Lessons from successful resistance uprisings

Three reports follow. The first regards successful nonviolent campaigns in India, the US and South Africa. The second regards Yugoslavia. The third regards the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine.  Address any comments to democracyphoenix@gmail.com. 

Lessons from India, the United States, and South Africa

Summary by Aspen Sobon

Analyzing  the Salt March in India (Gandhi), the lunch counter protests in Nashville, and the anti-apartheid boycott in Port Elizabeth Africa, we see the following themes.

1. Find a target that speaks to the greatest percentage of people.  Do not try to change everything at once.
2. Prepare volunteers carefully with clear information and training
3. Publicity–strategies vary.  Important for volunteer recruitment and building national and international pressure for change.
4. Boycotts/ applying economic pressure seems to be a universal strategy.
5. Dramatize the issue for media attention.  Boycotts are not enough. In these three instances, arrests and other unfair government actions resulting from resistance caught the most attention of the media
6. Negotiate without rancor.  State demands in a diplomatic and matter-of-fact way.
7. Know when to take a break to maintain the strength of the resistance.
8. Have a plan for continued leadership if the primary leader is arrested or is otherwise disabled.

Each of these themes played out in Gandhi's Salt March, the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins, and the Port Elizabeth Consumer Boycott. Details follow. 

1. Finding a target

a.  Gandhi's Salt March. Gandhi chose to focus on salt taxes and the suppression of local salt manufacturing in India.  Salt was a tangible, relatable thing that could be easily understood by non-politicians.  Moreover, the salt tax disproportionately affected the poor.  Broader constitutional issues were saved for a later time.

b.  Nashville lunch counter sit-ins. James Lawson and his followers chose lunch counters.  At the time Blacks were allowed to shop but not eat downtown.  This was a very visible example of the broader injustice of the Jim Crow laws.

c.   Port Elizabeth Anti-Apartheid Consumer Boycott.  Mkhuseli Jack selected boycotts in the north end shops in Port Elizabeth to bring the struggle for black civil rights to white areas as white shop owners relied on black patronage for their survival.

2. Recruitment and reparation of volunteers

a. Gandhi's Salt March.

i. Gandhi started with a core of 78 volunteers from his ashram that he had trained in a strict code of non-violence.  These volunteers were able to model techniques to new recruits.

ii. During the march Gandhi held meetings in villages along the way to inform people of the march and nonviolent civil disobedience principles.

iii. He encouraged Indian employees of the British government to resign to weaken British influence.

b.  Nashville lunch counter sit-ins:

i. James Lawson provided lectures on non-violent civil disobedience in the basement of a church, attracting university students.  

ii. As the group organized actual sit ins these lectures turned to experiential training as participants were subjected to mock harassment that they would encounter at the sit ins The participants learned to neither run or fight back. This turned them into a unified force.  

iii. Participants enforced a nice dress code to counter the belief that black people were “dirty”.

c.  Port Elizabeth Anti-Apartheid Consumer Boycott

i. Mkhuseli Jack used speeches to teach and rally the black community in Port Elizabeth to conduct boycotts against white owned businesses in the north end.

ii. Mkhuseli set specific dates and plans and publicized them to organize boycotters.

iii. Notably, he also gained the support of black owned businesses to provide necessities during the boycotts and standardize the prices of these necessities.  This helped the community weather the boycotts.

iv. Decentralized street committees were used to pass information about the boycotts to the township people.

3.  Publicity

a.  Gandhi's Salt March

i. Gandhi wrote articles about salt taxes to educate the public before taking action.  

ii. Shortly before the march he wrote to Viceroy Lord Irwin about the unfairness of the salt tax and of his intentions to illegally manufacture salt.  He asked for negotiations.  

iii. As arrests grew, the international community started to report on their own which led to international action. The arrests provided the dramatization of the issue that attracted media attention.

b.  Nashville lunch counter sit-ins.  

Students in James Lawson’s group insisted on starting the sit-ins after similar actions in Greensboro NC were publicized in order to continue the momentum.

