From Hit and Sit to Hit and Run — Expanding Our Toolbox of Nonviolent Strategies

The cops have us figured out. Protests, soft blockades, tripods, lockboxes. Sure, all these tactics can be effective in certain situations. But when we consider the scale of the problem, they are lacking. These tactics do not generally lead to decisive outcomes. They can shape conditions and help lead to victory, but alone they are almost never sufficient.

We have trouble shutting stuff down permanently.

Decisive actions, on the other hand, can directly achieve our goal. Our goal is to stop the global industrial economy that is killing the planet. As such, a prime consideration is attrition—on our side. When people are arrested with every action, our losses—time, money, energy—add up quickly. People get burned out.

Let’s not get arrested on purpose. Instead, let’s consider applying guerilla tactics to the battle for the planet. These tactics can be adapted for non-violence, or carried out in a decisive ecological warfare style. Hit and run blockades allow us to inflict maximum economic and moral damage without taking losses.

It has been popular for many years for non-violent activists to “hit and sit”—waiting for the police to come arrest them. This approach can lend a certain moral weight in the courtroom, and there’s a time and a place where it’s probably the most effective method.

However, hit and sit tactics will always be limited by resources. If you only have a few people willing to be arrested, your actions can only take place on a small scale. Consider, instead, what you could accomplish with the same small group of people acting clandestinely.

To be effective, this strategy would require cooperation with existing aboveground movements. For example, hit and run tactics will be most effective where people can advocate for, justify, and explain the actions within a greater narrative of resistance to coal, oil, gas, and the broader industrial ecocide of the planet. To mitigate media demonization and police crackdowns, the story of this resistance has to be as powerful as the actions themselves.

Imagine, instead of a couple dozen direct actions a year, soft blockades that are easily broken up and leave people broke and in prison, hundreds or thousands of blockades taking place all around the country, and the world. Small teams striking like ghosts, interdicting commerce, halting logging, dams, fracking, coal trains, and more, then disappearing only to strike again the next day, and the next, and the next.

Suddenly, attrition is on our side.

Even if these tactics were broadly adopted, they wouldn’t be enough to save the planet. Ultimately, we call for decisive ecological warfare. However, in the near-term, such escalation in non-violent resistance would push our movements in a better direction: more strategic, more creative, more serious, more security-aware, more clandestine, more decisive.