A powerful guide that shows leaders, organizers, and everyday people how to choose with clarity between conversation, resistance, and the strategies that move real change.
When to Talk and When to Fight is a powerful guide to navigating conflict with clarity, integrity, and strategy. Drawing on decades of work with social change movements, negotiators, and community organizations, Rebecca Subar offers a practical framework for deciding when to engage in dialogue, when to build power, and when to resist.
Talking and fighting are not opposites, but essential tools that can strengthen each other when used strategically, and bridges the worlds of conflict resolution and social-movement strategy.
About the Book
Written for organizers, negotiators, mediators, and leaders navigating conflict at any scale.
When conflict arises, whether in communities, campaigns, families, or organizations, knowing whether to negotiate or to resist is a strategic choice. Through vivid stories and a simple, elegant ABC model for understanding conflict, Rebecca Subar shows how the most effective leaders skillfully move between conversation, power-building, and direct action.
When to Talk and When to Fight challenges the false binary between “dialogue” and “resistance,” helping readers analyze their goals, power, principles, and strategic context with sharper insight. It is an essential resource for changemakers, organizers, mediators, and anyone working to shift power toward a more just world.
Key Themes
A New ABC Model
for Conflict
A clear, three-part A–B–C framework that guides groups in choosing between approaching an opponent with conversation, building power to influence them, or contending directly.
Power and
Strategic Choice
An examination of how power dynamics shape outcomes, and how groups can build power without losing principle.
Principles and Values
Why clarity about values matters as much as strategy when deciding whether to talk or fight.
Biases and Comfort Zones
Examine how individuals and groups often have a built-in bias toward talking or fighting, and how recognizing these patterns allows for more strategic decisions
“A groundbreaking contribution to the cause of peace.”
Douglas Stone, Co-author of Difficult Conversations
“An essential toolkit for organizers navigating the strategic decision to talk or resist.”
Esteban Kelly, Executive Director, US Federation of Worker Cooperatives
“A beautiful, compelling, and timely approach to moving through conflict and building deep relationships to create change.”
Rev. Darlene Nipper, Rockwood Leadership Institute
Meet the Author
Rebecca Subar is a strategist, mediator, and educator who has advised political negotiators, movement leaders, and social change organizations for over twenty years. A consulting partner at Dragonfly Partners, she helps groups build power, navigate conflict, and make principled strategic decisions.
She has taught negotiation, conflict studies, and social movement strategy at universities, including West Chester University, and has supported campaigns in racial justice, gender justice, environmental justice, and peacebuilding.
When to Talk and When to Fight brings together her scholarship, field experience, and deep belief in shared liberation.
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