(Written by Stephanie Remers 2012)
Peaceful protesting is the way forward. A revolution can happen by people engaging and being frustrated enough to make change. It depends which country it is. If you look at Egypt then this revolution was encourage by people being tired of their governments…
Gene Sharp ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy”. has been inspirational to thousands and has even been credited with influencing the revolutions in Egypt recently. I have learnt that by people pulling together and using their intelligence and behaving non-violently they can make a difference. Sharps message is that Governments function because of the compliance of the people. In not cooperating with, and tactically finding a way to disprove of a governments rule, the regime will crumble. Gene Shape stated that;
“As soon as you choose to fight with violence you’re choosing to fight against your opponents best weapons and you have to be smarter than that.”
Sharp advises that in order for the revolution to wok it needs a mass amount of people to pull together one of the methods he suggest is to have happy friendly faces on the frontline during demonstrations and marches to minimise conflicts and reduce confrontation, equally in order for these revolutions to work people need to work together and a great deal of organisation is required to make it work, also that there should be a level of leadership to make sure eventing is organised appropriately and works effectively.
Sharp believes that it is possible to fight tyranny without the use of a gun, that we can have a revolution through the use of non-violence. Sharps documentary showed that by using politics, social psychological and economical whit rather than weapons we can overcome violence and become more powerful against oppression.
I am genuinely inspired by Gene Sharps work and I believe that his methods in non-violence have proved very successful. I feel this is a great form of non-violence as it also doesn’t discriminate, it allowed an opportunity for anyone to put it into practice, If you are poor or uneducated you are still able to put these theories into practice.
You can get a free download of From Dictatorship to Democracy here http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf
