Collective Noncooperation Training for these times
Many are looking for ways to get involved to stand up against attacks to our rights and freedoms.
As individuals, groups, and communities we can refuse to cooperate with official policies and actions nonviolently. When we take away our acquiescence at a massive scale, undemocratic actors can be stopped in their tracks.
We are a loose network of trainers teaching folks about these powerful tools of collective noncompliance and mass noncooperation based on tried and true tactics used by movements from around the world fighting against authoritarianism.
Training Agendas and Resources
Strategic Escalation in a Trump Era
120-minute training
Strategic Escalation in a Trump Era
120-minute training
Goals:
* Understand different of actions: symbolic actions, noncooperation (omission), disruption (commission), and alternative cooperation
* How to be more powerful in action design, from humorous street theater to dilemma actions
* Discuss how tactics may shift under a Trump Presidency
* Touch on action safety and maintaining discipline
Sense-making and Vision: how did we get here?
120-minute training
Sense-making and Vision: how did we get here?
120-minute training
Goals:
* preparing people emotionally to be ready to fight back (emotional triage),
* girding people for the long fights ahead by making people feel part of a large resistance community (how to organize under the new threat),
* orienting towards our next steps (you can adapt this to your design — here we’re introducing the “Block and Build” strategy).
This design requires some adaptations for your group, including your specific plans next and some chances for leadership to openly reflect on what they’re taking away from this moment. (People will want to hear from you!)
More coming soon!
Have agendas you have been using you want public? Let us know!
Want more resources?
We are focused specifically on noncooperation/noncompliance — there is much much more to know about organizing and activism under an authoritarian. These are just a few of our favorites:
Find more training agendas:
- Mutual Aid and Action Security: Choose Democracy
- Responding to Political Violence: HOPE-PV
Lessons about authoritarianism:
- Fascism Barometer, an excellent podcast and learning lab
- 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won
- Waging Nonviolence: Democracy is a Verb, collection of pro-democracy resources
- The Brain on Authoritarianism
- Understanding Pillars of Support
Lessons about activism:
- Beautiful Trouble, an interconnected web of ideas and creative best practices that puts the power in your hands — tactics, theory, and principles from around the globe
Examples of Noncooperation:
- Resist List — a Bluesky account tracking examples of noncooperation right now
- Horizons Project, offers rigorously researched case studies about noncooperation alongside their work as organizers, conveners, facilitators, and sense-makers to these times
- Waging Nonviolence, regularly reporting news on resistance to Musk/Trump.
Join Our Network
We have a wide and loose network of trainers. At this moment, we are only able to add folks who have training/organizing experience. If you would like to join, please submit this form.
Request a Workshop
Please fill out a consultation form and we’ll try to get back to you as soon as we can.
Who are we?
We are a tiny crew trying to support a big thing. Our team includes Keya Chatterjee, Nadine Bloch, Daniel Hunter, Jeff Ordower, Maria Stephan, Tabatha Pilgrim Thompson, and others.
Our principles:
- We oppose state violence using STRATEGIC ORGANIZING and COLLECTIVE NONCOOPERATION that boldly takes a stance against all violence and oppression;
- We are in SOLIDARITY with other movements — we welcome all people struggling for equality, freedom, and liberation;
- We seek a mass movement to resist authoritarianism — knowing that REQUIRES DISAGREEMENTS and working with people we do not align with on all things;
- We aspire for a DEMOCRACY where people’s wisdom is honored and people have direct control over our own destinies and futures.
We work with all sorts of groups: unions, lawyers, grassroots, government employees, councilmembers. We have no partisan ties. Our work is educating people about their options.