I’m Done Arguing About Nonviolence vs. Diversity of Tactics.

For years I’ve been frustrated by debates about violence and nonviolence, and I’d been thinking that someday I would contribute something of value to hopefully change the repetitiveness of the conversation. I didn’t imagine that my doing so would be in what’s been feeling like a political pressure-cooker.

I started writing this in the Fall of 2020 in the lead-up to the presidential election in the US, because of concerns about the possibility of a coup and potential grassroots violence. By mid-December, it seemed clear that the coup wasn’t going to happen, and I started to feel less rushed and more perfectionist about writing. But my second concern appears to be less marginal than I originally considered. The January 6th riot and the polarized media coverage about it have fueled my concern about political violence becoming more normalized. I don’t ultimately know what will come of this or if unrest is on the horizon in the near future. But the conditions that gave rise to such intense polarization aren’t going away anytime soon, and neither are the over 300 million guns that exist in the US.

I’m aching to contribute to our collective tool belt as we prepare to face what will likely be very difficult choices about how to respond to what lies ahead.

I’ve aimed to dedicate much of my life and energy toward shifting political and economic structures so that we might organize ourselves in ways that care for the needs of all humans and the planet we share. It is painful and terrifying to witness the possibility of things becoming even more dire than they are now. What’s more, things could escalate quite quickly, regardless of whatever unresolved tensions and conflicts we have, and regardless of whatever preparedness or lack of preparedness we have.

We have to work with what we’ve got, and I hope sharing my experience and thoughts will be one more addition to whatever we have on that collective list.

In this essay, I consistently refer to a large “we” when I am speaking, not because I think we are all the same or experiencing all of the same consequences of political, social, and economic structures, but because we are interdependent whether it is convenient for us to acknowledge it or not, and I want to counter widespread separation and disempowerment that leaves us feeling like what each of us does ultimately won’t matter. I am using “we” to invite a larger circle of responsibility and agency.

A Journey Through a Dilemma

If you have spent any time in any sort of activist movement or participated in any kind of campaign for a specific goal or change in the US, then you have probably experienced some debate about nonviolence vs. violence or diversity of tactics. Some people try to steer those conversations toward what is effective, which sort of side-steps the question by advocating for “diversity of tactics,” which supposedly doesn’t decide which is better. Some people advocate for rigid adherence to nonviolence, based on principles about what they believe is moral and right. If your experience is anything like mine over the last two decades, then you know that rarely do people switch “sides” during these debates.

All sorts of extremes in behavior can take place when the conversation is highly polarized. For example, in many instances adherents to nonviolence have actually called the cops on other activists for taking actions that cross the line into what they see as violence, utilizing the violence of a racist and unjust system to enforce their ideas about what is an acceptable form of resistance. And I can’t count the number of times I have seen people who advocate for diversity of tactics intentionally disrupting nonviolent actions and rallies, putting children and other vulnerable attendees in danger on top of the impact of interrupting whatever the organizers spent time originally planning. In each of those instances, potential relationships of solidarity are squandered, and mistrust becomes rampant.

No amount of workshops or discussions on the subject has really gotten us anywhere in terms of culturally shifting the conversations or recurrent choices. It has been an open question for so many decades that it can be exhausting for those of us who continually watch the circular talk with no hope for integration or mutual understanding.

I have a lot of lived experience with both the appeals and the inadequacies of each position, and I now hold data about this in my body. I’m not hoping to argue for just taking the best of each, I actually want to propose ways to integrate the information that is held within me about the ongoing controversy, rather than look to create a compromised hybrid-version that avoids important questions or differences.

I got really involved in anarchist organizing and political thinking in 2001 at age 16, and quickly became totally committed to diversity of tactics. I saw what people called nonviolence as basically one-sided violence, where the state got to be as violent as it wanted and we could still call it nonviolence if we shamefully didn’t fight back. I also saw it as hugely privileged and condescending to tell others how to resist their own oppression, which I understood nonviolent ideology to be doing.

I was part of communities that advocated for diversity of tactics, and, as part of that, also often advocated for violent resistance. But after many years, I saw that violence couldn’t be easily compartmentalized in our lives, and the communities that advocated for violence were being ravaged by internal violence, assault, division, and dehumanization. I, and others, were getting exhausted, hurt, and disillusioned. When I learned that police and military families have much higher than average domestic violence rates, it became clear to me that the internal violence we were experiencing in my community wasn’t an anomaly. It’s not different when we do it, even if we have far less power than official armed forces.

Like a pendulum, I swung the other direction. I became committed to my new understanding of nonviolence, believing that if our ultimate vision was a world free from coercion where all of our needs mattered, we needed to use nonviolent means and dialogue with others to get there. I understood that this would be harder, but more likely to yield long term results and fully liberated communities. I wasn’t rigid about it, and I didn’t even always use the term nonviolence. It might seem odd, but I actually in some way found it violent to tell others I was committed to nonviolence, even though I deeply believed in it. At the time, I used the term when I was confident others would understand what I meant by it.

