Change Up: Strategy and Tactics to advance the Occupy movement

Based on Go Rin No Sho and lessons of history

Strategy is the design for achieving victory; tactics are the brushstrokes that execute the design. Successful strategy is simple:
Use your strengths against your opponent's weaknesses. The recipe for defeat is the mirror of this: Allowing the opponent to send his strengths against your weaknesses.

To begin strategy, analyze the opponent's qualities, and determine how they may be regarded: Strength, or weakness? How you regard them determines how you deploy your own qualities to achieve your ends.

Your opponents have:
Lethal and non-lethal weapons in abundance. Materiel in abundance. They perceive the possession of these as their strength. They are willing and ready to use force--in fact, they prefer to use force. However, to deploy this force, they must have time to stage and organize their attacks.

Because they are few in number, they must use tactics that allow them to employ materiel and weapons to maximize their impact. However, the materiel and weapons they employ are costly. And although these resources are vast, their expenditure and replenishment involve an intricate supply chain, not all of which is at their discretion.

Their organization is hierarchical and authority flows from a central source. They have a "chain of command." Without the sanction of their superiors, they are limited to set arrays of action and a limited repertoire of offensive and defensive tactics.

Their lines of communication follow the lines of authority. They are oriented around the central core of authority, with limited ability to communicate horizontally among individuals and units already deployed.

The basis of their spirit is divided: Some act from conviction, some act from the desire for personal advancement, some act from unit cohesion, some act from spite or reaction or the need to prove that they are not weak. Some act from weariness and a desire to avoid initiative and responsibility.

They are coordinated by the will of their leaders. That will is strongly focused on a narrow objective: To hold their ground and prevent any losses, while the leadership works to achieve political and economic goals.

Their base of popular support requires them to either exercise restraint or avoid wide scrutiny of their preferred tactics. While their propaganda resources are overwhelming on a limited set of traditional methods, they have little or no access to non-traditional propaganda and communications.

To continue strategy, analyze our own qualities and how they may be regarded. As they may be strengths or weaknesses, choose how to use them in constructing our strategy:

We have:
Numbers in excess of our opponent's forces in the field.

The physical force of the materiel we have available is quantitatively and qualitatively inferior to that of our opponents. We have already made the choice to apply non-physical force as our primary tactics. The non-physical force of will we have in abundance. It may be deployed in any circumstances, on any ground, against any opposing force, without the need to stage or prepare or organize.

We are highly mobile and decentralized. We have no "chain of command" and our troops have autonomy and flexibility. We may change tactics as often as we like and develop new tactics as needed. We may expand our repertoire of tactics in any direction except that of physical force, at any time. We have creative thinkers and may take individual risks at will.

We have swift, flexible, decentralized communications. The absolute reliability of any specific communication line may not be guaranteed, but we have multiple redundancy, abundant horizontal communication lines, and a wide array of communication methods and channels that are resistant to interference, although not to subversion or distortion.

The basis of our spirit is unified: We share a fortitude based on conviction. We are coordinated by our own will to cooperate to achieve shared goals, not bound to the coordinating will of a leader or leaders.

Our base of popular support requires that we maintain our commitment to non-physical force, and promote constant awareness of the wrongs we seek to redress and the conditions we seek to improve and the benefits we seek to secure for our base of support. While we have no access to traditional propaganda outlets we have unlimited access to, and mastery of, increasingly powerful non-traditional outlets.

Learn from the history of popular conflict by the powerless against the powerful: To engage our opponent on static fields where they may deploy their superior force and resources to best effect is likely to yield little and sacrifice much.

Tactics that use our mobility, creativity, superior numbers, and flexibility hold promise.

Tactics that rely on our unified spirit and the shared convictions and popular support we can command also hold promise.

You will doubtless be able to think of many ways to exploit this, if you care to.

In the mean time, I offer two different specific tactics, that play to different areas of our strength:

Rolling action: Form task groups and deploy in scattered locations. Let one task group begin an action and draw our opponents in strength to that location. When the opponent has committed substantial force there, let another task group in another location begin an action. Continue rolling these actions around the city, drawing the opponents from location to location without ever giving them the opportunity to coordinate and deploy in effective force.

Mass action to overwhelm the opponent's resources and deliver propaganda victory: Deploy the maximum number of people in a clear line against the opponent's line. Let the front ranks sit down and link elbows, and submit passively to being arrested and carted away. As each one is carted away, one from the ranks behind steps forward to sit down and take her/his place. Those in the front ranks, the sitting down ranks, must be absolutely passive, offering no verbal or physical provocation or response. Those in the ranks waiting to replace them should offer minimal provocation/response. Behind them, shielded by numbers, should be deployed those to observe and record and communicate the action.

