Nonviolent Patriot Daze

Written By Jonathan Krogh

Dear Peacemaking Resisters: 

With thanks to Shankar Vedantam’s program Hidden Brain, I recently listened to an interview with Harvard Kennedy School Professor Erica Chenoweth, who uses scientific analysis to interpret the efficacy of revolutionary uprisings around the globe. Chenoweth’s initial academic research focused on the military history of armed uprisings, but a conversation with scholar of nonviolence Maria Stephan resulted in a calibration in which they analyzed the effectiveness of nonviolence in bringing about political independence. The results of their study were surprising. They studied 323 cases of revolutionary opposition over the past century and discovered that 25% of armed uprisings were successful in bringing political independence, but 50% of nonviolent campaigns succeeded in overturning repressive regimes. (The results of their research, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict,” were published in the journal International Security, 33 (1): 7-44.)

The effect of nonviolence, Chenoweth and Stephan argue, is due to the level of intergenerational participation in nonviolent resistance. Violence is a young man’s game, but nonviolence can be undertaken by women and men of any age. More often than not, effective campaigns targeted the absurdity of the government’s repression, making the ruling regime look absurd in the eyes of the nation and the world. One of their most colorful examples came from Morocco, where the government had made it illegal to fly the flag of the Western Sahara’s resistance. Organizers publicly announced a day of rebellion in which it was advertised that the opposition flag would be unfurled in the city. The city center was flooded with armed security guards ready to shoot on sight and arrest protesters, but what the demonstrators had done was round up hundreds of stray cats and tie little flags to their tails. When the cats were released, it was a photographer’s field day, snapping pictures of police in riot gear attempting to herd feral cats into awaiting arrest vans.

Perhaps the most remarkable statistic that came from Chenoweth and Stephan’s research was the percentage of participation they deemed necessary for a nonviolent resistance campaign to be effective. They determined that active participation in demonstrations by just 3 1/2% of the population resulted in inevitable, irreversible change. The number seems small, but Chenoweth points out that number is actually quite substantial. In the United States that would be approximately 12 million Americans willing to participate in acts of sustained nonviolent resistance. For context, the most recent No Kings rallies on March 28 mustered nearly nine million attendees (the largest single-day protest turnout in U.S. history). Nationally, it was reported there were only 105 arrests, testimony to the civility of the protesters and the continued effectiveness of the First Amendment.

All this has resulted in my musing over our continued glorification of violence. In Massachusetts, my grandchildren have today off because it is Patriots Day (actually a three-day weekend because Patriots Day was April 19), commemorating the beginning of the Revolutionary War in Lexington and Concord with the “shot heard 'round the world.”

We have been taught that American freedom was forged through violent resistance and armed encounter with the foul Brits. But a 2013 book edited by Maciej J. Bartkowski, Recovering Nonviolent History (Lynne Rienner Publishers), contains a chapter in which Presbyterian historian Walter Conser argues that the Revolutionary War was, in reality, a counterrevolution. King George was attempting to regain colonies he had already lost. For over a decade preceding the war, colonists engaged in all forms of nonviolent resistance through economic non-cooperation and the development of alternative institutions like domestic judicial institutions, political conventions and other activities that thwarted the monarch’s rule. They effectively freed themselves before violent hostilities broke out. Perhaps we should reconsider the way we tell the story.

Seeking to break up our romance with violence, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor

Jonathan Krogh
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