How to Start a Revolution Page #3

The many people in conflict situations

that would like to use violence,

but their opponents really have more

military weapons and weapons of violence,

usually physical weapons,

than the potential resistors have,

the resistors choose to fight with violence.

Their opponent has all the advantages in that

situation because youre choosing to fight

with your opponents best weapons.

But you can choose to fight with a totally different

kind of weapon in these nonviolent forms,

which are much more

difficult for the opponent to counteract.

Big concentration tactics are

very difficult to control.

You have 20,000 peaceful demonstrators

and one idiot breaking out a window.

These people got all the media.

So this is the message which can

efficiently undermine your movement.

You would go on a march and there is a

risk of the people getting arrested,

so what would you normally do?

Instead of putting the big guys in front,

you will put the girls in front,

you will put the grandmas in front,

you will put the military veterans in front.

So the police is now faced with the friendly faces.

And these people are actually carrying

the flowers and the banners and smiling,

so you make the situation less threatening,

so you make the possibility of

a violent outcome very small.

October the 5th should be seen in the

context of successful strategy,

and that was not the day like many

spectators or media, like CNN.

They just see it as a big bunch of people,

revolution, boom, and its all over.

It was, first of all, ten years

of attempts and failures,

and two years of resistance of

Otpor, five different campaigns,

and we were setting the victory on the elections.

Serbian National Election

September 2000

In September 2000, Serbia went to the polls.

But Otpor expected Milosevic would fix the election.

We knew that Milosevic will lose,

and we knew that he will not

accept the fact that he has lost.

So around 3 pm, you hear like two

to 300,000 people on the square,

and there was a nonviolent takeover

of the physically of this building.

And this is where the people who broke

into the building, on October the 5th,

found many leaflets pre-marked for Milosevic.

So this is where, actually the physical cheat was

taking place on the second floor of this building.

It was more like a symbolic takeover,

because what was the real takeover was

that Milosevic lost power that day,

because police disobeyed,

because he ordered the military to get through

the barracks after 3 pm and they disobeyed.

This is where he lost the power.

What you are looking at on the TV and

physical overtaking of the building,

was just a symbol of him,

losing authority that day.

I think what we learned from Bob and what comes

and derives from Gene Sharp thinking and writing,

influenced the way we think,

and also made our struggle more

efficient in a very important point

when we were preparing for a resistive struggle.

And yes, I think what Bob and Gene are

doing are precious around the world,

and we strongly believe that the nonviolent

revolutions cannot be exported or imported,

but the knowledge on how to successfully

implement nonviolent struggle

can and is transferred from one

group to another as we speak.

Well, I felt good that here was a

revolution that occurred non-violently.

There was no violence on the part

of the democratic opposition,

and it shows that what Gene was

talking a bout year after year after year,

There are realistic alternatives to violent conflict.

Well, I mean, after Serbia, we were working with

Georgians and Ukrainians and Lebanese and Maldivians

and Iranians and Zimbabweans and Colombians

and Guatemalans and West Papuans

and the groups from places in the world

I couldnt literally find on a map.

Georgia, 2003

Then, from Serbia, the news spread to Georgia,

which was under a very repressive regime,

and then to Ukraine, which again had

problems, and it spread there,

and then to a series of other countries in the

southern tier of the former Soviet Union.

Ukraine, 2004

Vlodymyr Viatrovich was a leader

of Ukraine's Orange Revolution.

He used Gene's book to convince activists that

there was a powerful alternative to violence.

The protester community had

various schools of thought.

In particular, there were people

ready to use some kind of force.

The book in question

is Gene sharp's book, From Dictatorship to Democracy

The central concept of that book,

fighting dictators non-violently,

was very pertinent for us.

That was the idea that pretty

much shaped the protest

that led to the Orange Revolution of 2004.

We're united, we're many...

I think that tens of thousands of people, no more,

ever received Sharp's ideas directly from his book.

But the ideas themselves,

no longer linked to Gene Sharp,

reached hundreds of thousands of

people in the Orange Revolution.

We're united, we're many,

we won't be conquered!

So if we're to speak of his ideas,

even if the people didn't know they were Sharp's,

they were still widespread and influential.

Yushchenko! Yushchenko!

On the top floor of Gene's

home is his orchid house,

a refuge from the work below.

They take quite a bit of work.

They became very important because

it was something I could treat,

as they needed to be treated,

and not expecting miracles,

but if you dont treat orchids right or anything

else in life, then its not going to thrive.

- How did it feel watching your work spread?

- Oh, that spread was really quite remarkable,

I always think.

Im still amazed.

Im still amazed.

To have this piece that I

regarded as very introductory,

I think its maybe 70 or 80 pages,

to take off like that was a confirmation that

the analysis was more or less accurate.

It didnt spread because of good propaganda,

or some sales pitch.

It spread because people found it usable.

They found it important.

The books are there.

The literature is there.

Its online. Its in peoples homes

and peoples hard-drives,

and its being disseminated at a level where

that cannot stop, and it cannot be stopped.

People go to great lengths to discredit this work,

and there was one case where President

Chavez had referred to our staff as

the bunch of gringos at the Albert Einstein

Institution dont understand Venezuela,

and I thought:
Well, its true that we may not

fully understand the situation in Venezuela.

Its probably quite complex,

but Im not a gringo.

Gene Sharp, George Bush,

and the ideologues of this

soft coup with a slow fuse

Gentlemen, you can forget this

plan of yours in Venezuela.

In 2008, the Iranian government

broadcast a propaganda video

accusing Gene of working for the CIA.

The White House,

Washington D.C.

Gene Sharp, the theoretician of civil disobedience

and velvet revolutions,

who has published treatises on this subject.

He is one of the CIA agents

in charge of America's

infiltration of other countries.

Well, youve seen our office.

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