In a Jan. 30th article in the San Francisco Chronicle, C.W. Nevius characterizes the conflict over the oak grove slated for destruction on UC Berkeley campus as a “ classic no-win situation”:
“If Cal officials leave the branch-sitters up in their trees, nothing will ever get done. But if they try to drag them down – an official said on a conference call Monday that ‘they haven’t decided on that’ – they risk creating some really ugly news footage.”
Nonviolent activists familiar with the work of George Lakey, theoretician of nonviolent struggle and director of Training for Change, will recognize instantly that this “no-win” situation for the administration is actually a “win-win” situation for the Save the Oaks movement. Indeed, it was designed to be that way; the most strategic nonviolent actions are those in which the protestors achieve a goal no matter what reaction the authorities chose.
For example, when Gandhi led South African Indians in burning their identification cards in 1907, the nonviolent discipline of the satyagrahis, and the justice of their cause, enabled them to “win” through the violent response to their action. The authorities’ attempt to repress the movement generated sympathetic publicity, not to mention the unsettling realization that these demonstrators held a new kind of power.
I had my own apparent “no-win” situation at the Oak Grove a few days ago, when a campus police officer asked me to show my ID or leave the grove. Either action would have accomplished a goal of the UCPD: whether they intimidate members of the movement through profiling, or force them to physically abandon their claim to the space, both seem effective strategies for exerting their authority.
On the other hand, neither of these choices met my need for dignity, freedom, and fairness, so I asked for a third option, which for me was accepting whatever use of force the officer had as a “consequence” of my refusal. It turned out to be a trespass citation, similar to a traffic ticket, which the officer wrote out despite his surprise at my stated preference.
This painful situation made me think about how nonviolent action must aim to escape the win-lose paradigm altogether if it wants to be truly transformative. When the demonstrators – or UCPD – set up “win-win” situations, they are seeking to win at the other party’s expense, rather than to win over the other party.
The field of Conflict Transformation reveals deeper possibilities for change – by moving the parties past their stated interests closer to their real needs, and most importantly by transforming the relationship between the parties. In principled nonviolence, “win-win” signifies something different than zero risk of failure – it signifies the hope that ultimately there will be no losers in the conflict, as persuading — and even, if time does not allow for persuasion, coercing oppressors into ceasing violent action helps them recover their humanity, which is truly a share in the victory.
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By: Metta Center
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It’s actually kind of “lose-lose” for all of us.
It’s a couple of dozen young activists wasting months of time and energy on a very trivial cause. It is the worst kind of message we can promote to young activists.
There are probably 10,000 – 1,000,000 worse development projects going on right now. Although they may mean well, while the activists try to save 1.2 acres we are probably losing 100’s of acres of pristine habitat daily in the U.S.
Supporting this cause is dangerous. It sends a message to young kids that any kind of trivial protest is a good thing. In our MTV culture, do we really want kids patting themselves on the back for such a trivial cause?
The wasted time and energy is Berkeley is a big loss.
Thinking globally, Acting locally. It those trees are chopped down, all the World will hear them falling. I believe, brother John, that you have not been exposed to the “big picture” of the protest. I’m attaching an article and in this link you can find a complementary perspective:
https://archives.mettacenter.org/?p=306
Tree-sit: War profiteers want to build sports training center on Native American burial ground.
Berkeley, CA, September 24th, 2007—After living for almost 300 days in the tops of redwood and oak trees to save them from destruction, some still might call this movement nearsighted. Not in Berkeley. “We are challenging the lack of imagination at one of the most respected institutions in the world,” said astrobiologist Pancho Ramos Stierle, a 4th-year PhD student at the University of California (UC). “Let’s imagine old redwoods and new sports centers coexisting; let’s imagine the UC hiring a construction company other than war profiteers; let’s imagine the UC not manufacturing new atomic bombs and not supporting the proliferation of nuclear weapons; let’s imagine the UC and its affiliated laboratories completely dedicated to constructive scientific research and an understanding of the social implications of their work”, Ramos Stierle said.
The Committee on Grounds and Buildings of the University of California met on December 5th, 2006 to approve the design of the controversial Student Athlete High Performance Center on the Berkeley campus. The minutes of the meeting reveal that, “a private project management consultant, URS of San Francisco, will manage the project.”
Students, faculty and community members came together with many interests, to form the Phoenix Coalition with the shared goal to “Free the UC,” and to express their concerns about this corrupt deal: “URS Corp. is a war contractor. In March 2002, Richard C. Blum (married to United States Sen. Dianne Feinstein) was appointed by Gov. Gray Davis to a 12-year term as a regent of the University of California. For the next three years, both URS and Perini (another mercenary company making money in Iraq) benefited from construction contracts awarded by the Regents”.
Blum, who first invested in URS in 1975 and who was a majority owner of both URS and Perini from 1997 through the end of 2005, is the current Chair or the Board of the UC Regents. To many UC students, Blum’s former stake in the URS and Perini corporations is clearly a conflict of interest. On May 26, 2005, fifty UC Berkeley students interrupted a meeting of the Regents to protest the Blum-URS-Los Alamos corruption. In November 2005, Blum resigned from the board of directors of URS and also divested his investment firm of about $220 million in URS stock. In April 2006, the Feinstein-Blum family made a $15 million “gift” to UC Berkeley. The business school will expand to house the Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies, with the dubious aim of encouraging students to study the effects of global poverty upon political radicalism.
Zachary Running Wolf, a Native American elder of the Blackfoot Nation has brought his spiritual strength to the tree-sit, some of the 15 permanently camped residents said. He also shares a different perspective, which he calls the “respect perspective”. The University has admitted that it plans to build its $125 million Student Athlete High Performance Center on a Native American burial ground. “Respect the place where my ancestors are buried,” the Native elder stressed.
Richard Schwartz, a Berkeley author and amateur historian, notified the University that “there is a record of about 18 Indian burials unearthed when constructing the UC stadium. There would be many more still there.” His e-mail pointed to the state archaeological records repository at Sonoma State University, but those documents are unavailable to the press and general public—a measure to protect burial sites from those who raid burials for bones and artifacts. American Indian remains are protected by federal law, which doesn’t preclude development but says that descendants and the local Native American Heritage Commission must oversee any remains removal. The university’s environmental impact report did not specifically address the archaeological significance of the site.
A couple of weeks ago, after 2 decades of negotiations, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is a strong message to the University of California and the Earth Community. This coming Thursday, September 27th, will be the 300th day of tree defense at Memorial Stadium. We’ll see if we can evolve together, ending bloodshed and freeing ourselves to create a Collective Intelligence.
For further information on the Native American burial ground: (1) “Burials Prompted First Tree-Sitter”
by Richard Brenneman
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/text/article.cfm?issue=09-18-07&storyID=28025
(2) “Blum’s Plums” and “Senator Feinstein’s Iraq Conflict”
by Peter Byrne
http://www.metroactive.com/feinstein/blum.html
http://www.metroactive.com/feinstein/index.html
(3) More information:
http://www.saveoaks.com
http://www.freetheuc.org