4. Boycotts

All of these movements utilized boycotts to further gain attention and increase likelihood of negotiation.

a.  Gandhi’s Salt March

i. Gandhi asked his followers to boycott foreign cloth.  He modeled making his own cloth by working 2 hours a day and encouraged others to do the same. (Background: Britain imported Indian cotton for its mills, but to ensure a market for its mills, it prohibited India from making cloth from its own cotton.)

ii. The resulting clothes looked alike and served a secondary purpose of being a sort of uniform and symbol of unity among followers. 

iii. Boycotts of white owned businesses came into play later.  Boycotts were able to escalate as resistance grew. 

b.  Nashville lunch counter sit-ins

i. Jack Lawson’s group started boycotting white owned shops as attention around the sit ins took hold.  Again, the boycotts were used when outside outrage due to media attention and resistance had grown large enough. 

ii. Due to the continued sit-ins, white people started to avoid the same shops, exerting economic pressure on the area.
 

c.  Port Elizabeth Consumer Boycott.

 Mkhuseli Jack started with a boycott.

5.  Dramatize the issue to gain media attention

It was pointed out in the films that dramatizing the issues with protests and other actions are as important as the boycotts.

a.  Gandhi’s Salt March

i. Gandhi intended to be arrested and fill up the South African jails with followers in order to gain national attention about the brutality and unfairness of the conditions they were protesting.

ii. Timing was important here as Gandhi wanted to ensure he had a unified movement that could go on without him before getting arrested.

iii. Being arrested was seen as a badge of honor and a goal.
 

b.  Port Elizabeth Anti-Apartheid Boycotts

i. Mkhuseli Jack used his arrest to galvanize more support and outrage.  He did his best as well to evade arrest until he had a solid movement. 

ii. In his case his movement did falter temporarily when his decentralized group of leaders were also arrested.

iii. Nashville Lunch Counter sit-ins

For the lunch counter sit-ins the arrests created national and international attention that highlighted the unfairness of the policies in Nashville.  This created widespread condemnation as well as support and sympathy for the protesters and black population.

6. Negotiate without rancor

One of the central tenets of non-violent resistance is to win the other side over.  I noted that negotiations were done in a matter of fact way, keeping the interests of the oppositions in mind. Pressure was allowed to build until businessmen and politicians were willing to listen.

7.  Know when to pause and when to leave some items of negotiation for a later time.

During his Salt March action, Gandhi did this by tabling constitutional changes at his first meeting with viceroy Lord Irwin.  This gave his people a chance to rest.

During the Port Elizabeth Consumer Boycott, Mkhuseli Jack paused the boycott for Christmas, knowing that failing to do so may fracture the resistance.  He set a date to continue the boycott.

8.  Have a plan for continued leadership

Gandhi had trained his followers so well that they were able to step up when he was arrested.

James Lawson was able to retain his leadership during the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins.  His team was so well trained, however, that they could have easily stepped into his place.

During the Port Elizabeth Consumer Boycott, Mkhuseli Jack used several techniques to preserve leadership.  He was supported by other groups and started a decentralized system of neighborhood leaders.  He went from house to house to avoid being arrested for as long as possible.  As it was, he nearly lost his resistance when he and all of the leaders were arrested.

Bringing Down Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia

Summary by Mary Kimbell

By the Spring of 2000, Serbia had been through years of external governmental control, multiple wars, ethnic cleansing, and the creation of thousands of refugees at the hands of a dictator. It was at this time that a group of young Serbian students called Otpor! (“resistance” in Serbian), redirected their initial mission of protesting restrictions at Belgrade University to that of organizing an offensive against the President of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, nicknamed “Slobo” or the “butcher of the Balkans.”  

At the time, Serbia had just been through months of military attacks by NATO as a result of a brutal crackdown on Kosovo by Serbian forces. The citizens of Serbia were suffering from unemployment, poverty and repression.  They were afraid and had, subsequently, lost all faith in politicians who were themselves divided amongst multiple opposition parties. With a forced election coming in the Fall, Otpor! was key in the planning, organizing and training of citizens across the country to be ready to respond when the sham results were announced.  

When Milosevic was defeated on September 24, 2000 and the Federal Election Committee called for a runoff election, Otpor!, along with other resistance groups and activists, put their plans into motion to successfully remove Milosevic from power.**

While there were many Serbian civilians, workers, and NGOs involved in the effort to bring down Milosevic, the film was primarily focused on Otpor!.  

