Level Up! Assemble and Organize

If you've been a privacy advocate for a while, maybe it's time to level up and grow as a leader in your community.

Becoming a leader can mean many things. Maybe for you, it's starting a local meetup, preparing educational workshops, organizing an event or protest, initiating online projects with a team, or even starting your own organization!

Here's what you can do to become a good leader in the privacy rights movement:

Becoming a leader

There are many styles and scales of leadership. It could mean starting small by initiating actions that require fewer resources, or it can scale up to directing larger campaigns and organizations.

Regardless of the scale, it's important to become a good leader to lift your community up, which will benefit the whole movement.

Becoming a positive leader in your community doesn't mean running everything, and it doesn't mean being the only one taking decisions while telling others what to do either. First and foremost, it means supporting and inspiring people to become the best privacy advocates they can be.

Supporting others

Being a good leader is primarily being a good listener. A good leader will be attuned to their community, and support community members in reaching their full potential.

A good leader maximizes the activism strength and energy of each member. This allows the community to thrive, and multiplies the positive impact of everyone's effort.

Good leaders are the key to community organizing. They do not tell other people what to do, but help others to take charge. They do not grab center stage, but nudge others into the limelight.

Source: The Citizen's Handbook

Keys to positive leadership

Good leaders are like conductors. An orchestra conductor doesn't try to play each instrument by themselves, they trust the musicians to play each part on their own.

A good conductor ensures that each part is played in harmony with each other, to form a coherent whole, by communicating clearly and transparently with the musicians. They make sure that each musician has the tools and conditions they need to perform at the best of their skills, and always thank the musicians first when the audience applauds.

Here are a few tips that can help you become a positive leader in your community:

• Learn to delegate work and split-up tasks. Do not try to do it all by yourself. Delegating and trusting others to do the work will also help prevent activism burnout.

• Trust the members of your group according to their unique skill sets, and reach out to them when their unique expertise or experience is relevant to another part of the project.

• Show appreciation both in private and in public, and give credit where credit is due. This is incredibly important to retain the dedicated members of your group, and to attract new advocates.

• Inspire and support your group members to reach their full potential, and to become the best privacy advocates they can be. Make sure their needs are met, and that they feel safe coming to you for requests.

• Build a team that is inclusive and diverse. A diverse team will help your group gain a broader perspective, and be able to do more by having access to a diversity of experiences, skills, and networks. It will also help your message reach more people.

• Lead by example adopting principles of integrity, transparency, and work-life balance. Valorize and exemplify these behaviors within your group.

• Plan and organize projects transparently. Make sure the members of your group are aware of the direction you have in mind, and that they support it. Avoiding surprises internally will make your members feel safer, and will help with retention and satisfaction.

• Regularly ask the members of your group which tasks they prefer to do, and in which direction they want to go. Your group members should enjoy what they are doing, otherwise they will not stick around. Review this regularly, as situations can change and evolve.

• Make sure your group members have all the rest and resources they need. This is essential if you want a motivated team, with members that will invest the best of themselves in your group projects.

• Organize leisure opportunities for your group to discuss together about things other than work, and bound as a team. This will help improve communication, increase morale, and build better relationships within your group, as well as nurture a sense of belonging. Don't make this mandatory, however. Respect everyone's personal availabilities and boundaries.

• Be (temporarily) replaceable. If all the work your group does depends on your presence, all your projects will stop when you need to rest. This is a recipe for disaster, because you need to be able to take time off as much as any other members of your group. Have a backup plan ready, and communicate it with your group in advance. That way, if you fall sick, have to travel, or need time to take care of your family for a while, you will be able to take the time you need. Until you come back, you will be able to rest fully without stress, knowing your projects will keep running well despite your absence.

Bigger projects to organize

There are so many ways to be a privacy activist, and so many types of actions that can help our movement.

In fact, it's important that we have a wide variety of initiatives to make this works. The more diverse our activism, the further we can spread the word and bring positive changes.

Here are a few ideas of actions you might want to consider in your privacy work:

• Form a group to develop a website to inform and facilitate concrete action from the public to fight against a privacy issue. As an example, visit this impactful web project to fight Chat Control developed by Joachim.

• Develop a web page to inform the public on a privacy issues, and conduct research to provide a list of which businesses or institutions are participating in the invasive practice, and which ones have pledged not to. As an example, check out this amazing web page to ban facial recognition in stores created by Fight for The Future.

• Organize a campaign to fight a specific issue, and reach out to other organizations to take part in a coalition. As an example, check this website to push back against Chat Control developed by European Digital Rights (EDRi).

• Start a petition collecting citizen signatures to push against a privacy-invasive law or legislative proposal. As an example, read about the petition to repeal the invasive UK Online Safety Act, signed by over 550,000 people.

• Gather experts to publicly support an open letter opposing a privacy issue or supporting a privacy solution, and share it with the media. As an example, read this open letter opposing a Chat Control proposal, signed by over 800 scientists and researchers.

• Speak publicly to raise awareness on privacy issues and educate the public, if you are comfortable doing so. As an example, watch this moving TEDx talk by Carissa Véliz.

• Start a privacy rights video channel on your preferred privacy-preserving platform. As an example, check out Privacy Guides' PeerTube and Loops channels.

• Design educational online or printed material to provide information about a specific privacy issue or protections. As an example, visit this website about street level surveillance, or this border search pocket guide, both developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

• Write content to share your knowledge about solutions to push back against Big Tech and surveillance capitalism, and encourage others to join your journey. As an example, explore this blog about joining the Fediverse written by Elena Rossini.

• Learn about more types of actions you can use in your privacy activist work.

Tools that can help you to assemble and organize

Here are a few privacy-focused tools and services that can help you to organize your groups and actions:

CryptPad is a free open-source collaborative office suite that uses end-to-end encryption.

Use it as an alternative to Google Docs!

More info

Mastodon is a free and open-source microblogging social network.

Use it as an alternative to commercial social media such as X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, or Bluesky.

More info

Element is a free open-source client for the Matrix open standard for chat-room group communication.

Use it as a privacy-preserving alternative to Slack or Discord.

More info

PeerTube is a free open-source video platform developed by the French nonprofit Framasoft.

Use it to share videos with your community free from YouTube's control.

Homepage

More Alternatives  📗

• Maps & Navigation: Organic Maps or OsmAnd
• Calendar Sync: Tuta or Proton
• Cloud Storage: Proton Drive, Tresorit, or Peergos
• File Sharing: OnionShare, Send, or Syncthing

More tools for community organization could include LAUTI for community calendars, and Mobilizon for events and groups. For more on better alternatives to use, you can check this tip on why and how to migrate away from Big Tech for your privacy advocacy work.

More resources

Leadership

• Tips to become a good leader (The Citizen's Handbook)

• Start a movement guide: Social movement building (Activist Handbook)

• Positive leadership: 30 must-have traits and skills (Positive Psychology)

Campaigns and Actions

• New to activism, organising and campaigning? Start here! (The Commons Social Change Library)

• How do we begin taking action in the community (Community Tool Box)

• The methods of nonviolent action (Museum of Protest)

• Lobbying and advocacy: Start here (The Commons Social Change Library)

• Develop your activist strategy: Writing a strategy for your movement (Activist Handbook)

• Campaign accelerator training (Mobilisation Lab)

Go back to toolbox index

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