Some salve for the despair

198 methods of nonviolent action

Edvard Munch, Two Women on the Shore (1898)

Yesterday, I let myself feel despair. I went to get coffee and a pastry with a neighborhood friend. I called a friend in New York, and then another in Mexico. I took a long candlelit bath. I went to sleep early.

Today, I woke up feeling resolute. I became a monthly dues-paying member of the Working Families Party, signed up for a post-election meaning-making call (along with more than a hundred thousand others) happening tonight, and reread Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy cover to cover.

In the thirty years since it was published, people all over the world have studied and distributed this book. It’s been translated into more than thirty languages. And organizers have used the conceptual framework for liberation in their own fights against their own autocrats – the Otpor movement in Serbia, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt.

We’re in for a devastating time filled with more death, violence, and repression. Broadening my thinking to the global context made me feel less alone, and I hope I can offer some of that salve here.

The book ends with a list of 198 methods of nonviolent action to overthrow a dictatorship, which I’m including, in full, below. You’ll notice that some of these actions are already under way (like the United Auto Workers call for a general strike in 2028) and others may take weeks or months to materialize.

We all have a part to play, and none of us are powerless.

The methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion

Formal Statements

1. Public Speeches
2. Letters of opposition or support
3. Declarations by organizations and institutions
4. Signed public statements
5. Declarations of indictment and intention
6. Group or mass petitions

Communications with a wider audience

7. Slogans, caricatures, and symbols
8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications
9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
10. Newspapers and journals
11. Records, radio, and television
12. Skywriting and earthwriting

Group representations

13. Deputations
14. Mock awards
15. Group lobbying
16. Picketing
17. Mock elections

Symbolic public acts

18. Displays of flags and symbolic colors
19. Wearing of symbols
20. Prayer and worship
21. Delivering symbolic objects
22. Protest disrobings
23. Destruction of own property
24. Symbolic lights
25. Displays of portraits
26. Paint as protest
27. New signs and names
28. Symbolic sounds
29. Symbolic reclamations
30. Rude gestures

Pressure on individuals

31. “Haunting” officials
32. Taunting officials
33. Fraternization
34. Vigils

Drama and music

35. Humorous skits and pranks
36. Performances of plays and music
37. Singing

Processions

38. Marches
39. Parades
40. Religious processions
41. Pilgrimages
42. Motorcades

Honoring the dead

43. Political mourning
44. Mock funerals
45. Demonstrative funerals
46. Homage at burial places

Public assemblies

47. Assemblies of protest or support
48. Protest meetings
49. Camouflaged meetings of protest
50. Teach-ins

Withdrawal and renunciation

51. Walk-outs
52. Silence
53. Renouncing honor
54. Turning one’s back

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The methods of social noncooperation

Ostracism of persons

55. Social boycott
56. Selective social boycott
57. Lysistratic nonaction
58. Excommunication
59. Interdict

Noncooperation with social events, customs, and institutions

60. Suspension of social and sports activities
61. Boycott of social affairs
62. Student strike
63. Social disobedience
64. Withdrawal from social institutions

Withdrawal from the social system

65. Stay-at-home
66. Total personal noncooperation
67. “Flight” of workers
68. Sanctuary
69. Collective disappearance
70. Protest emigration (hijrat)

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The methods of economic noncooperation: economic boycotts

Action by consumers

71. Consumers’ boycott
72. Nonconsumption of boycotted goods
73. Policy of austerity
74. Rent withholding
75. Refusal to rent
76. National consumers’ boycott
77. International consumers’ boycott

Action by workers and producers

78. Workmen’s boycott
79. Producers’ boycott

Action by middlemen

80. Suppliers’ and handlers’ boycott

Action by owners and management

81. Traders’ boycott
82. Refusal to let or sell property
83. Lockout
84. Refusal of industrial assistance
85. Merchants’ “general strike”

Action by holders of financial resources

86. Withdrawal of bank deposits
87. Refusal to pay fees, dues, and assessments
88. Refusal to pay debts or interest
89. Severance of funds and credit
90. Revenue refusal
91. Refusal of a government’s money

Action by governments

92. Domestic embargo
93. Blacklisting of traders
94. International sellers’ embargo
95. International buyers’ embargo
96. International trade embargo

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The methods of economic noncooperation: the strike

