TAKE ACTION: Here’s a brief guide for how you could go about it…
For starters, gather a few people (or more) interested in taking action with you. Often you can find interested people through personal conversations and relationships. Don’t be afraid to reach out to acquaintances or other connections you know hold similar political views too – we don’t have to be friends with everyone we do political work with. Maybe you have existing networks among activists that you can call on.
Organise a meeting or dinner – some kind of gathering where you all get together to talk about the kind of action you are interested in doing and levels of commitment – e.g., are people interested in a one-off action or organising more things. Gauge things like your levels of willingness to break the law, to be seen on media, or to have conversions with the public to inform what makes sense for your group to do. You may want to focus your action on an issue that you, or those in your area, have direct experience of, e.g. housing crisis, climate related destruction, or cost of living. This way the actions are relatable to everyday people, and they will be able to see that the major parties are failing on these issues.
Likewise you could focus on larger issues such as Australia’s bipartisan support for involvement in imperialist wars and its seemingly endless commitment to environmental vandalism in the pursuit of corporate profits.
Remember, there are often diverse roles within actions and you can usually find something that everyone is happy participating in. Make a group chat – on signal or similar kind of encrypted app ideally – to stay in contact.
Decide on and plan your first action! [see Action Ideas below]
- Will you need any propaganda material – flyers, paint, etc.? You can find some resources or examples for inspiration [here]
- Will you need any legals information to be fully informed and prepared (visit our legals section), or should you leave your details with someone in case or arrest?
- Decide on the level of security / secrecy / anonymity needed for your action.
- Decide on and acquire any materials/resources – megaphones, banners, placards, props, disguises etc.
- You may want to organise specific roles within an action – to liaise with certain people like security or police or to be look out for something, to film or do other media.
- Media: Contact us if you want media support or to send in your actions footage! You can also think about other media distribution yourself.
- Does your action need to be flexible or time sensitive – e.g. trying to find a political press conference to crash. Plan for this.
- Maybe you need to all gather before the action to be prepared – leave plenty of time.
- Think about what you need to wear for the role you are taking on the day.
- You may want to practice or role play the new skills or conversations you are engaging in on the day.
- Organise transport to and from.
- Think about after the action – if it’s something you are engaging your community in how would you like to have conversations with them and what other grassroots organising that’s against or undermining the system can you invite people to? Or maybe you want to collect peoples details to connect and do other things.
- Make a plan to debrief and assess how your action went.
- Film your actions, big or small and send your action media to CATS !
Security Notes: decide what you’re comfortable talking about around phones or sharing with others. If you are planning things that might break the law, its best to do this away from phones or any other technology. Feel free to reach out to us – but be mindful of what you discuss online.
Disclaimer: we are all autonomous individuals attempting to work collectively against systems imposing injustices on us all. This is a brief anonymous guide to empower you to take action, provided out of solidarity. CATS takes no responsibility for the actions anyone takes after reading this and encourages everyone to look out for each other. This is intended for use for CATS actions during the election cycle, we encourage autonomous organising and actions that do not cause harm to people or living things. We will only publish supplied materials that align with our messaging and values.
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Action Ideas
- Engaging with people at pre poll, door knocking, or in your local town – to have conversations about how under-represented people feel by their politicians and what we can actively do.
- Disrupt political candidate forums.
- ‘Brand-jamming’ political advertising or campaigning equipment, and other forms of propoganda or disrupting political advertising. Brand-jamming is adding to existing advertising to expose your own message or the underlying message or ramifications of what is being advertised.
- Occupy campaign bus /car.
- ‘Swarm’: temporary blockage of road with a small protest, typically short – approx 3-10 minutes. To cause disruption, gather attention and communicate with people, but hopefully avoid police or arrest. It is useful to have banners to block the road and explain your purpose, and flyers or other materials to hand out to drivers or passers-by and explain what is happening and how long you will be. It may be useful to do around an election event – e.g., big press conference, paid access meet and greets between politicians and companies.
- “Bird dogging” politicians when they are doing media events – i.e. confronting or getting in their way at events. It may be useful to bring a sign to get into camera view or just generally ensure these media or baby kissing events that politicians do in election time are used as opportunities to spread a different narrative of change and not let business as usual carry on.
- Wheat-pasting propaganda
- Having confrontational conversations with politicians on the campaign trail in your area – use it as a moment to call out the system and how they structurally cannot make change or how politics is captured by industries etc, not to just have a go at that individual politician as a source of the problem.
See our messaging / banner / poster ideas {here}, to help with your action messaging.
Legal Resources
This is a non-extensive list of activist legal resources for some different states (laws vary between states). These resources are for helping know your rights and how to prepare for protest with some more legal information. There are state based legal aid services and local community legal centres, depending where you are, that can assist if you are charged with and offence.
If there is not info for your state please get in touch and we may be able to assist.
QLD
NSW
VIC
Melbourne Activist Legal Service
Other states