Strategy requires staying on the offensive: it’s about our vision of what should be, not merely stopping the powerholders, that should be addressed. (On the conservative right they call it the difference between “deterrence activism” and “highground activism” – responding and putting out fires versus presenting only better ways of solving the problems. )
In fighting against the FTAA, Philippe wrote about why they did not want to only set up another mass mobilization in Québec City at the Summit of the Americas where top government officials would discuss the treaty. “[If we did we would have] found ourselves fighting on their terrain, rather than ours. At first glance, they had the benefit of the offensive. They selected the place and the time of the confrontation. The relative weakness of a defensive position is well known among strategic thinkers. How could we, in this context, seize another form of offensive?”
The response was to avoid the physical and political terrain of the Summit of the Americas and instead go on the political offensive – launching an ambitious campaign to force the government’s hand. They created a petition that included a demand; they used their framing to assume an offensive posture (not “stopping the FTAA” but “fighting for the text to be public”). At the tactical level, their action that was most on the offense, the Search and Seizure, was a particular type of tactic that is consistent with taking the offensive: the dilemma demonstration.
Dilemma demonstrations, a term that comes from activist/trainer George Lakey, are tactics that put us on the offensive by taking a small piece of our objective and physically setting up to make it happen. In this case, it was the liberation of the texts. It’s not merely symbolic. If the police didn’t stop the protestors, the activists would happily go into the offices and find the text and make it public.
By setting up the situation thusly, it forced the government in a dilemma: do we stop them from liberating the texts or do we let them do it?
Dilemma demonstrations are not the only type of tactics on the offensive, but they can be done by small groups of people to make a big impact. I think if they were better understood and used they’d increase groups effectiveness by a tremendous amount.
Coming up with an effective dilemma demonstration forces a response and can make the difference in winning a campaign. Take this example from Philadelphia:
In Philadelphia the city government regularly ignores poor communities, such as giving irregular trash collection. A group of community members got fed up with the mistreatment and figured out a way to act to change the dynamic, and not just with marching or putting a request for trash collection onto the stack of some secretaries’ “to do list” that might never get attention.
They decided that they should demand their rights to live in a community without trash, and to highlight the responsibility of city government. So they organized their own trash collection for a week. Then they presented a bill to city hall for the trash collection. "That's why we pay taxes. But if you won't do it, then we'll take our taxes back!"
The city ignored them. So they collected the trash next week and then dumped it all in front of city hall. "If you won't pay us, then we'll bring the trash to you for you to deal with.”
Their tactic of collecting the trash, and then laying it at the steps of city hall, was a dilemma demonstration. The targets was put in a dilemma: do they stop us from collecting trash or do they let us go ahead and do it -- knowing they’ll have to clean it up when we dump it outside city hall? Or do they arrest us for dumping trash at city hall, which would be a media field day and talked up in the community, raising the issues profile? None are good options for them, hence the dilemma. And all highlight our power, since the target cannot ignore us and is forced into a response.
And after that they got their trash collected by the city.
The way I think about a dilemma demonstration is it's taking a piece of your vision and acting as if it were already in place or putting it into place. This kind of "acting as if" might be illegal, or it might just be outside the system. The point is that it's implementing a piece of your vision today.
At a rally for independence in Nagaland at a notorious checkpoint, an incident sparked the women to a simple dilemma demonstration when soldiers broke up the march with live gunfire. The women at the march were mostly elders in the community and were indignant. They marched back to their villages and called the other women outside. "It's time," they announced.
The women numbering around one hundred then proceed to the army checkpoint, which was manned by about a dozen soldiers. They announced their intentions and proceeded to take apart the checkpoint, bit by bit. They then ordered that the checkpoint was never going to be put up again, that the mess by the roadside would be left as a reminder of their power. And it’s still a heap of rubble to this day.
