As 20,000 people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge at the height of the Occupy Wall Street uprising in 2011, guerrilla-projectionists lit up the skyline with a huge “99% bat signal” light projection.
A political vision, a structural analysis of oppression, and a practical organizing strategy working towards a society that addresses harm without relying on prisons, police, military, or other violent systems.
Your action should speak for itself. Its inner logic should be obvious to the outside eye. When a protest has good action logic, its dramatic challenge to power tells a clear and compelling story.
A checklist of 8 key factors for planning & evaluating actions.
While international mechanisms like the United Nations’ human rights protocols are no cure-all for correcting abuses, savvy campaigners can use them to put pressure on rogue governments or protect activists.
The living systems that support us can regenerate and evolve, and so can we.
People are more likely to take your leaflet, read it, and remember what it’s all about if you deliver it with flair. (Or ice cream!)
A key segment of your supporters will only join at peak moments of your campaign — usually in response to an external event — and then disappear again. To win, you must be ready to make the most of this surge.
Bertolt Brecht’s method for using innovative theatrical techniques to “make the familiar strange” in order to provoke a social analysis and a critical response from the audience.
Anger is a powerful emotion. Use it wisely. If you have the moral high ground and act with dignity, anger is compelling and people will join you. If you don’t, you’ll seem a little scary, or even crazy.
The story of how 17 young activists risked their lives in hunger strikes and flash mobs to force out Angola’s brutal dictator and bring an end to over 30 years of oppression.
Anti-oppression practice provides a framework for constructively addressing and transforming oppressive dynamics as they play out in our organizing.
Don’t worry about being a lousy actor — you’re a great one.
Appropriate a politically neutral phone application to your cause by overwhelming it with campaign messages.
The Art of Hosting is a set of principles and practices for harnessing the self-organizing capacity and collective wisdom of groups to address complex challenges.
Artists are some of the original gig workers…
A vigil that draws upon artistic and ritual elements — thoughtful symbolism, the right tone, and a distinct look and feel — to deepen the experience for both participants and observers.
Artivism, the intersection of art and activism, harnesses the critical imagination to design events and strategies that provoke new questions and new meaning in pursuit of more respectful ways of being.
Like brainstorming, but more active, artstorming invites participants to jump directly into the creative process, resulting in better ideas, and often amazing creations.
They have been known as scavengers, reclaimers, recicladores, and waste pickers…
Armed guards stood at every entrance and exit of Cherán, an Indigenous P’urhépecha community within the Mexican state of Michoacán…
Organized collectives use networked computers and software to provide communications tools directly to their communities and resist spying, exploitation and control of their data by corporations and the state.
Art seeks to explore deep questions. Politics demands a clear direction and message. The right balance can move both hearts and minds.
A common political formation shows up across the Arab World: an often marginalized grouping of individuals that the government can call on to momentarily disrupt movements seeking change.
Hanging a banner off a building or structure makes for great media coverage, alerting the broad public to an issue or campaign. It’s also a good way to frame or contextualize an upcoming action.
A large community gathering to discuss important matters, share information, & hold leaders to account.
Switching the voice boxes of Barbie and GI Joe dolls generated hilarious results and a much-needed conversation about gender stereotypes in America.
In 1999, in a carnival of creative nonviolence, 70,000 protesters shut down the WTO meeting in Seattle, scoring a victory against neoliberalism and launching the global justice movement in the U.S.
A violent attack on protesters in Tahrir Square by pro-regime, camel-riding thugs was a turning point in the Egyptian revolution, generating popular support for the protesters and leading to the fall of Mubarak.
Harness the power of stories to expose oppressive beliefs and show how another reality is possible.
If we can’t talk about it, we can’t change it.
Founded more than 150 years ago with a mission to make higher education accessible to poor white and free Black students, Berea College was the first school in the US South to be sexually and racially integrated…
Sometimes the least structured group can be the most tyrannical. Create a participatory and welcoming environment by adopting a transparent decision making process and promoting accountability within the group.
In 2014, on the one-year anniversary of political violence in Rajganj, Noakhali, Bangladesh, the local community organized a bicycle rally to promote peace.
In December 2008, Tim DeChristopher disrupted an auction of Utah oil and gas drilling leases by bidding, and winning, many parcels. He then used his arrest and trial to make the case for bolder climate action.
During George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, the Billionaires for Bush used humour, guerrilla theatre, and creative media actions to dramatize economic inequality and political corruption in the US.
The Birthright Unplugged/Replugged project used travel as a subversive act to expose Israel’s unjust restrictions of movement and violations of international law.
A human chain or physical barrier that shuts down something bad (a coal mine or Shell meeting), protects something good (a forest or home), or makes a purely symbolic statement.
After Kenya’s post-election violence in 2008, when many young women were sexually abused and traumatized, Boxgirls Kenya used boxing to fight the shaming, stigma, and fear they experienced.
Though the concept of branding has a negative connotation, especially among anti-corporate activists, it can, and indeed should, be used proactively to amplify your message and persuade your target audience.
The Free Fare Movement awakened a generation of Brazilians to the power of mass street action and the utopian possibilities inherent in a popular uprising.
Providing a direct service that benefits your community can speak louder than any rhetorical argument. Living out the values of self-reliance can empower the community to engage in deeper organizing.
In April 2014, 276 girls were abducted from their school by the Boko Haram terrorist group, sparking a massive global campaign demanding their return.
By using creative visuals, telling powerful personal narratives, and highlighting local costs, we can make an otherwise abstract, far-away issue personal, visceral, and relevant.
We need each other, and so we need to build in ways that meet each other’s needs.
While negotiation with the state can play a role in a social movement victory, that depends entirely on people’s stamina and determination to keep the pressure on in the streets, far from the negotiating table.
An often overlooked aspect of campaigning is the patient work of building a skilled and committed base of support through the repetition of regular events.
Activities and practices for building individual, small-group, and community resilience, so we can create sustainable, impactful, and thriving groups capable of changing the world for the better.
In 2014, hundreds of students embarked on a 580 kilometre-long march across Myanmar to protest the military-controlled Parliament’s attempt to outlaw student unions.
