Here Come the Strategists By Mike Roselle

These are some of the questions that face us this coming summer when Mountain Justice Summer gets under way. Mountain Justice Summer is a campaign to draw the world’s attention to what is happening in the coalfields of southern Appalachia. The organizers are calling for a campaign of civil disobedience. This naturally makes everyone nervous. Civil disobedience has a way of doing that, and doing it across the board, making friend and foe, media and the public, all feel uncomfortable. This how it is supposed to work. Certainly it would be more comfortable if we all stayed home. But now is not the time to stay in ones comfort zone. We don’t have the luxury; because the issues we are facing in the coalfields are the same issues we face everywhere. We are burning too much fossil fuel. We are chocking the planet.

How to deal with just these sorts of problems has confounded the environmental movement for the last few decades. Many of us turned to the civil rights struggle for inspiration and for answers to these age-old questions. Certainly for the organizers of Mountain Justice Summer the civil rights movement, and more specifically the Freedom Summer campaign to register Mississippi’s rural black voters in 1956, was a principle inspiration, as was the Redwood Summer campaign in 1989. As in ‘56 and ‘89, it is the tactical questions that take center stage. How will a campaign of civil disobedience play against the backdrop of what is already happening on the issue of mountaintop removal?

These questions also confronted the civil rights and the old growth protesters, and not everyone involved agreed with one another on the subject. There were always those who were comfortable with the status quo that would never approve of civil disobedience. Other groups cannot support civil disobedience because they are registered as non profits, and can be sued for offering institutional support when the target of the actions are large corporations who tend to retaliate with law suits. The solution to the organizational problems of tactical non-violence is in the decentralized and non-hierarchical structure that these campaigns assume. They are not sponsored by other organizations; the individuals who make up the campaign and their supporters are the sponsors of the campaign. This makes it difficult for the targeted corporations to use the courts to shut down the organizations involved in the campaign, and makes it harder for law enforcement to target the leadership. Everyone is responsible for their own behavior, and since success is a common goal, also the behavior of their colleagues. This approach has work amazingly well in the many instances over the last three decades where I have observed its use.

Far from being last-ditch efforts when everything else has failed, campaigns involving nonviolent civil disobedience have a history of exceeding their sometimes modest goals. The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1954 was not originally about ending desegregation on the city’s buses, but about African Americans not having to give their seat up to a white person. Montgomery would in fact spell the end of Jim Crow in the south, something that few present in the room during the planning of the campaign could have imagined. Likewise Redwood Summer and the courage of Judy Barry inspired a generation of forest activists. Unlike other campaigns where volunteers slave away at sometimes menial tasks, these more dynamic, action-based campaigns have a dramatic impact on the core of the movement, strengthening networks, creating opportunities for training and teambuilding, and giving new activists a chance to move up through the ranks of a growing movement.

Civil disobedience will always be controversial. This is the very nature of civil disobedience. It must be controversial. We should not worry too much about those who for one reason or another will chose not to participate. More important are those who see this as an opportunity to voice our outrage over mountaintop removal and our support for the local people who are leading this fight. Campaigns of civil disobedience are always risky, but the gains that can be made can make the risks worthwhile. Our opponents will always try to isolate and marginalize anyone who stands up to them, no mater what tactics are being used. They will always portray us as outsiders and agitators. But the fact is that outsiders and agitators are just what are needed now.

Mountain Justice Summer is not a silver bullet strategy; no one thinks just getting arrested will change anything. But I do think that raising a ruckus this summer will get us closer to our goal of shutting down the global coal industry and switching to safe and clean alternatives. I do think it will lead to stronger networks, more visibility, more pressure, and an opportunity for people to get involved in the issue and learn how to organize. We are running out of time, and nowhere is there a place that better demonstrates what is wrong in this country than the coalfields. It affects all of us. So let’s not just talk endlessly of strategy. Let’s begin a new tactical phase in a campaign that will shed some light in the dark corners of our obscene consumption of energy and put the coal companies on the defensive.

Tactician Mike Roselle has objectives, strategies, and effective tactics in the struggle to end greed, corruption, and environmental degradation.