You have to bring people together based on a common purpose to create a revolution. It is possible to start it, although it may require a lot of patience, organization and passion. You will be more likely to succeed if you don't improvise your actions. A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, "a change of course") is a significant change that usually occurs in a short period of time.
Steps
Method 1 of 4: Choose a theme
Step 1. Find a central theme around which you organize your revolution
If you are a Marxist, this may be a core belief that capitalism is the root of all evil because it exploits the working class.
- You have to find a central truth, regardless of the revolution you seek to achieve. Find a way to articulate your cause, in a simple sentence, like a theory. Find a common purpose and define it. Create a clear and eloquent message. What does your revolution support? What do you want to achieve and why? Create a simple and powerful message that you can deliver regularly.
- You want a cause that relates to people's deepest passions and their sense of right and wrong. Hold on to what really matters and how it will create a better world.
Step 2. Identify the need for reform
You can only make your case for change if you express why the present is damaged. In addition to theory, you can do this by using a specific need or concern that is supported by information.
- Essentially, you are trying to express the reasons why the change is necessary. Perhaps, you want to change a single institution, such as a school. Aim for a need or concern that is prominent and compelling. In the case of the educational example, this could be a high rate of students dropping out.
- Perhaps, you want to change a government. People will rally more to your cause if you can specifically explain how the government disappoints people or endangers the environment or does something specific like this.
Step 3. Create specific goals
It is useful for the revolution to know what it seeks to change. Legislation? The same system of government? A little simpler improvement in the ways of thinking about a concept, like environmentalism?
- Breaking down the goals into smaller changes can help the revolution generate real change faster. For example, you may wish you could eliminate poverty in the world, but helping some poor local families may be a better place to start. You will see results immediately.
- You will need an action plan. This can be a written or visual model that can include some responsibilities, activities, and scheduled dates. Just don't improvise your actions. Sit down and make a plan. Measure progress and use information constantly.
Step 4. Come up with a plan to secure resources
Perhaps, you will need operational support. You will need some people who are willing to donate money or time for the cause.
- Having a supporter who provides funds can be helpful. Access to raw materials can also help. You will need to finance basic costs that you may not have imagined at first, such as postage, printing, permissions, and the website. Look for some donations.
- You will need some companions. They have to be people with resources (interpersonal, intellectual, financial or others) and who can join the organization and help it. Don't try to do everything on your own.
Method 2 of 4: Engage the Right People
Step 1. Choose a leader and a symbol
Put a charismatic face on the revolution. Revolutions can take off when they have a charismatic face to rally the masses. This face can be an already known person or just someone who is particularly eloquent or who insists on the subject. You need someone or something to represent your rebellion as a symbol. For example, Katniss is the Mockingjay.
- The leader can be the person who came up with the original idea or just a person who is brave enough to take criticism. Choose a spokesperson who is easygoing and good on camera. Build a relationship with television and newspaper reporters to get your message across.
- There are some people who advocate making decisions as a group and remaining anonymous without clear leadership so that leaders are not targeted or end up in jail due to opposition. However, remember that having a charismatic leader can be another strategy. In some circumstances, the masses can join the cause (as in the case of Martin Luther King Jr.) if the leader becomes the target and ends up in jail.
Step 2. Recruit some activists
You need the people who will organize and lead the movement. These people must be committed and willing to work in the trenches and dedicate their hearts and time to the cause. Motivate people to join because they believe in the cause. Give presentations at coffee shops or music stores or other places where you think receptive audiences will congregate.
- The administrative team will require people with different skills and techniques. They will know how to interact with the media and how to get the masses to attend a protest. Average people can relate more to people like them than to a charismatic leader. They will feel more comfortable joining if they see other people they know join or people they associate with join.
- You cannot create a revolution with just one person. You have to remember the fundamental principle. Creating a revolution is a painstaking process that requires a well-formed organization. Build support and consensus - nothing will happen if the only rebels are you and your teammates. This is an important step and is the organization for a successful revolution or a small civil rebellion.
Step 3. Build partnerships with other people and groups
Find some supporters for the change. You will need people inside and outside the institution or the social structure in question to have a better chance of achieving change. Don't succumb to the temptation of competition.
