Revolution U

The Text Revolution U, written by Tina Rosenberg examines a Serbian pro democracy groups called CANVAS which now operates as a global organization. The aim of the group is to educate young pro democracy advocates in effective non-violent opposition and demonstrations. They have worked in South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia but originally began in Serbia under Milosevic.

            The original organization was called Otpor which is the Serbian word for resistance and began in a Serbian cafe at a meeting of young university students in a desperate attempt to find a direction that they could take towards lasting political change. At this meeting the students decided to try and make political activism cool by abandoning attempts at mass protests for long term campaigns that offer funny or interesting forms of dissent for the public to take part in. An example of this would their idea of rolling a barrel with Milosevic's face painted on it down the street and charging by standers a dollar to whack the barrel. When the police arrived they abandoned the barrel and scatted leaving the authorities to arrest a barrel with the face of Milosevic on it. Events like this attracted media attention and public support which allowed the group to avoid attracting the stigma that comes with being aggressive or violent dissenters through the use of protests that are humorous. The key reason this type of tactic is important is because according to Otpor it allows political protest to get support from the middle class which always important. In addition Otpor used other conciliatory tactics when dealing with the police who they would cheer and deliver cookies rather than fight. These tactics represent the overall culture of the organization which has always preferred to work with energetic young activists rather than older opposition groups who may have become more lethargic and less inventive in the campaigning over time.

            After the end of Milosevic’s regime Otpor leaders began to export their philosophy overseas to countries like Zimbabwe and Burma under the new name CANVAS where they stressed the need for groups of dissident young people to achieve a succession of small victories over a period of time. This strategy is due to the philosophy held by CANVAS is that only after much preparation can periods of intense anger in a country be used effectively to overturn a regime. This policy was implemented in Egypt where Mohammed Adel began the April 6^th movement after travelling to Serbia and consulting CANVAS. What he learnt allowed him to start organizing people on the streets into the mass protests which the Egyptian revolution is famous for.

            However whilst CANVAS has been successful in countries such as Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Egypt where a certain level of opposition had been allowed by the authoritarian regimes, it has been less successful in countries such as Zimbabwe and Burma where political opposition was stamped out violently. This comparison may demonstrate the one of the strategies of CANVAS which is the achievement of small successes over time does more to affect a healthy long term transition to democracy than sudden large scale acts of revolution.