Issue: Principles & Processes

This booklet aims to give people thinking about going to or organizing a protest information about best practices for interacting with law enforcement in-the-moment. Further, it can also help as advance information to consider in order to assess risk and prepare for possible police encounters. When you are protesting or having any interaction with law enforcement, asserting your rights does not usually mean that the police will respect your rights or change how they are treating you. However, by using your rights (by saying them out loud, as this booklet will teach you to do), you can make it harder for police to use your own statements or anything found on you during a search as evidence against you during a trial. Using this information could help your case later in court and, importantly, can help you protect your fellow activists.

These trainings help organizations to get the most out of their online channels, by building a community and moving people to action. Nonprofit consulting group Aspiration has posted online trainings for groups working for social justice, to help groups with social media, communications, email newsletters, and online advocacy. Trainings include slides and recorded webinar videos. Some notable trainings include “Creating a Social Media Policy,” Tracking Online Analytics,” “Enewsletters for fundraising,” and “Building Online Advocates.”             

From one perspective, we’re ending 2021 a lot like we started it. In a pandemic, experiencing one extreme weather event after another, and anxious over how power is being wielded in Congress and the White House.
At the same time, there have been a significant number of policy victories at all levels of government while new funding resources and new horizons in climate leadership are creating transformational shifts within the climate movement. Shifts that have the potential to unlock the people power we are going to need to win – and secure – the transition to a clean energy future that we all need. Below you’ll find summaries of key trends in the climate movement for 2021 – and some of the Best of the Lab from this year.