How to Start a Revolution Page #2

I was talking to one of the Karen Commandos

and he says:
Where in the hell

has this information been?

Weve been fighting and killing people for 20 years.

How come we didnt know this?

Some of the Burmese came up to him and asked

if he would write something for the Burmese on

how to move from a dictatorship to a democracy.

Thats the origin of why the book was written:

the Burmese.

I couldnt write about Burma honestly,

because I didnt know Burma well,

and he said not to write about something

you dont know anything about,

so I had to write generically.

If there was a movement that wanted

to bring a dictatorship to an end,

how could they do it?

And so I wrote those theories,

and they were serialized there,

and published in English and in Burmese,

and I thought that was it.

In 1989, Gene traveled to China at the height

of the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.

Tiananmen Square, 1989

It would shape his views about the

importance of planning and strategy.

Lesson 1:
Plan a Strategy

Id gone to Beijing

after the Tiananmen Square

protests were well underway.

That whole event, which it should be remembered,

was not just in Beijing

but reportedly in 350 other cities of China,

similar protests were going on.

But they were not planned.

They were not prepared.

There was no strategic decision.

There was no advanced decision how long you

stay in the square and when you leave.

The students had no plan.

They were improvising all the way through,

and later on we know that many of those

Chinese people who were out on the streets,

in another day, were shot and killed.

The attitude that you simply improvise

and improvisation will bring you

greater success is nonsense.

Exactly the opposite.

That if you dont know what youre doing,

youre likely to get into big trouble.

Serbia, 2000

The government of Slobodan Milosevic, in Serbia,

presided over years of crimes against

humanity and brutal internal repression.

The regime fueled the creation of new democracy

groups in the country fighting, for his removal.

I went to Budapest at the request of the

International Republican Institute,

which was providing support to

the Serbian Opposition Movement,

and one particular part of that

opposition movement was Otpor.

Thats a Serbian word for resistance.

Hes a retired colonel, and he has

this type of military approach,

and the way he speaks is really something that

creates a strange impression

with a bunch of student leaders.

We talked for a while, and I said:

Well, theres something missing here.

We havent talked about whos

leader of this organization.

Who is the leader?

And then one guy said: We dont have a leader.

And I said:
Well, wait a minute guys.

I did not fall off the turnip truck coming over here.

Somebody has to lead an organization that

has mobilized the entire Serbian society.

So we spent probably one hour

fooling him about some stuff,

and the reason for this was that we were not

very comfortable about giving the details

about the organization to the foreigner.

And then they explained to me,

why theres no quote leader.

To keep it away from the government.

The government doesnt know whos in charge.

And I later found out I was talking to the leader,

Srdja Popovic.

Belgrade

Bob began teaching Gene Sharp's lessons

to the new Serbian revolutionaries.

When Bob Helvey gave us the Gene Sharps politics

of nonviolent action, we were quite amazed.

Partly I was ashamed that I didnt

know about such a book before,

even if there was a translation of From

Dictatorship to Democracy in Serbian,

but I had never seen it.

And seeing the knowledge of how power operates,

and pillars of the support operates,

and all this stuff, we needed to learn

the hard way throughout our experience

written systematically on one place

was quite an amazing thing.

One of Otpors first tasks was to create a

symbol of resistance to help unify the people.

Its obvious that we are a majority.

If we can just recognize all of

those who are against Milosevic

by saluting each other with a fist, he would

probably be over within a few years.

Lesson 2:
Overcome "Atomisation"

Atomisation is

when a regime attempts to make

every individual in this society

an isolated unit.

Its one of the main ways that took over their

systems, seek to control their populations,

make them all fear each other,

fearing to speak out and to act together,

never telling your neighbor or even sometimes

a family member what you really think.

By seeing the example of the demonstration

and bravery by other people:

Now its "we", now its "we",

and we can do something that I alone could not.

During the 96-97, we were walking

day after day after day,

and the police was walking streets,

and our numbers would start falling

because it was obviously too boring for the

people to demonstrate every day in harsh winter.

So we said:
Okay, why wont we go home and

try to make noise from our balconies.

We were doing it from 7:30 until 8:00 pm,

as a response to the state TV news.

That was the answer...

we dont watch your crap.

We do our own thing.

From the pots and pans to doing the stickers,

so the stickers can be doing in every building,

and also the things like,

Will you go and prosecute the

kids for wearing Otpor t-shirts

when there is not one single law which

bans wearing anything on a t-shirt?

So for the policemen, getting inside high schools

and arresting high school kids only

because they were wearing the t-shirt,

and then going home and talking to their wife

whose friend was complaining

because her son was arrested.

Getting a dialogue of your kids

was coming now from his school

where nobody wants to spend time with him or her

because their father is now beating

kids from my neighborhood.

And now, this systemic oppression doesnt work.

Lesson 3:
Pillars of Support

These pillars are holding up the government,

like my fingers are holding up this book,

and I developed a strategy to

undermine each of those pillars:

the police,

the [???], the religious

institutions, the workers,

whatever, every organization.

And as they weaken and start to

collapse, the government will collapse

when those pillars are broken.

Ideally we want those pillars not destroyed,

but transferred over to the democratic movement.

If you want these pillars to shift sides,

you need to co-opt people.

Its exactly what Otpor has done.

We were telling the police that we

are both victims of the same system.

There is no reason to have war

between victims and victims.

One of the victims wear blue uniforms,

Other victims wear blue jeans,

but there is no reason for this conflict.

And this worked, really worked.

And it worked in Georgia.

It worked in Ukraine.

It worked in many other places in the world.

This is the way you do.

You go and co-opt from this course of pillars.

You dont throw stones at the police.

Lesson 4:
Resist Violence

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