Introduction
Strengthen a Campaign with Dilemma Demonstrations – They are effective because rather than telling people about a problem, they show it. This book excerpt about Dilemma Demonstrations is from Daniel Hunter’s book, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow: An Organizing Guide.
Use Dilemma Demonstrations
As campaigns develop, they often find that established channels—for example legal or lobbying—are insufficient. For that reason, groups often turn to various types of direct action, civil disobedience, or street protests. One way to strengthen that part of our campaigns is to create dilemma demonstrations.
Dilemma demonstrations are actions that force the target to either let you do what you want, or be shown as unreasonable as they stop you from doing it.
For example, in a campaign I worked on against two giant unwanted casinos, the community was locked out at every step. No public input. No engagement. We were expected to roll over and give up. We wanted more than a rally. We wanted a way to embed our movement’s values in our action. So we set up a dilemma, giving a one-month notice that we wanted the release of all the previously secret documents concerning site plans, social impact studies, environmental plans, architectural renderings, and economic studies.
“We are asking for all these documents to be made public by December 1 at high noon,” we announced. “If they are not, then we will be forced to get them ourselves, going to the Gaming Control Board headquarters and performing a citizen’s document search to liberate them and release them ourselves.”
Our action was our message. And it placed those opposed to us in a tough dilemma.
If they kept the documents secret, they confirmed public suspicions that they were hiding something nefarious. If they released the documents, we achieved a win for transparency. Either way, the movement won.
Dilemma demonstrations are different from rallies, marches, and vigils, which are all symbolic in nature.
Dilemma demonstrations are effective because rather than telling about a problem, they show it. You can think of them as us taking a piece of our vision and implementing it now, with or without permission.
That fills our demonstrations with action logic—helping the outsider understand the meaning of the action because its message is embedded in the action itself, not in a sign.
Dilemma demonstrations have been used to great effect:
- When refused service at lunch counters, black citizens kept sitting at the counter demanding to be served. They further highlighted the injustice by modelling dignified behavior;
- When national governments were secretly negotiating a massive “free trade” agreement that would undermine workers’ and environmental rights (called the Free Trade Area of the Americas), a rag-tag group of protestors openly and publicly announced their intention to “liberate” the texts of the agreement through a “nonviolent search and seizure,” which eventually led to the collapse of the talks;
- Defying the law, some immigrant rights groups have openly offered “sanctuary” to folks facing final deportation orders. For example, New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia (NSM) provided sanctuary for mother-of-two Angela Navarro. She stayed in a church round-the-clock, during which she and others in NSM mobilized public pressure. Two months later she won a stay of deportation;
- During the gruelling sanctions against the people of Iraq by the US government, a group of peace activists with Voices in the Wilderness delivered basic medical aid to Iraqi civilians, in direct violation of the law—but in good conscience following their moral duty to help those suffering.
A grassroots group, Decarcerate PA, has experimented very creatively in creating stronger tactics in the direction of dilemma demonstrations. As part of their high-profile campaign to stop a $400 million two-prison complex, the group laid claim to the “first-ever act of civil disobedience to block prison construction in Pennsylvania.” But they did it in a unique way: with seven people blocking the construction site by sitting at school desks complete with apples and notebooks.
The logic speaks for itself: to pay for prisons, we are destroying our schools. Actions like this become even stronger as we reduce their symbolic nature. For example, imagine organizing a group of teachers and/or students going to the construction site to openly, transparently, and in all sincerity reclaim school supplies, like toilet paper or writing instruments, for their under-resourced schools.
Or have students from overcrowded schools head to the site to hold class—“We’d have the money for more rooms if we weren’t investing in prison expansion.” Even if they weren’t allowed onto the site, it would make a great civics class, great TV, and another chance to highlight how investing in prisons comes at the expense of schools.
By bringing dilemma demonstrations into our actions, we help others see the injustices in our present situation more acutely and with deeper emotion.
Access Full Book
This booklet is for people who want to act for change. It offers tools and activities you can use in groups. It’s filled with practical tips and strategic principles, with real-life examples of campaigns around the country. Each section ends with guiding questions to help think about next steps.
- Chapter 1: Roles in Movement-Building
Looks at different roles played in movements, examining our own strengths and those of others. - Chapter 2: Building Strong Groups
Focusses on building strong groups. Groups generate social power and are a building block of movement work. - Chapter 3: Creating Effective Campaigns
Examines creating change through campaigns.Campaigns harness the power of groups and direct that power toward a single goal. With intention and focus, campaigns create pressure to enact specific, concrete changes. By making these changes, we can chip away at the larger oppressive system and hone our ability to transform society.
The book also comes with a Study Guide – The New Jim Crow Study Guide and Call to Action. This study guide provides a launching pad for groups wishing to engage in deep, meaningful dialogue about race, racism, and structural inequality in the age of mass incarceration.
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About the Author
Daniel Hunter is an organizer and strategist with Training for Change, an activist training organization. He’s sought all over the globe for his expertise at organizing and direct action, having trained tens of thousands of activists in over a dozen countries.
He has previously authored a compelling narrative bringing to life the vibrancy of direct action campaigning in Strategy and Soul. He is also a contributor to the books Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution and We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America. More about the author at: www.DanielHunter.org.
Explore Further
- Dilemma Demonstrations, Campaign Tactics by Daniel Hunter
- Dilemma Actions: The Power of Putting your Opponent in a Bind
- The dilemma action: analysis of an activist technique, Majken Jul Sørensen and Brian Martin, Peace & Change,Volume 39, Number 1, January 2014, pp. 73-100 (includes 3 case studies)
- the 1930 salt march in India,
- a jail-in used in the Norwegian total resistance movement in the 1980s,
- the freedom flotillas to Gaza in 2010 and 2011
- The Dilemma Demonstration: Using nonviolent civil disobedience to put the government between a rock and a hard place by Philippe Duhamel
- Dilemma Actions, Handbook for Nonviolent Campaigns, 2nd Edition, Majken Jul Sorenson and Brian Martin (includes case study Freedom Flotilla to Gaza)
- Dilemma Actions Boost Nonviolent Campaign Success Sophia McClennen, Srdja Popovic, Joseph Wright
- Srdja Popovic on Dilemma Actions (Podcast – How to Sharpen a Non-Violent Movement)
- Backfire Manual: Tactics Against Injustice by Brian Martin
- Creative activism: Hologram protest
