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Use your radical fringe to shift the Overton window

The various policy options available on a given issue can be roughly plotted on a spectrum of public acceptability, from unthinkable, to fringe, to acceptable, to common sense, to policy. The Overton...

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We are all leaders

What is the difference between saying “none of us is a leader” and saying “we are all leaders”? At first glance these two phrases may seem like two ways of saying the same thing, which is essentially,...

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Beware the tyranny of structurelessness

Have you ever sat through an interminable meeting where everyone is theoretically on equal grounding, and yet only one or two people are doing eighty percent of the talking? Where there’s no...

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Maintain nonviolent discipline

It’s amazing to think that unarmed masses of people have defeated armed-to-the-teeth forces using humble techniques as strikes, occupations, boycotts and sit-ins. One way of understanding why this can...

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Debtors of the world, unite!

From 2009 to the present, countries from the UK to Chile have seen an upsurge of student strikes and school occupations to protest raising tuition fees. The 2011 Spanish indignados uprising began under...

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The real action is your target’s reaction

During the Salt March of 1930, Indian independence activists famously kept walking, unarmed and undeterred, into the brutal blows of British police (see CASE: The Salt March). Importantly, the press...

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Recapture the flag

Samuel Johnson did not mean patriotism per se when he famously called patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel. He meant false patriotism. The uncritical, unthinking, “Love it or leave it” variety of...

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Jury-rig solutions (or, How would MacGyver protest?)

Imagine a problem that you, as a regular citizen, can’t solve alone. For example, let’s say your street is paved with cheap, bad materials after your city privatized road repair, and now has lots of...

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Use your cultural assets

Radical social change groups can rarely compete with their opponents in terms of financial resources or institutional power. Instead, they must draw on what they do have: passionate, committed people...

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Build strength through repetition

A crucial skill for campaigners is the ability to react quickly to time-sensitive issues. For example, a government threatens to declare war, so peace campaigners respond by organizing an anti-war...

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