Choosing the format, the place and the time

A vigil and a rally are not two styles of the same thing. Each format does a different job, carries different risk, and needs a different number of people to work at all.

Nobody has to approve your choice. Pick it from the purpose you settled in what is this action for, and the rest of the planning gets much easier.

What each format actually does

A vigil is for grief, commemoration and presence. It is the only format on this list that works with twenty people: twenty with candles reads as dignified, twenty with a megaphone reads as a failure. It is also the hardest to cut into a clip that embarrasses you, which is why it is the usual answer after an attack.

A rally is a static gathering with speakers. Good for morale among people who already agree, for giving press something to film, and for launching something. It is the format most damaged by too large a space. It is also the one most likely to draw a counter-protest, because it announces a place and a time and then stays there.

A march is for being seen by people who did not choose to see you. It needs the most stewarding, and in many countries it is the only format requiring notice to police. Its real risk is not the route. It is the walk home afterwards, in ones and twos, past people who watched it go by.

A stall or leafleting is for conversation. Two or three volunteers, weekly rather than annually, and for persuasion it beats everything else here. The trade is that you are stationary and identifiable in your own town for three hours, which is a different exposure question from being one face in a crowd.

A delegation or handover is a small group delivering something to a named person. Six people with a letter and a photographer can achieve more than a hundred people shouting, where the target is an institution that responds to scrutiny. Cheap, low risk, repeatable.

A meeting or teach-in turns sympathisers into participants better than anything outdoors, and nobody walks past it. Indoors means the building’s rules apply, which is the last section on this page.

Open the calendar before the diary

This rules out more dates than anything else you will consider, and getting it wrong is read as a statement about whose event this was meant to be.

• Friday evening and Saturday daytime are out for anybody observant. Shabbat starts at sunset and ends at nightfall, so in northern Europe the Friday cut-off moves by more than five hours between December and June. A four o’clock Friday event in midwinter has already ended for part of your community before it starts.
• The festivals carry the same restrictions as Shabbat: no travel, no phones, no money, no photography, no writing. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, the first and last days of Sukkot and of Pesach, Shemini Atzeret, Simchat Torah, Shavuot. Outside Israel most of those run two days rather than one.
• Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av are fasts of about twenty-five hours. Nobody is standing outdoors for two hours on either. Yom Kippur is also the day the largest number of Jews are inside a synagogue, which is why it recurs in the record of attacks.
• The intermediate days of Sukkot and Pesach are usable, and they are days when many people are off work and have children with them. Design accordingly.
• Check whether the date falls in a period of communal mourning, when live music and celebration are avoided by many. A concert is the wrong answer in those weeks and a vigil is not.

Then the ordinary questions. Working people cannot come at eleven on a Tuesday. Students are gone between terms. Families need daylight and a finish time.

And borrow attention where you can. An action timed to a vote, a meeting, a verdict or an anniversary is far easier to explain than one held on a random Saturday.

Choose a size you can fill

Density reads as strength. Emptiness reads as a community that has given up, and it does so in photographs long after the day.

Be honest about the number. Take the count of people who have said they will definitely come and expect between half and two thirds. Where somebody promises numbers for a group they do not personally organise, treat it as zero until you have spoken to that group.

Then pick the space that your realistic number fills, and fill it.

Walk the site, and ask the uncomfortable half

Go yourself, at the same time of day and preferably the same day of the week. Then look for what a map cannot tell you.

The ordinary questions first. Where people arrive and wait. Where sound goes. Where the exits are, and whether there is more than one. Where the toilets are. Whether the ground takes a wheelchair or a pushchair. And where press would stand to get your crowd rather than the gaps in it.

Then the four that belong to this subject.

1. Where would a counter-protest position itself, and how close can it get?
2. Can this space be enclosed? Find the pinch points where a crowd cannot move, and anywhere people could be held with no way out.
3. What is the route from here to the nearest station, how long does it take, and what does it pass?
4. Is this at or beside a Jewish building? If so you are inside somebody else’s security arrangement, and that person needs a phone call before you commit.

Fix the no-camera position on this walk, not on the day. It wants a wall or a banner behind it and no clear sightline from where a crowd will gather.

Indoors: the building’s rules, not yours

If you are using a synagogue, a school or a community centre, six things are decided by them.

• The room and the name are two separate decisions. An administrator can lend you a room. Whether the building’s name appears on your publicity usually needs the board or council, and takes longer.
• The address may not be publishable. Many buildings release it on request or to registered attendees only. Ask before you design the poster.
• Food is governed by the building’s kashrut rules, not by the label on the packet. Ask what may be brought in before you order anything, and ask again about Pesach, when ordinary certification is not enough.
• Their security arrangement applies, including who guards the door and who pays for it.
• Charitable status limits what many buildings may host. A communal solidarity event and a party-political meeting are different things to them. Ask the trustees what their rules allow rather than assuming either answer.
• Nothing involving money, microphones, photography or writing happens on Shabbat or a festival. That is not negotiable and asking will not help.

Two more things they decide arrive as paperwork rather than as a rule, and both take longer than a phone call. Whether their insurance covers you as a hirer, or whether you need a policy of your own. And what their risk assessment form asks you for. Both are in what the venue asks for, written for England and Wales.

Before you book the space

Fill in the blanks163 words

Write down four things and send them to whoever else is organising, tonight: format, place, start time, finish time.

If I have a date in mind, then I will check it against the Jewish calendar and the candle-lighting time before I mention it to anybody else.

If I am considering a space, then I will walk it at the same hour on the same weekday and answer the four uncomfortable questions on paper.

If the venue is a Jewish building, then I will ring the administrator and the person responsible for its security before anything is announced.

If I am about to book anything, then I will ask the administrator in one email whose insurance covers the event, and get that answer in writing before I pay a deposit.

If the realistic turnout is under thirty, then I will pick a vigil rather than a rally, because thirty people at a rally photographs as a failure and thirty at a vigil does not.