Coherent strategy

[muni]

error wrote in another thread:

To me it's a question of strategy vs. tactics. Now I love civil disobedience; it's a powerful tactic. But in the activism I've seen, there has often been a lack of strategy. Strategy, as I'm using it here, means having a specific goal and choosing tactics which will advance that goal.

It seems that sometimes, some activists want to commit civil disobedience for its own sake, rather than because it's the best way to make a change. A careful consideration of strategy, and of determining exactly what change is desired, might indicate that tactics other than civil disobedience would be most effective at making the change.

Given that accomplishing a particular goal might require a variety of tactics to be most effective, I'm not willing to take "in the system" political activism off the table. At the same time I'm not willing to take "outside the system" activism off the table. After watching various bits of activism fail to achieve the desired results over the last couple of years, I'm convinced that if we are going to get results, people who prefer "outside the system" activism need to select their tactics much more carefully, and coordinate more closely with those who prefer "inside the system" activism. There is, I believe, a time and place for both, depending on what the overall goal is.

Bill winter said years ago that so many of us do 'Random acts of libertarianism'.

After talking to several CD people, I have to conclude that what they do falls under that category - random acts. No planning, no strategy, no answer to 'ok, what next'. I am sorry to say it - I'm not happy - and I wish they did have a plan because what I see is a waste of efforts. They remind me of my 5yo son - cute, sweet, friendly and outgoing, full of energy, but he doesn't have a strategy to achieve his goals which change every 30 minutes. At least his goals are definable - Ice cream, going to play in the snow, decorate the tree. The CD people have an amorphic and abstract 'Increase Freedom.'

The 'In the system' people also commit random acts, but some of them have a coherent long term strategy. They may be mistaken, they may fail, you can argue that they are immoral, but we'll have to admit that they have a coherent, definable long term strategy and that they work according to the plan.

Merry Christmas!

[Jim Johnson]

If there is going to be ice cream I'll help with all of my cute, sweet, friendly and outgoing energy... but, you're going to have to detail your plan a little. 
Cuz, all's I be see'n from the Politicos is 200 years of the same old shit, which is pretty pointless.

[Ogre]

I think one big difference is that from what I have experienced, those who want to work with a defined strategy in mind all want to "fix the system." And, again, from what I have seen, they want to work within the system and oppose all efforts to not work in the system.

For example, the whole tea party protests to me was summed up in the group that met in Washington, DC and planned to drop some tea bags in a fountain. They didn't get permission to hold a protest, so they went out of their way to obey. To me, this was the tea parties defined -- they weren't protests against government, they were just a bunch of people following instructions.

From what I have also seen, most people who do CD simply don't believe in the system any more. They don't care about changing the system, because they believe the system is broken beyond repair. I think if you want to gather the CD people together and provide them with a strategy, the end goal would have to be the destruction of the current governing system. They might join in and follow the strategy then. But we all know what happened to the last group that tried that in the late 1700s in this country.

[Russell Kanning]

i have been following a very strict strategy
i moved to nh in 2004
my goal was to kick the feds out by the end of 2005
i didn't work

so muni ... what strategy should i have now?
what sort of actions should i take?


actually i really enjoy random acts of kindness and libertarianism
i don't want to stand in the way of anyone doing a good deed, no matter how small ... sometimes i do
i try to sometimes get in the way of people who want to hurt others ... other times i give ground

say your goal is to stop the bad guys who work through the evil empire
i think non-cooperation with them is good, since they need our voluntary service
any level and even random activism is better than nothing

tolstoy commented that you can't spend all your time arranging the coals, eventually you have  to ignite the fire

it will always seem more organized to work within a huge system
if you are working outside that system, you will only see order when you look at things in a politically incorrect way

it is fun to see all the different ways that my friends attack the bad guys.
monkey wrenching is a great strategy

[error]

My personal strategy is to undermine and destroy people's belief in government. I do this by calling out government as stupid. Some people who hear my message move closer to freedom in their own minds, and I make enough money to live on. It seems to be working so far.

[Lloyd Danforth]

I am neither a strategist nor a super activist and, it did not occur to me at the time, but, I've often thought that repeating the Manicurist event every Friday until the law was done away with would have been a more coherent strategy than the one time.  The event probably did result in new movers as many CD activities continue to do.

[Russell Kanning]

My personal strategy is to undermine and destroy people's belief in government. I do this by calling out government as stupid. Some people who hear my message move closer to freedom in their own minds, and I make enough money to live on. It seems to be working so far.

that sounds like a good strategy and has actual steps to take

in fact the last time i was at the airport, i was thinking about your website
i was holding a "big brother is watching" sign that some people were amused by
i was thinking that having a "tyranny threat level" sign would be good next time
could you make one that i could print out?
I would be using it on a normal piece of paper ... it is less personally threatening that way
i hold it on a clipboard and greet arriving passengers much like a limo driver would

[Russell Kanning]

I've often thought that repeating the Manicurist event every Friday until the law was done away with would have been a more coherent strategy than the one time.

that is a very good idea
we know why it wasn't followed
mike had too much personal conflict/pain to continue and none of the rest of us had enough passion about the subject to risk any suffering

[George Donnelly]

Yet there are multiple alternative strategies for liberty. We talk about them frequently on fr33 agents, facebook, twitter and other places. Here are some:

- Agorism: Starve the beast and build up our own power using the principles of liberty. See:

http://agorism.info/

- Voluntaryism: Self-improve, withdraw consent and pass it along. See:

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.2767

- Open Source Insurgency: 4th generation warfare inspired partially by the Iraqi insurgency, helped along by John Robb. One potential way to think of it in libertarian terms with a call to action I call the Free Me Project:

http://georgedonnelly.com/libertarian/free-me-project

http://georgedonnelly.com/agorism/early-plan-peaceful-evolution

And here is Gene Sharp's 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action. It's tactics tho, and no strategy per se on this page:

http://www.peacemagazine.org/198.htm

And here is a strategy for preparation from a kind of almost-libertarian right perspective:

http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2009/11/repost-lets-win.html

So there are a lot of options. None are particularly easy but the barriers to entry are low. For example, you can start sowing the seeds of statist discord by engaging people on twitter. Or you can stop sharing your labor with the government. Start a cash-only off-the-books business. Expand, collaborate .... do what comes naturally.

If it looks random, consider that the Iraqi insurgency looks random at times to the USSA's military leadership as well. But it's really stigmergic, and very "democratic" (read: anarchistic).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergic

[Lloyd Danforth]

I've often thought that repeating the Manicurist event every Friday until the law was done away with would have been a more coherent strategy than the one time.

that is a very good idea
we know why it wasn't followed
mike had too much personal conflict/pain to continue and none of the rest of us had enough passion about the subject to risk any suffering

I wasn't thinking about the same players.  That would be a Hell of a lot to ask.

[Russell Kanning]

here was my last sign
i could have one sign on each side next time

[error]

i was thinking that having a "tyranny threat level" sign would be good next time
could you make one that i could print out?

I whipped this up real fast. I can make changes if needed. Comments?

[KBCraig]

muni,

Why does there need to be a coherent strategy? Just think of it as open source activism: each participant contributes what they want, when they can.

Otherwise, you wind up with a Microsoft model of top-down strategy, which is exactly what has failed political reform to this point.

[error]

Successful open source projects generally have some level of coordination.

[Sovereign Curtis]

http://www.agorism.info/market_anarchism

I've got my plan. Do we really all have to be on the same plan? I dont think thats going to work.