RESISTANCE MENU

How to Use This Guide

This is a menu of resistance action options. The same action could incur different levels of risk for different people, depending on your agency, position, and environment.

Before you act, know your own level of risk and understand your rights and the potential consequences of the actions you choose.

This document is not legal advice. If you are contemplating any form of civil disobedience, you should seek legal counsel to understand what consequences may follow.

Evergreen Advice

• Know your rights and how to protect yourself. This will give you confidence as you assess your own risks in relation to what actions you choose.

  Forthcoming Risk Mitigation documents will be a good place to start.

• The administration wants you scared, paralyzed and (in Russell Vought's own words) traumatized. Weigh the potential risks of fighting back, even in small ways, with the actual risks of the action you are resisting.

• Be aware of your own personal agency and capacity to change or challenge events. Even small actions can add up. As a career Federal employee, you have more home field advantage than you realize.

• It is ok to start small to build confidence and skill.

• Find and build your resistance community and work together. There is strength and power in numbers.

• Consider your red lines and what you will do if and when they are crossed.

• Do not obey in advance of anticipated directions, or over-comply. As federal workers, we are in the habit of trying to anticipate what our leadership is going to want and doing it the way they will want it. Stop doing that. Make them make you.

• Show initiative, and seek forgiveness rather than ask permission.

• We are all in this together.

ACTIONS

Get to know your coworkers and neighbors, and grow your network of like-minded individuals. While individuals can and should take action, building local community will allow you to better identify opportunities, share information, and support each other. We are stronger together.

• Go for walks or get coffee/lunch with coworkers.

• Plan regular happy hours and other social events.

• Bring friends and colleagues into the fold. Talk to coworkers about what is going on to assess level of dissatisfaction, risk aversion, and identify others willing to hold the line. Build trust.

• Ensure you have outside contact information of friends and allies so you can talk freely outside of the office, and stay in touch outside of the office. Create informal networks of information sharing within your workplace and beyond to share and understand what is happening. In the event of patently unlawful administration activity, these networks will be crucial to keep factual lines of reporting active and allow those willing to plan and take further steps.

• Start or join a group chat on Signal with your colleagues for sharing information.

• Join resistance groups and organizations fighting back, such as Federal Workers Alliance for Democracy (FWAD), Federal Unionist Network (FUN), and your own agency resistance group (ARG).

• If your agency does not have an ARG, start one (if you are able).

• Unionize! Join or organize a union (if you are able).

• Former colleagues who recently left the government can be valuable allies through both their networks and ability to speak out.

• Cultivate contacts in the press, Congress, NGOs, and social media.

Build Community

• Continue to provide services (e.g., climate data, gender-affirming care, park maintenance).

• Hide threatened programs within bigger programs.

• Rename threatened programs to something more palatable for this administration.

• Find allies in key places to help you continue doing the work, such as like-minded administrative staff.

• When orders keep changing back and forth, pick the one you want to follow.

• If going through the chain of command would keep vital work from being done, avoid it.

• Run parallel efforts that reduce, minimize, or mitigate the harm of a new program/initiative.

Keep Doing Your Job When You Are Told to Stop

• Build community courage and resistance through small actions. Examples include:

• Coordinate with coworkers and wear a certain color on a certain day (CDC wears green on Wednesdays, and Thursdays are red shirt days for unions).

• List your pronouns in your email signature, Teams status, on your lanyard, on a button you wear.

• Wear the lanyards of your agency's former employee resource groups.

• When you have the power to do the right thing or the wrong thing – do the right thing, and make sure others know you are doing it.

• During programmatic meetings, agency- or department-wide meeting, or other forums, ask difficult and challenging questions. Do not move on until your questions have been answered. Be willing to interrupt the meetings with demands, walk out, and/or hold signs.

• If you see something, say something. Object when you see colleagues or leaders complying with harmful, unethical or illegal orders in advance. Even if it is not your decision to make, you can speak up and say it is wrong, or document concerns of objections in writing (see the below on documenting information).

