Where to Fight Back: Lessons from US Anti-coup Actions

Introduction

In the opening months of 2025 a wave of protest and resistance has rolled across the United States as people grapple with sustained attacks on the rights and livelihoods of those from all walks of life.

In raising their voices protesters have pushed back against the “shock and awe” approach of the federal government and its allies by showing that resistance is alive and possible. 

Amongst the many strategic questions raised by all this activity is that of where action can be most effectively carried out and how protests can move away from standard locations and predictable actions to wrongfoot opponents and garner greater public attention.

In their book, Re:Imagining Change: How to Use Story-Based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements, and Change the World Patrick Reinsborough and Doyle Canning discuss the importance of selecting and effectively targeting points of intervention, “specific places in a system where a targeted action can effectively interrupt the functioning of the system and open up opportunities for change.” 

The following examples from protests in the US demonstrate how these points, some of which overlap, can be used to intensify impact in terms of ensuring visibility, challenging opponents, and disrupting narratives. To read an extract from Reinsborough and Canning’s work on this topic visit here.

Points of Intervention

The Point of Production

For Reinsborough and Canning the Point of Production includes factories, workshops, research facilities, farms and other places where goods are designed and made for consumption. This category can be extended to also include federal workplaces where services are designed and provided and government decisions carried out.

Action at this point can challenge assumptions about who the workplace belongs to and who has the right to make decisions. It can be undertaken by the workers themselves and/or by community members.

Action can take place at actual locations or online. It can involve strikes and open refusal to carry out tasks or be more covert, including ‘working to rule’, following guidelines to the point that production and services slow down or grind to a halt.

In the opening months of the Trump administration workers have regularly been ignoring and pushing back against fatuous orders. They have also protested bigotry by breaking bans on introducing themselves with pronouns or by adding transgender flags to their desks.

During the Day Without Immigrants protest on 3 February 2025 workers in the private sector walked off the job or took the day off to join demonstrations across the US. In some cases businesses chose to close with one Washington DC bagelry stating, “Our staff will receive a paid day off in order to make their voices heard and stress the importance of immigrants to our community and local economy.”

Librarians, libraries and professional organisations have been protesting and resisting a wave of bans on books. This has happened on a day to day basis at the workplace level but also via activities such as the New York Public Libraries running a national Banned Teen Book Club to promote books suppressed elsewhere.

On Valentines Day 2025 people rallied outside the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington DC to directly show their appreciation for those who work there and to reject attacks on their jobs and the vital role they play in society. This was done through banners, placards and speeches as well as by giving workers Valentines notes. 

Various online actions have been used to undermine the work of the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) in slashing government services. Government departments and individual workers have refused to respond to Elon Musk’s “justify your job” emails, reported them as phishing, or responded, along with other members of the public, with pointed and humourous responses. Combined, these have helped the anti-worker push to backfire. 

Another action involved flooding DOGE’s hiring website with fake applications, including from the likes of Mussolini, Cruella De Ville, and Ebeneezer Scrooge. This not only disrupted the functioning of the site for a period but also allowed people to share humorous and other messages via their applications. Similar actions have mass spammed, misdirected and lampooned websites and email addresses being used to terrify the public and encourage people to snitch on federal employees, neighbours and community members for their gender, immigration status, sexuality and political opinions. 

The Point of Destruction

The Point of Destruction is a place where mining, demolition, neglect or other activities threaten to destroy or harm an area of ecological, heritage or other social importance. 

Protests have been held at US national parks to highlight the destruction that is set to follow the slashing of the workforce that maintains and protects them as well as the administration’s assault on regulations that more broadly protect the environment. Although these and other actions, such as video statements from workers shot within parks, have forced some cuts to be abandoned, resistance to the rest has continued. On 1 March 2025 rallies were held in 145 parks around the US.  When and if mining, logging and clearing of national parks and other protected places begins then blockading and other activities aimed at directly destroying the environment will likely come in to play.

The Point of Consumption

The point of consumption is the place where people interact with a product or service that is linked to injustice. 

Peaceful protests have targeted Tesla dealerships and other company outlets closely associated and complicit with the rolling coup to encourage boycotts and further tarnish their image. Cassandra Peterson, an actor and former TV host known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, donated her Tesla vehicle to National Public Radio, to help raise money for the organization and draw attention to attacks on its funding. Before doing so she visited a national park and drove around Portland, passing Tesla dealerships, with the words “Elon Sux” written on the side of the car. Her posts regarding the events got much coverage as did her message, “I believe in democracy… So, I don’t want to drive something around that represents a person who is directly trying to take away our freedoms.” 

