Power rests with millions of ordinary people who keep society running and who can choose not to cooperate with authoritarianism. Find actions that fit your life, comfort level, and community.
Quiet / Everyday Acts
- Leave postcards, stickers, or flyers with action steps in bathrooms, buses, or waiting rooms.
- Ask gyms, hotels, and bars to change propaganda news channels.
- Have intentional conversations with friends, neighbors, or coworkers about noncooperation.
- Slip resistance literature inside books at libraries or cafés.
- Support whistleblowers or targeted community members privately (letters, groceries, rides).
- Wear coded symbols (pins, colors) that signal solidarity.
- Boycott companies complicit in authoritarian policies.
- Use humor, parody, and memes to undercut propaganda online.
- Don’t obey in advance: If asked to do something questionable, do only what’s directly asked, don’t streamline it. Wait to be corrected; don’t make harmful orders easier to implement.
- File public records requests to expose unethical contracts or policies.
- Wear a resistance t‑shirt or hat to the gym and around town.
- Put yard signs up (with QR codes to resources) and rotate messages.
- Add resistance stickers to your car or laptop.
Community Power‑Building
- Form mutual aid networks for food, childcare, or emergency housing.
- Host small gatherings to air concerns and map local connections to pillars of power.
- Help people identify their “red lines” and support each other in readiness to act.
- Start a local newsletter, podcast, or social account to counter propaganda.
- Organize neighborhood canvasses (not for candidates) to share noncooperation info and resources.
- Build coalitions with local unions, faith groups, or student organizations.
- Start a community skills exchange: secure comms, de‑escalation, rapid response.
- Launch “adopt a pillar” campaigns to influence one institution (school board, library, hospital) toward noncooperation.
- Host story‑collection projects: record local stories of resistance and distribute them.
- Maintain a rapid‑response contact tree for quick mobilization.
Workplace Resistance
- Refuse to apply for or accept jobs with detention centers, surveillance companies, or propaganda outlets.
- Practice “performative incompetence”: intentionally misunderstand harmful requests.
- Practice “work‑to‑rule”: follow rules to the letter to slow unethical projects.
- Quietly share alternative information with coworkers.
- Organize inside your workplace to challenge cooperation with authoritarian demands.
- Document abuses (safely) and share through secure channels.
- Don’t obey in advance: Don’t anticipate and streamline harmful orders: make requestors own the process.
Public Actions
- Join or organize a street protest, march, or rally.
- Banner drops over highway overpasses or busy intersections.
- Create and display protest art, murals, chalk messages, or projection art on buildings.
- Organize a teach‑in, vigil, or public reading in a park or plaza.
- Hold a “honk for democracy” corner rally with signs during rush hour.
- Table at farmers’ markets or festivals with information and actions.
- Stage symbolic actions: lining shoes for victims, empty chairs for silenced voices.
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