Section 4 - Chapter 18 | Uncommon Sense

SECTION 1: STORMS

CHAPTER 18 - FLEXIBILITY IS PERSEVERANCE

Four strategies to handle any crisis or opportunity.

Animals respond to storms based on what they know and by working together. Humans do the same. In Bangladesh, villagers are creating floating vegetable gardens to protect their livelihoods from flooding; while in Vietnam, communities are helping to plant dense mangroves along the coast to diffuse tropical-storm waves.*

When organizations encounter a crisis or opportunity, it is far better to work with the storm rather than confront it head-on. Organizations sometimes plan for a crisis, but rarely for opportunities. Disaster response mechanisms often center on prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.

We propose here a flexibility tool with four strategies inspired by animal responses to storms.

Sidestep: Work around the edges of the storm to find your own way to survive or benefit.
Adapt: Change your location, focus or strategy.
Shelter: Stay quiet until the storm passes.
Charge: Increase your efforts to be heard above the noise.

These strategies can help you:

Respond and make the most of a storm.
Overcome the possible impact of a storm.
Create a storm that forces your opponent to respond in some of these ways.

Plan out these strategies before starting your campaign (you can practice them with the Simulation is Prevention tool in Chapter 19):

Sources:* https://www.un.org/development/desa/Indigenouspeoples/climate-change.html

In 2013, Istanbul’s Gezi Park became the epicenter of protests against an urban development plan that sparked widespread demonstrations across Turkey. The movement united diverse groups, including secular and observant Muslim anti-capitalist protesters.

During the holy month of Ramadan, Turkish authorities attempted to weaken this alliance by cracking down on the protesters, hoping to exploit the religious differences between them.

The protesters faced a critical challenge: how to maintain their unity in the face of government efforts to divide them, particularly during Ramadan, when Muslim protesters were fasting. The task was to prevent the authorities from using religious observance as a tool to break the solidarity of the movement.

Sidestep:

In response to this challenge, the anti-capitalist Muslim protesters decided to use the opportunity of Ramadan traditions to build more inclusion and unity across the groups:

They invited all protesters to join them for Iftar, calling it an ‘earth table’, inviting everyone - from those from all perspectives and practices - to dine together at the ground in collective solidarity.
The Iftar was held in the heart of the protest area, stretching from Istiklal Street to Taksim Square. People brought simple dishes, symbolizing their shared struggle against capitalism, and people came in their authentic selves, religious or non-religious, modest or secular.
The gathering transformed into a powerful demonstration of solidarity, which not only defied the authorities’ attempts to divide them but also strengthened the unity of the movement.
When the police ordered the protesters to disperse, the peaceful and united crowd remained steadfast, eventually causing the police to retreat.

Results:

The public Iftar was a turning point in the Gezi Park protests. By sidestepping the authorities’ attempt to fracture the movement, the protesters reinforced their unity and expanded their resistance from Gezi Park to Taksim Square and beyond. The event became a symbol of solidarity and resilience against capitalism, demonstrating that people could overcome their differences and stand together for a common cause. The spirit of unity that emerged from this moment was transformative, inspiring continued resistance throughout Istanbul and across Turkey.

In 2015, Jamia Milia Islamia University imposed new restrictions on women hostellers, canceling night outs and enforcing curfews. In response, a student penned a powerful letter to the Vice Chancellor, sparking the formation of Pinjra Tod (“Break the Cage”, an autonomous women’s collective.

Pinjra Tod faced the challenge of addressing deeply entrenched patriarchal norms that restricted the freedoms of women students, particularly in university hostels. Their task was to mobilize students across the country to challenge these norms and advocate for greater gender equality, focusing on issues such as curfew rules, moral policing, and discriminatory practices in educational institutions. They also sought to create a more inclusive and intersectional feminist movement that addressed the concerns of women from diverse backgrounds, including those from marginalized communities.

Adapt:

Pinjra Tod adapted by evolving its location, focus, strategy, and tactics:

Decentralized Organizing and Replicable Approach:
- Decentralized structure helped nimbleness and adaptability: Pinjra Tod adopted a non-hierarchical structure, allowing for collective decision-making. By avoiding a single leader, they ensured equal ownership among members. This helped spread their movement to campuses across India.
- They built cross-movement solidarity by connecting struggles against surveillance, moral policing, and discrimination. This approach allowed the movement to resonate with women students nationwide, driving collective action.
- The movement also engaged women from different social groups, recognizing the importance of intersectionality and the inclusion of marginalized voices. However, this approach also faced challenges, as some members from tribal, Muslim, and Bahujan communities later expressed concerns about exclusionary practices within the group.
Strategies and Tactics: The movement took nimble actions that a few members could organize quickly:
- Blockade: “Chakka jam,” blocking traffic to symbolize the immobilization of hostel curfews.
- Roaming: Night marches, climbing and even breaking hostel gates.
- Symbolism: Locked admin offices to mirror their own confinement.
Adapting Tactics for Safety: Recognizing the risks, Pinjra Tod carefully balanced visibility and anonymity:
- Guerrilla tactics: Postering at night, graffiti, and strategic use of social media to avoid identification and retaliation.
- Volunteering for roles: Plans were made via WhatsApp groups, and during high-risk protests like the chakka jam, they assigned roles based on students’ comfort levels.
- Staying within certain rules: They conducted actions after 6:30 PM to avoid police arrests. They also covered CCTV cameras to protect participants’ identities.
Expanding Through Alliances: Pinjra Tod received positive feedback and broadened its scope:
- Built alliances with non-hostellers, other student movements, and queer groups. Pinjra Tod effectively leveraged support from allies, including other student movements, queer groups, and the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW). The DCW’s support, in particular, helped challenge media narratives that portrayed Jamia as a minority institution justifying regressive rules. This support from the DCW inspired women from other universities, especially Delhi University, to organize under the Pinjra Tod banner.
- Organized joint events like ‘Humara Mohalla’ to address the challenges faced by women in the informal rental market, linking these issues to the broader fight for affordable and non-discriminatory accommodation.
- Pushing against intersectional structural oppression: These alliances helped the movement push universities to recognize the structural barriers affecting women’s education.
Focus on Intersectionality and Broader Issues:
1. Beyond addressing curfew rules, Pinjra Tod expanded its focus to sexual harassment, discriminatory dress codes, and the exclusion of women from public spaces.
2. Pinjra Tod engaged in activities like Jan Sunwais (public hearings) to bring women’s voices to the forefront, discussing their experiences with discrimination and the flawed notion of safety in hostels.
3. The movement also highlighted issues related to class, caste, and religious discrimination, challenging the dominance of Savarna (upper-caste) feminism and right-wing ideologies.

Result: Pinjra Tod successfully transformed from a campus-based protest into a national movement challenging patriarchal norms in higher education. However, internal challenges regarding inclusivity and representation emerged, leading some members from marginalized communities to leave the organization, citing exclusionary practices by upper-caste members.

Despite these challenges, Pinjra Tod remains a significant force in the fight against patriarchal oppression in Indian universities. The movement has been instrumental in reshaping the discourse on women’s rights, pushing for more inclusive and intersectional feminism, and inspiring other feminist movements across the country.

In 2018, Yue Xin, a final-year student at Peking University, sought to expose a decades-old rape-and-suicide case involving a former lecturer. Yue and seven other students filed a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request to the university, seeking transparency on the matter. However, the university and the Chinese government swiftly moved to suppress the story, pressuring Yue and censoring her message from the tightly controlled Chinese internet.

Yue and her fellow activists faced a significant challenge: how to preserve and disseminate her story in the face of severe government censorship. The task was to ensure that the story could not be erased, even as authorities sought to silence it completely.

Shelter:

Recognizing the futility of direct confrontation with the censors, online activists employed the shelter principle by quietly shifting their strategy to blockchain technology:

An anonymous user embedded Yue’s letter into the Ethereum blockchain, a decentralized and immutable ledger that cannot be altered or deleted.
This approach ensured that the story remained accessible, beyond the reach of Chinese censorship.
Additionally, activists shared the blockchain link via QR codes and encrypted messages, further disseminating the letter while avoiding direct confrontation with the authorities.

Result:

The activists successfully preserved Yue Xin’s message on the blockchain, making it permanently available despite the ongoing censorship. By staying quiet and avoiding direct conflict until the story was securely encoded, they sidestepped the crackdown while ensuring the story could not be removed. This action not only protected Yue’s message but also demonstrated a new method of resisting censorship, inspiring other activists facing similar challenges. The use of blockchain became a symbol of resilience and innovation in the fight for free speech in China.

“Falling might very well be flying – without the tyranny of coordinates.” - Bayo Akomolafe

story: gezi park iftar, turkey

story: the pinjra tod movement,
india

story: stamping a #metoo story
onto blockchain, china

tool: storm strategies

Uncommon Sense graphics - flexibility tool.png

Step 1

Profile the storm as a system (you may have already done this in the first Chapter in this Section). Again, profile the deep loops maintaining it:

Why: What are the values underpinning the power of this storm? How is it changing the values of the wider system, or your organization?
Who: Who is driving this storm, setting the rules for how it operates? How is this changing the relationships that drive the wider system, or your organization’s key relationships?
Where: Where does information flow enabling the storm to thrive? How does this intersect, boost or interrupt the information flows within the wider system or your organization?
How: How does the storm work in practice? How does this affect the wider system’s operations and your own?
What: What are the basic inputs and outputs of the storm? What do we see publicly? How does this intersect with the wider system, and your own inputs and outputs?
Deep loop: What is the deep loop maintaining the storm? Is it stabilizing, stagnating, vicious or virtuous? What effect does this loop have on the wider system and your own campaign?

Step 2

Explore the different strategies you could take with the storm. Label your approaches alongside the relevant Strategies on the storm chart. Note: Sometimes you may need to use a different strategy from the one shown on the storm chart.

Sidestep: What are the boundaries of the storm? Can we turn elements of the storm to our advantage? Who might we need to work with to sidestep successfully?
Adapt: Do we need to change our approach or campaign target? Could we change our message, navigation, target relationships to destabilize the storm or its narrative? Should we change the channels we use to communicate, or collaborate and work through new allies who can impact where we no longer can ourselves?
Shelter: Is it safe to wait out the storm? How long do we think we need to wait this out? What is the cost of not acting or responding, compared with the cost of doing so?
Charge: What resources do we need to step up our efforts? With whom could we collaborate for greater impact? What interventions could turn stagnating to stabilizing? What interventions could turn vicious to virtuous?