The following factors were key to the success of Otpor! movement and, ultimately, the take down of Slobodan Milosevic:

• Young people: Otpor! utilized young people who were known in their communities.
  • Otpor! was started by a group of young people who had a lot of energy,  operated on a shoestring and were willing to be arrested.
  • In local communities, young people who were well known handed out leaflets to friends and neighbors.  If a young person was arrested, local citizens were much more likely to support the kid that they knew than the government that they distrusted.

• Nonviolence:  Otpor! stressed that they wanted democracy through elections, not the overthrow of a government.
  • In all of its actions, events, leaflets, and, later, website information, Otpor! stressed that they were a nonviolent movement
  • They were not interested in toppling the government, they just wanted to have fair elections and move on from Milosevic.

• Ubiquity: Otpor! made consistent use of their logo and slogan throughout Serbia.
  • Otpor! made sure that their messaging was consistent and that their logo and slogan (Отпор! or Resistance! in English) showed up everywhere.  They wanted Serbians to see evidence of them in multiple places at multiple times of day and night.

• Shock therapy: Otpor! used a clenched fist logo and members dressed to look sinister.
  • Although they were committed to nonviolence, Otpor! used a clenched fist logo . Otpor! members dressed in storm trooper wardrobes of black leather to appear as shock troops of the resistance army.

• People’s movement: Otpor! acted as if they were a large, national movement before actually becoming one.
  • Otpor! was a grass roots group of young activists who targeted the foundation of Milosevic’s power - ordinary people.  Although they actually began as a small group, they created the impression that they were a large, national movement.
  • During the 1999 elections, they organized a national conference, and, in spite of their small size, they attracted multiple opposition leaders and a few journalists. As a result of the attention they garnered at their conference, they actually grew into a large, national movement. 

• Humor/Entertainment: Otpor! used humor or entertainment events to attract attention.
  • Otpor! used humor or parties to draw in citizens and then shared their real message of opposition to Milosevic and the current conditions of life in Serbia.  For example, Otpor! hosted a New Year’s Eve party in 1999 which drew a large crowd.  They partied and enjoyed themselves until midnight when Otpor! began to show images on a large screen of Serbians who had been killed under Milosevic’s reign.

• Non Political:  Otpor! stayed out of politics.
  • Otpor! never aligned itself with a political party or leader.
  • They worked specifically to support ordinary citizens who were afraid to fight back against Milosevic.
  • By staying out of politics, Otpor! was able to maintain a clean and uncorrupted image.
  • While they avoided politics, they did seek assistance and aid from international groups such as the United States.  Although they received help from the West, they made sure that they did not become a “tool” of the West.

• Preparation:  Otpor! planned extensively before events and actions.
  • In the months prior to the election, Otpor! members busied themselves with recruiting and training people from all of the smaller cities and outlying areas in Serbia.  They intentionally avoided any organizational, recruitment, or training activities in the capital of Belgrade to keep eyes off of themselves.
  • Attorneys and local activists were always on hand to ensure that if someone was arrested, legal counsel would be available immediately and a group of protesters would be on the ground outside of the local jail or prison within 10 minutes of the arrest.
  • Before they began their major opposition event, they made sure that they had all lines of communication coordinated between various key leaders.
• Training Poll Watchers: The most important part of Otpor!’s success.

Ukraine 2004 Orange Revolution 

Summary by Dennis Michael Burke

Bullet points: 

·      The participation of young people, specifically student movements, was critical to success.

·      The use of music kept energies high, even through freezing nights of protests.

·      Non-violence was seriously and continuously enforced among protesters. Any failure there would have caused a bloody crackdown and a division of the general population into two sides.

·      Close communication was maintained between the protest campaign and top government officials, including the police and military. This prevented overreaction, bloodshed, and the failure of the uprising.

·      Reform campaign leaders looked with clear eyes to the future. They knew they would need tents, signs, stages, bands, sound systems, food for a half-million people, portable toilets and blankets. All were arranged and were standing by before they were needed. Without that logistical work, the crowds would have been small and dwindling.

·      The opposition’s voters were never vilified. It was important to make them care about democracy, not about the candidate.

·      Good lawyers on standby were essential in moving the struggle into the courts successfully.

·      The Orange Revolution could have failed when the candidate’s running mate nearly whipped the crowd up to take over buildings, which would have been a disaster. It’s important for reform leaders to have a clear agreement on strategies, especially regarding nonviolence.

NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THE ORANGE REVOLUTION 

Ukraine’s president and prime minister were Putin’s men. In 2004, the president announced he would step down and support the prime minister for president in the fall election. The president, Leonid Kuchma, whose official residence had gold-plated bad taste throughout, had held power in the ways that dictators backed by oligarchs always do. Ukraine was in a delicate moment, as many people felt more a part of Western Europe than of Russia, and the values of democracy were in ascendency. The repressions and infinite corruptions of the regime, all for the financial benefit of Kuchma and his choir of oligarchs, were facing more resistance. 

If you were outspoken, you would need to look behind you when you walked on the street. Many people were followed, phones were tapped. But breaking points invariably happen.  For Ukraine, a big one was in 2000 when reporter Georgiy Gongadze dared ask hardball questions about corruption to Kuchma on live TV. The reporter was privately warned that he was “playing a deadly game,” but he persisted. Then he disappeared. 

His wife, US-born Myroslava, was sure he had disappeared himself to get a story, or was in a bad situation somewhere but would return. She expected him to return to their apartment every evening. When walking down a street, she expected him to appear around every next corner. 

But six weeks after his disappearance, his headless body was found in a shallow grave. That was perhaps the last straw precipitating an uprising that would take four years to mature. 

After that murder, some journalists were more emboldened than cowed. “The most they can do is kill you,” Olena Prytula, editor of Ukrainska Pravda, later told a documentary filmmaker. 

When some people are bravely outspoken, others follow. A member of parliament released an audio recording where Kuchma says: “Before I forget, there is this guy named Gongadze. He is the worst possible bastard, Gongadze. Well, the Chechens should kidnap him and take him to Chechnya.”

When autocrats call members of the Press enemies of the people, their henchmen eventually and invariably commit violence. When violence happens, freedom lovers must respond by doubling whatever the victims were doing to offend the regime. Americans should take that as the first lesson from the 2004 Orange Revolution. 

Gongadze’s murder energized the pro-Western reform elements in the parliamentary elections of 2002. The reformist bloc, “Our Ukraine,” received double the votes of the pro-Kuchma bloc, pushing charismatic reformer Viktor Yushchenko into position as Ukraine’s most popular politician in parliament. He had earlier served as Prime Minister during an especially prosperous time for Ukraine, 2000 and 2001.

When the presidential campaign came in 2004, Viktor Yushchenko was the clear favorite for reformers, opposing the regime’s man—and be prepared for the confusing similarity of names—Viktor Yanukovych. I will save you some trouble in the paragraphs below by referring to them as “Good Viktor” Yushchenko and “Bad Viktor” Yanukovych, who, by the way, had two criminal convictions. 

Good Viktor’s anti-corruption campaign posters featured bright orange. “Tak” (yes) was his slogan. There is a lesson for us in his campaign’s use of the word Yes, because the belief that a better future is possible and at hand is the only thing that can overcome the lethargic surrender intentionally imposed by autocrats.  His campaign was about freedom and the rule of law that comes with real democracy, but it focused solely on corruption, the part of Ukrainian life that was most aggravating to most people. Corruption in a society or an economy starts at the top. A corrupt head of state creates an ecosystem of corruption that floods down to clerks issuing drivers’ licenses. Do you want to pass your driver’s test? A bribe is necessary. A passport? Admission to school? Have surgery scheduled? Also, the msn who robbed your apartment is free on the street because police and judges are also for sale. There is freedom in such a society if you have lots of money.  For most Ukrainians, ubiquitous corruption was the concern. 

Harris and Walz lost the 2024 US election largely because they didn’t sufficiently understand that people vote for the problems right in front of them. If you live hand-to-mouth and with difficulty, you are not among the “elites” who can afford to vote for egghead issues like democracy. Our resistance movements now should not make the same mistake. Another lesson might be this: Resistance campaigns are essentially “No!” campaigns, while “Yes” is energizing for the long haul and points to a better future. A third lesson here might be that Good Viktor’s campaign did not specify issues. It simply claimed to be “the people,” which automatically set it against the corruption of the regime. A campaign of, by and for “free people,” might be more powerful than a campaign to preserve federal agencies and values of governance. 

The 2004 Ukrainian presidential campaign was rough. Good Viktor’s ads were not allowed in most newspapers or on most TV and radio channels. His campaign plane was sometimes denied landing at airports. Supporters were beaten. Everyone was followed. Supporters could not get train tickets to rallies. For the regime’s candidate and his supporters, trains were free. 

