The Human Playbook
What people before you have done to push back against the authoritarian playbook, and how that can guide your next steps.
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Dear friends
This week, I’ve been covering the CIVICUS downgrade of US civic space. You can read about it in more detail here:
In my follow-up, I stepped back to place that downgrade in the wider CIVICUS picture, and to highlight the small, hard-won gains elsewhere that show civic space can still move in both directions.
One reason the downgrade feels so shocking is that, for most Americans, the clearest examples of democracy being dismantled belong to other places or earlier generations. The military regimes in parts of Latin America, the one–party states of the Cold War, the long years of apartheid, the coups and crackdowns in parts of Africa and Asia – these are things many of us have read about or watched documentaries on, not changes we have had to navigate day by day in the place where we live.
But that does not mean there is no map to guide us through this.
We all know that what is happening in the United States is not random. Trump is drawing on a familiar authoritarian playbook for weakening democracy and tightening control over civic life, one we have already seen in Russia under Putin, Hungary under Orbán, India under Modi, El Salvador under Bukele and, in milder form, in the UK’s recent protest laws. I outlined it in my May pieces, and CIVICUS’ downgrade is an external way of marking how far along that script the US has now travelled.
The other side of that story is less visible, but it matters just as much. In every country where this kind of playbook has been used, people have found practical ways of pushing back against it, protecting one another and holding on to fragments of civic space until they could open them out again.
That is the human playbook we need to focus on now.
It won’t undo everything that is being built around us, and it rarely moves as quickly as we would like. What it does offer is a set of practices that have helped people elsewhere to stay involved, keep one another safe and, over time, win back pieces of civic space in conditions at least as harsh as those the US is beginning to face.
The map we have
When governments try to reframe protest as extremism, we do not simply accept that label. We start documenting what is happening in a calm, deliberate way. We ask lawyers and rights groups to help us understand what the law does and does not say — and where the authorities are stretching it. We share what we know with neighbours, colleagues and family members who are not yet convinced, so that the government line is no longer the only version of events in circulation. Little by little, that kind of steady work builds a second account that cannot easily be brushed aside. It does not erase the language of “domestic terrorism”, but it stops that language from swallowing ordinary dissent entirely.
When repressive laws are expanded, we respond in much the same way. Campaigners and community groups take cases to court, or help others to do it, and we keep pressing for amendments to the wording. We work out how to keep organising within the new rules and, when we have to, in the small gaps around them. In some places that are still hostile to human rights work, including Chile and the Philippines, that kind of persistence has pushed and tested the law until parts of the same framework that once restricted defenders now offer defenders some protection.
As enforcement becomes more intense, we learn to move through protest differently. We start paying attention to which streets are easiest to close off and quietly stop using them, or we choose to leave before a march reaches those points. We talk to one another about how kettling starts so we can spot the signs earlier, and we plan clearer meeting points and exit routes so that it is easier for everyone to get away safely if the atmosphere shifts.
This is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote my protest guides. I wanted that groundwork to be in place before you needed it — routes thought about in advance, basics packed as habit, simple safety plans already sitting in the back of your mind. My aim was that, by the time enforcement tightened in the way CIVICUS is now describing, most of the basics would already be in place for you, rather than being something you had to work out under pressure.
When organisers are targeted, our movements do not stop — they adjust. We spread responsibility more widely, make sure more people know how to do the key tasks, and avoid resting everything on one or two visible figures. Friends, lawyers and groups abroad can help keep those under the most pressure supported and in view. Experience from other countries shows that movements can keep going — and sometimes become more rooted and less fragile — even when some of the organisers are pushed out of the day-to-day work for a time.
As tighter rules settle in and start to feel like the new normal, cultural work carries more of the load. Writers, artists, musicians and ordinary citizens keep finding ways to tell the stories that would otherwise be pushed out of sight. A poem, a mural, a song, a small community event or an independent newsletter can hold on to people and events that official narratives try to ignore. These things do not change the law on their own, but they keep memory alive and give us language for what we are living through, which is one of the ways civic space stays open in people’s minds when it is narrowing on paper.
Alongside this, local bodies can make different choices from national ones. In Baguio, for example, a city council has adopted a human rights defenders’ protection ordinance in a national climate that is still sharply hostile. Schools, faith groups, professional associations and local councils decide, in small and often quiet ways, to leave a little more room for disagreement than the government line would like. Those decisions are easy to miss, but taken together they help to keep space for dissent alive.
As fear grows and the risks rise, many of us will pull back from the streets altogether. That is understandable given the circumstances. Hope here does not come from pretending that everyone will keep marching, regardless. It comes from noticing that movements have always survived on a mix of roles, not just on those who take to the streets with a banner. Movements survive when we choose our roles and our risks with care. Some of us march. Some organise. Some provide legal support. Some share information. Some focus on care, repair and recovery.
I’ve touched on this previously, here:
Every role matters, and none has to be dramatic in order to be effective. What counts is that we stay in the story in some way, rather than stepping out of it completely because we feel overwhelmed or helpless.
What I’ll keep bringing you
None of this cancels out the seriousness of what is being built in the US now. The pace of legal and institutional change is fast, and the infrastructure of control will not stop at the US border, so I am not going to tell you that everything will be fine.
What I can do, from where I am, is keep offering three kinds of support while we move through this.
Companionship, in the sense that you do not have to make sense of this alone. I will stay with this work alongside you, even when my own energy is low, and keep treating your fear and fatigue as understandable responses rather than personal failings.
Clarity, in the sense of mapping where present moves are likely to lead. Over the past year, wherever events have had time to unfold, they have moved in the direction I have described here. I will keep reading the data, watching the laws and tracing the pattern so that you have as clear a picture as possible of the conditions you are living in.
Care, in the sense of practical tools that protect your safety and your capacity.
I wrote the protest and phone-security guides so that you would not be caught out as civic space contracted. The guide I am currently working on goes a layer deeper: it is about managing cognitive load and overwhelm — how we handle our own stress response, attention and thinking patterns so that chronic stress, overload and burnout do not quietly take us out of the picture.
It grows out of decades of living with a chronic condition where physical, cognitive and emotional effort all carry a cost and have to be paced with care. Living like this has forced me to build a framework to manage the information I take in, and how I give my system space to reset. Those are the same skills we need if we want to stay politically engaged in a digital age, under advancing authoritarianism, without being pulled into constant reaction — exactly the state the regime wants us to be in.
The guide is taking time because I am trying to fully surface those steps, and turn that lived framework into a clear, practical plan for you to use, rather than a handful of small patches that will only make a marginal difference. It is slow work, but I am staying with it, and I will share it here as soon as it is ready.
As Trump continues to build his vision for America, you may feel very alone at times. The deliberate design of this moment is, in many ways, to isolate you and to make that isolation feel permanent. Yet there are people in large cities, small towns and out-of-the-way places across the world who recognise what you are facing and are, in our own ways, standing beside you. Some are in well-known movements; many are working in corners most of you will never hear about, but we are here all the same.
Civic space in the United States has narrowed quickly and sharply, but it has not vanished. You still have choices, tools and allies. The work now is to use that space carefully, to pace yourself, and to stay ready for the moments when it opens again.
In solidarity, as ever
— Lori
© Lori Corbet Mann, 2025
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Looking forward to solid advice. Our own playbook
Thank you, Lori. This is a timely, rejuvenating reminder about our tactical options as we continue this challenging journey. ❤️