- Identify these people and seek their support. Pick people who are influential and who can reach more people. Pick a mix of people with different strengths. Forge alliances and connect with other colleagues and others who are already working on the same or related cause.
- You will need at least 15% of the population to create a change. Bring new people to your team. You don't just go to people you know. Find the people whose skills are needed. Try to reach out to groups that are already organized and have a list of members and operations (unions, for example).
Step 4. Recruit the intellectuals
It is easier to start a revolution if the intellectuals support the causes of it. They can be professors, researchers, writers, artists, speakers, and opinion writers.
- Intellectuals can help shape the rationale for revolution by structuring a compelling theory. They can provide facts that will defend the cause. Many revolutions awaken with deeper momentous work, such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter to Birmingham. King wrote that letter while in jail in response to a public statement given by eight Southern religious leaders who were Caucasian. It became a central document of the civil rights movement, appeased opposition, and garnered support.
- Intellectuals can also help create a coherent and clear vision that will excite the masses about what the future may hold. They can state what the new world or system will look like.
Step 5. Go to the scientists
Controversy matters, but building your movement on science and information can be particularly effective.
- Consider the global warming debate and how important science is to environmental movements as they seek to advocate for their cause.
- He bases the cause of the movement on academic research that is respected in his field, including that of people who are not directly involved with the movement. In this way, it will be much more difficult for the opposition to refute the movement's arguments.
Method 3 of 4: Get the message across
Step 1. Remember the power of art and music
The rationale for a revolution can emerge from all artistic spheres and areas of popular culture. You don't just have to focus on the written words.
- Spoken words, poetry, music, and art, including public art, can sometimes further your message and cause more effectively.
- Some arts can be durable. Consider a mural painted in a community. Likewise, music has the ability to influence the minds of all the people in the world. Try to humanize the movement. Get people interested by telling the stories of real people who the masses relate to and are interested in.
Step 2. Embrace all the potentials of new media
You can also start a revolution through the quality of your own ideas. The internet has given people the ability to publish information and reach the masses.
- Create a blog. Install WordPress or another blog service. Write a blog and broadcast it to the masses. In it, create an intellectual basis for why the change is needed and explain what the change will look like and what it will symbolize to your audience.
- Consider other formats. You can create a documentary. This can educate and motivate an audience. Don't forget the power of a short video. A series on YouTube can help. Do not have the strategy of having only one means of communication. Use the new and the old. Use written media and multimedia media, such as video. Use social media and blogs, but fix your message in traditional newspapers and magazines. Issue your message through different formats and mechanisms.
Step 3. Use social media to organize
Remember to implement the power of social media, which is a great way to get your messages in front of many people.
- You can use social media to build events and get an attendance, as well as reach your target audience.
- Remember not only to have a social media strategy. Revolutions are most satisfying when organized on and off a computer screen. Build support by distributing flyers and brochures, spreading the word, making advertisements, and communicating using current technology.
Step 4. Outline the discussion
You can do this by choosing your words carefully. Choose your model of morality. In America, this is sometimes divided into "protective parent" or "strict parent."
- Consider how words, like "freedom," create an emotional response. Stick your words to people's needs and your overall mission.
- He persuades through a mixture of pathos (emotional attraction), logos (attraction to reason) and ethos (attraction to ethics). Build your case with logical reasoning and facts while adding an emotional element.
- It demonstrates the popularity of the movement to people in power, the legislature, and the military. The more popular it is in society, the less likely there will be violent repression.
Step 5. Expect people to react in different ways to change
Researchers have found five stages in the process of change.
- The first phase is called "uninformed optimism" and is the honeymoon phase of the project. There will be energy and excitement at this point. However, problems will then suddenly arise and "informed pessimism" will appear. Some efforts for change will be abandoned.
- You will need an optimistic realism, the third stage, to continue the movement. This is established when efforts are successful even though there have been some problems. Informed optimism is when confidence returns because things are still progressing. Finally, the rewarding conclusion develops when you can demonstrate concrete results and can communicate them.
Method 4 of 4: Choose a Strategy
Step 1. Take action
This is the most important step because the revolution fails without this. You must act, whether it be a non-violent protest or a sit-in or a boycott.
