Everyone should probably read this 3 part series once in their lifetime.

A foundational text in nonviolent direct action theory and practice, Gene Sharp's first volume develops a theoretical framework for successful nonviolent action, including a history of successful nonviolent tactics through the ages. The three-volume "Politics of Nonviolent Action" has been used as a textbook in countless social change movements, most recently in the successful nonviolent overthrow of the Serbian government and Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 by the student group Otpor.

Very interesting insight into the nature and planning of non-violent protests and the first part of the "handbook" for nonviolent action. Sometimes a bit repetitive.

This series takes the "idealism" of using nonviolent action for social change and resolution of conflicts and lays out how to do it. It gives strategy. It give analysis. It gives examples the world over.

Years ago, when I was in college in the 1980s, I got into a discussion with a friend about nonviolence. I said that war is sometimes necessary, for example to stop a great thundering juggernaut of evil, such as Hitler’s war machine. My friend said, oh no, nonviolence could always work, and I just needed to study more about the times nonviolence had worked in history. She gave me two books, this one and another one. As both were dry and textbooky-looking, I never read either one, but I never returned them, either, a source of lingering guilt. For years I was not sure where the books were, and now I have no idea where my college friend might be.

This past summer I have found myself thinking about nonviolence again, as Black Lives Matter protests ended with broken shop windows and fires. I understand the depth of people’s anger, but nonviolence seemed necessary, if only for the reason that even a single rock thrown gave the opposition cause to discredit the entire movement. But if there is no Dr King there to speak words of inspiration, and if the other side is sending saboteurs to incite violence on purpose, with the intention of discrediting the movement (a documented fact), then… how?

Then I was dusting a shelf, and there were the books. And now, 40 years later, we shall see what Mr. Gene Sharp has to say. First of all, this book, although short, looks intimidating, with its pages of notes, and references to Hume and Hobbes. But I found it surprisingly easy reading. There is one central point, which he makes over and over: power comes from the consent of the governed. Even if the leader is a dictator. The power of even a harsh and cruel ruler will crumble away if no one will do what he says.

You may say, yes, but that leader has guns. And prisons, and police. And Mr Sharp may say, but the leader is still dependent on workers to build and ship the guns, and dependent on a bureaucracy to carry out his orders, and if they do not, then the leader’s power is gone. In a discussion of a 1944 resistance against Jorge Ubico in Guatemala, the book says, in effect, what’s the dictator to do? Kill everyone in the country? He can kill a few here and a few there, but if he has to kill everyone who disagrees with him, then he has to leave.

Leaders know this, that they depend on the cooperation of the people, but they don’t think the people know that they have this power, and they are determined that the people not discover that they have this power, which is why leaders often crack down hard on any resistance, even if it is over a minor point, and if leaders do grant concessions, will often say they are doing it for some other reason, not because of the protest. (At this point I thought of the movie A Bug’s Life, where Flik tells the ants, in effect, “Why do you let the grasshoppers boss you around and take all our food? There’s more of us than there are of them.” In that movie, he leads the ants in a violent, not a non-violent rebellion, but the principle of the people holding a power they don’t recognize is the same.)

Other points: Nonviolent action has been used throughout history, many times successfully, but it has not been studied in the way war has. That is true. There are whole schools of military strategy, and have been for centuries, while many examples of nonviolent struggle go unremembered. Even when some people have led successful nonviolent campaigns, they have done so by making it up as they go along. While there have been successes in nonviolent action, imagine how much more successful it might be if people studied the techniques that had worked in the past.

Nonviolent action is not passively doing nothing. It is pointed action, just nonviolent. Its practitioners need to be organized, unified, strong, smart, and brave. They have to be willing to stand firm in the face of a backlash. (At this point I thought that in a nonviolent protest, some people are likely to die, but if you are having a violent rebellion, people are almost certain to die. People always die in a war. This insight is my own, not the author's. Sharp does say that there will be consequences, but stops short of saying that participating in nonviolent protest might get you killed.)

Most of this book is theory. At the end there are some examples of nonviolent action in history: The American colonies’ resistance to unpopular British laws and taxes, before the shooting of the American revolution started, Gandhi’s Salt March, the Norway teachers’ strike in WWII, the Montgomery bus boycott, and others.

But I am still left with questions. Most of my questions still boil down to the one question I began with: How? So, I have ordered Books Two and Three (which, if their titles are to be believed, address the question of how): The Methods of Nonviolent Struggle, and The Dynamics of Nonviolent Struggle. And we shall see.