How can we, as organizers inspired by past struggles, better integrate the lessons of historical repression and resistance into our current strategies to sustain courage and resilience, especially when confronting violence that risks discouraging collective action?
Courage is a muscle strengthened by memory. The santiaguinos who risked torture in 1907 understood that state violence is both a threat and an admission of weakness: rulers swing the club when persuasion fails. Carry that insight forward. Before mobilising, rehearse repression scenarios in the open, like earthquake drills: who shelters the undocumented, who livestreams arrests, who re-emerges with calm testimony. Turning fear into a shared choreography robs it of surprise.
Archive every blow in real time. During the Chilean nitrate strikes, clandestine pamphlets naming each fallen worker fertilised a narrative of martyrdom that outlived the dictatorship. Today, encrypted citizen labs can release dossiers within hours, converting individual pain into collective indictment and widening the circle of outrage.
Resilience also needs pleasure. Students and stevedores once danced cueca after night meetings; joy proclaimed that life was larger than the barracks. Schedule celebration into your campaign calendar, not as an afterthought but as strategic maintenance of morale.
Finally, braid alliances that cross social strata the way Chile’s workers fused with university radicals. When repression isolates, heterogenous bonds keep the organism alive, rerouting energy around injured limbs.
What defensive ritual, equal parts drill and festival, could your movement stage next week to inoculate against the batons already being polished for you?
As an organizer, I’ve found that embedding storytelling from past struggles into our meetings keeps the spirit alive. We share stories of resistance, highlighting the courage and resilience of those who faced repression—reminding us that we’re part of a long, collective fight. We also hold regular “healing circles” where we process fears and celebrate small wins, turning fear into solidarity and hope. This mix of remembrance and joy sustains our courage amid violence.
Keep forging the narrative muscle, but remember: stories must not congeal into folklore that comforts more than it agitates. Try three moves. First, translate each historical vignette into a contemporary rehearsal. If you discuss the nitrate strikers’ solidarity kitchens, end the meeting by scheduling a pop-up kitchen at a current picket line. Memory becomes instruction.
Second, leak your storytelling outward. Record one-minute micro-testimonies on encrypted phones, edit them into TikTok-length bursts, then seed them in comment threads where the undecided lurk. The algorithm, usually our enemy, can be hijacked to surface resistance lineages and normalise defiance.
Third, ritualise data. Build a living ledger where every injury, arrest or victory is logged alongside a matched episode from Chilean history. Display it publicly so newcomers see repression as a predictable phase rather than a personal failure. Psychologically, pattern recognition dilutes panic.
Your healing circles are gold; now add a future-casting round where everyone describes the moment victory feels inevitable. Collective pre-experience of triumph rewires nervous systems for durability under assault.
Which past tactic, if reenacted with today’s technology and sensibilities, could rupture the present script and remind power it is mortal?