We are teaming up with our good friend and Billionaries for Bush founder Andrew Boyd—and activists from other grassroots groups, including Agit-Pop/The Other 98%, The Yes Men/Yes Labs, The Center for Artistic Activism, SmartMeme, Beyond the Choir and The Ruckus Society—to create an exciting new resource called Beautiful Trouble. As the Kickstarter campaign describes the project:
Beautiful Trouble will be a book & web toolbox that puts the best ideas and tactics of creative action in the hands of the next generation of change-makers, connecting the accumulated wisdom of decades of creative protest to the popular outrage of the current political moment.
From prank websites to militant carnivals, flash mobs to virtual sit-ins, social activism has a creative new edge that is melding prank and PR, direct action protest and pop art. More and more, activists and artists find themselves together on the barricades.
But in the heat of battle, the principles that make creative actions successful seldom get hashed out or written down — until now. Beautiful Trouble will arm our movements with their own best weapons.
Beautiful Trouble will pull together an interlocking set of design principles, best practices, innovative tactics and case studies, that will enable anyone to pull off effective creative actions.
Having seen the book develop from the inside, I can confidently say that it will be an invaluable handbook for activists—and one that I will be regularly turning to—for many years to come.
To make this great project a reality, they are currently campaigning to raise $12,000 on Kickstarter. At the moment, there are pledges of nearly $4,000, or about a third of their total. However, as you may know, if you aren’t able to reach your goal on Kickstarter, you don’t get any of the money.
With only 22 days left before time runs out, please donate now to help create this important resource that will assist activists of all stripes engaging in creative nonviolent action do so more strategically and effectively.
And as a bonus, depending on how much you pledge, they are offering a range of great gifts—including a signed copy of the book, The Yes Men Fix the World DVD and a copy of the “Iraq War Ends” fake New York Times signed by the Yes Men—for your support.