Introduction to the campaign section
From WRIWiki
By Joanne Sheehan
To be effective, we need to develop strategic nonviolent campaigns.
A campaign is a connected series of activities and actions done over a period of time to achieve specific, stated goals. Campaigns are started by a group of people with a common understanding and vision, who identify the goals and begin the process of research, education and training that strengthens and grows the number of participants who engage in the activities and action.
Demonstrations alone do not end a particular war or correct a deep rooted injustice. Faced with the horrors of the world, it’s easy to do the nonviolent equivalent of lashing out – jumping into action or activity without stepping back or looking ahead. Too often groups go directly from recognizing a problem to picking a tactic. Or we suffer from the “paralysis of analysis”, educating ourselves and others, but never getting to action, and therefore never reaching our goals. The power of a nonviolent campaign comes in the creative combination of tactics, the strategic thinking and commitment of the participants.
A campaign has goals on different levels. There is the specific campaign demand or stated goal. Most campaigns are challenging the policies of people at the top of some hierarchy. To reach our goal, we need to reach out to them to persuade or defy. We do not see these people as enemies, but we do want to stop them from what they are doing – to end a specific injustice.
There are also internal goals such as building the capacity and number of participants. A nonviolent campaign takes people through processes of empowerment. It should be personally empowering — people discovering and exercising their own power against oppression, exclusion, and violence, and for participation, peace and human rights. Groups working on a campaign develop a collective power, learning how to be organisers and become political strategists in the process.
Campaigns should also communicate something of the vision of what we want, leading on to further campaigns that challenge the power structure. Multiple campaigns can move us towards social empowerment that leads to the social transformation we are working for. In our training and planning we need to consider all aspects of this nonviolent social empowerment process: personal empowerment, community power, people power.
To develop an effective nonviolent strategy we need to develop strategic thinking skills. Creative campaigns hold the key to exploring the potential of nonviolence.
