Students of principled nonviolence have long upheld Aung San Suu Kyi, Buddhist and leader of Burma’s democracy movement, as a luminary of nonviolent social change. On Saturday, the Burmese military junta allowed 500 monks to visit Suu Kyi at her home-prison, yielding to the recent massive nonviolent demonstrations by monks, students, and civic leaders. It appears that the monks have set up a win-win situation, where the government is hesitating to act and crush the demonstrations (as they did in 1988) because it would likely cause the nonviolent uprising to spread all across the country in protest.  Marches have reached as high as 100,000 participants at time of this writing (Tuesday, Sept. 25).

Check out the story on Common Dreams:

“Burma ‘Reaches Tipping Point’ As Monks Take On the Military Junta
Monks stage more protests against its military rulers – despite threats of force”
by David Williams

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/25/4087/

Maria Stephan of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) and Erica Chenoweth of the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered remarkable findings in their study of the relative strategic effectiveness of violent and nonviolent asymmetric conflict.

Their study of terrorist groups, guerrilla movements, and nonviolent resistance movements found that nonviolent resistance movements have achieved partial or full success nearly 90% of the time, compared to 50% for guerilla warfare. It is based on the newly-created Nonviolent and Violent Conflicts and Outcomes (“NAVCO”) dataset, which compiles data on the characteristics of various violent and nonviolent insurgency campaigns and attempts to systematically explain their outcomes.

Another recent study conducted by terrorism expert Max Abrahms found that terrorist groups have achieved their stated objectives a mere 7% of the times. These findings suggest that when it comes to fighting an adversary of superior military might, nonviolent civilian-based resistance is more effective than terrorism or guerilla warfare.

“Student Strikes Make History ” by Will Parrish: Written by one of the organizers of the antiwar strike at UC Santa Barbara on February 15, this piece is a fabulous history of the power of student strikes in the past century.

“February 15th’s strike against war at UCSB follows in a long tradition of similar student actions that have made history across the globe. The successes of these strikes have included radical social reforms, overthrown dictators, and even the end of unjust wars…..For over a century, student strikes have proved to be one of the most powerful and effective means by which citizens in any nation can organize at a grassroots level to foment meaningful social change.”

For more reflections on the Santa Barbara strike, check out an essay by protest organizer Darwin Bond-Graham.

In a Jan. 30th article in the San Francisco Chronicle, C.W. Nevius characterizes the conflict over the oak grove slated for destruction on UC Berkeley campus as a “ classic no-win situation”:
“If Cal officials leave the branch-sitters up in their trees, nothing will ever get done. But if they try to drag them down – an official said on a conference call Monday that ‘they haven’t decided on that’ – they risk creating some really ugly news footage.”

Nonviolent activists familiar with the work of George Lakey, theoretician of nonviolent struggle and director of Training for Change, will recognize instantly that this “no-win” situation for the administration is actually a “win-win” situation for the Save the Oaks movement. Indeed, it was designed to be that way; the most strategic nonviolent actions are those in which the protestors achieve a goal no matter what reaction the authorities chose.

For example, when Gandhi led South African Indians in burning their identification cards in 1907, the nonviolent discipline of the satyagrahis, and the justice of their cause, enabled them to “win” through the violent response to their action. The authorities’ attempt to repress the movement generated sympathetic publicity, not to mention the unsettling realization that these demonstrators held a new kind of power.

I had my own apparent “no-win” situation at the Oak Grove a few days ago, when a campus police officer asked me to show my ID or leave the grove. Either action would have accomplished a goal of the UCPD: whether they intimidate members of the movement through profiling, or force them to physically abandon their claim to the space, both seem effective strategies for exerting their authority.

On the other hand, neither of these choices met my need for dignity, freedom, and fairness, so I asked for a third option, which for me was accepting whatever use of force the officer had as a “consequence” of my refusal. It turned out to be a trespass citation, similar to a traffic ticket, which the officer wrote out despite his surprise at my stated preference.

This painful situation made me think about how nonviolent action must aim to escape the win-lose paradigm altogether if it wants to be truly transformative. When the demonstrators – or UCPD – set up “win-win” situations, they are seeking to win at the other party’s expense, rather than to win over the other party.

The field of Conflict Transformation reveals deeper possibilities for change – by moving the parties past their stated interests closer to their real needs, and most importantly by transforming the relationship between the parties. In principled nonviolence, “win-win” signifies something different than zero risk of failure – it signifies the hope that ultimately there will be no losers in the conflict, as persuading — and even, if time does not allow for persuasion, coercing oppressors into ceasing violent action helps them recover their humanity, which is truly a share in the victory.