The women had created a dilemma demonstration. And their dilemma demonstration was not just an "impromptu" act (though it was inspired!) but came out of a considered sensibility and lots of previous training and preparation. They had considered the possibility of repression (in their case being killed), and made an informed decision to go ahead with it.
Dilemma demonstrations are in this way very different than marching in the streets asking for something. Because if the women marched for an end to that checkpoint and the government just allowed them to march, do they win anything? And if there's no increasing of the pressure, the government can ignore the march and see it merely as personal expression of frustration that will go away.
And in this way dilemma demonstrations are very different than the politics of self-expression. The latter are just about expressing discontent – tactics to show unhappiness. Dilemma demos use our actions to try to implement things as they should be now – they force the elites to react to us, and by building credibility with the people we want to grow our sense of power and increasing the number of people willing to act with us.
Dilemma demonstrations force the hand of the powerholders, and in that way they show our power. It's easy to declare victory either way.
The canoe blockade of Pakistani arms is another example of a dilemma demonstration (from Chapter 2). If the Coast Guard pulls them out, as happened one occasion, then the protestors can declare success that this small crew of people made the US government pay attention and got attention on the issue. If protestors physically stop the boats from coming – as happened in another showdowns – then they win!
There's a natural drama to it. When announced ahead of time the drama builds, which gets people’s interest and curiosity involved (the media love it). So in the case of the blockaders, they announced their action weeks before the action. They practiced "naval maneuvers" -- people paddling canoes in the harbor. Because of the drama (and the zaniness), they received television coverage in Philadelphia for 27 out of 30 days in the month leading up to the action. Because the ending of dilemma demonstrations is unknown, it is engaging and can grab attention and headlines.
That worked in the case of the Dandi Salt March (another dilemma demonstration). The announcement of it ahead of time resulted in villagers were talking about the Salt March and asking each other, “What do you think will happen?” Same thing in Operation SalAMI’s Search and Seizure.
This tactic differs from other tactics in another way. Because it’s about implementing a piece of vision, it’s harder to miss “the point” of the protest. The action describes the vision. We’re searching for the text of the FTAA to make it public. We’re destroying this checkpoint. We’re stopping weapons from being shipped to East Pakistan.
Another aspect of dilemma demonstrations is that they can be carried out with small numbers. Environmentalists do it all the time when individuals do tree sits and put the logging corporations in a dilemma. Or the national sit-in movement started as only four people sitting in Greensboro, North Carolina. Because of its clarity as a tactic -- sitting in demanding rights -- it rapidly took off around the country. But the Greensboro sit-ins started with four people; the Salt March was a handful of dedicated folks; the Search and Seizure had only ninety-nine people arrest in the actual raid.
This differs from, for example, a boycott, which requires relatively high levels of participation, especially against increasingly large, multinational corporations. Or from large strikes or a factory occupation, which again requires, in most cases, high numbers and high commitment from many of those numbers. Or from marches, which to be effective as a pressure tactic need large numbers.
There’s often a natural flow from earlier and smaller offensive tactics, like dilemma demonstrations, to larger tactics that take the offensive, like strikes or mass occupations. The earlier dilemma demonstrations provide the framing for later actions and build power even while the movement/campaign so that the larger actions can take place.
A permanent posture of defensive, reactive tactics is not powerful. Gandhi’s first principle for good strategy was staying on the offensive. Our tactics should be on the offensive as often as possible and dilemma demonstrations are one way to naturally do that.
Examples of Dilemma Demonstrations:
- Search and Seizure of the FTAA texts (nonviolent raid to liberate the text)
- Dropping trash the city should have collected but did not onto city hall
- Dandi Salt March (with the march ending with illegal manufacturing of salt)
- Naval maneuvers to block arms headed to East Pakistan (stopping the arms from being loaded)
- Destruction of checkpoints (Naga women taking down a military checkpoint)
- Sit-in movement (serve us or we will occupy the sits until you do; similar theory with tree sits)