- Your leader must motivate support and work diligently day and night to improve the revolution. However, at some point, you have to do something, not just write or talk about it.
- Power will defend itself since that is its nature. Illegitimate "governments" are not happy with the rebellion of their people and will do whatever it takes to crush the resistance. Remember that your objective is the heart of your operation, your consensus is the mind of the revolution and the actions that you and your support take are the hands of the revolution.
Step 2. Work from the inside
Win a few decision-making positions in key institutions. Some people who have studied revolutions, like Saul Alinsky, claim that they are slow and require patience.
- It penetrates the institutions that have power in society, such as churches, unions, and political parties. Earn influence within decision-making ranks.
- When you have the power, use the new platform to create change within the system. Adapt and be flexible. Revolutionary movements must adapt to changing political circumstances. Resilience can be important for this.
Step 3. Find a goal
You will need a contrast to define your movement. Pick a goal and then customize it. Then polarize it. Do not opt for violence. Nonviolent resistance campaigns were found to be twice as likely to be successful in a research study.
- Freeze the target by focusing on it, be it an institution or a specific leader. Pit your strengths against your enemy's weaknesses, according to Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". Maybe the opponent has a stronger army, but you are cooler.
- Never hurt anyone. However, you can create a compelling case for change by focusing on the words and actions of a single target, such as an institution, group, or person.
Step 4. Study past revolutions
You can create a revolution that is modeled on some principles that have worked before. History is full of revolutions that have triumphed: the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Civil Rights Movement.
- Revolutions often begin by disrupting old or established organizations in society. Disorganize them by challenging their foundations and principles. Revolutions have occurred throughout human history and vary widely in terms of methods, duration, motivating ideology, and the number of revolutionaries who have participated. Its results include major changes in culture, economy, and socio-political institutions.
- When the old is disorganized, the new can be better organized. Determine your tactics. Remember that power is what the enemy thinks you have. Keep pushing, ridicule, keep the enemy by their own rules. Change the tactics because they can lose their effectiveness if they are used for a long time.
Step 5. Prove civil contempt
Sometimes people decide that political channels don't work, so they go to the streets to demonstrate the power of the people.
- For example, people have protested chemical factories in China and mining problems in Washington D. C. They have taken to the streets to protest what they perceive as police abuse.
- You can try to work within the system, but when it doesn't work, you can work outside of it, but in a visible way, like through a hunger strike, a mass protest.
Step 6. Plan a protest
Research the rules of public places. Choose your time wisely (probably a Friday so people can go).
- Pick a place that is in the area of public interest, pick a local political issue to incentivize people, and find a public space that can accommodate many people on foot. Research permit requirements and local laws and follow them.
- Make sure that decisions are made in a group way and make some booths or an art to generate some messages from the environment. Consider offering free services to show what society takes away (like library books). Follow the law.
Advice
- Remember to trust the people you fight for. They are your legacy.
- You have to be totally committed to succeed; reaching an agreement is a failure.
- If you want to change the world around you, you have to change yourself first!
- Know what you do and who you do it for. Also, be aware of how much you can lose.
- Always tell the truth and never succumb to the temptations of power or money. Believe in your cause and your power base. The revolution is a belief.
- Keep your vision in the big picture. Don't dive into the details.
- There is strength in quantity. The greater the mass and the unit of motion, the greater the probability of achieving what is required.
- You will not benefit anyone if you only try to consolidate a power or gain recognition just for yourself.
- Accept input from people. The revolution cannot happen by just one person; do not be a person who takes the law in his hands. Accept equality.
- Listen to your heart and think about what is most needed.
Warnings
- A revolution is not about you, but about all people. Don't try to get famous.
- Get an idea of how you want society to look after the revolution. Innocent people could suffer if the structures to take control are not put in place.
- Like many revolutions in the past, you can die in war, be attacked, tortured, imprisoned, etc. at the hands of those in power who protect their interests. However, that does not mean that the movement and the cause cannot win if there is enough determination. There are some methods that people in power use to intimidate and try to put out the fire of the revolution before it burns them.
- Never let the purpose of the revolution be driven by a single person or a single group; supporters must be governed for their legitimate cause.