This source is a guide by Seeds for Change that discusses how to organize effective direct action. Tactics such as occupying a building, jamming a company’s phone line with calls, breaking machinery, disrupting an event, blocking vehicles, among other direct actions are described. The guide also emphasizes the importance of identifying targets, understanding different types of pressure, and various other planning and logistical steps.
This document, a guide from Seeds for Change, explores direct action as a means to achieve political goals, contrasting it with indirect methods. It showcases successful examples in Britain, demonstrating how diverse and disruptive tactics like blockades, occupations, and property damage are employed to exert pressure. It highlights key points for effective direct action, including sustained campaigns, clear aims, targeted pressure, identifying leverage, and the importance of organized communities and diverse roles.
This document highlights various forms of direct action and resistance employed by groups such as Plowshares, known for disarmament actions, and Earth First!, associated with environmental sabotage. The text also discusses clandestine political bombings carried out by groups like the Armed Resistance Unit, emphasizing the importance of building revolutionary movements and resisting state repression. It examines the successes and failures of these actions, focusing on the need for strong networks, security, and a broader revolutionary vision.
In the past two years Les Soulèvements de la Terre, a network of ecological activists and groups, has used direct confrontations with polluters and developers to threaten industrial agriculture’s monopoly on the French countryside.
Yomango literally means to steal, or to shoplift. This cultural jamming movement emerged from the Mango brand, a popular clothing company. They were vehemently anti – consumerism, utilizing a tactic of shoplifting and distributing those goods. In a sense, it worked to normalized shoplifting as a form of disobedience and disruption against the normalized consumer behavior of society. One notable example of their work was a Yomango fashion show, where people would shoplift and then wear those clothing items in populated areas like shopping centers. Their comical movements and large gathering size drew attention to their cause. Eventually, their movement took off into different directions and chapters, such as Yomango – Tango. A group of Argentinian dancers took hundreds and hundreds of bottles of champagne from a grocery store and drank them in a branch of Santander Bank. This was an action of direct protest again the bank and the grocery store, who both greatly benefited from the Argentinian economic disaster. Below is an image of a “fashion show” in Barcelona.
This piece is a step-by-step guide published by CrimethInc. on organizing direct action. Common objectives of direct action, how to navigate the initial planning stages, what to do during and after the action, as well as other information is described and illustrated in the document.
A story from Vol. VII, No. IV of the Earth First! Journal that describes the direct actions taken by Oregon Earth First!ers in response to the Siskiyou National Forest’s reneging on an agreement to postpone logging within the North Kalmiopsis Roadless Area. While much of the wilderness in the Kalmiopsis region is protected, this action occurred to defend the hundreds of thousands of unprotected roadless areas. Activists engaged in a precedent-setting seven direct actions in addition to providing non-violent direct action training sessions to others. The piece concludes with a call to action to all Earth First!ers as well as anyone interested in participating in the direct actions the group has planned in the coming weeks to protect the North Kalmiopsis.