Taking care of ourselves and having fun in our work for social change are essential to building stronger, more effective, healthier movements.
Let your resistance be heard loud and clear by making lots of noise en masse — banging pots and pans, blowing whistles, honking horns, or setting off cell-phone ringtones.
Capitalism is a profit-driven economic system that, in spite of its supposed material benefits, is rooted in inequality, exploitation, dispossession, and environmental destruction.
Western North Carolina has long been a center for manufacturing, especially of textiles and furniture…
Celebrating one another as whole people, and celebrating our connection to all other life, is at the center of our efforts to build a better world.
Like all other unjust and arbitrary systems of authority and power, patriarchy must be actively challenged in our daily lives and organizing work if we are to achieve collective liberation.
Translate complex terms into simple, everyday language, so that people can more easily discuss and confront unjust and oppressive systems.
It’s not just the status quo that needs to change, but the status quo inside our own heads. How can we expect to change the world without also changing how we change the world?
After the end of Zimbabwe’s war of liberation in 1980, 22 ex-freedom fighters came together to start a new life by founding a cooperative farm called the Chitsvachirimurutsoka Cooperative Society…
Our strength lies in what we can do together.
Strategy is your overall plan; tactics are those actions you do to implement it — a critical distinction for effective campaigning. Don’t organize a rally before you know whether it serves your larger gameplan.
A campaign’s success or failure often hinges on correctly identifying your target — the specific person or entity with the institutional power to meet your demands — and then going after them strategically.
What can people do when criminals or corrupt officials are beyond the reach of the law? Arrest them!
In the final days of a stalled push to reform healthcare in the US, a “citizens’ posse” gathered to arrest those responsible for the gridlock.
Breaking a law in public in order to challenge the moral legitimacy of that specific law (e.g. racial segregation) or a greater injustice committed by the state (e.g. corruption).
A new methodology of civil disobedience, merging the ancient art of clowning with contemporary tactics of nonviolent direct action, which became an international protest phenomenon in the early 2000s.
When it is unsafe to protest or campaign publicly, there are many creative ways to deliver your message without putting yourself at risk — even floating lanterns or ping pong balls.
The co-operative university of Kenya is a leading center for quality cooperative education, training, research, and consultancy…
Money, debt, property rights, and markets are not unchangeable facts, but symbolic systems based in social relationships. Activists should inspire radical hope by exposing that they can and should be changed.
The natural and cultural wealth that belongs to all of us, such as air, water, forests, libraries, and the Internet. These shared gifts are foundations for a more just world, and must be protected and expanded.
When we take care of the earth, it takes care of us.
Access to reliable internet service has become a basic need in most of the world, yet many communities either lack service in their area or are priced out by corporate monopolies. Community broadband is a way for people rather than companies to own the means of accessing the internet, securing lower prices and faster service in the process.
A community land trust is a model of land or hous- ing ownership that isn’t run for profit but for the public good, for the benefit of families and commu- nities. Through collective control of land, a commu- nity can decide how they want to use it.
In June 2009, the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was arrested and forcibly removed from the country on the order of the Honduran Supreme Court by the Honduran Army…
People who have experienced violence and abuse from police and within their communities have ad- opted creative ways of addressing their needs for safety. Movements for community safety address violence without relying upon police or prisons.
Community-owned sports teams share manage- ment responsibilities, ownership, and profit with a team’s stakeholding supporters.
Youth in the Philippines face many challenges regarding their sexual wellbeing…
Comunalidad is a way of naming and describing the daily practice of coexistence in an autonomous collectivity, in the service of everyone, as practiced in the indigenous communities of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Cleverly retro-fitting a take-out window, Conflict Kitchen built cross-cultural understanding by introducing Pittsburgh locals to the food and culture of places with which the US government was in conflict.
The two foundational values of consensus decision making, which are more important than the form itself, are empowering every person’s full participation, and respecting and accommodating diverse opinions.
Don’t expect your audience to choose you. Instead, identify the constituencies you need to win your campaign, and strategically design your actions to move them in the right direction.
Cooperative education builds the skills, consciousness, and culture of everyday people to grow and govern social and economic democracy. It teaches us to unlearn dominant values of individualism and greed and uplifts the sacred and interconnected nature of all people.
A series of bold and creative direct action protests, from police station invasions to “wink-ins,” succeeded in pushing back against police persecution of gay men for consensual acts in the UK in the 1980s.
This performance art piece was an ironic reenactment of the practice of displaying indigenous peoples in public venues designed to expose the historic prejudices of the museums in which it appeared.
Some can dedicate their lives to a cause, others just an hour a week. Some can take risks, others can’t. Your campaign will be stronger if you offer many ways for people to get involved.
You could disrupt an illegitimate event by shouting or throwing things, but this might not help your cause. To outshine your target’s message, it’s often better to disrupt creatively: song, glitter, theatrics.
Petitions can often feel ineffectual, but when you deliver them creatively — with art, theater, or humor — you can make public opinion more visible to a campaign target.
Critical multiculturalism disrupts power structures by challenging the subjugation of marginalized cultures, questioning power and privilege, and acknowledging knowledge as a process.
In response to a sweeping new telecommunications law, the CryptoRally was organized as a game played out on the streets of Mexico City, whose goal is to build skills in digital security and freedom of speech.
Civil disobedience is the deliberate violation of unjust laws. In a similar spirit, cultural disobedience bravely subverts unjust cultural norms.
Capital maintains hegemony not just through raw power (violence, laws, and property) but through culture, by shaping what feels like “common sense.” To create a new society, we must create a new common sense.
People and communities have the right to express themselves. We protect and draw from our traditional cultures while ensuring that everyone is able create culture together.
A cultural intervention that alters a brand or meme to make a subversive political point.
Money can speak loudly, whether we’d like to admit it or not, so why not turn it into a tool to protest and organize, by stamping messages on local currency, and turning bills into leaflets.
Single moms pressured a public housing official for a daycare centre by not just sitting-in at his office, but actually turning his office into the daycare centre they needed.
