"The Civil Rights Movement's success was based on a coordinated 3-prong strategy of civil disobedi..

[Pirate Smile]

From The Democratic Strategist:

The Civil Rights Movement's success was based on a coordinated three-prong strategy of civil disobedience, grass-roots organizing and mass boycotts. To achieve similar victories, a national "We are the 99%" movement must adopt and apply that same approach


In the coming days the Occupy Wall Street movement faces an extremely complex and difficult series of decisions about its strategy and tactics. It cannot simply repeat the initial tactic of occupying public spaces that it has employed up to now but it has not yet developed any clear alternative strategy for the future.

In debating their next steps the protesters - and the massive numbers of Americans who support them - will turn again and again to the history and example of the civil rights movement for guidance. Martin Luther King's closest advisors including Jessie Jackson and Andrew Young have noted the clear historical parallels that exist between the two protest movements and both activists and observers will urgently seek to find lessons in the struggles of the past.

The discussion, however, will be hindered by the profoundly oversimplified vision that many people today have of how the victories of the civil rights movement were actually achieved. Most Americans have little more than a series of impressionistic images of the civil rights movement - police dogs and fire hoses unleashed against the demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, dramatic marches attacked by police in Selma, Alabama in 1965 and, across the south, sit-ins and freedom rides that rocked the region in the early years of the decade. In this vision, dramatic confrontations with the authorities appear to have been, in effect, the movement's entire "strategy."

But, in fact, behind every major campaign of the civil rights movement there was actually a very organized and coherent three-pronged strategy. To seriously seek guidance for the present in the struggles of the past, it is absolutely indispensible to understand the basic socio-political strategy that the movement employed.

The civil rights movement's three-pronged strategy combined:

(1) Civil disobedience
(2) Grass-roots organizing and voter registration
(3) Boycotts and economic withdrawal


In every single major campaign of the civil rights movement - Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma -- these three elements of the overall strategy were employed in a coherent, mutually supporting and reinforcing way. In contrast, no part of this coordinated approach was ever successful in isolation.

-snip-
Today it is the "We Are Ohio" movement and the Wisconsin recall campaigns, rather than Occupy Wall Street, that represent the modern equivalents of the civil rights movement's grass-roots organizing campaigns. During these recent campaigns against laws designed to eliminate the right to union representation hundreds of thousands of petitions were signed and thousands of volunteers engaged in door to door canvassing, literature distribution, the manning of tables in shopping centers and the operation of phone banks - the hard, grueling, unsung work that is indispensible for successful grass-roots campaigns. The one-on-one, face-to-face organizing techniques of the Ohio and Wisconsin movements actually displayed substantial similarities with the techniques of traditional trade union organizing as well as with the civil rights movement.

In short, comparisons between the movements of today and the civil rights movement cannot be limited to Occupy Wall Street. The "We Are Ohio" and Wisconsin recall campaigns have an equally valid claim to kinship with the earlier struggles of the civil rights era.

The third prong of the civil rights movement's strategy was boycott and economic withdrawal. In the Montgomery campaign the bus system was boycotted, in Birmingham, it was all downtown merchants. In the view of King and his associates it was economic withdrawal that was actually the most powerful single weapon in the nonviolent arsenal. It was the bus boycott that won King's first victory in Montgomery and the boycott of downtown stores that ultimately forced the business and political establishment of Birmingham to negotiate.

-snip-
The modern application of this strategy can now be seen in the "Move Your Money" and related campaigns that call on people to withdraw funds from the major banks and reinvest them in credit unions and other more socially conscious institutions. There are a variety of estimates from credit unions and independent sources that suggest the campaign has already had a significant and measurable effect, but it is also clear that this is still the very earliest trial run for future economic withdrawal campaigns with potentially powerful consequences.



http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2011/11/the_civil_rights_movements_suc.php?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[FirstLight]

1. Happy to be the first K&R

This is nowhere NEAR done...and yes, we CAN all participate...

[Empowerer]

2. There were also other strategies that were critically important:

Including a very carefully planned, orchestrated and effective legal and legislative strategies - without which, the civil disobedience would have been for naught.

[Number23]

7. I was just about to make that same point.

Without the support of legal groups and logistical support ie the SCLC, things may have been a bit different.

[Empowerer]

16. And the role of the NAACP - both legally and legislatively - can never be overestimated

The NAACP lawyers were instrumental in every success of the civil rights movement. For example, the Montgomery Bus Boycott that brought Dr. King to national prominence would have faded away and had no impact were it not for the Brown v. Board of Education decision decided the year before. That case was strategized, tried and argued by Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP General Counsel, who also took the case against segregation on Montgomery, Alabama busses to the Supreme Court.

