Action methods

Showing 20 of 20.

• OrganizingKnock on doorsLawful

  One conversation at a time. Slow, unglamorous, and the thing nearly every successful campaign was actually built on.

  Gene Sharp — methods of persuasion, group representation
• OrganizingHold listening sessions with people who disagreeLawful

  Sit with the people worried about their rates and take the worry seriously. The most underused move in organizing, and the only reliable way to stop a split before it happens.

  Gene Sharp — negotiation and dialogue as nonviolent method
• OrganizingTrain new organizersLawful

  Teach ten people to do what you do. The only move that gives you your own time back, and the one everybody skips because it produces nothing visible this month.

  Highlander Research and Education Center — organizer training tradition
• OrganizingDeliberately restLawful

  Stop for a month. It costs momentum and it is sometimes the difference between a campaign that lasts two years and one that ends in nine months.

  Chenoweth & Stephan — campaign duration and participant retention
• PersuasionTake it to the pressLawful

  Coverage brings people and attention. It also hands the framing to somebody else, and a story that makes your group look like one faction can cost you the neighbours you needed.

  Gene Sharp — methods of protest and persuasion
• PersuasionHold a marchLawful

  Visible, energising, and it shows people they are not alone — which is most of what it is for. A permit is usually required and a content-neutral permit requirement is lawful.

  Cox v. New Hampshire (1941) — parade permits upheld
• PersuasionStand a weekly vigilLawful

  Small, repeated, visible in the same place at the same hour. Its power is entirely in not stopping.

  Gene Sharp — vigils, method 19
• PersuasionPut affected families in front of the camerasLawful

  One family with three years of bottled water receipts does more than any argument. It also asks real people to be publicly exposed, and that is a cost paid by them, not you.

  Gene Sharp — public testimony and personal witness methods
• System actionFile public records requestsLawful

  Ask, in writing, for the documents. Boring, cheap, and it produces the one thing nobody can argue with: what the officials themselves wrote down.

  FOIA.gov — federal; every state has its own public records law
• System actionShow up to every council meetingLawful

  Open meetings laws exist in every state. A body that expects four people and gets sixty, every month, without fail, changes its behaviour — and the eleventh time is worth more than the first.

  Reporters Committee — Open Government Guide, state by state
• System actionGet an independent engineering assessmentLawful

  Stop arguing about whether it is bad and produce a number nobody can wave away. Expensive and slow, and it moves the argument from feelings to findings.

  EPA — drinking water infrastructure assessment
• System actionRun people for the seatsLawful

  The most powerful lawful lever and the one that most often splits a coalition, because now there are candidates and everyone has opinions about them. Local races are decided by startlingly few votes.

  U.S. Election Assistance Commission — local election administration
• System actionPut it on the ballotLawful

  In the states that allow it, gather signatures and let everyone vote on the thing directly. It routes around the body that will not act. It is a mountain of signatures.

  NCSL — initiative and referendum processes by state
• System actionSueLawful

  Slow, costly, and sometimes the only lever that reaches a state agency. It also takes the fight out of your hands and puts it in a lawyer's, which quietly demobilises people.

  EPA — Safe Drinking Water Act enforcement and citizen suits
• System actionFlood the public comment docketLawful

  When an agency proposes a rule it must accept and respond to comments. Almost nobody files one, which is exactly why a few hundred substantive comments land hard.

  Regulations.gov — the federal comment docket
• NoncooperationOrganise a consumer boycottLawful

  Withdraw your money, publicly and together. Politically motivated consumer boycotts are protected speech. Historically one of the most effective methods there is, and hard to sustain past a few months.

  NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982) — political boycotts are protected
• NoncooperationPay the water bills into escrowLawful

  Keep paying — into a lawyer-held account instead of the utility. The money is not withheld, it is parked, which is what separates this from simply not paying. Availability depends on your state and it needs a lawyer set up first.

  Gene Sharp — withholding of rent and deposits, methods 84–87
• NoncooperationCall a day of no businessLawful

  Everyone who can afford to stops spending and stops working for a day. The most economically visible thing a town can do to itself, and the cost falls hardest on the people who can least afford a lost day — which is exactly why it splits coalitions.

  Gene Sharp — the general strike, methods 115–120
• Civil disobedienceOccupy the agency lobby and refuse to leaveBreaks the law

  In 1977 disabled Americans occupied a federal building for 26 days and won the regulations that became the foundation of disability rights law. It worked. It also meant arrest, and the people who did it knew that going in.

  Unlawful — Trespass. Arrest is the expected outcome, not a risk — that is the design of the method. A conviction can affect employment, housing, professional licences, and immigration status for the rest of a person's life, and it falls unequally: the same act costs some people far more than others.

  The 504 Sit-in, 1977 — Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund
• Civil disobedienceBlock the road to the plantBreaks the law

  High pressure, high cost, and it is the method most likely to lose you the uninvolved majority — which is the majority that decides whether a crackdown on you is tolerated.

  Unlawful — Obstruction of a public way, and depending on the state and the circumstances it can be charged well above a misdemeanour. Emergency vehicles are the immediate practical problem and the immediate moral one.

  Gene Sharp — nonviolent obstruction, methods 173–175