Over centuries, popular uprisings and indebted poor people have advocated for the abolition of debt and won. At a time when billions of people are harmed and oppressed by debt, the time has come for an international “jubilee” of debt forgiveness.
Realizing our collective power to withdraw our willingness to pay debts is potentially as system-shaking today as the power of the industrial working class to withdraw its labour power a century ago.
Inspired by a common struggle against systemic financial exploitation, a debt strike is a coordinated refusal to make monthly debt payments and thereby force the banks to negotiate.
The burden of debt unites millions in common struggle. Together, we can build a movement that challenges not just debt, but the entire capitalist system and its drive to profit from imposed scarcity.
A form of bottom-up disobedience that revives indigenous ideas and lived experiences to challenge the impact of historical colonization and reverse its trajectory.
When movements heat up, there’s a tendency to become so extreme that you lose touch with your base. Good leaders will define that “extreme” in constructive ways, and escalate their campaigns strategically.
Things get done only when the task is clearly defined and on someone’s to-do list. Delegate!
Democracy promotion is the term the US uses to describe efforts to penetrate and control emergent civil societies in targeted countries — those with regimes deemed unfriendly or unstable by policymakers.
People have control over the decisions that affect their lives. They have the right, ability, and responsibility to participate in building and protecting their communities.
Our communities practice direct ownership and control of the things that affect our lives.
The rise of the internet age has seen the cre- ation of a digital “design commons”: a vast pool of knowledge and blueprints—for everything from farm equipment to malaria drugs—that is freely accessible to communities around the world, for use in local production and economic development.
Some people only work through the system. Others only challenge it from outside. But the most powerful strategies will link the two, combining social movement pressure with efforts to win and wield state power.
We share leadership and knowledge across communities and generations.
In 2012, Tunisian anti-corruption campaigners used blogs, flash mobs and lobbying of National Constituent Assembly deputies to enshrine the right to freedom of information in the post-revolution constitution.
Action that changes our circumstances without handing power to an intermediary. Direct action interrupts business-as-usual, seizes leadership, and introduces an alternative narrative.
In 2014, young activists at Yangon University, Myanmar, creatively disrupted a town hall meeting with President Obama to expose the flaws in the military-dominated government’s political reform process.
A decentralized mass protest where large numbers of people express their support by taking many small, simple, coordinated actions: banging pots, turning lights off, wearing the same colour of clothing, etc.
A coordinated online effort that brings together vast numbers of people to target a powerful entity’s website by flooding it with high levels of data traffic. A powerful means to draw attention to your cause.
Withdrawing your investment from a company can be a powerful form of economic pressure on an industry or state that is profiting from injustice and destruction.
Entice journalists to cover your issue by providing them with print and video materials that do half their job for them, while giving you more control of the story you’re trying to create.
Whether you’re scouting an action location, doing a power analysis of your political target, or reviewing previous episodes of a TV show you’re going to be on: Do. Your. Research.
If you look like a stereotypical protester, it’s easy for people to write you off, but if you look like the girl next door, people just might sympathize with you instead.
Concrete actions have measurable goals and are designed to have a direct physical impact. Communicative actions tend to have more symbolic goals. Know the difference and plan accordingly.
Just because an action succeeds once and is a big hit, doesn’t mean that same tactic will succeed again and again. While planning your campaign, employ creative tactics that take your target by surprise.
We want society to be democratic. But to be effective, your small group may need to operate more like the crew of a small ship, with a strict division of roles. That’s OK, because your little group isn’t society.
An imposter posing as a Dow Chemical spokesperson announced live on BBC World News that Dow would spend $12 billion to compensate the victims of the Bhopal disaster, creating an instructive PR disaster for Dow.
BDS activists around the world forced the French company Veolia to divest from the Israeli market after causing it to lose $20 billion worth of contracts for its complicity in Israel’s human rights violations.
We can only maintain 150 I-care-you-care relationships. These strong, primary relationships foster empowerment and social cohesion, while more rule-based relationships favor management. This impacts organizing.
In deep belief that there is “no compromise in defense of Mother Earth,” members of this movement put their bodies on the line to stop ecological destruction.
By running for public office as a prank, you can sabotage a particularly ugly policy or candidate, popularize a radical idea, or challenge the limits of the electoral system itself.
Whereas efforts led by commanding leaders are often dependent on that one person’s energy and presence, enabling leaders awaken the creative potential of all participants, helping to grow the broader cause.
A vital tool for activists and organizers — and everyone else — to communicate securely outside the prying eyes of the state and corporate bad actors.
On April 15, 2023, Germany shut down its last nuclear power plant…
Only by looking at environmental issues through a social justice lens can we effectively challenge abuses of power that target indigenous people, people of colour, and other disenfranchised communities.
El Salvador’s civil war and state-sponsored death squads terrorized the nation during the early 1980s…
Everyone has access to the same rights and resources, and together we are responsible for guaranteeing that access.
Since a target rarely gives in after one action, it is often necessary to strategically increase the pressure on them in a step-by-step escalation that draws upon a diverse mix of tactics.
Since politics is not just about facts and reason, but also desire and fantasy, activists need to engage in spectacle. By honouring our principles, our spectacles can be ethical, liberating, and reality-based.
Using the #LATE campaign hashtag, revolutionary artists and media activists are reinventing the aesthetic narrative of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution and situating the commune at its symbolic center.
A need to follow through on crazy ideas, and friends who will goad you on to do so, can take you far. You’re braver than you think!
A strong show of physical resistance to an unjust eviction.
A simple, defiant gesture (say, thousands of stone-broke people turning their pockets inside-out as they go about their day) can bring economic inequality to the surface and make oppressive institutions panic.
Political actions tend to either express an identity or try to win concrete changes. Know the difference so you can choose the one that best serves your purpose.
“Fall seven times, stand up eight,” a Japanese proverb says. Only when you experiment, execute and iterate will you be able to learn from your mistakes and turn your stories of failure into valuable lessons.