And all of the major civil rights legislation of that time - the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act, 1968 Fair Housing Act, etc., would have died in Congress without the vigorous lobbying by Clarence Mitchell, the NAACP's chief lobbyist who was so effective, he was called "the 101st Senator" and "The Lion in the Lobby."

Much of this gets lost in the romanticizing of the marches and protests - the protests were extremely effective, but they were only part of the Movement.

[Number23]

18. You are spot on correct

And the role of the NAACP - both legally and legislatively - can never be overestimated

Your points about Marshall are also right on the money. Which is why so many of the black posters here were outraged when Jonathon Tur(d)ley questioned Marshall's intelligence and impact on history.

[frazzled]

3. There was a difference in the civil disobedience in the Civil Rights movement

than in some (not all) of the OWS acts of civil disobedience.

Take the Freedom Riders, for example. Their civil disobedience was specifically aimed at breaking a law in Southern states. They'd go into the bus stations at the stops and sit together, black and white, in the "Whites only" waiting rooms. And then they'd get arrested for doing so. The point was to rescind discrimination laws. Same with lunch counter boycotts, etc.

I approve of such targeted disobedience. I'm not sure breaking civic ordinances in order to camp in a park or blocking a bridge rises to the same level of specificity. We're not aiming to rally for public sleeping--we're supposed to be rallying to oppose laws and practices of financial institutions and banks and the politicians than support these unfair practices causing income disparity.

I do think, say, disrupting the Mortgage Banker's Association meeting (as happened last month here in Chicago) is an appropriate act of civil disobedience (but not blocking ordinary citizens' access to their own branch banks, as has happened in some places). Civil disobedience has to have a point. I hope I'm making sense.

[Pirate Smile]

4. True. The laws themselves were discriminatory and racist. The violence used against the civil rights

protesters got the public on their side.

Your point totally makes sense.

Most people are already on the side of the 99% regarding the problem of vast income inequality. How to aim at the right target in using civil disobedience is going to require some creativity and thought which I know they are working on doing. It makes it more complicated but still is necessary.

[jberryhill]

8. The thing is...

...engagement with the financial system is, at bottom, voluntary.

You CAN join an intentional community which practices sustainable self sufficiency. That most people don't is not really a matter of ability, but of convenience.

If you "can't" join a commune because you'd have to give up your house, car, or various otherpersonal comforts and conveniences, that is a matter of choice and not compulsion.

To find a direct "civil disobedience" route, as opposed to disobedience not directly connected with what is being protested, then you have to find where it is you are compelled to conform with the injustice.

For example if the point is "the lunch counter won't serve people of color," then you have people of color show up for lunch. Enforcement of the injustice will require physical intervention against the unwanted customers who refuse to conform. Then you have exposed what is required to maintain the injustice.

For something like "money has too much influence in politics," you don't have anything to disobey. Your problem is not with what you are being forced to do or not to do. Your problem is with the actions of other people and their ultimate impact upon you. Your participation in that larger picture is that you buy cars, consume fuel, buy food which you do not produce yourself, and otherwise participate in the economy which is ultimately the one that is choking you.

Take something like net neutrality. Opposition to it is fueled by telcos and cable television operators. But start a thread here on whether iPhones are better than android phones, or about what some cable tv personality said, and you'll get a lively discussion among those of us who are putting those dollars into the pockets of the telcos and the cable companies.

In other words, if you don't like the influence of telco money on politics, then your point of engagement is to consider whether you should keep supplying them with the money to do it.

[Azathoth]

5. Bingo. n/t

[Number23]

6. The OWS lawyer who was begging attendees to "Stop smoking weed on public property"

definitely bolsters your argument that not all civil disobedience is the same. Camping out on public property is enough of a public protest without breaking the law on top of that. I think the OWS actions that I have approved of the most was when a group of protestors went into banks and withdrew their funds. That drew alot of excellent publicity to a VERY specific cause that they are fighting for.

The protestors in the CRM knew they had to be on the best behavior. In many cases, they dressed as if they were going to church in the most pristine attire and were mostly silent at the sit ins and even at many marches. In other marches, they sang their hearts out. There would be no criminal behavior (ie smoking weed) ON TOP of the "criminal behavior" of simply protesting.

[jberryhill]

9. However...

I would suggest that the legalization of weed is among the items that many believe should be on the agenda. Hence they ARE engaging in classic civil disobedience by smoking it.

[Number23]

10. Legalizing weed isn't going to help someone about to lose their house

If they want to continue to be compared to the Civil Rights Movement and have legions of people on their side, they need to continue to focus on real issues that affect millions of Americans and give them genuine power.

[jberryhill]

11. Oh, so the agenda is top-down?

The posters all said, "What is your one demand?"

Has a consensus been reached that marijuana legalization is not on the table, so those who think it is can all go home now?