Symbolic strikes

97. Protest strike
98. Quickie walkout (lightning strike)

Agricultural strikes

99. Peasant strike
100. Farm Workers’ strike

Strikes by special groups

101. Refusal of impressed labor
102. Prisoners’ strike
103. Craft strike
104. Professional strike

Ordinary industrial strikes

105. Establishment strike
106. Industry strike
107. Sympathetic strike

Restricted strikes

108. Detailed strike
109. Bumper strike
110. Slowdown strike
111. Working-to-rule strike
112. Reporting “sick” (sick-in)
113. Strike by resignation
114. Limited strike
115. Selective strike

Multi-industry strikes

116. Generalized strike
117. General strike

Combination of strikes and economic closures

118. Hartal
119. Economic shutdown

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The methods of political noncooperation

Rejection of authority

120. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance
121. Refusal of public support
122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance

Citizens’ noncooperation with government

123. Boycott of legislative bodies
124. Boycott of elections
125. Boycott of government employment and positions
126. Boycott of government depts., agencies, and other bodies
127. Withdrawal from government educational institutions
128. Boycott of government-supported organizations
129. Refusal of assistance to enforcement agents
130. Removal of own signs and placemarks
131. Refusal to accept appointed officials
132. Refusal to dissolve existing institutions

Citizens’ alternatives to obedience

133. Reluctant and slow compliance
134. Nonobedience in absence of direct supervision
135. Popular nonobedience
136. Disguised disobedience
137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
138. Sitdown
139. Noncooperation with conscription and deportation
140. Hiding, escape, and false identities
141. Civil disobedience of “illegitimate” laws

Action by government personnel

142. Selective refusal of assistance by government aides
143. Blocking of lines of command and information
144. Stalling and obstruction
145. General administrative noncooperation
146. Judicial noncooperation
147. Deliberate inefficiency and selective noncooperation by enforcement agents
148. Mutiny

Domestic governmental action

149. Quasi-legal evasions and delays
150. Noncooperation by constituent governmental units

International governmental action

151. Changes in diplomatic and other representations
152. Delay and cancellation of diplomatic events
153. Withholding of diplomatic recognition
154. Severance of diplomatic relations
155. Withdrawal from international organizations
156. Refusal of membership in international bodies
157. Expulsion from international organizations

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The methods of nonviolent intervention

Psychological intervention

158. Self-exposure to the elements
159. The fast: a) Fast of moral pressure, b) Hunger strike, c) Satyagrahic fast
160. Reverse trial
161. Nonviolent harassment

Physical intervention

162. Sit-in
163. Stand-in
164. Ride-in
165. Wade-in
166. Mill-in
167. Pray-in
168. Nonviolent raids
169. Nonviolent air raids
170. Nonviolent invasion
171. Nonviolent interjection
172. Nonviolent obstruction
173. Nonviolent occupation

Social intervention

174. Establishing new social patterns
175. Overloading of facilities
176. Stall-in
177. Speak-in
178. Guerrilla theater
179. Alternative social institutions
180. Alternative communication system

Economic intervention

181. Reverse strike
182. Stay-in strike
183. Nonviolent land seizure
184. Defiance of blockades
185. Politically motivated counterfeiting
186. Preclusive purchasing
187. Seizure of assets
188. Dumping
189. Selective patronage
190. Alternative markets
191. Alternative transportation systems
192. Alternative economic institutions

Political intervention

193. Overloading of administrative systems
194. Disclosing identities of secret agents
195. Seeking imprisonment
196. Civil disobedience of “neutral” laws
197. Work-on without collaboration
198. Dual sovereignty and parallel government

In full transparency, I did have to google some of the items on the list… who knew that “lysistratic nonaction” meant sex strike? Here’s hoping that Melania is participating in the nonviolent revolution through her own lysistratic nonaction. The point is, there’s something for everyone to do to topple autocracy, and not everyone’s action is going to look like yours in the coming years.

I don’t have any hot takes or sweeping arguments about how we got here and who’s to blame. We know things aren’t working, haven’t been working, and they’re about to get a whole lot worse.

But we have frameworks, blueprints. We have history. We have organizations and movements. We have each other. “No outside force is coming to give oppressed people the freedom they so much want,” Sharp reminds us. “People will have to learn how to take that freedom themselves.”

Stay gentle with one another.