The 2015 tuition hikes sparked a national student movement in South Africa that demanded comprehensive reform and questioned the political, social, and economic status quo of the “rainbow nation.”
Feminist social movements identify patriarchal power as a fundamental source of injustice and inequality, and hence call to transform gender power relations in all domains.
A spontaneous, contagious, and often celebratory protest that often uses social media or word of mouth to gather people on short notice in a particular place at a particular time.
A floating signifier is a symbol or concept (for example, the Zapatista balaclava) that's loose enough to mean many things to many people, yet specific enough to galvanize action in a particular direction.
A flotilla — also known as a boat rally or “kayaktivist” blockade — is an innovative way to attract public attention, demonstrate support for a cause or disrupt a marine target.
In 2014, Burmese activists launched the Panzagar (“flower speech”) campaign to counter hate speech in Myanmar in response to a rise in anti-Muslim violence.
In repressive regimes, directly criticizing the authorities can be dangerous. One lower-risk way to challenge the legitimacy of the regime is to focus attention on everyday economic struggles, e.g. high prices.
It is both good ethics and good politics to take direction from, and provide appropriate support to, those who have the most at stake in your cause.
Food sovereignty is the right of communities to access healthy and culturally appropriate food and to have control over agricultural and food production systems. More than just access to food, it means being able to choose our food and to participate in producing it.
Forum theatre is a tool for exploring and rehearsing possible actions that people can take to transform their world. It’s often used both in preparation to taking action and in anti-oppression workshops.
Whether in our meetings or on our streets, we can advance our struggle for justice by creating safer spaces for everyone, and by challenging the norms and power dynamics that make spaces unsafe for some people.
Like the frame around a photograph, a conceptual frame highlights certain events and facts, while making others invisible. Effectively framing your message can make the difference between winning and losing.
Transparent software written by and for the people can help us avoid corporate exploitation of our pri- vacy, data, and money.
After almost a decade of building momentum, Gambians seized a crucial window of opportunity in 2016 to overthrow a notorious dictator.
A widespread work shutdown across many industries in a city, region, or country. General strikes are led by workers, often involve entire communities, and can be triggered by unpopular political edicts.
Gerontocracy is the rule of the old over the young — a form of oppression primarily exercised across a society or culture, but sometimes also specifically within governments or other institutional structures.
When Turkish authorities tried to break the unity between secular and religious anti-capitalist protesters, Observant Muslims responded by inviting everyone to a public feast during the Ramadan Iftar.
A global art project that flips the script on the international aid model by enlisting regular folks in Ghana and elsewhere throughout the Global South to help “develop the First World.”
Trees can’t speak, right? Wrong! There are many creative ways to give voice to those that can’t speak — be it trees, animals, or archeological artifacts — so humans can hear their plight loud and clear.
When the systems and technologies that mediate our lives “glitch” or malfunction, those marginalized by tech can seize the radical potential of this moment. Theory coined by scholar-activist Legacy Russell.
The Global South is not a place, but a way of talking about a diverse set of struggles: the uprising of the planet’s people against neoliberal policies, at least, and against the capitalist system, at most.
In 1992, at the height of industrialized fishing in Newfoundland, the cod stocks collapsed and 30,000 people were out of work overnight…
With a clever image, a high-powered projector, and a little moxie, you can literally shine a spotlight on your opposition.
In the rural mountain communities outside of Barcelona, Spain, fiber optic lines run across the land— from east to west and north to south…
Anthropologist Gabriella Coleman defines a hack as “a clever technical solution arrived at through non-obvious means.” Hacking is more than rogue computer programming; it’s a rebellious solutionary spirit.
At the height of the anti-apartheid struggle, South African freedom fighters and hackers created an encrypted communication network that connected the leadership in exile with operatives in South Africa.
Turning anger into action is necessary, but that anger is most effective when it is disciplined and intelligently focused (hamas). Uncontrolled, stupid anger (hamoq) mostly undermines your own cause.
Organizers can help people shift their understanding of the difficulties they are experiencing from isolated hardships to shared grievances, then carry out successful campaigns to address those grievances.
An innovative cultural campaign that mobilized the huge Harry Potter fan-base to fight for justice, human rights, and democracy in our world, just like Harry did in his world.
By choosing a strategic hashtag and curating the ensuing conversation, you can use Twitter and other social media platforms to shift the debate and expand your support.
Don’t have enough Twitter followers to trend better than your target? Pull the rug out from under them by stealing their hashtag!
More than two decades ago, the chief physician of the Center for Community Health in the rural community of Nongom-Souala in Mali noticed the center’s services were largely unused by the region’s over 10,000 inhabitants…
By impersonating your target through a fake press release or media event, you can use satire and exaggeration to expose an injustice or demonstrate that another reality is possible.
In June 2013, citizens began honking their horns outside Lebanon’s Parliament to tell MPs that their time in office had expired. The protest spread until they were honked at everywhere they went.
We can’t build a just world from scratch…
Human civilization is out of balance with nature…
Technology is often framed as an almost magical, unstoppable force…
Our solutions need to meet the scale of the problems our communities are facing…
Governments can support or undermine our efforts to build solidarity economies…
Borders are enclosures—just like fences or property lines, they impose artificial limits that restrict movement and turn collective resources such as water and energy into commodities that can be bought and sold…
Capitalism says that bigger is better…
Police, militaries, and prisons were not created to make people safe…
A political rally arranged into a huge work of human aerial art, composing a single iconic photo that captures what’s at stake.
The deliberate and public refusal of food, and sometimes water, as a moral protest against injustice or abuse of power. A single individual can hold a hunger strike, or hundreds together in solidarity.
An act of activist ventriloquism in which you momentarily assume the mask of power to speak a little lie that tells a greater truth.
When repression makes protest too risky, turn ordinary acts — driving slowly, clapping, wearing black, or laughing — into protests, thereby ridiculing the authorities and forcing them into a decision dilemma.
A theatre exercise in which participants form statues that represent an oppressive situation, followed by group reflection to better understand the situation and try out possible solutions.