[zipplewrath]

14. The model is probably closer to the Anti-War protests

The antiwar movement utilized civil disobedience, quite effectively, to push their political agenda. Some of it was directly related such as burning of draft cards, skipping physicals, moving to Canada, etc. But large amounts of it were merely of the "attention getting" type, such as what became the "Chicago Riots". It was intended to put those in power in a very negative light while they attempted to enforce laws, usually minor laws associated with large crowds moving or occupying public and private places.

There can be a use to what the OWS folks are doing, it is their lack of any specific "demand" or request for action that is problematic for anyone in a position of political power or influence. Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren can't start going down there and start making promises. Because if they "deliver" the OWS folks won't get up and leave.

Right now, the OWS are basically succeeding in shoving the public discourse to the left a tad. They are walking a fine line because they teeter on the edge of becoming a "rabble" and scaring huge chunks of the 99%. If we do get a second collapse soon, particularly if Europe starts to collapse, they could become very popular, very fast. They won't be feared, they'll be seen as the only hope.

[Pirate Smile]

15. I think the article does a good job of making it clear that all three are needed so OWS has been

necessary & successful in the Civil Disobedience prong but the other two are necessary also - AND there has been clear use of these in the very recent past with Move Your Money and the political actions in Ohio and Wisconsin.

The fact that all three prong are currently being used is very good news and should make it easier to get them to work with & bounce off of each other.

There were TONS of conflicts in the Civil Rights Movement re tactics and strategy. That always happens and will here too but, at least we already have actions which would fall under all three prongs being utilized even if not necessarily coordinated.

[Pirate Smile]

12. kick

[Laelth]

13. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[alcibiades_mystery]

17. A Longer View on the Civil Rights Movement

The "three-pronged" strategy listed here is certainly correct, but it is limited in its viewpoint of the Civil Rights Movement.

The most interesting historical work on the civil rights movement in recent years has focused on what's called the Long Civil Rights Movement. It seeks to track the emergence of the movement beyond the well-known bookends of the mid-1950's (Brown v. Board of Ed and the Montgomery Bus Boycott) to its dissipation in the late 1960's with the "appearance" of more radical groups.

There is a function to the limited civil rights movement narrative in contemporary politics. First, it ignores the fact that non-violent resistance throughout the civil rights movement didn't happen in isolation - it was always a counterweight to more radical versions of resistance. Mainstream liberals today love to say that non-violent resistance is what worked, but if always operated next to other kinds of resistance, and was largely inextricable from those other types, then this is a deeply flawed methodological reading. It's a bit like taking a fist that broke a board and saying that it was really the third and fourth finger that actually broke the board. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it serves its function today in establishing the kind of resistance that will be tolerated. The legend of the non-violent civil rights movement is a form of power.

Second, the "official" histories of the civil rights movement ignore its origins in the anti-lynching movements of the first half of the century and in the Popular Front of the 1930's. It is especially mainstream Democrats who avoid the anti-lynching campaigns, since their failure is a great embarrassment to the Democratic Party as a whole, as supposedly liberal Northern Democrats struck an unholy bargain with racist Dixiecrats to stymy anti-lynching legislation. This goes even to FDR, who shamefully back-burnered any attempt to get anti-lynching legislation passed in order to keep his New Deal coalition together.

It also ignores the deep ties the Civil Rights movement had with lefist groups of the Popular Front, an attempt to strip the Civil Rights Movement of its roots in radical resistance and labor organization. For almost two decades, the generation of people who developed the "three-pronged" strategy of the limited, official civil rights movement were trained in labor schools and labor direct action, networks of education on strategy and tactics that would only come into play when the conditions were right. Rosa Parks wasn't just tired one day. She went to activism camps at Highlander, which was itself part and parcel of the Popular Front labor schools operating throughout the country, and viciously suppressed during McCarthyism. This history of the civil rights movement is also ignored: too leftist, too organized.

The function of the doubly false narrative of the (short) Civil Rights Movement serves a very particular purpose that's being played out in the OP: it asks every people's movement to spring up fully formed, as if from the head of Zeus, all its strategies and tactics well-developed and relevant, so long as they're tolerable to power. It is a false image of the Civil Rights Movement, which developed over the long haul, by halts and jumps, through failures and a multiplicity of tactics, learning and adapting and growing, built in the networks of other movements and movement allies, with their own histories of successes and failures.

The three-pronged approach worked in coordination with other approaches, even if this coordination was not deliberate. It worked where it had previously failed, and carried along with it a history and memory of other approaches, some of which also worked. But what is most important is that we don't demand of any movement that it be the final product at inception, and a final product that was appropriate to its own day and time and perhaps not to ours. When we do that, we are not being historians, but ideologues, and we are not serving people's movements, but the very power that seeks to shape them in advance.