The idea was launched in 1846 by Henry David Thoreau, who went to jail as a tax protester. He began advancing the idea that citizens ought to improve government by refusing to obey unjust and stupid laws. His landmark 1849 essay "Civil Disobedience" was literally read around the world. After an era of gory revolutions and civil wars across Europe, during which both sides got carried away in senseless violence, Thoreau's idea offered a visionary option for peaceful routes to change.

The 20th century saw this strategy evolve. A big victory came in India, where Gandhi used non-violent protest to persuade British colonial authorities to grant India her independence. The tactic was adopted by some South Africans in their fight against apartheid. In the U.S. it was used successfully by Martin Luther King and American blacks in their fight against segregation, and by the 1960s peace movement. To name a few.

But many Americans today seem to forget what makes non-violence work. It doesn't work because a handful of activists let the cops drag their limp bodies off to jail. It doesn't work because the TV news media record these arrests.

A protest movement has to have a good chance of winning. The only way you can win, if you're pitting your unarmed nonviolence against the threat of armed government violence, is by having NUMBERS on your side. Ultimately, if a peaceful movement is to succeed, it has to become a tidal wave of marchers. This way, authorities have the lightbulb moment and realize that it's not a good idea to send out the troops. So they are finally motivated to make the needed changes. The threat lies in the veiled warning by the marching millions. "We're peaceful now, but if you continue to ignore us, violence may break out... and there may be civil war."

India is the classic example. Indian leader Gandhi realized that India's vast population was his biggest weapon. He finally got millions of Indians marching, and briefly got Hindus and Muslims working together. The British were smart enough to know that their occupation forces couldn't win a protracted shooting war against millions of Indians, so they withdrew from India. Gandhi won with NUMBERS. So did the U.S. black civil rights movement, after it became clear to U.S. authorities that millions of blacks would soon be organizing and protesting. So did the 1960s peace movement, when the U.S. government finally saw that the peace movement was no longer a few draft-dodgers and Yippies.

I don't think this core dynamic has changed today. But today we have an unfortunate situation here in the U.S. So far, none of the causes being peacefully protested -- whether the abuses of globalization, or the Iraqi war, or the fate of our forests, or gay rights, or even all of them banded together -- have pulled enough millions of civil disobedients to scare our government (and the corporations that control it) towards peaceful change. These movements don't have the NUMBERS yet.

It's true that civil disobedience has created a few explosive moments. Most of these happened during DNC and RNC conventions and World Trade meetings, when thousands of demonstrators representing dozens of causes converged on those cities. I was at the 2000 DNC convention in L.A. on a media pass, so I witnessed the police brutality against peaceful protest there. But these moments were not big enough yet for the government to take them seriously! Washington D.C. continues to dismiss legitimate protest as a "handful of professional anarchists," and legislators has passed new laws that enable the justice system to characterize even peaceful protest as "violent" and "conspiratorial." Most people in authority have felt comfortable sending out the troops, and seeing to it that even the mom and pop marchers get sent away on long felony convictions.

Change will only happen when the government and its supporting corporations see that they're facing the overwhelming millions of citizens who demand change. We will have to repeat what Gandhi did in India. Hopefully our government will be as smart as the British were, and realize that they can't fight millions of us, or put millions of us in jail. We have the option of demanding change at the ballot box -- but the government is ready with their electronic voting scheme so they can do better at stealing elections, the way they did in Florida in 2006. We've had the option of demanding change in court, but the government is doing a good job of subverting the courts.

If our votes fail to send the message of change in November , we will have to send it other ways. Peacefully, of course. But the numbers must be there if we want to win.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Patricia Nell Warren. All rights reserved.