Recruiting and coordinating your team

Recruitment

Now that you have your basicinitial action design and plan in place, you can work out what roles need to be filled, what skills are needed and how many of each role you need. SoIn nowshort, you canneed to start recruiting.recruiting!

You might be recruiting people to:

• Help with planning
• Take a specific support role
• Take a specific participant role
• Or

(Separately, you'll probably want to encourage people to just to turn up on the day

Whether it is an open or closed action will determine how you go about recruiting.)

OpenlyUse organisedthis - you can reach out using any communication route available to you - Telegram, WhatsApp, Action Network emails. You may want to use the design toolguidance to make asure niceyou graphicmake your action accessible and inclusive to getall: people excited. You may want to put on an open call so you have the chance to convince lots of people all at once to join your action. And/or you can go to different local group meetingsAccess and persuadeInclusion themChecklist. toAre support.

there

Closedany organisingaccessibility - Your routes for reaching out are far more limited. Ideally you can reach out to those who you know and trust for secure elements of an action and ask them to use their networks of trusted rebels to recruit. However, this does meanissues that you aren’tmight being particularly inclusiveneed to newerplan for? Ask if rebels sohave youany mayspecific wantneeds and discuss how to tryadjust gettingfor people vouched for- see below.them. This canmight bemean timeadjusting consumingyour andmarch doesroute, increaseor thefinding riskaccessible oftravel a closed action being compromised but it helps to bring more people into NVDA.options.

With both open and closed actions, takeTake the time to speak 1-on-1 with your recruits im specific roles to:

• ensure they are bought into the action
• make sure they are available
• ensure they have any necessary skills or attributes and that you know about any adjustments that might need to be made to make sure they can take part.
• This also makesHelp them feel valued and part of the team.
• Make sure they have time and space to discuss concerns about the action and don’t feel any undue pressure.
• Make sure they have agreed to the Rebel Agreement.
• Check participants have had NVDA training (highly advised!)

SecurityRoles

AsHere mentionedis beforea securitynon-exhaustive list of roles. For simpler actions, many of these roles will either not be needed or one person can hold multiple roles.

Many of these roles fall under Action Support. You can find a load more information on these roles here.

Coordinators

• Action planner
• Budget holder
• Media & Messaging (public)
• Comms (internal)
• On the ground co-ord
• Action support co-ord
• Protest liaison
• Legal support
• Programming

Crews

• Stewards
• Wellbeing
• Deescalation
• Back office / Police Station Support
• Outreach
• Creatives
• Rhythms
• Banner holders
• Roadtakers

Media

• Spokespeople
• Photographers
• Videographers
• Livestreamers

Coordinating with your team

You will want to have a regular meeting with your core team. You will need an accessible way of communicating regularly, like Mattermost, Telegram or Signal for chats and inclusionGoogle Docs or Cryptpad for documents.

It’s also a good idea to hold briefings with all participants, so they can becomemeet twoand endsfeel part of the team. You might hold different briefings for mass participants, spicy rebels, action support roles, etc.

Lots of info and advice on which tools to use to coordinate with your team - and how best to use them - can be found on the Internal Comms page.

Open or closed organising

Closed organizing is a scale.secure Toaction makethat relies on the element of surprise. This usually means smaller numbers with a trusted closed team (eg climbing up an oil rig). This has the disadvantage of being less inclusive. Ideally you can reach out to those who you know and trust for secure elements of an action and ask them to use their networks of trusted rebels to recruit more securepeople. oftenHowever, meansthis makingdoes itmean lessthat inclusive.you Asaren’t abovebeing thereparticularly areinclusive waysto newer rebels, so you may want to try to lessen this affect.

For closed planning you will likely need to communicate with your planning team and any other rebels that need to know restricted details using Signal messaging app.

The key thing here is to give information on a need to know basis. Encourage everyone to be super vigilant with this rule. Stagger giving spicy info like this - Eg. We’ve got this kind of action in late May, would you be interested? If yes, then give the date, are they available? If yes, then give the types of roles you are recruiting. If yes, then give the final details you are prepared to share.

Gettinggetting people vouched

Thisfor (this means inviting people on open/public channels to take a role and asking those that respond to provide someone who can vouch for them who is known to the movementmovement). (i.e.This can be time consuming and does increase the risk of a LGclosed coordaction being compromised but it helps to bring more people into NVDA.

Open organising is where you openly say what you’re doing and anyone can come and join the action (eg a big march, or someoneoccupying some land and inviting the whole world to join). This can also mean opening it up to other groups. This has the advantage of being much more inclusive and you can reach out using any communication route available to you - Telegram, WhatsApp, email, press, open calls, etc.

There is huge power in telling the government, the police and the media where you will be and when, and then doing it. This is an XRukact circle).of Verifypure theirdefiance. phone number rather than going on a name or handle/alias, as namesWe are oftentoo sharedmany orto differentbe onstopped. differentWe platforms.

are

Signal/Cryptpad

reclaiming

Onour Signalpower. turn on admin permissions for admitting new members so you know you only have trusted people in your chat group.

Signal chat description in the headerIt is visiblealso respectful to anyonegive even if they are not a membermembers of the chat.public So/ becity carefultransport whatmanagement informationdue warning of disruption.

Some actions have elements of both open and linksclosed youorganising put- inwhere there.

something

Cryptpadspicy is happening and a sharedmarch documentwith app similar to Google Docs but farloads more secure, especially if used with a password, though it isn’t as user friendly. So make sure any restricted information like plans or lists of participants is saved on a crytpad with a password.

Roles

Here is a non-exhaustive list of roles in addition to those purely participating on the day. For simpler actions, many of these roles will either not be needed or one person can hold multiple roles.

Many of these roles fall under Action Support and so you can find a load more information on these roles and how to access action support here: Action Support

• Action planner
• Media & Messaging
• On the ground co-ord
• Action support co-ord
• Protest liaison
• Stewards
• Wellbeing
• Deescalation
• Legal support
• Back office/Police Station Support
• Outreach
• Creatives
• Programming
• Rhythms co-ord
• Budget holder
• Photo/video/livestream
• Banner holder/roadtakers
• Spokesperson

Coordinating roles

You will likely need a regular meeting with your action planning team made up of some of the people holding these roles. And you will need an accessible way of communicating regularly like Telegram or Signal. You may choose to organise this over more than one channel.

Aside from planning meetings, it’s a good idea to hold briefings with participants so they can meet and feel part of the team. You might hold different ones for mass participants, spicy rebels, action support etc.

If you have a spicy element to your action, you need to take extra care to balance the info given to them so they can commit and feel bought into the action, without having more info than they need. Get a legal briefing from one of our legal reps and share this so they can weigh up the risks and potential consequences.

Make sure they have time and space to discuss concerns about the action and don’t feel any undue pressure.

All rebels participating in actions should have agreedcomes to the Rebel Agreement beforehand.location.

Extra arrangements

Do you need any extra training? Check participants have had NVDA training.

You might need to rehearse using equipment or arrange rehearsals for performances.

Will you have rebels traveling from further afield? Can you offer travel expenses or can you seek out hosts to provide accommodation for the night before/after? Check for train strikes early and continuously. Find out about Organising coaches and other transport to action here.

Use this guidance to make sure you make your action accessible and inclusive to all…Access and Inclusion Checklist. Are there any accessibility issues that you might need to plan for? Ask if rebels have any specific needs and discuss how to adjust for them. This might mean adjusting your march route, or finding accessible travel options.