https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/tactic/

Tactics

Advanced leafleting

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!)

App flooding

Appropriate a politically neutral phone application to your cause by overwhelming it with campaign messages.

Artistic vigil

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.

Autonomous servers

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.

Banner hang

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.

Blockade

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.

Cacerolazo (noise-making protest)

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.

Citizen’s arrest

What can people do when criminals or corrupt officials are beyond the reach of the law? Arrest them!

Civil disobedience

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).

Clandestine leafleting

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.

Creative disruption

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.

Creative petition delivery

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.

Cultural disobedience

Civil disobedience is the deliberate violation of unjust laws. In a similar spirit, cultural disobedience bravely subverts unjust cultural norms.

Culture jamming

A cultural intervention that alters a brand or meme to make a subversive political point.

Currency hacking

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.

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Debt strike

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.

Distributed action

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.

Distributed denial of service (DDoS)

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.

Divestment

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.

Electoral guerrilla theatre

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.

Encryption

A vital tool for activists and organizers — and everyone else — to communicate securely outside the prying eyes of the state and corporate bad actors.

Eviction blockade

A strong show of physical resistance to an unjust eviction.

Flash mob

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.

Flotilla

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.

Forum theatre

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.

General strike

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.

Guerrilla projection

With a clever image, a high-powered projector, and a little moxie, you can literally shine a spotlight on your opposition.

Hashtag campaign

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.

Hashtag hijack

Don’t have enough Twitter followers to trend better than your target? Pull the rug out from under them by stealing their hashtag!

Hoax

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.

Human banner

A political rally arranged into a huge work of human aerial art, composing a single iconic photo that captures what’s at stake.

Hunger strike

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.

Identity correction

An act of activist ventriloquism in which you momentarily assume the mask of power to speak a little lie that tells a greater truth.

Image theatre

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.

Infiltration

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.

Inflatables

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.

Invisible theatre

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.

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Jail solidarity

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.

Lamentation

Public mourning as protest.

Legislative theatre

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.

Light Brigade

A method for creating visually-striking, illuminated protest messages (that work particularly well in site-specific, nighttime locations).

Mass street action

A large public protest that shows the scale of people power behind a cause.

Media-jacking

Hijack your opponent’s media event in a way that creatively reframes the issue, while leveraging their media presence to draw attention to your side of the story.

Music video

Social justice music videos combine the contagious power of music with compelling visuals to expose injustice and inspire potential allies into action.

Nonviolent search and seizure

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.

Occupation

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.

Phone banking

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.

Phone blockade

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.

Public filibuster

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.

Reverse graffiti

Instead of spraying paint, clean away grime to make your “reverse graffiti” message. All you need are stencils, a water pump, and some courage.

Spoof website

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.

Storytelling

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.

Subversive travel

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.

Trek

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.

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