
Nonviolence Training: A Brief History
A brief history of nonviolence training around the world, Australia and in the Pacific by a group called Pt’Chang.
CounterAct: Building People Powered Action is a not-for-profit organisation that supports communities across Australia to protect the natural environment and work for social justice and human rights. This is done by providing training, educational resources and capacity building to support communities and activists.
The CounterAct collection on the Commons includes case studies, articles and practical checklists. Many of these resources have been written by Nicola Paris from CounterAct but the collection also includes resources from allied projects and campaigns focused on civil resistance, non-violence, direct action skills, campaigning and grassroots organising.
A brief history of nonviolence training around the world, Australia and in the Pacific by a group called Pt’Chang.
A comprehensive list of resources about climate justice (including First Nations, gender, disability and other resources) collated by the Womens Climate Justice Collective (WCJC) and CounterAct.
Crowdfunding to cover the cost of fines for civil disobedience shares the cost among many supporters and reduces financial pressure on organisations or small grassroots groups. Here’s some tips from CounterAct on effective fundraising in this context.
Tips from CounterAct for small grassroots groups on creating quality online content, making sure it is reaches the right audience and lands as well as it could.
Creative tactics for social change: A number of examples of fun, empowering and engaging actions incorporating a creative approach.
Creative tactics for social change: Different ways of spreading messages and information in a creative way… memes, posters, postcards, stencils, etc.
Creative troublemaking! What is creative activism? Why do we use creative tactics? What are the advantages of using cheek, shock and surprise?
Here is a list of crowdsourced ideas on how to make meetings and activism more welcoming and inclusive for parents/carers and their families.
A thorough checklist to help you prepare for traditional and social media in the lead up to an action, including some considerations for non-violent direct actions. Download as a handy printable pdf from the box at the bottom of this page.
Nonviolence training manual to support the work of people working to increase the power and effectiveness of grassroots social movements.
The struggle to protect James Price Point was a multi-faceted, organic campaign, fuelled by creativity, ingenuity and a fierce sense of independence and justice. The Camp Walmadan booklet gives an insight into a recent successful community campaign. It also provides a great overview of the kinds of issues to consider when organising a large scale direct action convergence.
Many successful campaigns have based their direct action from blockade camps and include the wins against the damming of the Franklin river, stopping the Jabiluka uranium mine, and the proposed gas hub at Walmadan/James Price Point. It can be a scary thing, heading to a blockade camp for the first time. Here are some tips to get you started.
Twitter is a very useful way to share your story outside traditional networks. Increasingly Twitter quotes and photos are used to embed in traditional media, and with a small amount of effort you can get your event trending. This will alert politicians and media to your issue.
Affinity groups are a feature of many large scale non-violent actions. An affinity group is a small group of people (eg: 5-15) who have something in common who take action together. Groups could focus on a specific theme eg street medics or legal observers or more commonly it is a group of people that take action as a team.
A collection of reflections on Occupy Melbourne. The global Occupy movement was one of the most important political events of recent history. Beginning with Occupy Wall Street in New York, the movement triggered an unprecedented wave of uprisings. Melbourne became the largest occupation in the southern hemisphere.
In 2005 the Mirarr succeeded in halting the development of the proposed Jabiluka mine. It was the culmination of an extraordinary decade-long campaign which saw people across Australia and the world stand up and support Mirarr in their opposition to uranium mining on their land.
Stop Jabiluka Mine handbook gives a fascinating insight into an important part of Australian social movement history as well as an overview of the kinds of issues to consider when organising a large scale direct action convergence. Over 500 people were arrested in the course of an eight-month blockade at Jabiluka in 1998.
This article includes reflections and tips for ‘extreme sport’ facilitation at blockades and action camps. Includes notes about logistics, comfort of participants, timing, internal organisation within the facilitation team, holding the space, and being transparent about role and power dynamics.
Facebook is a vital organising and networking tool but presents risks for activists. Digital security can seem overwhelming but we can all get better at it. There are organisations who have done a great job of breaking the information down and giving you support to improve your practices. Start with these 7 tips.
CounterAct encourages the progressive and radical movements on the Australian continent to get better at digital privacy and security. Security culture is simply a set of practices that limits the ability for government or opponents to find out more information about you and interfere with or monitor your group. We’ve given you some tools to minimise this.