In most countries around the world, penitentiary systems are centered around punishment, not rehabilitation…
The people destroying the planet don’t just have names and addresses, they also have gatherings. When they gather near you, stop in and see what they’re up to.
An inflatable prop (pneumatic object made of plastic foil, filled with air or helium) with the right symbol can be a great way to frame your action and communicate your message.
Residents in informal urban settlements are form- ing organizations and networks to demand their human rights and improve their quality of life.
The public staging of a realistic scene — say, a same-sex couple discriminated against in a restaurant — that poses an ethical dilemma and engages bystanders, who remain unaware they are part of a performance.
1,400 years ago, Islamic scholars recognized the fragility of economic systems built on interest and categorically forbade it…
Putting pressure on authorities after activists are arrested can create a strong community of resistance, and help deter state violence and the persecution of activists.
Our journey towards a better world can—and often should—be a nurturing and joyful experience! Find pleasure in the process, as adrienne maree brown said: “Feeling good is not frivolous, It is freedom.”
The Janitors’ Union in Washington, D.C. used a series of escalating creative direct actions — dubbed Days of Rage — to win union recognition, wage hikes, and benefits.
Kindness is sometimes harder for the authorities to rebuff than anger. When done with true compassion and some artfulness, a kind gesture can win over the public, and even help to humanize an inhuman situation.
Despite state violence, the people of Kisangani forced the Congolese authorities to honor their constitutional right to reliable electric power.
The more you know about the culture and psychology of your community, the more successful your campaign will be.
The first rule of guerrilla warfare is to know your terrain and use it to your advantage. This rule also holds true in the cultural jungle of words, images, memes, and pop songs.
In 2014, after a disheartening election in Zimbabwe, despondent citizens were inspired by motivational posters around Harare to interact with each other via the online social justice site, kubatana.net.
In 2005, a group of independent journalists collaboratively produced a magazine entitled El Coyote Itinerante (The Traveling Coyote in English)…
A community organizing framework for designing intentional pathways that guide your supporters from low-effort engagement, at the bottom rung of the ladder, to higher levels of engagement.
Public mourning as protest.
All people have a right to permanent and secure land tenure as the source for many of our most basic needs. Through tools such as reparations, rematriation, easements, and land trusts, we can share the land fairly among the human and non-human citizens of planet Earth.
The Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) began to build its power in Brazil during a period of military dictatorship…
Good actions tell a good story. Good stories revolve around sympathetic characters. The most sympathetic characters are members of the impacted community that outsiders can easily relate to.
Legislative theater is a participatory, community- based tool for proposing and enacting legislative and policy changes at any level of government.
Legislative theatre, a tool for proposing and enacting legislative and policy changes at any level of government, takes Augusto Boal’s interactive forum theatre exercises from the stage into the real world.
A method for creating visually-striking, illuminated protest messages (that work particularly well in site-specific, nighttime locations).
A limited-equity housing cooperative is a form of shared housing in which many individuals or fam- ilies jointly purchase housing, often a multi-unit home. Instead of owning a particular unit within it, each party owns a share of the property as a whole, which expands access to home ownership for lower-income people.
To protest the Iraq War, the Lysistrata Project held over 1000 readings in 59 countries of the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata, which is about how women ended a war by refusing sex until the men quit fighting.
Time and again, unarmed masses of people have triumphed over armed-to-the-teeth forces using humble techniques like strikes, occupations, boycotts, and sit-ins. But only because people have remained nonviolent.
The more the merrier! But if new folks are going to stick around, you’ll need to put work into making sure they feel welcome.
Many injustices (and toxins!) are invisible due to distance, ideology, or simple chemistry. If you can’t see it, you can’t change it. So, the first task of an activist is often to make the invisible visible.
After the revolution, Tunisian youth combined their wit and passion to demand “no reconciliation without accountability!” and prevent the corrupt business elite from escaping justice.
During Rio+20, the Xavante indigenous people partnered with other organizations mastering a strategic intervention to regain the land that had been promised to them 20 years before.
A large public protest that shows the scale of people power behind a cause.
Corporate consolidation has combined catastrophically with the rise of targeted online advertising to degrade the quality and independence of journalism. In the resulting tectonic shifts, there are opportunities to build democratic media outlets that channel power to communities and workers.
Memes are self-replicating units of cultural information that spread virally from mind to mind, network to network, generation to generation.
Artist Fred Wilson presented a museum’s collection in such a way that it called into question the entire worldview from which the collection was originally assembled.
After a video circulated in 2014 showing the public abuse and harassment of a woman in Harare, Zimbabwe, women organized a miniskirt march to protest widespread street harassment and to push for safe spaces.
To highlight abuses of farm workers and identify remedies, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (a community-based farmworker organization) created the Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum.
A framework that can help organizers identify what they need to be doing right now, by understanding, and thinking strategically about, the life cycle that social movements tend to follow.
Social justice music videos combine the contagious power of music with compelling visuals to expose injustice and inspire potential allies into action.
Some people face difficulties getting loans because they are written off for being in debt, having bad credit, or lacking collateral…
Kenya is a country of 54 million people, with roughly one in two living on less than $5…
NDN Fund is an indigenous-led organization which provides loans and investments to large-scale community and national development projects…
Neoliberalism, today’s dominant ideology, reduces the state to a handmaiden of transnational capital. In pursuing the relentless privatization of the commons, its policies inevitably spark popular discontent.
A continuation of the historic Pan-African struggle for freedom, justice, and dignity across the continent, renewed to tackle the particular challenges Africa faces today.
When frontline organizers spend more time writing grant reports than changing the system, something is wrong. People most impacted by injustice, not those working for big non-profits, should drive the movement.
Participating in a drum circle is amazing, transformative, and fun. Watching a drum circle, on the other hand, is torture. Don’t ask people to watch you have fun — get them involved!
An opposition party candidate in Zimbabwe’s 2013 elections called for women to withhold sex from their husbands in order to pressure them to vote for change. The results were underwhelming.
A direct action tactic that involves showing up with a “citizens’ search warrant” and attempting, nonviolently, to liberate important documents that are being kept from the public.
