Image remixed from Labor Day Protest photo by L. Pham on Pixabay
Nonviolence News collects and shares 30-50 stories of nonviolence in action each week. Over the course of 2024, we collected more than 2,000 articles from around the world. From those, we looked for the most creative, unexpected, and out-of-the-box actions that highlighted the versatility and inventiveness of nonviolent action. Creative actions can inspire us as we rise to the challenges that are coming up. They can give us ideas we’ve never thought about and offer strategies we desperately need. To support everyone who’s moving into action, we’ve pulled out 10 of the very best creative actions from the past year that can inspire our own wild inventiveness for social change.
It was hard to narrow it down … there were over 280 examples, including dads putting baby slings on famous male statues to call for paternity leave, Florida LGBTQ+ allies using rainbow flashlights to defy the governor’s refusal to light up a bridge for Pride Month, 200,000 students in New York boycotting exams to object to overtesting, and climate activists making 100 snowmen that melted in front of city hall in protest of the climate crisis. You can find all of these in our Research Archive.
Here are the top picks, along with strategy insights and examples of how other movements are using the same approach. As we move into action in 2025, let them inspire you as you work for change.
#1 German Sports Fans Protest With Remote Control Cars With Flares
German soccer fans protested external investment into the league by driving remote control cars with smoking flares onto the field. Supporters across several stadiums also made their discontent known by halting games with showers of tennis balls. This caused numerous delays—one match ran twice as long because of them. In another action, a 12-minute silent protest was ended by throwing chocolate coins onto the field. The fans won.
The fans were successful because they coordinated a sustained campaign of creative actions, not just a one-off protest. They also directly disrupted the sports matches, which made their demands impossible to ignore. The varied, dramatic, and often-humorous actions caught media attention and built momentum for the campaign.
Similarly, #SummerOfHeat on Wall Street also used a sustained campaign with weekly direct actions focusing on different groups of climate activists (grandparents and elders, youth and students, scientists). They used climate memorials, tombstones, die-ins, told climate stories, and an array of other tactics along with blockades and civil disobedience at Citibank headquarters. As you’re thinking about creative protests, think of how you can use a sequence of them, not just one brilliant idea.
#2 Art Held Hostage for Assange Release
Art collector Andrei Molodkin put paintings by Picasso, Rembrandt, and Warhol in a 32-ton Swiss bank safe. Then he threatened to destroy them if imprisoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange died in prison. Framed as an art project entitled “Dead Man’s Switch”, the installation raised questions of justice, value, and the relative worth of a man’s life versus a piece of artwork. It’s impossible to say whether it had a direct impact, but Julian Assange was released from prison in 2024.
This action used something so outrageous it helped people recognize the outrageousness of the original injustice, Assange’s incarceration. Framing it as an art installation softened the perceived ‘threat’ of the action (making it more palatable to some viewer’s eyes) while simultaneously invoking the framework of hostages and the serious demand for change. While this action veered toward property destruction (which has always been a gray area for nonviolence), it aligned more closely with Gene Sharp, who viewed destruction of one’s own property as a nonviolent action, but not destruction of others’ property.
‘Outrageous’ actions can work powerfully to call attention to grievances: Indian municipal workers ate a plate of grass to highlight their demand for wages they could live on. In Hyderabad, India, a woman sat down in the middle of one of the water-filled potholes that pocketed the roads and refused to leave until public works officials came out to speak with her about road conditions. Going over-the-top can make your protest impossible to ignore.
#3 Naming Storms After Polluters Who Caused Them
In a satirical news report created by climate activists, the US government announced that it is naming storms after the climate polluters who caused them. Hurricane Chevron, for example. Yellow Dot Studios, which makes humorous spoof videos for climate action, also reworked actual news footage to show how powerful this kind of truth-telling could be.
The task of any nonviolent movement is to reveal the truth about the injustice and rally people into action. With this spoof new report, Yellow Dot Studios took a swing at several groups that were failing to be honest about the climate crisis: the fossil fuel companies, the meteorological institutions (which could be naming these storms this way), and the news media (which regularly fails to acknowledge the climate crisis, or its causes when reporting on climate disaster).
