TABLE OF CONTENTS

- Introduction

* About this Handbook and How to Use It
* What is Nonviolence and Why Use it
* How Does Nonviolence Work?
* Nonviolence Training: Role of Trainers; Potential Topics for Nonviolence Training
* You and Your Group: Strengthening a Group; Exploring Differences; What Do You Want?
* Historical Uses of Nonviolence: What Works Where; The Role of Pacifists; Organising
* Case Study: Nonviolence Training in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement
* Case Study: Otpor: People's Power in Serbia

Technology has changed the street protest. In centuries past, a mass of people wishing to express themselves could only be silenced by live gunfire. But the advent of riot armor, lachrymatory gases and “less-lethal” projectiles have allowed ruling establishments to squelch the voice of protesters with great ease, and even better PR.
It is the interest of this booklet to help preserve our freedoms of speech and public movement in expressing ourselves. The objective is not to ‘up the ante’ or encourage street battles. No one sets out to engage the police or the army. We are on the streets to be seen and heard, but find it ever more difficult as arrests and injuries from policing forces aim to shut our voices out of the general equation.

Download full pdf on http://www.devo.com/sarin/shieldbook.pdf

Resource pack and tour documentation for trainers
and facilitators

From the Rising Tide Climate Action Tour. For more information or feedback please email cookie[at]risingtide.org.uk

Download unter http://risingtide.org.uk/pdfs/RTNAtour.pdf

Creative, bold visuals make a great center piece for every direct action. They do much more than make your actions look good. They unify your group, amplify your message, invite people to have a personal interaction with your work, and provide a visual story through symbols that clarify the issue. If you integrate art into your campaign strategy and actions, you can make change irresistible.
In this manual you will find simple directions on how to make banners, giant puppets, stencils for t-shirts and posters, and customized t-shirts. Use them as a starting point and improvise your own techniques!

Download pdf (2,1 MB)

You’re down at your local military base, ready for a spot of disobedience… but there’s always a fence in your way. DFROIOW (the Democratic Front for the Removal of Obstacles In Our Way) presents this practical guide to fences in their many guises and how to overcome them.

Download pdf (100 kB)

1. Be Honest, Stay Honest, Get Honest

If you know that you hurt the person calling you out for abuse, acknowledge it. If you think its a possibility that you might have hurt them let them know. If you have any inkling that some way that you interacted with them might have compromised their dignity and boundaries let them know. The first step to dealing with our abusive tendencies is getting out of denial. Denial is like an infection. It starts in some locality (specific instances and situations, nitpicking at certain parts of an account of the situation[s]), and if untreated festers and eventually consumes us entirely. When we are able to vocalize that we are aware that something isn’t quite right with our behaviour it brings us a step closer to dealing with it in a meaningful and honest way.

This text in german

The interview is the method by which the journalist tries to get what they want and also the means by which you must put your message across.

What we’re up against:

• Triviality: every media outlet shares the same principal aim: to expand it’s share of the market, it tries to do this by grabbing hold of people’s attention; this is why they concentrate more on events rather than issues
• Bias: Media is about pandering to the aims of the proprietors – there is no point talking to the boulevard press for example – but there are news outlets that we can use to our advantage. It is helpful to remember that newspapers are allowed to and are expected to be partisan, but that publicly funded broadcast outlets have a legal obligation to be “balanced and fair” – this gives you a little bit more scope to play with
• Play the game – give the interviewer what they want and get your message across
• Don’t hate your opponent, even if it’s sometimes hard!

To achieve this it’s important to have a clear understanding of what the story is:

1: * Making Invisible
2: * Ridiculing
3: * Withholding Information
4: * Damned If You Do And Damned If You Don't
5: * Heaping Blame and Putting to Shame

METHODS OF DOMINATION

A Norwegian feminist and peace activist, Berit Ås, listed five master suppression techniques in the 70's, in order to show the ways in which one person can get power over another person.

1. Making invisible
Are certain people talking all the time? Do some people only have eye contact with each other? Are your suggestions ignored or are others gazing through their calenders or looking at their phones when you're talking? Is somebody's repeating what you've just said and proposing it as their own suggestion?

2. Ridiculing
Are your suggestions laughed at/made fun of? Are you treated like a child? Are people saying that they know your suggestions wouldn't work "cause it's already been tried ten years ago"?

3. Withholding information
Does somebody in the group have all the important information? Do you begin the discussion without having presented the same information to all the participants? Are people swapping information without sharing it with the rest of the group?

4. Double punishment
"Damned if you do, damned if you don't". Is everything wrong no matter what you do? Are others saying you're not participating if you're quiet, and that you're dominant if you're suggesting something?

