A while back I had a few goes at running a workshop I called The Activist Toolbox.

I'd start by having the group brainstorm all the different kinds of actions that might help to build a mass movement campaign. Then identify the minimum number of committed people you need for each tactic. Get it all scribed on a white board or a big sheet of paper.

I'd encourage the group to share personal stories of using different tactics, whether they worked or not, and discuss why they did or didn't.

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While the focus was on tactics, which are easier to get your head around, my goal was to get groups thinking about tactics *strategically*, rather than ideologically. Because I'd noticed that the tactics in use through the 1990s tended to depend on which ideological grouping was driving the campaign.

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Unionists loved mass rallies, even when they didn't have enough support to make them anything other than embarrassing fizzers.

Marxists always wanted to picket. Even if it meant picking targets only vaguely related to the real target of the campaign, making it entirely performative.

Other anarchists often rejected tactics that were accessible to anyone outside the veteran activist corp. Preferring to stampede directly to chaining themselves to stuff, with no educate, agitate, organise.

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I wanted to get activists to start thinking together, about where our tactics come from, their history, and the functions they might serve in a campaign.

How a logical progression from one set of tactics to another makes sense as a campaign progresses. How opponents might try to predict future tactics by extrapolating from past and current tactics, and how to keep them guessing. How to to adapt tactics to the unfolding situations of real world social change movements.

It's kind of fun.

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