http://www.activistrights.org.au/handbook/ch01s08.php and a section on dealing with surveillance and infiltration

here http://www.activistrights.org.au/handbook/ch03s09.php

There are many more stages models of course – Hopper’s four stages of the revolutionarly process, the one attributed to Blumer, Mauss and Tilly that identifies four stages of social movements aswell as Downs’ ‘Issue Attention Cycle’.

I developed the Counterpower model as a kind of amalgam of the others. All of the models listed are quite defendable, as they are fairly similar. This isn’t coincedence – at least with the benefit of hindsight and the broad view, each movement’s story seems to have a smiliar structure. This in turn corresponds with Gandhi’s famous 4 stage maxim – first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win (I wrote an article for Peace News on this recently here – http://peacenews.info/blog/6722/just-beginning .

What I think is particularly interesting about most attempts to present such models is the disclaimers and caveats that almost every writer presents. For example Bill Moyer writes “From past experience, real-life social movements will neither fit exactly nor move through the stages linearly, smoothly, or in the manner outlined”. Joe Slovo (who also proposed a model) warns that “every political struggle has specific phases and stages…but there is no Chinese wall between these stages; they flow from and into one another”.

So I think all of these are best seen as heuristic devices. But I do think they are useful ones for trainers. Different kinds of support are needed at different stages of campaigns. And working out what kind of support, and whose insight is most useful, first necessitates working out what stage a campaign is at.

As Alinsky writes at the start of Rules for Radicals ‘Effective organising is thwarted by the desire for instant and dramatic change…to go right in to the third act, skipping the first two.’ But it can also guard against the too frequent travesty of organisations forming but being to meek to challenge the power of the ‘haves’ at all.

Hope those might be some useful thoughts in your discussion…

X Tom

PS> I am going to be on a panel discussion in late May at the THE HUMAN RIGHTS ARTS & FILM FESTIVAL about Street Art, Graffiti, the City and Politics. http://hraff.org.au

we need more of these kinda forums!

‘Negative rebels make bad revolutionaries. Despite their radical ideology and bravado, negative rebels usually act out of deep feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, and desperation. Because they see the powerholders and system as all-powerful and themselves as relatively powerless, negative rebels have little hope of achieving success. Consequently, they propose rebellious tactics out of deep personal and political frustration and anger… Many negative rebels act on the sense that “We have to do something; it doesn’t matter what.” As a result, many of their activities violate guidelines for achieving movement success, eg:
* Negative rebels alienate the public.
* Negative rebels reduce movement legitimacy and power.
* Negative rebels cause movement burnout, dropout and dissipation.
* Negative rebels legitimate fascistic tactics.
* Negative rebels provide an excuse for police to be violent and for legislation to pass laws contravening basic civil rights of protest.’

For more context check out the four roles of activists and eight stages of social movements outlined in Doing Democracy.

Thanks for sharing the Drama triangle, useful.