Activists can reveal powerful truths by crafting alternative messages and subverting people’s expectations. At the classic Christmas nativity unveiling this year, Pope Francis blessed a baby Jesus wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh. In New York City, a group of racial justice activists replaced commercial subway ads with signs that read: “A MAN WAS LYNCHED HERE” to raise awareness of the murder of a Black man, Jordan Neely. Injustice thrives amidst lies and concealment. With creativity, activists can pull back the veil and show what’s really going on.
#4 Funeral For Nature
Alarmed by biodiversity loss, hundreds of environmental activists held a funeral procession for nature to mourn the United Kingdom’s status as one of the most nature-deplete countries in the world. With 400 “Red Rebels” in bright red costumes leading the way, they were followed by public figures and citizens wearing funeral blacks, and carrying tree-branch and moss coffins.
Visually striking, the images from the procession captured media attention for this under-acknowledged critical aspect of the climate crisis. By localizing the emergency to their own nation, the activists made the issue personal to their fellow citizens. The somber funeral march also tapped into a widespread emotion – grief and sorrow – that people feel at what’s happening. Less prominent in the climate movement than fear or outrage, the focus on grief brought out hundreds of people who wanted the world to know how they felt. By using coordinated costumes, colors, and themes, the march demonstrated discipline, organization, and intention.
Activists can learn from this disciplined approach to visual imagery. In Brighton Beach, UK, hundreds of people carried a blocks-long scarlet red strip of cloth during a march for a ceasefire in Gaza. The striking visual invoked the blood of the Palestinians killed and the sheer size of it showed both the tens of thousands who had died and the size of the ceasefire movement. We can also use our grief as a powerful motivator for change, as Stop the Money Pipeline recently did by building a Children’s Climate Memorial outside Citibank to get the bank to stop financing fossil fuels.
#5 Teen Makes Code To Swamp Banned History Reporting Site With Song Lyrics
As conservatives tried to ban critical race theory across the United States, they put up a website where parents could report teachers who taught the curriculum, particularly in districts that had banned it. Teenager Sofia Ongele created a code that allowed GenZers to flood the website with mock reports. In a few weeks, the website was shut down.
This is a tech-savvy adaptation of a nonviolent tactic called ‘overloading systems’. By submitting an overwhelming amount of reports, data, calls, or other inputs, activists make an unjust system non-functional and force it to be shut down.
There are dozens of savvy ways to use technology to advance social change. The families of six youth killed with guns made AI messages in the voices of their loved ones’ to robocall senators and representatives who support the National Rifle Association and oppose tougher gun laws. The hacker group, Bushnell’s Men (inspired by the 25-year-old US Air Force serviceman who self-immolated in a radical act of protest of Israel’s genocide) hacked into 30,000 printers to make them print out fliers with Bushnell’s message.
#6 Underwear Protest Against Hijab Law & Morality Police
On November 2, Iranian Ahou Daryaei took off all her clothing and walked into the streets in her underwear. It was a protest of her assault by members of the Basij paramilitary force, which enforces the country’s stringent dress code. In 2022, the murder of Mahsa Amini in custody of the morality police sparked immense nationwide protests. Daryaei’s defiance, a video of which was shared on social media, decried Iran’s draconian repression and abuse of women, as well as the mandatory hijab laws.
This action took extreme courage. Daryaei had already been imprisoned and assaulted for resisting the dress code. By refusing again to comply, she demonstrated astonishing determination and moral outrage. Her action is an example of bold civil disobedience to an unjust law. By defying the law, activists seek to either challenge it in the courts, galvanize public opinion against it, or make it unenforceable through mass noncooperation. In Afghanistan, when the Taliban forbade women to speak in public, women defiantly recorded themselves singing and posted them online. In the United States, the Banned Books Wagon travels to the country giving out free books in places where they’ve been challenged or banned.
As individuals, groups, or populaces, direct defiance of unjust laws is one of the most powerful tactics in the nonviolent toolbox.
