making methods which combine efficiency with democracy.

Training as a new craft for meeting old needs

Training is not a panacea -- it cannot make up for weak strategy, corrupt leadership, or an idea whose time has not yet come. Nevertheless, movements and individuals increasingly turn to training as one resource for emboldening, uniting, and democratizing their struggles for justice. Strategic and tactical work can be done in a training context; the skills and dynamics of nonviolent action can be taught. Trainers are learning from each other and from cognate fields how to assist movements even more effectively. There's reason to keep an eye on this new and growing field.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

George Lakey, 56, has led over 1,000 workshops on five continents since his start while teaching at the Martin Luther King School of Social Change. He has led a variety of nonviolent social change projects, engaged in civil disobedience, and accompanied Sri Lankan lawyers threatened with assassination. Author of five books, he has taught at Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges and the University of Pennsylvania.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Michael Beer, Philip Bogdonoff, Nancy Brigham, Chuck Esser, Vivien Sharples, Lynne Shivers, and Peter Woodrow, for their suggestions and assistance.

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