• Organize "stand-ins" or gatherings during lunch or breaks where you and coworkers briefly gather.

Document and Preserve Information

Be Brave in Public

Creating and preserving records can serve a multitude of purposes, from protecting yourself against punishment or retaliation to ensuring accountability and facilitating policy challenges.

• Learn about your agencies' records retention schedule, and ensure as much relevant information is preserved as a permanent record as possible.

• While this does not necessarily prevent records from being deleted, accredited Federal record systems also capture the "fact of" deletions.

• Prioritize the retention of records related to harmful, illegal or unethical actions or orders.

• Get everything in writing to verify and document verbal commands. If a written confirmation cannot be obtained, email your supervisor/superior with your understanding of the verbal commands and language like "please respond if this is not your understanding.” Send follow-ups if and state you are waiting for responses.

• Consider taking real-time contemporaneous notes, date them, and keep personal copies, particularly if management refuses to put orders in writing. If possible share them with trusted confidants who can serve as witnesses.

• Solicit and capture in writing doubts about the legitimacy of questionable orders from coworkers and (ideally) managers. Ask and record if (and who within) the general counsel's office approved the order as lawful.

• Back up data internally and keep it accessible.

• Externally archive public datasets on third party systems not subject to tampering by the administration. The OPEN Government Data Act of 2018 makes government data open by default and many agencies' SOPs explicitly authorize (or at least do not prohibit) openness through external copies. Harvard Dataverse (and other options) are available for archive of data.

Making the American public aware of what is going on is critical to the success of this movement! Being brave in public is as simple as being brave in front of other people which can be with one or two coworkers or a larger audience.

• Courage is contagious. People are scared and do not know what to do. Seeing you do the right thing will embolden other people to do the right thing.

• Attend rallies and protests.

• Attend press conferences and Congressional town halls, and to ask challenging and difficult questions. Do not move on until they have answered the question. Hold signs and shout demands.

• Conduct vigils for what has been lost through cuts. The NIH weekly vigils are an excellent example.

• Write open letters, create petitions, or author/sign agency-wide statements or declarations.

• Send anonymous emails calling out leadership.

Speak the Truth to the American People

Know Your Rights Regarding Protected Disclosures

• Fighting back against authoritarianism requires massive public support. The public, by and large, still does not understand what’s happening and how it will hurt them. They lack context. They do not know what you know. Tell them. You have credibility among your friends, family, colleagues, and fellow professionals – use it.

• Talk to friends and family.

• Talk to members of the public you work with as part of your job. Let them know how administration actions are making it harder for you to do your job, and jeopardizing their access to services.

• Use social media to publicize what is going on.

• For personal, attributable social media accounts, if you keep your statements factual, do not discuss any non-public data. If you only post on your own time and equipment and make it clear that you are speaking in your personal capacity, this will generally be allowable/low-risk.

• If your agency does not have an alt-gov account on social media, start one. Ideally register in a standalone, non-attributable way using a VPN.

• Start a podcast (e.g., Resistance Rangers On The Air).

• Put information on Github, a website, or a blog (e.g., Science and Freedom Alliance, Alt-FEMA Newsletter).

As a Federal employee or contractor, your ability to whistleblow or engage Congressional oversight is legally established, defensible, and (if handled professionally) can afford a host of legal and professional protections.

• Engage with legal experts or whistleblowing facilitation groups (such as Whistleblower Aid) ahead of time.

• You have likely seen reports in the media that administration loyalists have been installed in various Offices of the Inspector General. Be willing to call their bluff and put them on the defensive if they refuse to investigate.

• Retaliation against whistleblowing is illegal, and subsequent personnel or administrative actions pursued against you can be viewed through the lens of retaliation.

Demonstrate Bravery within Your Agency

Malicious Compliance and Active Non-Compliance

Every day the administration's activities are delayed is another day we move closer to its end. Practicing malicious compliance and active non-compliance carries some of the most risk, though this risk can be mitigated by ensuring that you:

• Be subtle. Acting too directly deprives the American people of another guardrail (yourself).