#7 “People’s Cooling Army” Installs Free Air Conditioners
In Chicago, tenant organizers have a program to fix up and install free air conditioners in low-income rental homes. As they put it in, they talk with the renters about forming and joining new tenant unions.
This is a classic ‘constructive program’, similar to Gandhi’s use of the spinning wheel and handspun cloth. It builds the self-reliance of tenants, serves a direct need, and helps to strengthen and mobilize the movement. In Minnesota, a program called Relationships Evolving Possibilities, or REP, is training people in how to respond to crisis situations without relying on police. By building an alternative like this, they hope to end racist police brutality and other issues with policing. These types of constructive programs are underutilized in contemporary movements, but hold vast potential and power for organizers.
#8 Congolese Soccer Team’s Silent Protest Stuns Viewers
At the Africa Cup of Nations, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s team members and coach held a silent protest over the massacres and war. Standing during the national anthem, they placed one hand over their mouths and held their other hand in the gesture of a gun to the head.
The boldness of the hand gestures had a lot of shock value. Holding it during the national anthem deepened the symbolism. Add to that the unexpected element of soccer players launching such a united political statement against war. Thousands of people, in person and on television, were watching. The action helped bring wider attention to the war.
Thinking through the details of your action can heighten its impact. Location, timing, participants, messaging, and target all matter. When the Israeli President Isaac Herzog came to the Netherlands to visit the Holocaust Museum, Dutch Jewish organizers lined the streets with road signs redirecting him to the International Criminal Court at the Hague to stand trial for the war crimes and genocide against Palestinian people in Occupied West Bank and Gaza. Dutch Jewish organizers held the moral authority to challenge the Israeli President. By creating realistic road signs, they demonstrated the seriousness of their intention to send him to the Hague. The contrast between the two locations drew the connection between being the victims of one genocide and the perpetrators of another.
These factors combined made it a much more powerful action than a generic protest or march.
#9 Artists Transform Anti-Homeless Spikes
Cities and businesses started putting metal spikes into flat surfaces to try to keep homeless people from sitting or sleeping on them. So artists covered them with beds and bookcases. This is an example of creative, nonviolent direct action with its signature DIY approach. The artists didn’t wait for permission or for an authority figure to pass a law or do something about the injustice. They went out and fixed the problem. In so doing, they challenged the morality and social attitudes that led to the spikes.
This kind of DIY action puts power back into people’s hands and can break through the frustration – and danger – that comes when officials or authority figures refuse to take action. In Argentina, after a local family was poisoned by their drinking water, which was found to contain glyphosate, a cancer-causing herbicide banned in much of Europe, Extinction Rebellion activists in Buenos Aires conducted a regional water survey, passed their samples onto scientists, and held a rally to warn people about the toxicity of their water supplies. By taking matters into their own hands, they protected the community and forced officials to take notice.
#10 Springfield Residents Pack Haitian Restaurants in Solidarity After Trump Remarks
After Trump made racist comments about Haitians in Springfield, OH, local community members are organizing the city to pack Haitian restaurants to defy the lies and show solidarity with their neighbors.
This is an example of making the opponent’s action backfire on them by using it to mobilize support for the very thing they oppose. Not only is this a meaningful way of supporting those targeted by hate or injustice, it can also be a lot of fun! Other great uses of this strategy include the reverse boycotts to counter hate-based harassment and the ‘involuntary walk-a-thon’ in Germany that got a neo-Nazi march cancelled by getting people to pledge to donate to LGBTQ+ and anti-racist groups for every step the hate-mongers group marched. Rather than raise money for the issues they opposed, the neo-Nazi’s stayed home. It was a win-win situation for the movement.
Creativity is essential for our movements. It cuts through fatigue. It brings new people into the campaign. It heightens strategy. It grabs media and public attention. It can force decision-makers to act. It builds solutions and alternatives. By thinking outside the box, we can strengthen our movements in numerous ways … and push for more successes in the years to come.
These are just some of the many examples of creative actions that Nonviolence News collected from our 2024 issues. Find more in our Research Archive here.
