Freedom Trainers

Noncooperation Library

All of our public materials in one place.

87 resources

Election Defense Slide deck – key slides for a grassroots Election Defense training. Includes slides for the People’s Election Playbook, election scenario role-plays, and explanation of the model Fight, Prove, Win, Enforce.

The HOPE guide and trainings aim to empower individuals and strengthen communities to make political violence backfire against those who incite, threaten, and enact it.

The People’s Election Playbook — a 6-step plan to help defend the election. These are the must-do moves to stop them from wrongfully seizing power through manipulated elections.

Toolkit — Business for Democracy Pledge: A tool to publicly push big business and partner with small business to take action to help realize democracy, including opposing the regime’s assaults on voting and elections. 

GroundControl – A website for individuals who want to find election volunteer opportunities near them (e.g. be a poll worker, text voters)

Resistance Menu

Federal Workers Alliance for Democracy has helpfully created a “Resistance Menu” with a range of actions federal workers can take — noting the same action could incur different levels of risk for different people, depending on your agency, position, and environment.

Sense-making and Vision: how did we get here?
120-minute training

Sense-making and Vision: how did we get here?
120-minute training

Goals:
* preparing people emotionally to be ready to fight back (emotional triage),
* girding people for the long fights ahead by making people feel part of a large resistance community (how to organize under the new threat),
* orienting towards our next steps (you can adapt this to your design — here we’re introducing the “Block and Build” strategy).

This design requires some adaptations for your group, including your specific plans next and some chances for leadership to openly reflect on what they’re taking away from this moment. (People will want to hear from you!)

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Toolkit for NO AI Data Centers: AI data centers are being built out across the US at an unprecedented rate. These projects are being pushed by the tech oligarchs who are spurring on the Trump administration’s authoritarian project.

Toolkit Against Detention Center: No to torture. What is happening inside these walls is wrong. Maggots in food. Cancer untreated. People beaten for asking for their medication. Sewage backing into sleeping areas. Detainees pressured to sign deportation papers they don’t understand.

Toolkit: End 287(g) agreements: Across the county, local police, and sheriffs are being deputized to act as immigration enforcement officers in our home towns and cities. These agreements are called 287(g) agreements, overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and they are being pushed by the current administration to stoke fear and mistrust, deepen the jail to deportation pipeline in our local communities, and increase the number of immigrants detained.

Toolkit Fix It, Fed Ex: FedEx paid $1.9 million to the Tennessee legislators who eliminated the state’s only majority-Black congressional district. FedEx has not responded to a single demand for accountability yet. From Memphis to the world, people are rising up and taking action to ramp up the pressure on FedEx to meet our demands.

The real reason Musk retreated: Elon Musk’s departure from DOGE was a massive, unplanned retreat by the richest person on the planet due to relentless noncooperation.

Online recording of 101 noncooperation webinar – a 2 hour virtual training on civil resistance and noncooperation. We cover the authoritarian threat and how to defeat it. We focus on countering the all-out assault on our elections and concrete steps for taking action.

Strategy Memo: The 89 Million – This memo by Ash-Lee Henderson describes 3 core reasons people don’t vote. While focused on Black voters, it examines strategies to activate the 89 million that did not vote in the latest election.

Toolkit: Holding Election-Denying Officials Accountable: Election denial isn’t a technicality. It’s a big crack in the foundation of our democracy. Every official who lied about 2020, refused to certify results, or fed a bogus “audit” chose to attack the vote instead of defend it. As we head toward the midterms, we’re hold them accountable now.

Toolkit: Thank an election official: Elections are the backbone of our democracy.  Without them, our democracy would not function. They work overtime to count every vote so that our voices could be heard. But politicians have spread false claims about election workers.  Many election workers have received threats just for doing their jobs. It’s time to thank election workers – in a meaningful public way.  They deserve our gratitude.  It’s long past the time for us to let them know how grateful we are for their courage and fortitude. 

Election Risk Heat Map by Voting Rights Lab — breaking down where the most likely bad actors and systemic weaknesses collide to increase risk.

Hands Off Our Vote – the narrative guide to understand how to talk about “election theft” in this current authoritarian context

History and Practice of Noncooperation

Political scientist Erica Chenoweth unpacks what makes a successful movement against authoritarianism, and how nonviolent resistance can be used to uphold democracy.

Understanding Pillars of Support

One powerful approach that can help make sense of this complexity is the “pillars of support” framework: summarized by a simple image of a roof held up by several pillars.

Many of these resources are produced or hosted by other organizations and is shared here for educational purposes. Inclusion of any example or tactic does not constitute an endorsement or instruction to act similarly. Freedom Trainers is a 501(c)(3) educational organization committed to lawful, nonviolent action. Nothing here is legal advice. Individuals are solely responsible for their own decisions and conduct.