Credible opinion polls showed Good Viktor leading by landslide numbers. The regime decided to take him out. Two months before election day, the first symptoms of his poisoning appeared. Vomiting. Pain throughout his body. He was taken to a hospital on September 10 for treatment and surgery. 

Campaign surrogates took to the stage at rallies. Government TV claimed that he had not been poisoned, that it was all a campaign lie. A doctor was produced who said it was likely food poisoning from one of his own events or alcohol abuse. 

Good Viktor Yushchenko finally was able to show up at a rally on September 18, thanking the doctors and all who supported him. He was sweating and in great pain, with a pain catheter in his spine, but he spoke powerfully for two hours, warning the regime that they would not poison the movement, as it was millions of people. (Reminds us of when Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest but went on to speak for two hours.)  His wife, Myroslava, noticed how his face and his articulation had changed. The scarring of his face from the poison would continue. So that he would not have to speak that long again, his rallies were mostly rock music and mass singing of traditional Ukrainian songs.  Rock music kept the young people coming and excited. They became the energy of the campaign. That’s a lesson. 

On September 24, the regime lamely tried to even the PR score. Bad Victor stepped out of a campaign bus and collapsed into the arms of his aids. His campaign claimed he was hit with a heavy blunt object in an assassination attempt. He made a video statement from a hospital room, blaming his opponent. 

A cameraman who got away before his videotape could be confiscated released the tape to a reform-friendly TV station. The weapon was a single egg thrown at Bad Viktor’s chest. A brave woman in the Interior Ministry acknowledged that fact before her statement was retracted in favor of the official assassination claim. The egg was thrown by a first-year college student, Dmytro Romaniuk. I include his name for no reason, except to show that not every Ukrainian man is a Viktor. 

A lesson here is that any violence, even a thrown egg, will be used by an autocrat to lie and perhaps further clamp down.

Good Viktor repeatedly warned his crowds not to believe polls that said the race was close. It was not close, and the regime was obviously using false polls to prepare for a dishonest count. He quotes Stalin from 1936: “It doesn’t matter how you vote; it only matters how you count them.”

Two days before election day, Vladimir Putin came to Kyiv for a state visit and to watch a military parade. It was several things:  don’t think you can mess with the present regime, your neighbor has your autocrat’s back, and nice little country you got here—careful how you vote. 

October 31, 2004, election day. Exit polls show Good Viktor with a modest but healthy lead. Nevertheless, the count went to Bad Viktor. As there was no majority winner, a runoff was scheduled.  The dishonest count was a clear warning to Good Viktor’s campaign that the next count would be even more corrupt. They began to prepare the physical logistics—everything but bullets—for what would become known as the Orange Revolution. 

Some of Bad Viktor’s voters were beginning to come over to Good Viktor, as the first round was such an insult to all citizens. It was helpful that the Good Viktor campaign had been about the people, not about issues other than corruption. No one had to cross an ideological line to join the crowds already forming in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Plaza). The regime’s former voters had never been demonized. Those should be huge lessons for opponents of autocrats. 

November 21-22, 2004, runoff election night. Even before polls closed on the day of the runoff election, the Good Viktor campaign had filled Independence Plaza with supporters, starting at 9 am with about five-hundred people. By 11am, 30,000. By noon, 80,000 and growing continuously as people streamed in from Ukraine’s western regions. The crowd would swell to half a million. 

(Good) Viktor Yushchenko at the Independence Plaza microphone: 

“What I want to say and what I want all Ukraine to hear: we will protect the rights of the voters, and we will defend Ukrainian laws. The time has come my friends all across this plaza to raise the tent city and to prepare for acts of protest. We should show, dear friends, that together with us in the capital all regions of Ukraine are acting together. This unity exists in every region. In every province there should be a tent city with opposition activists.” His running mate, Yulia Tymoshenko, always wearing her signature strawberry braids like a crown, said they must prepare for lay siege to the criminal regime. 

A very important student movement, PORA, accounted for an important part of the crowd. Could the crowd keep the voting counting honest? It would not. Good Viktor took the microphone to urge people not to go home. He said that he had information that the Plaza would be cleared by the military at 3 am otherwise. 

