I wasn't planning to write another blog post this weekend. And I have grown to dislike regular exposure to the news. But the police murder of Tyre Nichols came to my attention within the last few hours. Tyre Nichols was an unarmed African-American man who was brutally beaten to death by the police in Memphis, Tennessee. Tennessee is a red state ruled by Republicans and I am sure that many of its citizens are white evangelicals who loudly proclaim the name of Jesus even though they have no intention of doing anything He actually commanded them.
The question that naturally arises after yet another White murder of unarmed Black people is how we who are people of color should respond. I wrote an extensive series of blog posts on that subject a little more than two years ago. Those posts can be found on the sidebar of this blog, under the headings, "From Dictatorship to Democracy" and "Resistance In The Age of Trump." These posts deal with the subject of strategic nonviolent resistance as a means of liberation of historically oppressed peoples. Let me summarize some key points from those posts as follows:
- Strategic nonviolent resistance is an effective means of liberation - especially when it is guided by wise strategy.
- Strategic nonviolent resistance does not consist of trying to convert the oppressor by appealing to the "better angels" of the oppressor.
- Strategic nonviolent resistance works best when an oppressed population withdraws its cooperation from a system of oppression in ways that impose coercive costs on that system and its masters.
- The best kind of coercive costs which an oppressed people can impose are economic costs. Think of things like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, for instance.
- A key component of effective strategic nonviolent resistance consists of the oppressed population building their own structures for individual and communal self-reliance. This way they will not need to rely on the structures of the oppressor.
- Effective resistance does not rely solely or even primarily on mass protest marches.
- Mass protest marches are not as effective now as they were in the past, because oppressors have learned how to discredit the protests by sending agents provocateurs into the marches to cause violence and vandalism.
- One of the main strengths of strategic nonviolent resistance is its nonviolent character. Therefore beware of any people (especially from the white community) who try to persuade you to mix violence (including vandalism or property damage) of any kind into your struggle. If you listen to them, you will give the oppressor a ready-made excuse to increase his oppression. That is why the oppressor sends such people to try to infiltrate your struggle. The oppressor will use any means to try to force your struggle to turn violent. If the oppressor can successfully tempt you to use violence or to destroy property, then he can justify using force to violently crush you. Maintain nonviolent discipline! If you maintain nonviolent discipline, then any violence which your oppressor inflicts on you will backfire on him instead.
- This means that you should probably not listen to anything said by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict from 2016 onward or to anything said by Erica Chenoweth from 2019 onward. These people used to give good advice up to 2016. After Trump entered the White House, the advice of the ICNC began to turn to garbage. (I wonder - was that change deliberate?) And in my opinion, Erica Chenoweth's recent book titled Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs To Know is a continuation of that garbage.
- Effective strategic nonviolent resistance requires people to develop the art of strategic thinking and of learning to work together in long-term projects of collective self-reliance. Start developing these skills.
