After an action
Debriefs; tidying up on the ground and virtually; regeneration and rest
Looking after arrested rebels
Arrest support
If you have had arrests, hopefully you were expecting them and have Back Office and Police Station Support readied.
If Back Office are working, once you know there will be no more arrests, you need to stand them down again.
You may need to call out to wider circles once the action has begun, to get PSS crew in place for the day/night/following day.
Aside from PSS make sure anyone that has been arrested gets the support they need. Wellbeing can help with this and CASP offer a range of support. Make sure they are plugged into that support but also give them extra opportunity to talk things through outside of formal debriefs.
See here for more guidance on Post Arrest Support.
Tidying up - physically and virtually
Physical cleaning
We work hard to minimise the environmental impact of our physical actions. This includes tidying up the site at the end.
We are all crew. The packing up should not be left to those who have worked the hardest during the day. Encourage others to help out so you can all get away sooner and celebrate.
Virtual cleaning
People should be fired up by the action. Make sure you make the most of the momentum you have created by talking about what's next or redirect them to permanent administered chats.
Once you have sent out final messages, collected debrief feedback and shared images from your action, it is advisable to remove everyone from chat group and delete the chat.
Abandoned chat groups pose a risk both from spammers harvesting contact details and also from the authorities if they gain access to a rebel's phone they are able to start to build maps of connections to other rebels.
How to debrief
As the movement grows, it is important that we learn from our achievements and our mistakes.
A debrief after an action gives us the opportunity to recognise our skills and weaknesses and to develop ourselves both as individuals and part of a team within the movement and our environment.
Although we are taking action for positive reasons, and often come away from these actions full of excitement, joy and energy, taking action can be emotionally heightening and stressful. It is likely that many people will have been running on adrenaline throughout the action. During moments of stress, our unconscious memory is more active. Debriefing can help process these memories and experiences.
After periods of heightened adrenaline, people may also experience a physical or emotional dip, which may leave them feeling unable to communicate, exhausted or experiencing negative thoughts. This is a completely normal bodily response but can feel destabilising and unpleasant in the moment. Debrief can offer a space to share and to get support in dealing with these feelings.
Hot debrief- immediately after the action
It’s a good idea to grab as many as possible from the team together to just check in with everyone, share how you’re feeling and share gratitude - regardless of how it went. If things went wrong, acknowledge that but don’t feel the need to resolve it there and then. You can cover it in more detail during the full debrief when everyone has had some reflection time.
Full debrief- a few days after the action
You may need to debrief different groups separately depending on the size of your action. And it may be appropriate to do these in a specific order to ensure that the feedback easily gets to the right people. For example, if planners debrief before any other groups you might miss some feedback.
If you are able to conduct the debrief in person that is ideal but often, it will need to be online.
The debrief facilitator doesn’t need to be a professional and shouldn’t be expected to magically fix anyone’s hurts. Rather, they should focus on moving the group through the different parts of the session, while taking part in the session themselves. If you are able to have someone that wasn't involved in the planning facilitate the debrief, this can be helpful to allow everyone to participate more fully and may allow any tensions to be managed better.
Note-taking during the debrief can further help the group to look back and see how much there is to celebrate or understand what can be learned for next time. It also gives people the opportunity to add to these if they are unable to attend or have more to add that they didn't share during the meeting. The learnings gathered from the debrief may also be useful to share with other circles and feed into your regional or national team.
Resources
Here are some resources to help you plan and structure debrief sessions. There are two main forms of debrief: our standard one and an emotional one. It is up to you which one fits best for your group and you may even want to do both.
- Simple Debrief - outline for 90 min session with 10 people & 2 facilitators
- Simple Emotional Debrief - outline for 90 min session with 4-8 people & 1 facilitator
- Emotional Debrief - for large groups modification for groups of more than 10 people
- Individual or Buddy debrief template
- Onsite debrief flyer
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