In 2016 French citizens occupied the Place de la République for three consecutive months to expand democracy and protest attempts by the government to liberalize the labour market.
Physically occupying contested space to create community and disrupt the functioning of power. Examples include: sit-ins, factory occupations, housing squats, occupations of public squares or at-risk land.
The Orange Alternative was a 1980s-era underground protest movement in Poland that used street happenings and absurdist provocations to ridicule the Communist regime and promote independent thinking.
When civilian resistance threatens to depose a dictator, that dictator may try to short-circuit the people by handing over power to one of his own. This is known as a palace coup, or “faux-verthrow.”
Burmese dissidents protested Myanmar’s ruling junta by encouraging supporters to mail panties to foreign embassies and top generals (who superstitiously feared that female underwear sapped their power).
PARK(ing) Day is a worldwide movement to challenge and repurpose urban space by temporarily transforming metered parking spaces into public parks.
Through a local democratic process, community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. Participatory budgeting enables residents to work with their government to make decisions that affect their daily lives.
Unlike representative democracy, which is often a tame affair of choosing between the lesser of two evils, participatory democracy involves masses of people directly transforming their lives and society.
Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) facilitate the building of closer relationships among food producers and consumers involved in short sup- ply-chains by enabling for quality certification to take place on a local level. Organic producers and consumers use PGS to create healthy and resilient local food systems, to make organic certification more affordable and accessible, and to build trust and relationships.
A theory of education by which, according to Paulo Freire, “men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
Student activists hung full-sized human foam core cut-outs over a dangerous highway in Beirut to draw attention to pedestrian fatalities, successfully pressuring the city council to build an overpass.
People & organizations are more complicated than their stated positions. By peeling back the onion on both friend & foe, we can discover potential allies and reveal power- holders’ hidden conflicts of interest.
Crises such as coups, wars, natural disasters, recessions, and pandemics are not just opportunities for the powers that be to impose their will, but for people power to win great victories.
Use the perception box to understand your audiences better, so you can design effective campaign messages to reach them.
The glass is half full and half empty. We need hard-headed realism and full-hearted idealism to change the world.
Mobilizing the public to call or text a government or corporate target to pressure them into taking an action. It can be a contagious tactic for lobbying decision makers.
When large numbers of people repeatedly dial the key phone lines of your target, you can tie up their service, and pressure them to comply with your demands.
Identify the institutions that your target relies on for support so you can weaken or disrupt their power.
In Brazil, artivists used humorous graffiti to decorate the carts of trash collectors, bringing them visibility and respect, while demonstrating the importance of their contribution to city life.
In a media-saturated world, the audience you care about is rarely the one witnessing your action, but rather the one you’ll reach through mass media and social media. Design your action with them in mind.
Identify pressure points where you can take action to interrupt business as usual, and press for change.
Public policies are often designed for the benefit of profit-focused businesses and disadvantage co- operative enterprises. But legislation can—and in many places around the world already does—sup- port cooperatives and enable them to flourish.
Group identity creates a cohesive community for activists, yet tends to foster a subculture that can alienate the public. Balancing these two tendencies is key to sustaining our work and maximizing its impact.
Folk schools and popular education processes provide opportunities for people most affected by injustice to build skills, participate in democratic learning, and gain tools for organizing.
Postcolonial theory forces us to acknowledge that oppression occurs not just in economic relations, but also in the very categories of meaning-making that produce reality as we know, understand, and live it.
A focus on “poverty” relies on a charity framework that can never bring justice. To counter the process of impoverishment requires political action against those who cause and benefit from impoverishment.
Map the power dynamics at play to identify your primary target and design a winning campaign strategy.
To protect against digital surveillance and online attacks, activists should get comfortable with digital security tools and protocols.
We live our lives as acts of resistance to the destruction of land and life.
Theory without action goes nowhere. Action without reflection is ineffective. That’s why we have praxis: a cycle of theory, action and reflection that helps us analyse our efforts so we can be more effective.
By creating in the now — via visionary direct action and living our values — the future world we wish to see, we can experience for ourselves how a better world is not only necessary but possible.
The propaganda model suggests that media outlets operating within a capitalist economy will consistently produce news content that aligns with the interests of political and economic elites.
A hilarious fake talk show that domestic workers in the U.S. dialed into for information on overtime wages, tax requirements, trafficking, and more.
In a public filibuster, a group of people interrupt and seek to shut down a public hearing or government vote by standing and speaking, one after the other. It’s confrontational, but polite and constructive.
In 2009, at the height of the Obamacare fight in the US, a band of creative activists snuck into a major health insurance industry gathering and did a guerrilla musical that got national attention.
By removing the profit motive, democratic and pub- lic ownership of pharmaceutical companies can lead to healthier outcomes for society and reclaim medicine for the common good.
Taking care of each other and our home is the basis of the world we’re trying to create—and how we get there.
Design your action so that your target is forced to make a decision, and all their available options play to your advantage.
As part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, marchers built huge pyramids of shoes to visualize the number of people still being killed or injured by landmines in lapsed conflict zones.
In 2012, Québec students managed to reverse a major tuition hike and a draconian anti-protest law through direct democracy, creative tactics, and mass demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of people.
Radical Grandma Collective (RadGram) is an international and intergenerational organization that works in solidarity with communities in northeast Thailand to change the balances of power that extractive industries have disrupted, and to defend and restore the land those communities share…
When challenging a more powerful target, the key to success often isn’t what you do, but how your target reacts to what you do. Therefore, anticipate your target’s response and write it into your script.
We can’t deny that the symbols of one’s nation provide a meaningful feeling of social solidarity. To be effective as change agents, we need to engage, claim, and contest the meanings of these symbols.
Reclaim the Streets began as creative activist group in London, but its tactics, blending party and protest, soon spread around the world.
Worker-led campaigns have seized the means of production, made decisions democratically, prevent- ed unemployment, and revitalized communities in the process.
The surest way to win an argument is to redefine the terms of the debate — by highlighting voices, values, and solutions that have been left out of the dominant story.
