Topic

Tactics

Tactics are the exciting part of any campaign – the actions that involve people, put pressure on powerholders, and make a splash in the media. This topic includes activities to choose your tactics from a wealth of options, case studies that showcase different tactics, and the nitty gritty of organising particular actions.

Campaign Tactics

Learn all about tactics for your campaigns including how to adapt their tone for different events and explore different examples.

An Arrow pointing up features a person by themselves and as the arrow moves up the person gathers more and more people and at the end there is a group of people holding barbells up in the air representing there is strength and power in numbers.

Replace Endless Actions with Campaigns

Keep doing the same actions and not getting anywhere? Learn about replacing endless actions with campaigns and have a bigger impact.

Two May Day marchers carrying a banner in 1973 that reads "Support BLF Green Bans"

Green Bans Timeline: 1971-74

A timeline of the Green Bans implemented by NSW Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) in the early 1970s.

Screenshot of the homepage of the activist handbook. Heading reads Activist Handbook: Campaigning guides for activists. There is an illustration of an abstract loudspeaker in a circle with different colours and small writing.

The Activist Handbook: Campaigning Guides for Activists

The Activist Handbook is a ‘wikipedia’ style website that provides guides and resources for people to become effective activists.

Violence and the Backfire Effect

There are ways that social movements and organizers can handle violence to their advantage and why violence can backfire.

Online Tactics: Digital Storms

A Digital Storm is an online event mobilising the public to email, call, text and post comments to a corporate or government target.

a flyer that reads Funding Adani climate crisis. Icons of men in business suits, envelopes and a cart of coal at the bottom.

Creating Change with Letter Deliveries

A letter delivery is a planned event where representatives from a group or campaign deliver a letter to a manager or business.

Image of a three hands, all with dark-brown skin. One is a small hand with fingers spread out onto a yellow, red, and black painting from hand-stencils; the others are gently holding and spraying yellow paint onto the first hand, respectively.

Prefigurative Politics in Practice

The concept of prefigurative practices can help us identify and cultivate the many forms of activism that help to open up the space of possibilities from within which we can co-create better futures.

Book cover that reads - Advertising Shits in Your Head: Strategies for Resistance. Letters are in red neon lights.

Subvertising: Sharing a Different Set of Messages

Exposing the manipulation and damage wrought by the advertising industry and outline the ways in which subvertisers are fighting back.

Two protestors have chained themselves to the railway line.

Frontline Action on Coal FLAC: Ten Years on the Climate Frontline

Frontline Action on Coal (FLAC) have used blockades and non-violent direct action to oppose new fossil fuel projects in Australia.

blimp flying over city. On the blimp it says Chicken of the Sea, Carnage in a Tuna Can, Greenpeace.

5 lessons for success from real-world #BrandJam campaigns

Brandjam campaigns use a companies brand value as a way to access public attention. So…what’s to be learned here?

ten dvd covers of movies about social movements struggles and leaders

Films and Documentaries about Social Justice, Movements, Victories and Leaders

Be inspired with this list of movies and documentaries about social movement struggles, victories and leaders – Selma, Milk, Silkwood, Norma Rae, Gandhi and more.

A mural outside the Bernard Shaw Pub in Portobello, Dublin depicting Savita Halappanavar and calling for a Yes vote in Ireland’s referendum on repealing the Eighth Amendment. The mural shows Savita's face surrounded by lots of stickers saying Vote Yes

How Powerful Conversations Won Abortion Rights in Ireland

Overturning the abortion ban in Ireland meant equipping people to share their stories and spark conversations with their friends and family.

black and white photo of two police dragging one person along the ground and accompanying another woman off a sports oval

Australian Actions at the Point of Assumption

Points of Assumption – A list of Australian examples of tactics and actions that have reframed debates and beliefs and made social change.

a group of people protesting on the street wearing face masks and holding their fists in the air. There is a banner in the back reading Black Lives Matter. The person at the front wearing an Australian Aboriginal flag is holding their phone.

Australian Actions at Different Points of Intervention

Australian examples of actions that intensify impact in terms of ensuring visibility, challenging opponents, and disrupting narratives.

silhouette of hand putting a voting ballot into a box

Elections and Activism: Case Studies

A collection of case studies of how activists have intervened in elections collated by The Commons Social Change Library.

Elections and Activism: Campaign Skills

This collection provides how-to guides and resources regarding the skills and tactics you’ll need to reach your goals in election time.

Anti nuclear poster. Text says For a nuclear-free and independent Pacific. Stop French tests, US out, USSR Stay Out! The image is a nuclear symbol overlaying an illustrated aerial view of land and clouds. Text in other language is - Kia toituu te mana o te Moana-niu-aa-Kiwa: raahuitat kia waatea i ngaa Nuukrina whakahaehae whakamootii. La matua fa'asaina le fa'aaogaina o aupega malolosi e ai le nuclear bomb i le pasefiak atoa

From Protest to Politics: The Effectiveness of Civil Society in shaping the Nuclear-free Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand

A case study about what made anti-nuclear activism successful in Aotearoa New Zealand between the 1960s – 1980s.

Civil Resistance against Climate Change: What, when, who and how effective?

New research considers what Australian climate activism – specifically climate change civil resistance – looks like, how it is changing, and what it is achieving.

Tasmanian Wilderness Society blocks dam construction (Franklin River Campaign) 1981-83

Tasmanian Wilderness Society activists blockaded the Tasmanian Franklin below Gordon Dam site, proposed by the Hydro Electric Commission.