Self-Liberation: A Guide to Strategic Planning for Action to End a Dictatorship or Other Oppression (Albert Einstein Institution)

Self-Liberation
A Guide to Strategic Planning for Action to End a Dictatorship or Other Oppression

by Gene Sharp, with the assistance of Jamila Raqib

First Edition, November 2009

Self-Liberation (Download PDF)

(You may also order hard copies. Also available for download in Vietnamese.)

This strategic planning guide is intended to assist people who wish themselves to plan a grand strategy, or super plan, to achieve their liberation from oppression and to build a more free and democratic system. This document is not only relevant to people facing internal dictatorships. It is also meant to be useful to people facing any kind of oppression.

This short document cannot include adequate in-depth presentations of all the knowledge and ideas needed for strategic planning of a nonviolent struggle for liberation. Therefore, interspersed in this text are references to selected published readings covering those important topics. Careful study of these selected readings, available for download below, in the sequence recommended is essential. They contain much of the understandings, knowledge, and insights that may be useful in the preparation of strategies of liberation.

All of the readings recommended in Self Liberation may be downloaded as PDF files, here:

	On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict by Robert L. Helvey (2004) [1]
	The Anti-Coup by Gene Sharp and Bruce Jenkins (2003) [1]
	From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation by Gene Sharp (1993) [2] and (2003, 2008, 2010) [1]
	Social Power and Political Freedom (excerpts) by Gene Sharp (1980) [3]
	The Politics of Nonviolent Action (excerpts) by Gene Sharp (1973) [3]
	There Are Realistic Alternatives by Gene Sharp (2003) [1]
	Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (excerpts) by Gene Sharp (2005) [3]

[1] Boston: Albert Einstein Institution
[2] Bangkok: Committee for the Restoration of Democracy in Burma
[3] Boston: Extending Horizons Books, Porter Sargent Publishers