“Rebecca Subar’s rich personal background and distinguished career advising political negotiators, organization-builders, and movement strategists have positioned her as one of the world’s leading voices on conflict management. Here Subar combines profound insights from both practitioners and theoreticians, offering her readers invaluable paradigms on conflict transformation. When to Talk and When to Fight is the book many of us having been waiting for!”
—Sa’ed Atshan, assistant professor of peace and conflict studies, Swarthmore College
“This is an emotionally and intellectually engaging masterpiece about lovers and fighters. It makes clear that the defining connection between talking and fighting is that the fight for policy change and passionate dialogue must both exist to change a narrative of trauma and injustice. This is a must-read.”
—Shawanna Vaughn, antiviolence and criminal justice activist with Silent Cry Inc.
“When to Talk and When to Fight brilliantly bridges the worlds of bargaining-table negotiation and social movement power building. Rebecca Subar creates an original framework for understanding why the two approaches are often in tension with one another and how—when coordinated skillfully—they can be used together. A writer who is both a ‘peacemaker and provocateur,’ Subar fills her book with illuminating stories and narrates with a wonderfully engaging personal voice, making the reading at once absorbing and enlightening.”
—Mark Engler, coauthor of This Is an Uprising
“Rebecca Subar’s book is a powerful and important exploration of the tensions between challenging unjust centers of power and negotiating our terms of victory. This book has forced me to ask tough questions about both the social justice strategies I am comfortable with—and the strategies I need to get more comfortable with to be the most effective human rights advocate possible.”
—Sunjeev Bery, Executive Director, Freedom Forward
“In When to Talk and When to Fight, Subar argues against black-and-white binaries and promotes the validity of different strategies depending on the mix of personal and community styles, principles and values, structural obstacles and biases, and the power dynamics between the opposing parties in a constantly churning and contradictory society. Subar’s style is engaging and challenging, a smart ‘how-to’ book that is grounded in a deep personal understanding of social struggle and political advocacy.”
—Alice Rothchild, author of Condition Critical: Life and Death in Israel/Palestine