I really enjoyed the relationships I formed with people I met through the nonviolence world. It’s not that all the new people and groups I met were perfect or never had conflict or internal violence. It’s that there was much more resourcefulness to deal with it, along with many more expressions of love (I am not saying in every instance, only overall). These groups also tended to be much more racially and economically diverse than the communities I was in that advocated diversity of tactics (again, not universally, only overall). Coming from racially and class-diverse Muslim communities in New York, this felt a lot more normal to me than the anarchists I had been around that were majority white and often from upper-middle class backgrounds.

I went deep in both directions before arriving where I am now, which I believe is more integrated, and could theoretically be described as both or neither, though I prefer to explain my ideas rather than use terms that each already carry legacies.

I have met many people who began their journey on the side of nonviolence, and settled in the diversity of tactics camp. This makes sense, because here in the US, nonviolence is talked about in many mainstream arenas (albeit in a shallow, diluted, and disjointed way), so it is very possible that many more people are exposed to it first. The few that I know who began on the diversity of tactics side and then shifted toward nonviolence, have often settled there quite rigidly. This is similar to my experience, though I didn’t quite settle.

I have been humbled too many times to believe I am the only one who has the perspective I have, and my guess is that there are many who feel aligned with me, though we all may use different words to describe it. And yet I want to share what I am thinking, because having gone as far as I did in each direction, I have a very deep sadness and gnawing impatience about the consequences of the continued polarization, and I long for the divide to begin to shift.

There were two notable turning points for me in my journey: one early on, and one much more recently.

In 2003, I hitchhiked and hopped freight trains with friends to attend a prisoner support conference in Eugene, OR called Break The Chains. There, I saw Craig Rosebragh speak. I later learned that he was at first very committed to Gandhian nonviolence, and then later advocated for revolutionary violence, including in a book called The Logic of Political Violence. Craig was formerly the spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which advocates for property destruction and sabotage to protect the Earth, while being committed to never physically harming any life, human or non-human, in the process.

At the conference, Craig talked about how he came to realize that property destruction was violence. In the example he gave, if someone destroys the files of a scientist’s life work on something, like genetically-modified trees, there is a harmful impact on the person who spent years doing the work, even if the harm is not physical and even if the action was taken in order to care for the health of forests. Realizing that property destruction, however well intentioned, was still often violent, didn’t lead him to disavow property destruction. But he was no longer willing to claim it as nonviolent.

This really affected me, both his courage to say it to a room of people who likely disagreed with that assessment, and the nuance he brought to holding the perspective. I thought of other examples, like Kristallnacht in WWII where Jewish homes and businesses were vandalized as part of a campaign of anti-Semitic terror, and how property destruction has been wielded many times throughout history as part of racist violence. Even though I continued to adhere to a diversity of tactics mentality for another 10 years or so, those few sentences from Craig Rosebragh influenced me in thinking critically about definitions of violence and the impacts of actions.

About 16 years later, in 2019, I was at a Nonviolent Direct Action training led by my partner, Iridaea. He was leading us through an exercise designed to reveal differences in perception about violence and nonviolence. I had done it before, and perhaps you are familiar with it. Sometimes called “the spectogram,” the room is divided into quadrants. On two opposite walls, there are signs, one with the word “violence”, and the other with “nonviolence.” On the other two walls, there is “effective” on one side, and “ineffective” on the opposite wall. The trainer reads a series of examples of actions and asks participants to stand in whatever quadrant of the room represents how violent or nonviolent they think the action example is, and how effective or ineffective they think it is. The actions are anything from the Boston tea party to breaking windows to having a sit-in, and participants move around the room to show what their assessment is. The trainer will often ask people why they chose their position, people with mainstream perspectives as well as outliers, to make it visible to everyone why people chose to stand where they are.

I have never liked this exercise, even though I could kind of see why it could be valuable in showing people that there are often varied perspectives in any given group. In this particular workshop, I finally realized why I didn’t like it so much. I raised my hand, and said something along the lines of, “This makes it look like nonviolence and violence are on a spectrum. Really what this should say is ‘Not Violent’ and ‘Violent.’ Not being violent doesn’t make something nonviolent. Nonviolence is an actual thing, with principles and practices that interrupt a cycle of violence. You could be doing nothing and it doesn’t make it nonviolent.”

About two weeks later I read Kazu Haga’s book, Healing Resistance, where he talks about the exact same concept with much more depth and clarity than I had in that moment at the workshop. He says this is the reason many people choose to differentiate between non-violence, with a hyphen, and nonviolence, the practice. He describes a first-hand situation that illustrates the difference:

“For whatever reason, the specific corner I live on seems to attract a lot of conflict… One day, I was taking a nap in my apartment, when I was woken up by a commotion below my window; a man and a woman were yelling at each other. I tried to go back to sleep, but the fight kept getting louder and getting worse. Finally, I decided to get out of bed and look outside, and I saw a woman on the ground being beaten, crying and screaming for help. I jumped up, put on my shoes, and ran downstairs. By the time I arrived, about fifteen of my neighbors had also come outside, but they were just watching this woman getting beat, doing nothing to help. I managed to break up the fight, and get the two to walk away from each other, one fuming with anger and the other in tears. My neighbors were practicing ‘non hyphen violence’…They were being explicitly ‘not violent’. In fact, you could argue that I was more violent than they were, since I used a limited amount of physical force to pull the two apart… If we define nonviolence as ‘not violent,’ then we can hide behind the veil of nonviolence while still condoning and perpetuating or even inflicting harm. Our commitment to ‘nonviolence’ could become an act of violence.”

