From corporate offices to plants to universities to cities and streets, strategic nonviolent direct action can creatively liberate spaces, shift the balance of power, offer alternatives and cause your opponent to reconsider their actions.

Throughout history people’s movements, workers and youth have engaged in creative actions to win basic rights and protections for their community and the environment. This workshop will look at some success stories, explore different organizing models for actions, examine some good practices in the art of actions and campaigns and offer hands on exercises including tactical spectrograms, blockade techniques, flying squads and the five finger strategy just used in Germany to oppose the G8.

Case studies will include labor campaigns by low wage immigrant workers and their allies, global justice mobilizations including Seattle, Prague, Quebec, and Cancun as well as solidarity actions in Palestine and New Orleans as well as actions to end the US war in Iraq.

This workshop will drawn together lessons for our movements about how we can work in alignment with one another despite differences in race, class, culture, strategy, tactics and goals.

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Powerpoint slideshow and video will be used as well discussion, experiential exercises and planning tools for small group work.

For those people finding themselves in a place of needing to shut something down, they will come away with a pretty good idea on how to proceed! Numerous movements will be highlighted and hopefully people will have a better idea on how to work in solidarity with each other.

The training will be conducted in English

Handouts will be provided in English (and hopefully in Spanish).