Why Non Violent Guerilla Warfare Should be OWS Preferred Strategy

If we have learned anything in the last week, it is that the Occupy movements have NO friends in high places. Liberal mayors and university presidents, with the tacit if not open encouragement of the Obama White House, have used police violence against non violent Occupiers on level comparable to what Bull Connor used against civil rights protesters in Birmingham and Jim Clark used against voting right marchers in Selma. So wedded are they to trickle down economics and protecting the privileges of the very wealthy that they have used little more than raw intimidation to suppress the first redistributionist movement in the US since the Great Depression. Given the virtually unanimous determination of elites to defend the status quo, OWS should find ways of embedding itself among middle class and working class communities, organize quick effective protests then disperse- essentially following the strategy of the Viet Cong in Southeast Asia while maintaining strict non violence.

We can learn a lot from Vo Ngyen Giap, the brilliant history teacher turned military strategist of the Vietnamese Revolution, even though our weapons are ideas not guns. Like our Vietnamese brothers and sisters, we are engaged in a protracted struggle against very powerful enemies, and it may take ten or 20 years to achieve any of our major goals. But we cannot be discouraged by the difficulty of the taskS we face. Our cause is just and with patience, hard work, and continuous revision of our tactics in response to changed conditions we will eventually prevail.