You can imagine how relieved I was to hear this perspective. It gave much more depth to the realization I had had only two weeks earlier. It reignited my gnawing impatience I had about doing something to shift the conversation.

There are two huge misunderstandings about nonviolence and advocating for violence, and I believe that integrating these two is where any hope lies for transforming the polarized, circular conversation and its ongoing impacts. The misunderstanding about violence or diversity of tactics is that it isn’t choiceful and principled. In fact, many of those perspectives include discernment about how and when we use force. The misunderstanding about nonviolence is that it is characterized by inaction, and doesn’t involve using force to protect life and dignity. In fact, this is central.

Myth #1: Advocates for violence are reactive and unprincipled in their tactical choices

Perhaps the most well-known example of discernment in use of force comes from Malcolm X, who famously said (emphasis mine);

“We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”

That “by any means necessary” is a form of discernment, was pointed out to me by Miki Kashtan, first in person, and then later and more expansively in her essay “Is Nonviolent Use of Force an Oxymoron?” Malcolm X doesn’t say just “by any means,” or “by any means we happen to feel like.” He clarifies that means will be whatever is necessary to defend the rights he lists.

Discernment is exactly the reason so many groups that advocate diversity of tactics, like the ELF, also choose not to harm living beings, and instead to turn toward sabotage and property destruction as a means of creating pressure. Along with the ELF, The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Weather Underground are examples of groups that practiced this type of discernment. Each of them has engaged in property destruction, bombing, and economic sabotage, all while making efforts to assure that their actions wouldn’t physically harm any living beings. They are practicing principled discernment in the use of force.

Even when people in the diversity of tactics camp advocate for actions that are likely to physically harm living beings, it is still within some expressed reasonable discernment that the conditions are so dire that the violence is necessary to protect the life and dignity of the oppressed. Whether anyone agrees with the reasoning and assessment in any given situation is entirely separate from the fact that there is often a clear discerned choice based on an assessment of what the situation calls for. Peter Gelderloos talks about this in his book How Non-violence Protects the State; (emphasis mine)

“Millions of people die every year on this planet for no better reason than a lack of clean drinking water. Because the governments and corporations that have usurped control of the commons have not found a way to profit from those people’s lives, they let them die. Millions of people die every year because a few corporations and their allied governments do not want to allow the production of generic AIDS drugs and other medicine. Do you think the institutions and the elite individuals who hold the power of life or death over millions give a fuck about our protests? They have declared war on us, and we need to take it back to them. Not because we are angry (though we should be), not to get revenge, and not because we are acting impulsively, but because we have weighed the possibility of freedom against the certainty of shame from living under whatever form of domination we are faced with in our particular corner of the globe…”

It is true that I have met some people who claim to have no qualms or principles whatsoever about using violence, and who consistently dehumanize their adversaries and often anyone who disagrees with them about anything. I don’t want to pretend that everyone who advocates for violence or diversity of tactics is trying to exercise a lot of care by making conscious choices with principles in mind. The fact is, many are not. And yet, so many well-known groups and authors that advocate for violence or diversity of tactics have expressed clear reasons for the choice to use force. This is true even if I personally have concerns about many of their assessments.

Myth #2: Nonviolence is primarily characterized by inaction and opposition to force even under deeply oppressive conditions, and advocates of nonviolence prefer maintaining the status quo to using violence.

I myself previously held this misconception, and I believe even proponents of nonviolence often hold it: that nonviolence is mostly characterized by what we don’t do, and in general it teaches that we should die or suffer rather than use force against oppressors. In fact, much like the groups I named above, I’ve come to understand that nonviolence applied to action is basically principles and practices to support discernment in the use of force.

For example, if we are doing a sit-in at a bank to convince them to divest from the Dakota Access Pipeline, we are using some amount of force to put pressure on the bank to meet demands they would otherwise have no incentive to meet. And yet, even many advocates of nonviolence wouldn’t consider this force.

In my earlier quote from Kazu Haga’s book, he illustrates a clear difference between not acting and taking action within a principled framework. The example of having a sit-in at a bank is an active disruption, and will probably annoy and upset at least some, if not most, of the people working at the bank. It is using a limited amount of force that is guided by principles in order to place pressure on those who have the power to do something, but for a variety of reasons will not act without pressure. This is what Gene Sharp called an “act of commission,” a form of nonviolent action that involves doing something we don’t usually do in order to interrupt or disrupt a situation that is causing ongoing harm or injustice.

To be clear, some nonviolent action involves not doing something, which Gene Sharp refers to as “acts of omission.” This is when people refuse to cooperate or participate in something as a means of creating pressure. Workers going on strike, soldiers refusing orders, and boycotts are all forms of acts of omission. Even though these acts explicitly involve not doing something, they are not characterized by inaction. In fact, they often involve quite a bit of organizing and mutual aid to pull off. Acts of omission, like acts of commission, are primarily characterized by their ability to disrupt or interrupt whatever is happening that is resulting in ongoing harm or injustice.

