Public Resource
Stages of escalation in a nonviolent campaign
When developing and carrying out a nonviolent campaign for social change, organizers need to consider steps for increasing the pressure on those whose actions or decisions are opposed. There are lots of ways a movement can escalate a conflict while remaining nonviolent. In Ebert's model, the first stage of a nonviolent campaign emphasizes bringing an issue into the public sphere. In the second stage, the campaign increases public pressure by staging legal forms of non-cooperation (strikes, consumer boycotts, slow-downs) as well as innovative lawful activities (fair trade initiatives, alternative economy structures, nonviolent intervention). The third stage of escalation uses nonviolent civil disobedience as both a protest and as a form of civil usurpation. Of course, there are more ways to escalate a campaign than increasing the level of non-cooperation or developing constructive alternatives. Perhaps the most common are escalation through increasing numbers of participants, increased length of public protests (think of people occupying a public square to protest against a repressive regime for many weeks) or a wider variety of participants.