Exit polls of 30,000 voters from 500 polling locations showed Good Viktor with a 10 or 11% advantage. Another exit poll showed him with only a 5% lead, but still healthy.

More than 1.2 million ballots appeared unexpectedly from Donetsk, the most Russia-friendly province of Ukraine. In some polling places, acid was poured into ballot boxes. At 2 am, the Election Commission announced that a third of the votes had been counted and Bad Viktor was ahead by 4%. That was enough of an alarm bell: After conferring with experts on the vote count, Good Viktor called on all his supporters to come to Independence Plaza if they wanted to save their democracy. It was very Gandhian of him to check the facts first. 

The Regime was also busy. Armored vehicles flanked the Elections Commission. Several thousand troops and special forces surrounded the Presidential Administration.

By that time, Good Viktor’s campaign had turned Independence Plaza into more than a crowd. Preparations had begun even before the first round of elections. Tents, sleeping bags, portable kitchens, portable toilets, and an army’s worth of food donated from wholesale food companies had been secured, and now it all moved into the Plaza. Almost all the funding had come from the people. Large companies, tired of corrupt business-by-oligarch, had been the first to donate. That encouraged smaller companies and individuals to donate—supplies and money for more supplies.

The first 200 tents went up in the early evening as the second-round ballots were still being counted. 

From a properly permitted stage, patriotic songs were sung and broadcast through loudspeakers continuously. Then rock groups came on, and two dancing eggs in Sesame Street-worthy costumes to make jokes like, “Do you know why nobody ever found a heavy blunt object at the scene of the crime?” No, why? “Because they picked him up by his arms and carried him away!” Giant television screens showed the show and the reported election results to the far ends of the crowds, which were orange with flags and scarves. 

Putin was already congratulating Bad Viktor, but leaders of the city councils of four large cities in Western Ukraine were congratulating Good Viktor. A lesson here is to have such statements ready in advance to build momentum at critical times.

Good Viktor, covered by the friendly television channels, called for more people to come to the Plaza. His running mate called for mass strikes in industries, transportation, schools and more. 

The United States weighed in: Senator Richard Lugar, chair of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a statement condemning the falsification of the results. Elmar Brok of the European Parliament issued something similar, threatening financial sanctions. U.S. Secretary of State’s office called the Russian Ambassador, Yuri Ushakov, to appear for a scolding regarding Putin’s statement. 

The crowds were urged to contact their friends to come after work and stay as long as necessary through the days ahead. They did. While it was not advertised as a general strike, the economy was nevertheless at a standstill. That is the one condition a corrupt regime cannot survive or abide. “In two hours, all of Kiev should be standing here. 

Yulia Tymoshenko, the running mate, announced on her own that a march to the presidential administration was planned for the second day. Other campaign leaders, including Good Viktor, thought this would result in violence that would turn many Ukrainians against them, but did not argue publicly. 

The crowd continued to grow, as people streamed into Kyiv. 

The march to the Presidential Administration took place. The marchers stopped at a thick line of riot police standing with their shields. Yulia Tymoshenko approached the police and asked them to step aside, saying they represented the people of Ukraine. Protesters attached yellow ribbons and flowers to the barricade between their numbers and the police. 

Tymoshenko had not been clear about the purpose of the march. Some supporters thought they were there to storm and occupy the buildings. Those people were held back by others, who recognized that any violence would be a tactical mistake and a bloodbath.  

General Oleksandr Savchenko, Commander of the Kyiv Police, sympathetic to the marchers and the cause, told the organizers that if he let the demonstrators through his line, the federal police guarding the federal buildings would kill them.

This sobered up the more aggressive demonstrators long enough for Good Viktor’s people to turn the rhetoric toward a peaceful blockade. This was in line with the candidate’s intention, which was “maximum participation and maximum peacefulness.” He was quoted to say, “Even one person’s life is worth more than my future presidency.”  

It was snowing but the crowds stayed. Schoolteachers and parents brought their kids out to see democracy defended. Back in the Plaza, speeches, rock music, patriotic songs known by all in the crowds continued. Supporters of the other side also flowed into the city. 

By the third day, November 24, Good Viktor was urging unions and other workers to engage in a general strike, and to come to the Plaza instead of to work.  Blockades were paralyzing the city and the government.

On that day, the Central Election Commission announced that Bad Viktor had won with 49.46% and Good VIktor with 46.61%.  One member of the commission left the room in protest. 