In the same way that the ELF or Weather Underground have taken action with limited force based on some discernment, so too does nonviolence. Whether one agrees with the principles or whether a specific nonviolent practice is actually effective in a given situation is entirely separate from the fact that taking action and using force are central to nonviolent resistance. The main difference I can see is that there are many more considerations in nonviolent resistance.

So if there are some similarities, it may seem surprising that many people have the belief that nonviolence is also characterized by opposition to anyone using violence. It is totally true that nonviolent thought in general includes deep concerns about the impacts of using violence, but it isn’t true that nonviolence necessitates judgement of and opposition to those who resort to violence.

Here in the US, Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King are arguably two of the most well-known thinkers and leaders for nonviolent movements. Interestingly, they both took great care to avoid talking negatively about those who resisted oppression with violence, even while having concerns about the impacts. As far as anything I have learned, they also didn’t use nonviolence as an excuse to incite police violence against others who acted violently or advocated for violent tactics. Seeing the actions of others through a lens of understanding, as a window into systemic conditions, is actually part of many practices of nonviolence.

And it follows that each of them expressed understanding why people might resort to violence. Gandhi even said he preferred violence to apathy or inaction.

Here is an example of Gandhi expressing an aspect of this:

“I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence… I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.”

and again here (emphasis mine):

“Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defense or for the defense of the defenseless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. The latter benefits neither man nor woman. Under violence, there are many stages and varieties of bravery. Every man must judge this for himself. No other person can or has the right.”

Dr. Martin Luther King also refused to condemn those who resorted to violence in response to oppression. In multiple instances, he expressed that riots and violence were inevitable if conditions continued to be oppressive. Note that in the below quote, he doesn’t blame violent resistance on the people doing it, but places responsibility on all who refuse to change systemic conditions, even while expressing huge concern about the impact of riots (emphasis mine);

“Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”

It is true that I have met many activists who choose to openly condemn anyone whose actions don’t align with their ideas about nonviolence. And it is true that there are people who claim a commitment to nonviolence but for all sorts of reasons, they find the violence of the status quo preferable to using violence to confront it.

But this is not an inherent part of nonviolent practice. There are many other well-known thinkers and ideas that explicitly express understanding about why people might act violently when their dignity and lives are at stake, and that acknowledge that nonviolent tactics always use some amount of force. Whether I agree personally that this is sufficient for the global crises we are facing today is separate from the fact that there is principled use of force as well as systemic analysis about violence present in most nonviolent orientations that I have been exposed to.

Myths or corruption?

Now, I am always skeptical when people claim that the mainstream version of something is the corrupted version and that the real version would be fine if only people truly followed it. It is tempting to argue that if people really followed the true meaning of diversity of tactics, maybe so many of us wouldn’t have the experience of it secretly meaning “your nonviolent tactics are humiliating and ineffective, and violence and property destruction are better.” Or, if people really followed the true meaning of nonviolence, then they would escalate in the face of violent oppression, and they wouldn’t so readily call the cops on people who are breaking windows.

The same can be said about so many other things. One can argue that things would be better if we each personally voted on all governing policies with true direct democracy, an argument that usually avoids the systemic issues with majority rule, which often leave no room to integrate wisdom that comes from dissent and minority views. One can argue that meritocracy would be fair if only we would practice it well, giving everyone an equal shot at making it to the top, a perspective which unfortunately doesn’t include the inherent indignity in a system where anyone has to prove their worth in order to “deserve” resources to live.

I don’t want to pretend it would be fine if we just actually practiced true nonviolence or true diversity of tactics. There are reasons that these polarized dynamics happen over and over again, there are reasons these misconceptions exist, and I want to address them.

Not all of these misconceptions are due to flaws in the ways people choose to practice these ideas. For example, I am hugely dismayed at the watered-down, mainstream version of Dr. Martin Luther King’s ideas that are taught to us in the form of a national holiday and history lessons in public school. This version often leaves out his radical economic ideas and the complexity of his ideas, which left room for compassion for the downtrodden who resort to violence, whether they are those who are enacting oppression or those hoping to combat injustice.

On the other side, agent provocateurs and infiltrators routinely capitalize on the controversy surrounding certain tactics, like property destruction, and insert themselves in ways that make our movements look callous and disorganized for using violence in situations where it is tactically ineffective and often causes unintended consequences for vulnerable people. The status quo benefits greatly from us being divided about this, and there are documented instances of the state exacerbating existing conflicts to neutralize movements. All this trouble isn’t just us.

But a lot of it is us. And those are the parts that we have some agency in changing.

