The Strongest Nonviolent Weapons

When an oppressed people faces an oppressing power, there are certain limits on what the oppressed can reasonably expect.  One thing the oppressed usually cannot expect (at least, not by itself) is to end their oppression simply by appealing to the better angels of their oppressors.  For the whole point of oppression is to create an economic and political system which grants all the benefits of a society to a small group of privileged people while externalizing all of the costs of that society onto the oppressed.  This was the goal and chief characteristic of the antebellum American South and of South Africa under apartheid.  Anyone who would want to create such a system therefore has no better angels to appeal to.  The soul of such a person is a piece of garbage.

The Republican Party in the United States has sought to revive such a system.  From the Tea Party to Trump, we all can see the poisonous fruits of their labors.  The Republicans know that they can never win elections in a nation that is composed of many peoples who have been designated by the Republican party as meat to be chewed in a cannibal feast.  Therefore one of their strategies has been to try as hard as possible to restrict the right to vote in the United States by disenfranchising as many of their intended victims as possible.

So we come to Georgia in 2021, where the Republican-controlled state government has recently passed the most restrictive voting law in the United States.  But here we have a beautiful response by some of the people most affected by that law.  For over 1,000 pastors of African-American churches have joined together to urge a boycott of corporations such as Home Depot (also known as Home Cheapo) that refuse to oppose the Georgia law.  The boycott as a tactic is straight out of Gene Sharp's 198 methods.  Note also that these pastors have not called for street protests, thus showing a level of tactical and strategic maturity far beyond that shown by the Black Lives Matter organizers last year.

To be sure, there are some who say that calls for boycotts are "controversial."  Among these is Stacey Abrams, who asserts that a boycott is the wrong move because it would hurt poor Georgians.  She conveniently forgets that the same criticism was made against Black South African liberation leaders in the 1980's when they called for boycotts and international economic sanctions against South African businesses.  She also forgets that most Black South Africans living under apartheid supported the boycotts and calls for economic sanctions.  For they knew that when dealing with corrupt, proud, evil pieces of garbage, the only language that would carry weight was the language of power - the power to impose real costs.  Finally, Ms. Abrams seems to forget that it was the sanctions and boycotts - not merely trying to work through institutional means - that forced the de Klerk regime to renounce apartheid.  In her opposition to an economic boycott of Georgia, Stacey Abrams sounds suspiciously like the leaders of many modern-day "business unions" who dissuade their members from striking.  (Perhaps Stacey Abrams might better be named "Aunt Tammy"?)

To those "bleeding-heart conservatives" who oppose the organizing of economic non-cooperation against oppressors, I have some words.  Over fifty years ago, Thomas Schelling wrote the following:

“[The] tyrant and his subjects are in somewhat symmetrical positions. They can deny him most of what he wants — they can, that is, if they have the disciplined organization to refuse collaboration….They can deny him the satisfaction of ruling a disciplined country, he can deny them the satisfaction of ruling themselves….It is a bargaining situation in which either side, if adequately disciplined and organized, can deny most of what the other wants, and it remains to see who wins.”

In denying the oppressor what he wants, the oppressed must of necessity bear some costs themselves. However, the oppressed can win only by bearing those costs in a disciplined manner, from a position of mutually helping one another so as not to provide any support to the economic structures of the oppressor.  Each member of an oppressed population must ask whether he or she is willing for the "disciplined organization to refuse collaboration" with the oppressor.  Those who are not willing become Uncle Toms (UT's) and Aunt Tammys (AT's).  Given enough of these UT's and AT's, a nonviolent liberation struggle collapses.  Bleeding-heart conservatives such as former President Reagan and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher cry great crocodile tears at the sufferings which oppressed people take on themselves in their struggle to liberate themselves.  Yet those tears will turn to laughter if the oppressed are persuaded to sabotage themselves.  We who are of the oppressed must remember that some things are non-negotiable.  It was for the purpose of learning to organize exactly the kind of strong, coercive nonviolent action described by Schelling that I spent over two thousand dollars of my own money a couple of years ago to take a series of community organizing classes.  I mean business.

As for me, I have a four-pronged hoe that I've been using for several years.  A few weeks ago, the wooden handle broke.  The next hoe I buy will not be from Home Cheapo.  Let's boycott!