Here’s a chance to practice creating new actions or tactics for your group. It supports creativity and can be a chance to apply strategy lessons taught in earlier activities. It’s quick and guaranteed to get a few new tactics.
In this manual we share some broader theory of direct action and recent examples of kayaktivism, drawn from experiences as early as the 1970’s to recent examples (as recent as an action Cam participated in just a few weeks ago). We share this to think about best practices and how to carry out this work even more effectively.
A lot of campaigns forget one very important element of success: photography. An action can be strategic, technically smart, and flawless in detail, yet still fail if it has nothing to show for it — if it doesn’t have beautiful photos to demonstrate its power, excite the media & inspire supporters.
Here’s a chance to practice creating new actions or tactics for your group. It supports creativity and can be a chance to apply strategy lessons taught in earlier activities. It’s quick and guaranteed to get a few new tactics.
There are many aspects to carrying out a good action. They may be fun and creative, or well-planned, or poorly executed. They could have lots of people or few. Many groups spend the bulk of their time on these elements of actions, and they are important. Yet perhaps the most key area of action-planning is the action itself, what it is, what it stands for—action logic.
Here’s a chance to practice creating new actions or tactics for your group. It supports creativity and can be a chance to apply strategy lessons taught in earlier activities. It’s quick and guaranteed to get a few new tactics.
Activist groups often develop some actions they use again and again. Sometimes that’s sufficient. Groups can develop internal rituals or find that tactics continue to be effective. But oftentimes groups can get so used to do things that do them even when they’re not effective. So if you know a group who keeps picking the same ineffective tactics, or same boring meetings, this tool can help.