Emerging after World War II from one of the most war-ravaged regions in Italy, Reggio Emilia is a teaching style and philosophy that enables young children to grow into complete people and develop the core capacities to participate in radical democracy throughout their lives.
Remunicipalization is when the management of utilities is brought back under public control. Some of the most important examples concern water, but remunicipalization encompasses regional and na- tional-level services from energy and transportation to internet access and education.
Faced with a notoriously corrupt traffic police force, chaos on the roads, and many traffic deaths, Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus disbanded the corrupt cops and offered to retrain and rehire them… as mimes.
On the night of October 12, 2012, 20 Jewish graves in Auckland’s oldest cemetery were spray-painted with Nazi symbols and anti-Semitic phrases…
Instead of spraying paint, clean away grime to make your “reverse graffiti” message. All you need are stencils, a water pump, and some courage.
Revolutionary nonviolence emphasizes dialogue among radicals of different stripes and seeks to build unity around a shared commitment to revolutionary social transformation via mass civil resistance.
Revolutionary reforms are smaller, more achievable changes that can lay the groundwork for more systemic and lasting change.
We belong to each other. The world we are building must help us remember how.
For as long as they have existed, the indigenous people of Ecuador’s Sarayaku region have inhabited a forest fed by water from the Andes mountains, which drains into the Amazon basin through the Bobonaza River…
In 2012, a movement combining flash mob tactics and traditional Indigenous round dances rose up to defeat a bill that would have eroded Indigenous sovereignty and environmental protections across Canada.
In 1930, Gandhi famously led a march to the sea to collect salt (which Indians were banned from producing), forcing the British Raj into a classic decision dilemma and paving the way for Indian independence.
A radical theatre collective dressed in Santa costumes took to the streets of Copenhagen to demonstrate the true meaning of Christmas. Hilarity ensued, and a legend was born.
Students occupied over 200 schools in São Paulo to protest the governor’s plan to close schools, forcing him to reverse course, and igniting a wave of student resistance across the country.
To transform a political culture, we must seek out common ground with those we disagree with.
When activists are threatened, it’s important to harness national or international networks that can provide support and deter violence.
In the mid-1960s, in response to rising food prices, a group of Japanese housewives started a buying club to purchase milk directly from producers…
The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is a trade union of self-employed women workers—the first in India to gain legal recognition for self-employed women in the informal sector…
Fix a problem as best you can in order to pressure authorities to fix it properly.
We are responsible to each other and have shared responsibility for the whole.
When we share power, we learn about one another’s needs and we combine our resources, skills, memories, beliefs, and identities to be more powerful in the face of injustice than we ever could be alone.
Neoliberalism treats crises such as wars, natural disasters, and recessions as opportunities to impose privatization, deregulation, and cuts to social services. Social movements must contest these moments.
Use metaphor, visuals, and action to show your message rather than falling into preaching, hectoring, or otherwise telling your audience what to think.
Deaf activists in Zimbabwe stood up (and sat-in) to demand access to information in sign language, successfully pressuring the national broadcaster to include sign language interpretation in news broadcasts.
Rather than trying to script everything out, often a few simple rules — say, “come to Wall St; bring a tent,” or “bang your pots and pans at noon” — are enough to spark a surprisingly effective mass action.
Strong campaigns are built on a series of short- and medium-term SMART objectives that function as intermediary steps towards a more ambitious campaign goal.
Through social cooperatives, people can care for each other within a framework of democratic con- trol and shared power.
The actions of our peers are more likely to motivate us to act than either information or an appeal to fear. The social cure shows us how to harness this power of social groups for social change.
In the fallout from the 2008 global financial crisis, the Greek government implemented severe austerity measures in exchange for a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund…
Modern capitalism upholds social control through "the spectacle" — the use of mass communications to turn us into consumers and passive spectators of our own lives, history, and power.
A tradition of radical economic organizing emerging from Latin America that strives to replace dependence on exploitative economic relations through “solidarity chains” linking community-based alternatives.
Grassroots leaders around the world must support each other to set local and global guidelines for NGO intervention in order to guarantee sustainable community empowerment and leadership.
Southern journeys collective is a worker-owned craft cooperative that provides income and an outlet for self-expression for Black women in the Black Belt of Alabama and Georgia and the Mississippi Delta…
Locate allies and opponents along a spectrum from active opposition to active allies in order to increase your own support, as well as to shift support out from under your opponent.
Creating near-identical websites to those of our targets, but altering them to illustrate our target taking a certain action, such as announcing a new initiative that supports our campaign goals.
Sometimes one person standing in defiance of police repression is enough to galvanize a movement of millions. That’s exactly what happened in Turkey in 2013.
When we exercise message discipline, we stay focused on our core message; create harmony between our words, visuals, and actions; and communicate exactly what we want our audience to know.
The Stolen Beauty boycott campaign targeted the Israeli cosmetics manufacturer Ahava, causing economic damage, a tarnished reputation, and ultimately, a promise to move the factory out of historic Palestine.
Grassroots Jordanian activists mobilized popular opposition against a $15 billion deal with Israel to import natural gas, both before and after the deal was signed.
In response to a draft Israeli bill that aimed to expel 70,000 Palestinian Bedouins from their ancestral land, Palestinians organized a massive campaign that led to the withdrawal of the proposed bill.
Move large numbers of people to action by exchanging personal stories that help build a sense of community around shared values & experiences.
Storytelling is far more than telling a tale; it’s a way of organizing reality — and political power. A good story can build group solidarity, develop a shared analysis of a social problem, and up participation.
A framework for broad-based direct action emphasizing openness, accountability, and agreements on "how we want to work together this time," designed to build large, inclusive, diverse, and effective movements.
Graduates across Zimbabwe creatively turned their unemployment into a daily protest routine, instilling a clear link in public consciousness between unemployment, the financial crisis, and corruption.
In 1999 New Yorkers turned the tables on the mayor’s attempt to auction off hundreds of their beloved community gardens by turning the streets themselves into gardens and staging a “festival of resistance.”
Female elders in northern Uganda invoked powerful cultural taboos by removing their clothes in front of two government ministers who were attempting to grab their land, successfully chasing them away.