5. Heaping blame and putting to shame
Blaming happens through using ridiculing and double punishment. Blaming is what's done when people are judging you more for who you are than what you do. This technique can be seen at a societal level in the way women who have been raped feel shame and blame themselves for what has been done to them.

As the name implies, this approach to communication emphasizes compassion as the motivation for action rather than fear, guilt, shame, blame, coercion, threat or justification for punishment. In other words, it is about getting what you want for reasons you will not regret later. These techniques allow you to make conscious choices about how you will respond whether you get what you want, or not. It is definitely NOT about guilt and tricking people into giving you what you want.

The skills are built on Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg's application of Non violent Communication. The process of NVC encourages us to focus on what we and others are observing, how and why we are each feeling as we do, what our underlying needs are, and what each of us would like to have happen. These skills emphasize personal responsibility for our actions and the choices we make when we respond to others.

Non Violent Communication skills will assist you in dealing with major blocks to communication such as demands, diagnoses and blaming. In NVC trainings you will learn to express your feelings without attacking. This will help minimize the likelihood of facing defensive reactions in others. The skills will help you make clear requests. They will help you receive critical and hostile messages without taking them personally, giving in, or losing self-esteem.

NVC is a clear and effective model for communicating in a way that is cooperative, conscious, and compassionate.

making meetings enjoyable - easy and inclusive. (not only a space for the loudest/bravest/most egocentric few, but a space for sharing the thoughts and experiences of all and everyone..)

and -if you haven't already- please have a look at tsolife.org for further skills in having pleasant meetings.

**** BEFORE THE MEETING
Preparations

Preparation group - Prepares the agenda;
Who has something to talk about at the meeting, and what is it about? The preparation group makes sure that the person in question has prepared an introduction for what s/he wants to talk over and has suggestions (as concrete as possible) for how the issue should be treated (discussed). The preparation group should also look up who the meeting facilitators (these shift from time to time) are going to be.

Useful questions for the preparation group

1. What is the purpose of the meeting, why are we having the meeting
2. Goal of the meeting, what results should we achieve, what decisions should we make
3. What documents are needed during the meeting
4. Where/in what place should we hold the meeting
5. How much time do we need
6. Agenda

The meeting participants should receive information about the above mentioned things, well before the meeting.

A Handbook for Changing Our World
Edited by The Trapese Collective

‘A Radical Guide to Ethical and Sustainable Living’

Climate change, resource wars, privatisation, the growing gap between rich and poor, politicians that don’t listen. Massive issues, but how can we make any difference?

This book shows how
It’s not a book about what’s wrong with the world, but a collection of dynamic ideas which explore how we can build radical and meaningful social change, ourselves, here and now. Covering nine themes, the book weaves together analysis, stories and experiences. It combines in-depth analytical chapters followed by easy to follow “How to Guides” with practical ideas for organising collectively for change.

Do It Yourself is part of a growing response from the global social justice movement. Written and edited by activists and grassroots campaigners from across the world, the book reflects on their experiments in taking back control of their lives from governments and corporations.

http://hbfc.clearerchannel.org/

Using your body and a few simple tools to maximise your protest!

• Die kleine Blockadefibel alt
  | update
• Nonviolent Direct Action – Roles During Actions
• Direct Action Handbook
  (updated for G8 2005)
• Basic Blockading
• Roadraging (some chapters online)
• Ecodefense: A field guide to monkey wrenching
• Notwehr – Sabotage im Namen der Erde
• Direct Action Training Collective
• Schnews DIY Guides
• Direct Action Toolbox
• Seeds for change
• Fuck Shit up!
• Guide to Public Order Situations
• Group Movement Situations

After a month we had an internal weekend with the aims of debriefing and looking into group dynamics, and then evaluating our work in order to draw lessons for other people who might want to do this work.* The general consensus was that all of us enjoyed doing the work: it felt useful, appreciated and it is rewarding to feel that somebody actually feels better after talking to you.

Internal group dynamics are often complicated and this is especially true if people have been traumatised in the past, as all of the people in the working group had in some way or other. Summits are stressful situations at the best of times, they “trigger” people’s memories and remind them of previous traumatic situations. Additional factors were that a lot of the people did not really know each other beforehand and had very different personal and professional backgrounds and attitudes.

We concluded it would be better for a future trauma support group to really try and get to know each other beforehand and put effort into trust building and group bonding, since we need to be able to draw strength from the group rather than having to deal with internal conflict. It might have been a good idea to have an external supervisor on site who was independent of the group and could provide support for the supporters and group facilitation if necessary.