Protest Is Dead. Long Live Protest.

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When it comes to that broader strategy, another movement is emerging that could lead the way for activists: collaboration and cooperation with the enemy.

There are times when it's right to fight -- and fight creatively. The left's us-versus-them mentality, however, represents strategic shortsightedness. It alienates potential allies with the power to act and instead causes them to react defensively.

Of course, it's far easier to shout slogans than it is to sit down at the table and hash out, say, energy policy. But that's exactly what groups that want change are starting to do. Consider the movement to prevent the clear-cutting of Canada's rainforests on the Clayoquot Sound. Fourteen years ago, environmentalists, backed by overwhelmingly favorable public opinion, organized what was then the largest civil disobedience campaign in that nation's history, resulting in 1,000 arrests. The clear-cutting continued. So instead of facing off against the logging companies again, the activists targeted their customers -- the largely U.S.-based corporations that were buying the paper. They launched a creative education campaign with clever advertisements and other tactics to alert the public about where their phone books were coming from.

Then activists made allies within these same corporations with whom they collaborated to find alternatives to Clayoquot lumber. 'It's not about moving on from confrontation,' explains Tzeporah Berman, strategic director of Forest Ethics, an organization that grew out of the Clayoquot campaigns. 'It's about understanding which tool you use from your tool belt. Confrontational tactics like blockades kick the door open. But if all we do is protest, without actually helping to define the solutions, we're as thin as a placard.'

Success stories like Forest Ethics serve as a model -- and a reason for relegating nonviolent civil disobedience to its rightful place as only one of many approaches. Public opinion is with progressives on a whole range of issues, from reforming health care to ending the Iraq war. It's time we come down off our high horses, get creative, and take back change.

Joseph Hart is a contributing editor for Utne Reader.

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