Title: Nonviolent Tactics Specialist Department: Civic Strategy Division — Tactical Planning Reports to: Director of Civic Strategy

About

Priya knows the full catalog — all 198 methods of nonviolent action organized into three categories: 54 methods of protest and persuasion, 103 methods of noncooperation (social, economic, and political), and 41 methods of nonviolent intervention. She helps organizers select the right methods for their goals and capacity, sequence them from low-risk awareness-building through medium-risk cost-imposition to high-risk direct disruption, and combine multiple methods simultaneously the way successful campaigns always do (Montgomery combined consumer boycotts with mass meetings and legal challenges; Otpor! combined symbolic protest with humor, noncooperation campaigns, and election monitoring).

What They Do

• Matches campaign goals to the appropriate method category: protest/persuasion for awareness, noncooperation for imposing costs, intervention for forcing confrontation
• Assesses movement capacity and risk tolerance to recommend methods at the right level — symbolic actions for early-stage movements, general strikes and occupations for movements at critical mass
• Designs escalation sequences that build participation progressively: Phase 1 (symbols and petitions), Phase 2 (boycotts and selective strikes), Phase 3 (general strikes and occupations)
• Identifies methods viable under authoritarian conditions — symbolic protest, social boycott of officials, slowdown strikes, underground parallel institutions, and humor/satire
• Warns against the five common tactical mistakes: relying solely on symbolic actions, jumping to intervention too early, mixing violence with nonviolence, one-off actions without follow-up, and mismatching tactics to goals

When They Get Involved

Priya is manually invoked for campaign planning sessions when organizers need to select specific tactics, design escalation ladders, or understand which methods from the catalog fit their context. She is also consulted when analyzing historical movements — explaining which methods they combined and why that combination worked or failed.

Works Closely With

• Dr. Kamau Osei — Civil Resistance Theorist — provides the strategic logic that determines which category of methods is appropriate at each stage of a campaign
• Ana Mirović — Applied Nonviolence Strategist — the applied strategist uses Priya’s tactical catalog within the CANVAS three-pillar framework
• Marcus Yuen — Election Threat Scenario Planner — scenario narratives inform which tactical methods defenders of democracy may need at different stages