Subversive travel seeks to defy and subvert unjust travel restrictions. It can be used to facilitate freedom of movement, challenge militarized borders, break a siege, deliver aid, or attract media attention.
The forests of Nepal are essential for the balance of the region’s ecosystem, the health of the economy, and the livelihoods of local people…
Cross-reference internal & external factors in order to identify potential campaign scenarios.
In 2005, farm workers in Florida, US, led a nationwide boycott of Taco Bell. They eventually won a historic victory, raising wages and setting an inspiring example for farm worker organizing.
We often think of activist tactics as serving a larger campaign strategy. Instead, it might be more liberating and agile to think of tactics not as a subset of strategy, but as a democratic response to it.
Direct action is inherently risky. The point is to minimize the risk, not needlessly (or unilaterally) endanger your safety or that of the people around you by trying to prove that you are “hardcore.”
We all have different boundaries, and we support each other to experiment and take risks while taking care of ourselves.
Ramos Arizpe is a medium-sized city in the north of Mexico, about three hours’ drive from the Texas border…
A tanda is an informal finance circle that is based on trust and community relationships. It is used by people all over the world and allows its participants access to cash that they can use to improve their lives.
To protest continued harassment and exorbitant illegal charges by tax collectors, taxi drivers and conductors throughout Kampala parked their vehicles and stopped working.
In a tit-for-tat of escalating absurdity, anti-globalization activists found themselves lobbing teddy bears at police with a toy catapult, and police found themselves mocked for taking it seriously.
A T.A.Z. is a liberated area “of land, time or imagination” where one can be for something, not just against, and where new ways of being human together can be explored and experimented with.
A set of theatrical games and exercises that empower people to explore collective struggles, analyze their history and present circumstances, and then experiment with inventing a new future together.
Lay a solid foundation for a campaign by working backwards from long-term goals to identify the conditions that must be in place in order to achieve those goals, and why.
Sometimes the best response to a powerful enemy is a powerful story.
If the pursuit of perfection is undermining the effectiveness of your action or campaign, then do only what is strategically warranted, and save your sanity and energy.
One individual’s outcry for a better future inspired the citizens of Zimbabwe to find their courage and overthrow a ruthless dictator.
What’s better than waging a campaign and winning? Not waging a campaign and still winning! You can do that by making a (credible) threat your opponent gives into without a fight (or even calling your bluff).
In 2010, four US immigrant youth leaders walked 1,500 miles to Washington, D.C. to put a human face on the immigration debate and pressure politicians to fix the broken and unjust US immigration system.
Training is not a distraction from the struggle; in fact, it’s critical for cultivating three key elements of social movement success: unity, strategic planning, and nonviolent discipline.
There are lots of ways to get free.
A long journey (often on foot, though sometimes by bike, bus, or boat) towards a centre of power or other key point of intervention, that rallies geographically dispersed people to a common cause.
Sometimes the most compelling way to expose an injustice is to flip it around and theatrically re-visit it upon the perpetrator (say, by dumping sewage outside the company that's polluting your community).
Especially when the powerful rule through fear and intimidation, it is often humour, laughter, and absurdity that can help to undermine power and embolden dissent.
Once your movement has a clear story, structure and strategy, you can scale up quickly by finding ways for people to start organizing using the resources already available to them in their daily lives.
Your opponent’s prejudices against you are a weakness that you can exploit to your advantage.
The Jedi mind trick worked for Obi-Wan Kenobi, and it can work for you, too. Believe in yourself hard enough, and others will too. “Act like you belong,” and most people — even the police — will assume you do.
So you’ve received a threatening letter from a corporate lawyer. Congratulations!
Rituals like weddings, vigils, and pilgrimages are powerful experiences for participants, and familiar narratives for observers. You can use their symbolic power to give actions greater depth and resonance.
By drawing on the traditional practices, rituals, and symbols of the community, organizers can deepen the involvement of participants, disorient opponents, and shift the cultural terrain in their favour.
By strategically pushing the far edge of what is considered acceptable within a range of policy options, you can slide public opinion in your direction, making what was once fringe, seem like common sense.
Inspired by migratory birds, this is a technique for sustaining activism for the long haul. Rotate roles to share burdens, and allow members to step back from frontline roles without guilt, and you’ll go far.
In the evening hours of March 18, 2014, a group of students occupied Taiwan’s parliament…
Let’s all be leaders. Let’s be leaderful, not leaderless.
Hundreds of international solidarity activists staged a “fly-in” at Ben Gurion airport demanding to visit Palestine in protest of Israel’s racist border policies and de facto siege of historic Palestine.
After Egypt’s 2013 coup, when the only safe way to criticize the regime was to focus on poor economic conditions, ten Egyptian women held up banners with messages like, “Who would accept… such high gas bills?”
On Tax Day in 1998, fair tax campaigners cleverly pranked a GOP media event on the Boston Tea Party Ship Museum, stealing the day’s headlines, and offering a master-class in the tactic of media-jacking.
In 2011, tens of thousands of workers and students filled Wisconsin’s state capitol with a non-stop protest to protest Governor Walker’s attempt to strip civic unions of collective bargaining rights.
Success comes from incorporating the strengths of both mass protests and structure-based organizing — so that outbreaks of widespread revolt complement long-term organizing.
In 2014, to protest government corruption and high rates of youth unemployment, young activists painted two pigs yellow (the colour of the ruling party), and let them run wild in Uganda’s Parliament.
The ethical shoplifting, culture jamming, direct-action movement Yomango turned the impulse to shoplift into a movement and an art form.
Housing rights activists organized this participatory publicity stunt to reframe the housing crisis as a shared problem that would require record-breaking collective action to resolve.
In 2015, in Lebanon, more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets in response to a garbage crisis, triggering a resistance movement that told the corrupt government “You Stink.”
In 1994, university students organized educational brigades to break the information blockade and rumours about the uprising of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN).
Communities around the world are finding alternatives to corporate waste management that demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of zero waste systems, wherein materials that are not needed are either repurposed, composted, or recycled.