It is time to change up.

It is time to be strategic.

We are not losing. We are gaining advantages, day by day. The more we draw out the opponents' force and take them to their weakest ground, and deploy our strongest assets, the surer our ultimate victory.

Cause loss of balance.

Disengage and change tactics as needed.

Renew our spirit as needed.

Retain a large focus while striking small blows.

Have patience.

serenely,
Bright

Best point to know. WE ARE NOT LOSING.

Love your analysis, and great to think on these things and these tactics and strategies.

All these small blows add up to a lot. And every person who becomes affected by this, who starts to think, who starts to know, who wakes from the dream, the illusion - those are all victories.

It's not an accident that "the Matrix" was a successful movie.

Time to bust it up, and get this planet and this country moving again.

All best.

Let's get this to the greatest page. These tactics worked in Los Angeles during the AB101 demonstrations and they will work here. Then we didn't even have Internet, cell phones or small cameras, so now it will be even easier!

VERY shrewd to assess the enemy's strengths and weaknesses and ALWAYS be looking for ways to confuse, subvert, overcome, outrun, outwit, out-maneuver, and out-class. ALWAYS be thinking. Always be a moving target. Keep 'em busy, as they used to teach us in sparring class. We learned that even a fighter with a broken arm, one who only can jab, CAN win. Just keep 'em busy. Tire 'em out. We were taught that the way to beat a long-limbed opponent who had a reach with punches and kicks that you could never match: crowd in on 'em. Close in tight so they can't use that length advantage against you. Never give up. Frustrate and confuse them. Don't repeat their framing and language and usage, thereby reinforcing them. WE decide the terms, to be reinforced by constant usage and repetition.

YES ABSOLUTELY cause loss of balance. DESTABILIZE THE ENEMY.

EXCELLENT work, TygrBright! Most valuable insights! Everyone should study this.

But it begs the primary question of strategy: what is our objective? "Cause change" is not an objective, it is an ambition.

There are a few considerations I'd like to throw in there:

I am not personally bothered by the nebulous nature of the movement. I see what is happening as procedural, and not goal-oriented: paradigm change is concerned not with specifics, but with process. The problem, however, lies in finding a mechanism to achieve desired goals which the movement may define. It does not appear that the traditional forms of government are going to be a realistic means of effecting change, although it is early yet. But this has been true from the beginning: the movement emerged because the old system was broken.

The enemy's traditional means of communications have been harping on the fact that the movement is formless and goal-less. I use my elderly mother as a touchstone for what is "normal" (since I hardly am), and she has expressed this same concern, faithfully parroting the line of the MSM. (Network news, not Fox or any other strongly ideological source) This is probably the biggest weakness of the movement, because people seem to have a hard time grasping the idea that the movement is not about finding answers but asking questions. This weakness is apparent even on DU. While the enemy will continue to use other propaganda to smear and discredit the movement, it appears that the people are too sophisticated to fall much for that line, but the question of objectives is serious because it happens to be true.

The movement lacks an executive branch, by intent. Thus it is difficult for me to see how the above strategic analysis really applies, as the movement is not a "side" in a conflict, despite the OP's use of "us" and "them." The movement can identify change that needs to be made, indeed, it is ideal for that. But without an executive branch, how is change to be effected? The strategic design put forth in this analysis will serve to keep the movement active and effective, but the crux of the issue still remains how we get from "ought" to "is."

-- Mal

Learn from history, yes. Certainly insofar as understanding the dynamics of opposing forces.

However, learning from history includes the assumptions that conditions that applied in the past and that (to a lesser extent) apply today will also apply tomorrow.

My 82-year-old mother listens to NPR and watches network television news; when I asked her what she thought OWS was about, she said immediately "It's about taking our country back and making it work for the 99%, not for the 1%. Good for them!" Then she got a surprised look on her face and corrected herself: "Good for us."

In the case of many successful popular movements the goal has been defined in terms as broad and as simple as OWS: To make imperialist forces turn loose their control. To drive out an oppressive force. To release people from the confinements of economic rule by proxy.

As far as an executive is concerned, the heart of OWS is the demonstration that we are each the executive. We must each analyse, apply strategy, seek allies, take action. We are building on a new, distributed model of community and control and resources.

responsively,
Bright

Your analysis is right on.