When a state-friendly television station announced the results, a sign-language interpreter in the corner of the screen did not translate the official announcement quite correctly. Nataliya Dmytruk, 46, signed: "I am addressing everybody who is deaf in Ukraine. Our new president is Viktor Yushchenko. Do not trust the results of the Central Election Committee. They are all lies, and I am too ashamed to translate such lies to you. Maybe (or maybe not) you will see me again."

Her courage prompted 250 news colleagues confronted the network’s owners, chanting, "No more lies!" The network changed almost immediately to fair reporting, as did other news outlets. 

Nataliya Dmytruk’s red line had been crossed. The television station had become an organ of a corrupt government—think Fox News. The people who worked there knew it. When they saw Nataliya’s courage, they had to join her. 

A Bad Viktor supporter on the street, celebrating his candidate’s supposed win, was confronted by a Good Viktor supporter who said there were falsifications. The drunk young man said, “You go ask President Bush. Were there falsifications? Did he have falsifications? Did he really win the election?”  If that was a reference to the “swift boating” of John Kerry, vote-switching voting machines or other stories, it shows how election misdeeds in America give people around the world permission to accept unethical practices as a normal part of winning. But a young woman on the street pushed back: “If there is no fairness in the country, there is no democracy!” she said. 

Crowds were now perhaps 600,000 for Good Viktor. More rock music. Laser lights. Songs about “Our Future, Our lives!” The weather was 10-degrees, and the crowds were staying. 

On November 25, the Ukrainian Supreme Court heard arguments. The crowds held their ground for days. 

The regime was under tremendous pressure from Russia and from the oligarchs to clear the streets. As many as 10,000 troops were on the outskirts of the city, heading in. They did not want to come. Communications between Good Viktor’s campaign and the military paid off. The general bringing in the troops said he would not continue if there were a blockade to prevent them. Good Viktor’s campaign sent one car and a few people to block the highway. That was enough for the general.

A great effort was also made to not provoke individual police officers. The police with shields would change guard every half hour, giving the protestors the opportunity to help the retiring ones with good marching music like “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and welcoming the new police with friendly hellos and welcomes. “Good evening! The police are with the People!” And then the national anthem. 

The city police were coming over to the people’s side. The Police Chief made a speech to the crowd: “We are convinced that no policeman wants the future president to be a person who was convicted of premeditated crimes in the past. We believe that solidarity of the police with the Ukrainian people will lead to complete victory over this criminal government.”

Cheers went up: “The Police are with the People!” 

The federal police were another matter, but the city Police Chief addressed the phalanx of riot-shielded federal police: “Think about what you are doing. These are our parents, our sisters standing over there, freezing. And you are standing here. Who did you take an oath to? To the people of Ukraine! You haven’t fulfilled your oath… Who are you protecting? You’re young, they’ll take off, and you’ll be left here to live with the people. How will you look each other in the eye then? Think about it. Serve your people. Glory to Ukraine."

Some of the young federal police looked to be on the verge of crying. Their top officers told the President Kuchma’s office that they would attack the crowd only upon explicit orders signed by Kuchma. In fact, Kuchma saw the writing on the wall and did not want to risk that paper trail. People remember the fate of Mussolini. According to his advisors interviewed later, the fact that protesters were before his residence convinced Kuchma that the nation was no longer under his control.  

Good Viktor’s campaign manager gave his personal word to the Minister of the Interior that the crowd would not enter any government building if the federal police would withdraw. That assurance, as it was between men who knew and trusted each other, was enough to prevent bloody action. The federal police withdrew into buses as the people chanted “You’re our guys! You’re our guys!”

Noisy steel drum music was played by the crowds outside the presidential residence. Organizers with bullhorns repeatedly reminded the people to remain peaceful —at least in all things other than making noise.  Graffiti was prohibited and a self-imposed distance of two meters from the fence was enforced, giving the police no excuse to react. “Behave like civilized people!” organized repeated to the crowds. “We will let everyone through!”

Offers were made to let Good Viktor be President of Ukraine, if Russia could have some of the eastern areas. The offer was refused. 

December 3, 2004. The Ukrainian Supreme Court orders a new election. Everyone knows that Good Viktor will win, which he did, though not without another great effort to fight the efforts of the corrupt regime. 

President George Bush said the world was watching, and it was. 

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