To me, the main reason that these myths exist is because of the way that thousands of years of patriarchal conquest (and all of its current acute manifestations globally, which are different in different places in the world, for example, sexism in many Gulf countries, racism in the US, colorism in India, religious oppression in other places, etc.) have influenced our ability to hear feedback from and find integration with people we disagree with. Instead, most of the time, we resort to conquering people, either by trying to convince them of an idea without considering there are good reasons the idea doesn’t work for them, or else by force in some way (threats, intimidation, disruption, public condemnation, etc.). And if not conquering, many of us submit or appease, even if we don’t feel right about going along. It will take effort to work toward integration when competition and compromise are the water we are swimming in.

My sincere hope is to expose these myths and underlying feedback that contribute to so much polarization about this topic in activist communities, in order to offer a different approach that is more open to emergent practice, learning, and listening. And therefore, more adaptable to the crises we are facing globally.

What’s in a myth?

Each myth about diversity of tactics and nonviolence points to important things that I think can be integrated in a way that transcends the trappings of the divide.

Unpacking Myth 1: The myth that diversity of tactics is unprincipled and reactive points to the value of having some principles and strategy that guide us to act in ways that are aligned with our values and visions. The feedback I can glean from within the myth is that if there are strategies and principles within a diversity of tactics orientation, then people outside of those groups can’t easily see it. My best guess about why it looks that way is that it is possible that outsiders don’t see the strategies or principles because the actions promoted within a diversity of tactics framework don’t seem to center or communicate love or care for other people. It is easy to guess (or assume) that anyone taking action with such immense impact must be coming from a place of anger and desperation, and not love, care, and intention.

A way to attend to this feedback is that perhaps there needs to be even more clearly articulated principles embedded in the actions themselves, which would include acting with care, even if we can’t figure out how to include as much care as we ultimately want for everyone. Also, for those coming from a diversity of tactics perspective, there could be a deeper commitment to discern alternatives to actions that are likely to harm (not just upset) others. This would acknowledge the potential impacts from the beginning.

Unpacking Myth 2: The myth that Nonviolence is characterized by inaction or passivity, even when things are dire, points to a value of honoring our dignity and speaking our truth, even if we can’t figure out how to do it with as much care as we ultimately want to have for everyone. The feedback I can glean from within the myth is that many people have the experience of nonviolence as being too passive to face the gravity of the oppression we face. Many of those who accept violence as a tactic feel that their own and their community’s survival and dignity are at stake, and the commitment to nonviolence is not an adequate response to the immensity of that truth.

It might feel to them as if they are saying “my house is on fire” and instead of helping them escape the burning house, nonviolent adherents are telling them it’s more important for them to put their shoes on first than to escape as quickly as possible. I don’t think that is at all the intention of people who practice nonviolence, so let’s explore that feedback.

It can be much harder for people with more privilege or security (economic, racial, gender, etc) to understand the sense of risk and danger experienced by those with less privilege or security. Massive inequity and systems based on privilege and oppression often mask the ongoing impact on the real lived experiences of the people who shoulder the most weight of those systems. If you can’t feel the heat of the fire, it might seem like the safest way to escape the house would be to put your shoes on first.

I believe that to attend to this feedback there needs to be even more support for fully grasping what is at stake in our struggles, and attending to the gravity of those stakes with action that holds as much care as possible and operates within a level of risk that is choiceful enough that it doesn’t further increase either disempowerment or trauma.

This point is especially important for anyone explicitly organizing with principles of nonviolence. Only when there is full understanding of what is at stake, can there be togetherness in choosing to address it. In order to support people having choice about their level of risk, we need to be real about what it takes to respond with principles of nonviolence. With togetherness and solidarity in holding the short-term and long-term risks and impacts of taking specific actions (and conversely, not taking specific actions), people who shoulder the burden of the most impacts are much more likely to feel supported and empowered to discern careful action.

For the most risky situations, it takes a ton of inner resources, support, training, and willingness to put your body in harm’s way. That isn’t to be taken lightly, and not everyone is prepared or willing to take on front-line roles in those situations.

One other factor that complicates this is that it is very common with trauma, either acute or accumulated over time, that one can experience something as a more immediate threat than it actually is in that particular moment. When I’ve participated in some de-escalation training, one thing I learned is that every moment there isn’t an immediate threat is a chance to intervene. Even when someone has a gun, the moment it is lowered is safer than the moment before, and can be a chance to intervene. This isn’t a universal truth, it is a practice of finding moments to access choice so we can strategically intervene. For those of us with trauma, there may actually be a safe-enough moment to slow down enough to think and act strategically in response to a dire situation, but where our lived experience is that the threat is so imminent, that it seems like there is no option but to act quickly, even without care, and deal with the consequences later.

Now, I don’t think this means that people actually can wait patiently while experiencing oppression, and that they are just overreacting about urgency because of trauma. It means that the trauma responses of fight, flight, freeze, and faint are significant obstacles to empowered choice, which is key to liberation and strategic action. Discernment about action and impacts requires a level of choice that is actually physiologically difficult to do in a trauma response.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to look at how to intervene when trauma responses are impacting a group’s ability to make decisions or work through conflict. For the purposes of making strategic decisions about action, I want for us to be clear about our commitment to careful, nonreactive, principled discernment, regardless of what tactics we are choosing. Those of us with lots of trauma may need more support to maintain that commitment in high-stakes situations, and I long for us to cultivate relationships and resources that we can lean into. But even this commitment must be a choice if we want it to be liberating, and not everyone will choose it.

