This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century, by Mark Engler and Paul Engler, makes a good pairing with the last book I reviewed, Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic. Published within a year of each other, these two books are about the same topic – nonviolent revolution – and cover many of the same people and events, but from different perspectives.

Blueprint for Revolution is very much the exuberant personal story of Popovic’s experiences leading the Otpor! (Resistance!) movement that ousted Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević. This Is an Uprising, on the other hand, is a drier, academic examination of the history, structure and operation of nonviolent protest groups. It’s been sitting on my shelf unread since just after Donald Trump won the US presidency the first time in 2016. I’m glad I waited and read Blueprint for Revolution first because it was a far more enjoyable book even though This Is an Uprising goes deeper.  

Mark Engler is a Philadelphia-based writer whose work has appeared in The Nation, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone. This Is an Uprising is his second book. Paul Engler is a community organizer, licensed psychotherapist and self-described Christian mystic. He’s the founding director of the Center for the Working Poor in Los Angeles.

This Is an Uprising:
How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century
By Mark Engler and Paul Engler
Nation Books, New York, 2016

Structure and Movement

The main argument of This Is an Uprising is that there are two sometimes competing types of nonviolent protest groups, structure-based organizations and momentum-driven movements, and that successful social change requires both.

Structure-based organizations focus on the painstaking development of an organization’s capabilities and processes. They might be organized in a hierarchical fashion with local, regional and national elements. They tend operate transactionally, emphasizing negotiation, incremental progress and protecting gains achieved in the past. Labor unions and most of what we might call “mainstream” advocacy organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Sierra Club are good examples.  

Momentum-driven movements, on the other hand, are much more interested in mass protest, civil disobedience and confrontation with established authorities. They seek to build momentum and they drive for transformational, not transactional, change. The Occupy and Arab Spring protest movements fit into this category.

Although these two types of groups often view each other warily, the Englers argue that hybrid organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) led by Dr. Martin Luther King, or Otpor! in Serbia, are most likely to succeed. That’s because successful nonviolent resistance requires discipline and coordination, and it must also attract popular support and take advantage of “whirlwind” moments when they arise.

Momentum-driven movements have a difficult job. They measure success by their ability to attract more and more active participants and greater popular support for their cause. Yet their tactics are deliberately disruptive and confrontational. They use these tactics to raise public awareness about an issue and to shift the Overton window, widening the public’s views of what’s possible. But disruption and confrontation will inevitably anger some people, perhaps spark a backlash. It may even galvanize some of their opponents to become more extreme.

So, the authors say momentum-driven movements must combine disruptive tactics and escalating confrontation with personal sacrifice. Personal sacrifice means the willingness to risk violence at the hands of the authorities. At all costs, they must avoid the temptation towards violent action themselves, even if that violence is directed only at property, like smashing windows or burning cars. That’s a surefire way to alienate the public. But when the authorities use violence against them, to repress protest, that builds public sympathy and support.

It also helps knock down the pillars that prop up established regimes. The conventional view is that power is monolithic. Dictators encourage this view because it makes them seem invincible. But the Englers and Popovic both make the case that power is expressed and mediated through institutions like the military, business, community groups, media, churches, unions, etc. If an activist group can knock down these pillars – bring students to their side, bring the unions and then business on board – they can undermine support for the regime until it eventually collapses.

“Milošević fell when the institutions of Serbian society refused to hold him up any longer.” [p. 95]

Protest movements do the exact opposite of what politicians do. They divide people, force people to choose sides. Popovic calls this “drawing a line.” This unnerves politicians who are always eager to build and maintain broad “big tent” coalitions. The authors quote renown sociologist and activist Frances Fox Piven who said:

“Protest movements threaten to cleave the majority coalitions that politicians assiduously try to hold together. It is in order to avoid the ensuing defections, or to win back the defectors, that politicians initiate new public policies.” [p. 207]

Put another way:

“.. if social movements could win the battle over public opinion, the courts and the legislatures would ultimately fall in line.” [p. 89]

Making Change Stick

In the end, the Englers argue that what’s needed is an “ecology of change.” To secure the gains achieved through protest, activists (some of them at least) must become part of the mainstream, and change must become institutionalized.

The Arab Spring in Egypt illustrates this powerfully. The Tahrir Square movement succeeded in driving Hosni Mubarak from power, but the secular groups that led the movement were not organized or united enough to contest the ensuing elections. The Muslim Brotherhood was and they won the elections but were quickly overthrown by the military who remain in control to this day.

This shows that structure-based organizations and momentum-driven movements need each other, and ultimately, they need, or need to become, conventional political parties. The authors note the irony here:

“All this highlights a certain contradiction: new movements may arise from the margins, but if they want to make change for the majority, they should not aspire to stay there.” [p. 274]

Bat that’s what’s needed to achieve lasting change … until the next challenge comes up.

“The great movements of the past century have won by taking issues that were unpopular and changing the boundaries of the politically acceptable, so that advances which previously seemed impossible were made inevitable.” [p. 278]

This is an Uprising filled some of the gaps I found in Blueprint for Revolution, especially in the area of achieving long term change. But it was a slog to get through. If you only read one of these books, I’d suggest Blueprint for Revolution as its just more readable. However, both books do an important job showing us how nonviolent protest can lead to real, meaningful change.

Thanks for reading.

Related Links

The Politics of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp, sometimes called the “Machiavelli of Nonviolence,” contains a list of 198 nonviolent tactics.

Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky, one of the leading advocates for structure-based organizations.

Poor People’s Movements by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward and Challenging Authority by Frances Fox Piven explore how protest movements can achieve change by directly challenging authority.