• Practice deniability. Be prepared to address, at a minimum, accountability concerns with your job performance.

• Do not engage in waste, fraud, abuse, or law-breaking.

• Do not disrupt the lawful services Americans rely on.

Please be aware that members of the administration are well aware of tactics such as those published in the OSS Simple Sabotage Manual and may be actively working to identify individuals attempting more overt, undeniable non-compliance.

Below are a number of things you can do to help run out the clock:

• Use your leave. You have earned leave, do not devote more time than you have to your job than necessary. Do not gift the administration your use-or-lose time by the end of the year. Take mental health days, decompress, and help pace yourself.

• Do not refer to taking time off as "striking," even in jest, as this can be used to manufacture cause. Likewise, coordinated "sick outs" brought to administration attention can be used as cause. If necessary, be prepared to share a doctor's note.

• Focus your time and energy on tasks that are in the public's best interests, while de-prioritizing administration priorities. Develop selective hearing, forgetfulness, or blame your workload.

• Insist on proper procedures, additional approvals, and instructions in writing. If management refuses to provide written orders, it is likely legally questionable at a minimum. Familiarize yourself with agency internal policy and regulations, and insist they be followed to the letter (regardless of how efficient they may be).

• Constantly ask questions. If confronted, state you are trying to ensure you understand explicitly to ensure best results, understand legal or policy implications, or protect the agency.

• Answer Requests for Information (RFIs) with questions about how the information will be used, clarifications, or raise the question of workflow approvals. Do not over comply or provide additional data, or volunteer the existence of additional information.

• Do not correct or flag errors or loopholes that could be used to challenge objectionable policies.

• Practice malicious compliance. Do not point out when a request or initiative will be self defeating or run into problems.

• Know what legal actions have taken place (e.g., Just Security's Litigation Tracker) so that you understand the state of current legality of any legally questionable orders you may receive.

Overt Resistance

Acts of overt resistance carry some of the most risk (particularly career/professional risk) and should be only engaged in after serious risk acceptance considerations. For Feds retiring, leaving Federal service, or who are otherwise committed to leaving the Federal workforce, overt acts of resistance can help underline to your fellow coworkers still in the fight that they are not alone.

• Speak to the press, journalists, stakeholders, other national partner, federal, or state agencies, NGOs, social media alt-gov accounts, politicians and representatives.

• Please note that protected categories of information (particularly classified information) are best served as protected disclosures via whistleblowing (see above); unauthorized disclosures of such information carry considerable legal and ethical risk, and will almost certainly be aggressively investigated and prosecuted.

• If not willing or unable to provide new information to the press or other entities, being available to confirm information provided by others is also valuable to confirm reporting and enable disclosures.

• Flag the "fact of" incompatible or damning documentation to Oversight, the press, activists and Freedom of Information Act clearinghouses (examples include but are not limited to Muckrock, and National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC). Provide document metadata to ensure FOIA requests are hard/impossible to deny (such as document title/subject line, author/sender, time/date, URL or unique document ID, and recipient in the case of emails).

• Display, distribute or leave pro-democracy, "honor your oath," or anti-administration material around Federal workspaces where they can be found. Be cognizant of risks surrounding the Hatch Act with such materials.

• Openly display anti-authoritarian, discouraged or banned art, flags (such as Pride flags).

• If you raise the flag at your office location, raise it upside down or half-mast.

• If you are aspiring Federal employee, either fake perceived loyalty tests or agree with the most innocuous, agreeable administration initiative you feel comfortable with.

• If you have a previous reasonable accommodation for telework, resist return-to-office orders to the greatest extent possible. Document all correspondence and communications on the matter, begin the EEO complaint process, and ideally consult with legal counsel. While the EEO process plays out, use any situational telework that your agency makes available to you and take your sick leave. Consider filing for FMLA as well, as this will provide you with 12 weeks of job protection across any type of leave you wish to take (including sick leave, annual leave, and LWOP). If you are a manager or responsible for an employee with a telework Reasonable Accommodation, practice benign neglect in terms of enforcing Return-to-Office.