With the feedback I can glean from each myth, there is a meta-principle that is important for me to name, which I believe applies to how we respond to both sets of feedback. The most basic way to explain it, is that when situations are extremely challenging, it is all the more important to apply our principles and creativity in how we choose to respond. This is a meta-principle to me because it is about how we apply what is important to us in our decisions, rather than being a specific idea about what is important to apply to decisions.

It is counter-intuitive in some way, that we do the difficult work of thinking things through with our values in mind when we might be less resourced or more may be at stake. And yet it is those moments of acute friction when what we choose to do is more likely to have significant consequences, both materially and also in shaping the faith we have about our visions.

If we decide from the get-go that we need to cut corners on our principles, we already have lost an opportunity to experience liberation in the moment, regardless of outcome. We have already given up on our vision. So often, when we try to apply our principles to challenging situations as we move ever closer toward our visions, it is not the principles and visions that are ineffective, it is that we don’t have sufficient conditions, skills, or resources to apply them as fully as we want. That lack of capacity can result in less-than-ideal outcomes at best, and even worse, tragic losses. If we don’t acknowledge and mourn the tragedy of lacking what we need, we are more likely to blame ourselves or others and lose faith in visionary possibilities. Mourning a lack of capacity allows us to keep our dreams alive, and we’ll need those dreams to feed us as we face yet even more tragedies and difficult decisions.

I said earlier that I went pretty deep in each direction, and I want so badly for my experiences to have benefits beyond myself. What good is going through the pain of internal strife, division, and violence in my own community if I just keep all of the feedback about it inside of me? What good is it to learn how nonviolence can be used to avoid and repress conflict rather than address it if I just keep all of the feedback about it inside of me?

Failure to address the feedback will only result in continued divergence. Given all I have said about my best guesses as to what is generative about the feedback, I want to propose paths of integration. Each suggestion I have is aimed at creating conditions so that when we choose to act, we will do so in a way that is most likely to:

• include care for the widest possible circle of interdependence, including each other, our adversaries, and anyone impacted
• include the deepest possible togetherness in holding the current impacts of what is happening and the possible outcomes of what we do
• come from a place of groundedness in our visions
• increase empowerment and choice for those choosing to act

What I’m saying and not saying about paths to integration

I want to explain what I don’t think is helpful in naming and applying in paths toward integration, as well as what I want. I am doing this even though I am annoyed about feeling compelled to say what I don’t want. I am annoyed because I long for a world where we can say our ideas and our visions, and have our comrades and community members take it in with curiosity, regardless of whether they ultimately feel aligned with what we are saying. I want the vision to speak for itself. Why say everything I’m not saying? I’m not saying let’s all go feed the pigeons, or ride on boats, or a billion other things that I’m not talking about. It seems tedious and unnecessary to have to explain it.

But my experience is that, with any hugely polarized conversation, people often look for ways that what you are saying echoes what they have already heard, and you need to clarify what you aren’t saying before there is even openness to hear the actual content.

Much of what I am saying are ideas adapted from Miki Kashtan’s essay “Is Nonviolent Use of Force an Oxymoron?” and mixing them with my own experiences and proposals that I have come to over many years. I am really excited about her essay and the depth of wisdom within it, and yet I don’t see it alone shifting the circular conversations I am exhausted by. This is largely because the audience for that article is people who are squarely within the world of nonviolence, and who could use some deeper understanding about the role of force within the paradigm of nonviolence as it is lived within a world of violence. I want the conversation to reach those who are not within the world of nonviolence, and I have more anxiety in me about what could happen if those who are okay with using violence don’t have adequate support or principles for using force with care. In many ways, I see Miki and I as building a similar bridge but with different materials.

This paragraph from Miki’s essay lays out the principles she proposes in a nutshell;

“Use of force is consistent with nonviolence to the extent that we use the least amount of force possible, with the most love possible, aiming at (re)creating conditions for dialogue; that we make the choice using as much nonreactive discernment as possible, with as much support for the choice as possible, and while mourning not seeing another way to respond to a situation in which vital needs are at stake except to use force.”

Much of what I am not saying comes from seeing countless attempts to shift the conversation that have ultimately not resulted in any practical convergence on a broad scale. I don’t want to try the same things over and over that haven’t achieved what I am hoping for.

I’m not proposing that we use the language of diversity of tactics, because I don’t think it’s helpful anymore. It has been used far too many times to argue for only thinking of effectiveness and not principles, within a very narrow frame of effectiveness that doesn’t include our collective well-being or the question of whether using specific tactics can ever bring about our long term visions. It has also been used somewhat dishonestly, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to actually mean that nonviolence is inferior to violence. Essentially, some have used diversity of tactics language as a way to do whatever they thought was best, without including consideration of possible impacts on others or the ideas of others. When I have seen some try to bring other ideas or impacts to their attention, a good number of diversity of tactics proponents would deflect this by arguing that what they did was fine as long as you believe in diversity of tactics, and that perhaps there is just a values difference. This response ignores the practical, not ideological, feedback.