Other people have highlighted the administration’s broken promise to immediately reduce inflation by placing stickers on skyrocketing supermarket items with a picture of the President and the words “I did that”. In doing so they have repurposed a tactic previously used by MAGA supporters. 

Bookshops, theatres, record stores and other providers of information and entertainment have pushed back against censorship for decades by selling and promoting artworks and items that have been removed from libraries and banned by distributors and other retailers.

In 2024 Unite Against Book Bans teamed up with author Jodi Picoult to promote a book tour of 17 states, which included places where her novels had been removed from shelves. Teaming up with bookshops and libraries they made the issue of censorship a key part of each event, reaching more than 16 000 people and widely distributing campaign resource kits.

The Point of Decision 

The point of decision is where those who hold power and possess the ability to meet campaign demands are located: places such as legislatures, shareholder AGMs, and international negotiations. Actions can target well known players but they can also be used to expose and pressure those whose role is more hidden.

Demonstrations have traditionally targeted capitol buildings and politician’s offices as has occurred on various national days of action held in 2025. On February 5, 2025 a grassroots movement dubbed #50501 saw more than 70 000 people protest at such locations across the US while on March 7 Stand Up for Science rallies were held at the Lincoln memorial and at government sites in 30 US cities as well as 30 overseas locations.

Town hall meetings held by Republican politicians have also been flooded with constituents eager to provide direct feedback and demand change, with some of their questions and comments going viral. The pressure generated was strong enough to force the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee to step in and urge politicians to avoid voters by holding virtual events rather than in-person ones.

Constituents have responded with a range of ideas to further expose Republicans’ lack of accountability. These include the classic tactic of having an empty chair in a scheduled meeting for those who have refused to meet them or inviting union leaders and others to speak in their place as well as shifting the event to outside the politician’s office.

The Point of Opportunity

Specific dates, national holidays and commemorations, as well as events and appearances by decision makers and other public figures, can offer opportunities for well timed interventions. 

The January 18 People’s March on Washington was timed for the day before Martin Luther King Day and two days before Trump’s inauguration. On February 17 a national “No Kings Day” protest used the Presidents Day holiday to denounce autocratic rule.

The Point of Transport

The points of intervention covered in this series are by no means exhaustive and campaigners should always be on the lookout for new ones as well as variations on those that are tried and true.

One which did not appear in Reinsborough and Canning’s original typology is the Point of Transport.

Warehouses, railways, ports, highways and other key points in logistics and supply chains are all places where people can engage in and support workplace struggles as well as disrupt and draw attention to the movement of goods used for destructive activities.

Action at such points can also alert people to issues more broadly. Members of the Visibility Brigade regularly spell out messages with huge letters at a pedestrian walkway over Route 4 in Paramus, New Jersey and have produced a guide on how to organise similar actions.

Causing disruption at points of transport can also draw public attention to the depth of feeling around an issue. For instance during the Day Without Immigrants protests all lanes of Route 101 were blocked in Los Angeles bringing commuter traffic to a halt. 

The Point of Assumption

Effective actions not only use relevant physical locations to grab attention and generate pressure, but also intervene at the point of assumption to challenge and change popular understandings and beliefs regarding an issue.

Many of the actions highlighted so far have shared messages and shifted narratives. One that has particularly resonated, and which combined the point of destruction, point of production, point of opportunity and point of assumption, has been the hanging of upside down US flags as a distress signal at iconic spots in national parks. A flag hanging by laid off park workers from the El Capitan cliff face in Yosemite park during the popular annual Firefall event grabbed mass attention and flipped the MAGA script of “saving the nation” on February 22 2025. 

More Examples of Actions

• Noncooperation Database, Choose Democracy
• Tracking Trackers, Choose Democracy
• Pillars: Principled collective action & loving defiance, Horizons Project
• CCC Data Dashboard, Nonviolent Action Lab

Explore Further

• 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp
• Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century
• Civil Resistance 2.0: 198 Nonviolent Methods Upgraded
• The Tactic Star
• Tactics Resources in the Commons Library
• Pranks, Performances and Protestivals: Public Events
• Changing the World via Shock and Beauty: Visual Artworks
• Items of Mass Instruction: Posters, Stickers, Memes and More
• Humorous Political Stunts: Nonviolent Public Challenges to Power
• Changing Beliefs Through Action at the Point of Assumption
• Points of Intervention
• Points of Intervention Planning Tool 
• Points of Intervention Worksheet, Storybased Strategy (1pg PDF)