Civil Resistance and Non-Violent Direct Action

"If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time."

Noam Chomsky

Non Violent Direct Action (NVDA) has a long history as a way of demonstrating opposition to the harmful activates of political, industrial or other organisations. This style of protest has been around for as long as there have been people willing to stand out from the crowd and speak up against the wrong doings of others. NVDA has Quaker roots, Quakers believe

"It is everyone's duty to bear witness to the truth and to stand in front of evil."

The aim of nonviolence is both dialogue and resistance - dialogue with the people to persuade them and resistance to the structures that compel change.

Nonviolence can be both a political strategy or a moral philosophy that rejects the use of violence in efforts to attain social or political change. As an alternative to both passive acceptance and armed struggle, nonviolence proclaims other means of popular struggle such as civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance or the power of non co-operation combined with persuasion.

The term nonviolence or nonviolent resistance has come to embody a diversity of techniques for social change without the use of force, as well as the underlying political and philosophical rationale for the use of these techniques. Nonviolent resistance is different from pacifism because it is a direct attack on the oppressor's will and sense of right and wrong.

Most advocates of nonviolence draw their preference for nonviolence either from religious or ethical beliefs, or from political analysis. The first justification for nonviolence is sometimes referred to as principled or ethical nonviolence, while the second is known as pragmatic or strategic.

Nonviolent action comprises three categories.

1. Acts of Protest and Persuasion, which include protest marches, vigils, public meetings and tools such as banners, placards, candles and flowers.
2. Non cooperation, the deliberate and strategic refusal to co-operate with an injustice.
3. Nonviolent Intervention, the deliberate and often physical intervention into a perceived unjust event, such as blockades, occupations, sit-ins, tree sitting and critical mass.

Tactics must be carefully chosen, taking into account political and cultural circumstances, and form part of a larger plan.

"Unarmed truth is the strongest power in the universe"

Martin Luther King

Why non violence?

• The powerholders can always call on more force and greater resources than protesters.
• Violence creates a negative image of the protests and often alienates people who we are trying to rally on our side.
• Violence never produces long term solutions, there is always residue of hurt and pain that will erupt later.
• Bringing about peace by violent means is a real contradiction in terms, peace can only come about by peaceful protest.
• Respect for others is a central theme of non violence. By our actions we are seeking to win our opponents over to our way of thinking, which involves a change of heart, which cannot be achieved by force.

NVDA Movements

Human Rights

• Abolition of slavery
• Women?s suffrage
• Trade union movement
• U.S civil rights movement
• Nazi occupied Denmark

National Independence

• India
• Pakistan
• The Philippines
• Czechoslovakia
• Ukraine

Nuclear Disarmament

• Greenham Common
• Anti-Trident campaigns

A NVDA means you are:

• peaceful
• considerate
• compassionate
• gentle
• acting in the interests of the group, not in the heat of the moment

By participating in a demonstration, you are making people aware of something they either didn't know about or had not considered to be a problem. It's best to approach your action with humility and generosity, rather than anger and self righteousness. Loud, insulting and dangerous behaviour is not a part of NVDA or Faslane 365/student blockade.

Remember when participating in a nonviolent direct action that you are not out to make enemies but to win people over to our cause.