To be clear, if someone is using an intentionally planned nonviolent action as a cover for window smashing, it means they are unilaterally deciding that an action isn’t going to be nonviolent, regardless of whatever work or planning already occurred. That creates uniformity in tactics, not diversity. The unilateral disruptions are loaded with hubris and sub-cultural supremacy. No wonder diversity of tactics has such a bad name in so many places. I know these dynamics because I was steeped in this subculture.

It’s not my intention to demean anyone who believes in diversity of tactics. Some of us with that orientation are genuinely coming from a perspective of “whatever works,” in which our assessment of “works” includes our own well-being and also principles that are tied to visions of a better world. I am very close to several people who think that way, and I deeply appreciate their perspective. In fact, if there is a way for people to reclaim the language in small pockets of people, I am not against it. I am only saying that at this point the work of redefining the meaning of the language to something that isn’t loaded with hubris and baggage might not work, or might take a lot longer than we have time for.

Instead of calling for diversity of tactics, I want to have clarity and agreements within groups about what principles and criteria we are considering whenever we use any kind of force, especially any kind that could physically harm living beings.

I am not saying we should only act with immense amounts of love and compassion and that if we can’t, we might as well not act. I know that it takes tons of inner resources and support to find compassion and groundedness in tough situations, and that even if we have access to some amount of love and compassion, we don’t always come up with actions that are able to express that while also attending to our own needs. I am saying that I want us to actively support each other in accessing love and care for a larger circle of interdependence that includes each other, our adversaries, and others potentially impacted by the situation. This way we will be more likely to infuse love and care into our actions, even if it is less love and care than we wish for.

I don’t think that defining violence is helpful. Academics have written essays and blog posts about defining property destruction and violence, and they have all sorts of evidence and well-worded definitions. Rationalizing doesn’t change people’s experiences, and it rarely changes their opinions. As I said earlier, people have hugely different ideas about what is violent, and on top of that, hugely different personal experiences of violence, nonviolence, and inaction. I have watched an almost embarrassing number of conversations happen about definitions alone, and I think it’s safe to conclude that coming up with good definitions has proven ineffective at shifting the conversation. At this point, I would rather leave refining discourse for the academy, not the streets. Instead of definitions, I want us to aim to figure out exactly what is important to people about their definitions, so we can discern what risks and impacts they are tracking (if any), so we can openly consider them when making choices to act.

Talking only about effectiveness isn’t helpful. This is something people do on both sides of the dichotomy. I think that anytime we are talking about effectiveness alone, we run the risk of focusing only on outcome and not process. This terrifies me for two reasons: 1) that it puts us in the risky business of relying on our ability to predict the future in order to assess how worthwhile any risks we take will be; 2) that it recreates a patriarchal paradigm of prioritizing outcome over process, which means we are likely to miss any potential “side effects” of the process (think back to the police and military families having higher than normal domestic violence rates). Instead, I propose that our groups and organizations create many specific criteria to consider when choosing to act and that possible outcomes be only one among many.

I am not saying that we should limit our visions only to what we think is achievable in the immensely challenging current scenario we find ourselves in. If we don’t have enough faith that something better is possible, even if it seems out of reach at the moment, then I am not confident we will have enough fuel to last through dealing with painful choices and consequences. I am also not saying that we should hold ourselves to ideals that don’t account for the reality of our situation. We may not have skills or resources that match what is called for in every instance. Pushing ourselves or others beyond what is actually within capacity will only further traumatize and disempower. Instead, I propose that we articulate flexible but strong visions to nourish our tired, beautiful hearts, and that we look for how we can move ever more in alignment with our visions in each moment, based on whatever capacity and constraints exist.

I am not saying what anyone should do, or advocating for telling anyone what they should do. Given the level of trauma and oppression present in the world at the moment, I think it is safe to assume at least some people, maybe even most, will respond with inaction or reactive, non-discerned violence, even if we have a compelling and exciting alternative. I want us to consider how the actions we choose to take might be resilient enough to withstand the reality that not everyone will understand or agree with our choices to act.

I don’t think trying to reclaim “nonviolence” by more widely educating people about the actual radical nature of it is helpful for most of us to do. I appreciate some nonviolent thinkers doing work that may contribute to that, including Miki Kashtan and Kazu Haga, and I think it is helpful to have their perspectives out there for people committed to nonviolence. That kind of work may also be helpful for people who have mostly experienced nonviolence when activists call it violent to block roads, or call the cops on people they disagree with. At the same time, while people like Miki and Kazu will likely reach people who already agree with nonviolence, I want people who have less qualms about using force to have access to ideas, resources, and support to avoid taking action that dehumanizes themselves or others. Instead, I want flexible language that focuses on our principles, so we are actually articulating our ideas and visions without using loaded terms that are less likely to communicate what we want outside of specific arenas.

