Stand with Nonviolence
Simply put, staying disciplined when it comes to practicing nonviolence in protests is easier in theory than in practice. But when peaceful protest is done well, it may just be one of humanity’s biggest accomplishments.
Keeping a collectively cool head is undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges for pro-democracy movements in the face of tyranny. In the case of Standing Rivers (Ríos de Pie), a Bolivian movement that I belong to, avoiding clashes with the police is something we’re not only prepared for but for which we have methodically trained. Standing Rivers is a strictly non-violent movement because we believe in the power of peaceful protest to create systemic and long-lasting change (which is well articulated in this study by academics Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth).
Respecting the practice of nonviolent protest is imaginably difficult when demonstrators are being physically attacked by police or pro-establishment forces. However, it is achievable through conscientious training, as many non-violent movements have shown us in the past. From the storied history of the civil rights movement in the United States to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s LUCHA movement in the past few years, it’s clear that nonviolent discipline on the streets is fundamental for overcoming repression and ensuring a movement subsists.
Standing Rivers began in response to the removal of term limits by Bolivian President Evo Morales in 2017. Bolivians were not only angered but shocked when Morales’ constitutional court, belonging to the same government that had perpetrated many human rights abuses against its own people, legalized his ability to run for president for a fifth time. This happened despite a 2016 referendum when Bolivians denied Morales the chance to run again.
With the full knowledge of Bolivia’s history of violent protest, Standing Rivers wanted to give Bolivians an alternative way to defend democracy, one that didn’t end with caskets and impunity. Our citizen-led movement aims at defending democracy and freedom through creative and nonviolent means. The movement has been met with a healthy dose of skepticism and criticism around our methods of protesting. But as we have continued to protest nonviolently, keeping our training and guiding historical examples in mind, our credibility has increased. We are proud to share our trainings with the various citizen groups that have expressed interest in learning better practices for their own non-violent movements.
In Bolivia, we learned that Morales and his cronies will use any violent occurrence that comes out of a protest to blame it on the peace-abiding leaders of those protests. The government has even gone as far as prosecuting and arresting citizens who were constitutionally and nonviolently exercising their right to speech and protest. The point is, avoiding violence is in everyone’s best interest, even if it seems like a more effective means of bringing about change.
Our movement has worked hard to put the theory of non-violent protest into practice. We see two main tasks during protests: avoiding violence from sparking in the first place, and, in the cases when it does, avoiding that violence from spreading. We have been successful in seeing these tasks through by working to eliminate factors that could stoke violence or fear (which is why we have strongly opposed to the use of skyrockets and other explosives during protests, something that is very common in Bolivia). Our pro-democracy participants have also made an effort to keep the spirits of the protests as positive, creative, and artistic as possible, making it easier to recognize where or from who violence originates, when it does.
If and when violence does infiltrate our protests, activists who have been meticulously trained, have learned how to make “human chains” to separate protesters from police forces, preventing the latter from their own violent retaliations. Something as simple as a human chain not only creates a deep sense of authority in a protest, but it also prevents violence from erupting by the fact that our fellow protestors would have to resort to “attacking” their own allies, thus exposing which side they fall on. This is just one of scores of tactics that are at our disposable as advocates of democracy and adherents to nonviolence.
The knowledge necessary to achieve nonviolent discipline comes from learning from other movements’ experiences as much as our own even though the recipe can vary greatly from one culture to another. What works in Bolivia may not work in Sudan, but the principle of keeping nonviolent discipline at all times — as taught by intellectuals such as Martin Luther King Jr., Gene Sharp, Jamila Raqib, Srdja Popovic, and others — remains undisputed. Standing Rivers learned that achieving such discipline comes through constant training. As Dr. King said: “Even violent temperaments can be channeled through nonviolent discipline, if they can act constructively and express through an effective channel their very legitimate anger”.
