Hongkongers abroad play a key role in Occupy movement
Florence Lee says non-violent campaigns succeed with onlookers' backing
Studying abroad, and not being physically present in Hong Kong for the Occupy protests has left me feeling helpless. I am an observer from the outside, separated from the turmoil. At best, I can follow the protests by watching live news coverage on a computer, thousands of miles away.
It is difficult under these circumstances to not feel frustrated, or even guilty about the inability to be "in the moment". But, in fact, citizens "on the outside" also play a crucial role.
As Gandhi and others have noted, the basic strategy upon which satyagraha, or any form of non-violent resistance, rests is to persuade large numbers of people to withdraw their support for an established power structure. Once that happens, political change through compromise is brought about, and conflict is resolved.
Two forces operate in this process: persuasion and a degree of coercion. Satyagraha, and the "peaceful" Occupy movement, are attempting to persuade without violence.
The question is: how does non-violent resistance persuade? Essentially, through techniques that play on "suffering". Yet it is often assumed, wrongly, that only two actors are involved in the process - resister and opponent; one suffers, the other feels guilty, and presumably makes policy changes.
Actually, as Gandhi writes, non-violent resistance operates within a framework of three actors: the passive resister, the opponent, and the judging, onlooking populace.
Because the outcome is drastically influenced by the extent to which the audience becomes involved, the third actor is the most important in mass demonstrations. Political scientist E. E. Schattschneider calls this "the contagiousness of conflict", and argues that conflicts are won or lost by the number of onlookers they garner.