If there is some mutual understanding in a group or community about these ideas, using some specific short-hand doesn’t conflict with flexible language. I’ve been using Principled Use of Force among people who now know what I mean by it, but I don’t see a benefit to standardizing it. In my experience, that will serve to alienate people with less access to the latest blogs or academic discourse, and result in unintentional elitism that favors whoever is using the “best” words. I’m grateful to George Lakey for illuminating to me how this focus on perfect language and discourse is highly classist because it privileges those with college degrees, as well as recreating manager-class dynamics when those with more formal education manage other people’s speech. It is also alienating to anyone not within a small political niche.

Being perfect or “right” won’t help us figure out how to struggle and live alongside people who aren’t exactly like us. It would be devastating to me if as a result of this writing, the main take-away was people trying to get everyone to use some new term. I so much want as many of us as possible to have an orientation of meeting people where they are, and seeking to understand underlying principles and needs in what they are saying. Even if we develop terms we like that are neither Diversity of Tactics nor Nonviolence, I still want to seek to hear what people mean when they say what they are saying, regardless of their terminology, rather than assume their meaning or correct their language.

Integrating Feedback and Taking Action

Each of the above proposals for orientation can be practically implemented by building structures of support and relationships that make it easier for us to consider how our actions might align with our vision and values, and how our actions fit within a larger circle of responsibility. This support can be fertile ground for more of a creative process when coming up with and deciding on tactics. We might come up with entirely new ideas if we spend energy and time with the process of considering principles, and hopefully release some rigidity that can happen when we focus on outcomes and pre-existing ideas.

I don’t think there will be one way to apply those considerations that works for all. Instead I want to suggest that groups, coalitions, organizations, and any number of people who are engaging with dilemmas that have to do with violence or nonviolence come up with agreements about what principles to apply to decisions, and how to apply them. As a starting place, I propose using the below questions when coming up with actions or agreements about actions, and to modify it or add to it to make it relevant to any local or cultural wisdom in your group.

• When planning actions, are there any alternative ideas that use less force or may result in less harm? Are there any other costs that we might take on if we chose one of those alternatives? (eg: is it less likely to be effective, is it more likely to cause us physical harm, etc) What support might we need to metabolize those costs?
• Does this action support our own liberation and needs? Does it support liberation for our adversaries? For anyone impacted?
• Would this action make it harder or easier for our adversaries to be in dialogue with us down the road? (ie: will it seem humiliating to them based on how we treated them, or will there be so much harm done by us that repair would have to happen first, etc)
• How much risk of harm are we willing to take on? Are these risks within a window of choice, even if the choice is constrained? What is at stake if we act?
• If things go on like they are now, what are the ongoing impacts and harms and who is receiving them? What is at stake if we don’t act?
• Does this action include care and love for the widest possible circle of interdependence as far as we can tell? If not, what support would we need to widen the circle?
• Have we fully articulated our visions and principles? Do our actions feel aligned with meeting those visions and principles in the constraints of the moment?
• Have we made space to mourn together about how fucked up the situation is that we even have to make these choices? Have we made space to mourn any ways in which we do not have the capacity to fully meet our vision?

I believe that it is almost always risky to try to intervene in any polarized situation, whether it is anything from an active conflict to a stuck conversation. We run the risk of upsetting people on both “sides,” and we run the risk of experiencing whatever actions people choose to take if they feel upset by what we say and do. I don’t think stepping into the fray, however necessary, is usually very pleasant. I don’t believe this is avoidable, and the global crises call for us to take risks outside our comfort zones, collaborate across differences, and cultivate willingness to face the consequences of the actions we choose to take even in difficult circumstances. I don’t know what each individual level of risk is in whatever your context is, but I know for some of us it might be quite high. I can’t decide for you, but I know for many of us taking the risk of intervening in the polarized debate will be worth potential costs.

I invite you to join me in intervening in the circular, stuck conversation about nonviolence and diversity of tactics. I really encourage anyone reading who resonates at all with any of these ideas to bring them into conversations with your communities and networks.

And I also encourage you to make space to mourn together when shit doesn’t go how we want, and when we are in positions of making gnarly choices. It doesn’t have to be a big event. Some of my most effective experiences of grief happen just because we paused for two minutes in a meeting when someone had tears about something and it turned out that all of us were also holding sadness about it. Mourning can release hardness and stuckness that can happen in our hearts when we haven’t processed our grief, and can open us into more creativity and groundedness, so we aren’t coming from a place of reactivity.

There is a lot to mourn about. So many of us have offered so much, our time, our skills, our love, and in many cases it hasn’t been a match for what is called for. Many of us have experienced significant loss, in our families, our communities, our campaigns: ancestral lands seized; wetlands destroyed; people we love killed by police; relationships torn apart by intractable conflict. Even as we continue to make hard choices, there will almost certainly be even more tragedy and grief.

It isn’t an easy task to step outside of a polarized narrative. People will often assume you are on the other side of whatever their position is. Shit is really heated right now in the US, and the stakes are high. We can’t anticipate how much time we have to get our shit together, and we may have unaddressed conflict and other obstacles that make it even harder to come together to face what’s unfolding. I know that even with so many disagreements politically in this country, a great many of us long for a liberated world, even if we are experiencing different consequences of not yet living that vision. My hope is that wherever we each might be positioned, we can find a way to talk about these ideas, and adapt and apply them so we can take effective, visionary action together.