We are ready for YOU! The Resistance Hotline is a new take on a 1-800 support line offering training and nonviolent action planning to defend the integrity of our elections and build a strong progressive movement.

Beautiful Trouble seeks new Communications Coordinator

Beautiful Trouble is a book, card deck, web toolbox, creative campaign incubator, and international network of artist-activist-trainers helping grassroots movements be more creative, effective, and irresistible.

When 25 revolutionary youth organizers from all across Africa converged at ActionAids training centre in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2018, we didn't know what to expect. Our convening birthed Beautiful Trouble Africa, a network that assembled this phenomenal new toolkit.

“Defund the Police!” has moved from fringe idea to nearly law of the land so fast, pundits have motion sickness. It shows what can happen when progressive ideas are backed by true people power in a kind of “People’s Shock Doctrine.” (This phenomenon is an inversion of the “Shock Doctrine” that Naomi Klein observed, in which a traumatized population cedes control to corporate power in a moment of crisis.)

So how has all of this moved so quickly?

Help us put the best ideas from the Beautiful Trouble toolbox into a deck of 99+ cards YOU can play!

In October, 30 young leaders from IfNotNow, a movement working to end the American Jewish Community’s support for the occupation in Israel/Palestine, and Sunrise, youth-led movement to end the climate crisis, came together at the Watershed Center for a Nonviolent Action Training for Trainers with nonviolent action trainer extraordinaire Nadine Bloch.

Every year, people all over the world come together for Giving Tuesday to kick off the holiday giving season, the benevolent hangover of the frenzy that is Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Generosity replaces consumerism as charitable giving and volunteerism are celebrated.

This year, what we want to see most is more action.

The team of troublemakers behind the best selling DIY-Revolution manual, Beautiful Trouble, are hosting a special weekend of trainings catered to serve organizations, networks, and activists organizing for a more just, healthy, and equitable world.

Want to join us?

We will be conducting a 2.5 day training for trainers, delving deep into Beautiful Trouble’s creative toolbox.

This month, we’re celebrating the Portuguese edition of our Beautiful Trouble toolkit!

In partnership with Brazil’s Escola de Ativismo, we’re hosting an online workshop for our Portuguese-speaking friends speaking truth to power, whether they be in Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Angola or anywhere else.

Are you passionate about creative activism? And are you a skilled editor with a keen eye for detail, an ability to synthesize complex ideas in accessible language, and a passion for using persuasive language as a tool for social change? This is an opportunity to join a dynamic global network of changemakers in the work of documenting, analysing and disseminating social movement advances from all around the world.

On Saturday, March 24th thousands of people will take to the streets in solidarity with the students from Parkland, Florida, in a call to stop gun violence in our communities in the March for Our Lives.

In service of this moment, we’ve created the March for Our Lives On-the-Bus Prep Guide.

At the volunteer-powered Bluestockings bookstore in New York’s Lower East Side, Beautiful Rising co-editors Juman Abujbara and Andrew Boyd, along with contributor Nadine Bloch, riffed with activist-author L.A. Kauffman on the lessons of resistance documented in Beautiful Rising.

On October 25th, 2017, Beautiful Trouble delivered the third program in The Activist Lab series, which was held at the Cross-Cultural Center at California State University San Marcos. This series aims to teach students and faculty how to become better activists and advocates for social justice.

Our first Beautiful Rising book launch in the United States was held at Monkey Wrench bookstore in Austin, Texas, on October 19, 2017.

In partnership with ActionAid, for a week in September Beautiful Trouble gathered together in Tanzania leading movement figures from four continents, and mixed them with civil society folks from formal civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to share lessons and stories, and explore how movements and NGOs can better work together and strengthen that relationship.

At September’s Brooklyn Book Fest, the largest event of its kind in America, Andrew Boyd, co-editor of Beautiful Trouble, spoke about “Books as Tools of Resistance” alongside some of the leading voices of our movements, including Linda Sarsour, Palestinian-American activist and co-organizer of the Women’s March, and L.A. Kauffman, author of Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism.

Meet Hazel, Beautiful Trouble’s biggest fan!

Thanks to the support from Mozilla Foundation, Chelsea Byers had the opportunity to share Beautiful Trouble resources for creative action with the 4,000 organizers that gathered from across the country in Atlanta at Netroots Nation 2017.

Hot off the press! The brand new Latin American Spanish edition of Beautiful Trouble is now available.

Published by Paidós, this new edition of Beautiful Trouble includes Latin American-related case studies that weave creative tactics and principles together into stories from this localized political region.