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How to Engage in Direct-Action Civil Disobedience

March 15, 2002

Goal: To go beyond protests

Summary: What if large protests are ineffective? What if the media and police have adapted to large, loud, and emotional protests and are able to successfully dampen the effectiveness of these tactics? While supplying few concrete answers, this guide offers samplings of ongoing research into the tactics that groups have used in the past to go beyond mass protests.

Introduction

This is a new war and it demands new tactics. We have been thinking very seriously about how the movement should move beyond large protests and how it can become an effective and nonviolent social movement. One conclusion that we have come to is that we need to embrace direct-action tactics geared towards creating media spectacles and disrupting the functioning of organizations that are complicit in the war. This resource guide will present a series of links to articles that we have found interesting, whether it is because it describes the tactics used by activists or because it tells of the police tactics that one may encounter.

Preface

We believe firmly in nonviolence, yet the government is prepared to label any group that resists their policies as “domestic terrorists.” To engage in violence will only result in being hurt and being marginalized. We see it as an uncontestable point that if we are to build a peaceful world we, ourselves, must demonstrate that peaceful tactics can build that world. If social change is impossible through peaceful tactics than social change will only result in more misery and pain. We hope that these articles will point towards new possibilities in the struggle to build peace. Although we are posting articles from various sources, we do not necessarily condone any of the actions taken (nor their ideologies) and instead look to these articles as an educational resources that will inform us in our own future peaceful tactics. Our goal is to apply some of these tactics to the new movement. If you have any links you’d like to suggest, please let us know. Also, check back often as we hope to update this page frequently.

The Links

Civil Disobedience Index (Act Up)
Why We Get Arrested (Act Up)
Civil Disobedience as Tactic, Not Culture (Act Up)
Going Underground: Tunnels as a direct-action tactic (Earth First!)
Planning Direct Action (Earth First!)
Personality Politics (Earth First!)
Anarchism in Action: Methods, Tactics, Skills and Ideas
Shell Office Occupation (Earth First!) more information and even more information
Another Office Occupation
Guide to Office Occupation
Guide to Tunneling
Guide to Blockades (PDF)
Civil Disobedience Workshop Notes
Another Description of Lockbox Tactics
Takeover of a Roof
Netwar in the Emerald City: WTO Protest Strategy and Tactics (RAND; PDF) and the entire book on “netwar”
Biotic Baking Brigade
Ruckus Society Training Manual
Training For Change
Nonviolence.org
Police Interrorgation Techniques and more here and here
Forming an Affinity Group; other writings by Starhawk about activism

This website is a tribute to Why War?, one of the nation's first and most innovative post-9/11 student antiwar organizations. Born on October 22, 2001 at Swarthmore College, we were a handful of freshmen and sophmores who vocally opposed the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. And now, seven years later, we are retiring this website as we focus our efforts on new directions. We hope that it continues to serve future activists and we remain confident that humanity is on the verge birthing a better world.