Running the day, from the six roles to a hostile encounter

Your one job today is that everybody who came goes home safely and would come again. Not the turnout, not the coverage, not whether anybody was impressed. Hold that and most decisions make themselves.

Nobody has to authorise you to end an event early. That call is yours and it costs less than every alternative.

Read the filming section before you brief anybody. It is the likeliest thing to happen and the thing willing volunteers get most wrong, in the direction of more confrontation rather than less.

The six roles

You do not need a large team. You need somebody holding each of these jobs, and everybody knowing who that is.

Lead. Makes decisions, including the decision to change or stop. Does not speak, does not lead chants, does not give interviews. Their whole job is to be free to think and available to be found, which they cannot do on a megaphone.

Stewards. Look after your own participants. They welcome people, show them where to stand, keep exits clear, find the lead if something is wrong, and stay calm loudly. Roughly one for every twenty to thirty people, fewer if the event is static and small.

Front and back. At a moving event, one steward setting the pace at the front and one at the back making sure nobody is left behind. The back is the more important and the one people forget.

Welfare. Water, a chair, a quiet corner, a first aid kit, and somebody whose job is to notice the person who has gone very quiet. At any event of a hundred somebody will feel unwell, usually heat, dehydration or a panic response.

Media contact. One named person who talks to press, with a phone number on your publicity, so a journalist does not interview whoever is nearest.

Note taker. One person recording what happened and when: times, decisions, anything said to you by officials, anything that went wrong. Boring, and the thing you will be most grateful for in any dispute afterwards.

At a small event one person can hold welfare and note taking, and the lead can also be a steward. The pairs that must stay separate are lead and speaker, and lead and media.

What stewards are not

They are not security and they are not police. They have no special authority, and pretending otherwise gets people hurt.

A steward does not physically remove anybody, does not confront a counter-protester, and does not stand between two groups of people. If somebody hostile arrives, the steward’s job is to move your own people away and find the lead. That is all. It is not cowardice, it is the correct answer, and it is what distinguishes a steward from a participant who has decided to get involved.

Neither of those two sentences is addressed to the hostile person. Both are said to your own people, with your back to whoever has turned up.

“Come with me a minute, we’re moving over towards the wall.”

“Stay together here. I’m going to get Yusuf.”

Say this explicitly in the briefing, because willing volunteers routinely misunderstand the role in the direction of more confrontation rather than less.

Before people arrive, and the briefing

Get there early and walk the space again. Exits still where they were, nothing newly fenced, the ground usable. Check the no-camera position still works and that every steward can point at it, and tell whoever runs the building’s security that you are here.

Then brief all the roles together, out loud, fifteen minutes before the start. Spoken, not emailed. What the event is for and when it finishes. Who the lead is and where they will be. The exits and the meeting point. That nobody except the media contact speaks to press. What to do if somebody becomes unwell, and what stewards do when a hostile person arrives, which is disengage and fetch the lead. And the camera rule in the next section, in full. Then ask for questions. Somebody always has one, and it is always something you had not thought of.

The lead’s own part lands better said than read off a list.

“I’m Yusuf, I’m the lead. I’ll be by the steps the whole time. If anything worries you, come and find me rather than sorting it out yourself.”

Vests. High visibility ones are cheap and do a surprising amount of work. They tell a nervous first timer who to ask, a journalist who to approach and police who is organising, and they change how a crowd behaves by making it obvious that somebody is paying attention. Leave your organisation’s name off them where visibility is a concern for the people wearing them. The word STEWARD is enough.

That first timer will find a vest and say nothing, so get in first, and keep it to what you can promise.

“First time? Stand near me. We finish at two, and the way out is behind you.”

When somebody starts filming faces

Six steps. Nothing here is addressed to the person with the camera.

1. Do not touch the camera, the phone or the person. Touching it turns you from the person being filmed into the person who did something, and in many places into the offence. There is no version of this that ends well.

2. Say nothing to them. Not one word. Anything you say is the clip. Silence is not weakness here, it is the only response that cannot be edited.

3. Turn your back on the camera and face your own people. Then move them.

   “Stand behind the banner if you’d rather not be in shot. That’s what it’s there for.”

4. Walk anybody who is worried to the no-camera position, the one fixed on the site walk. Do not improvise a new one now.

5. Tell the lead. The lead decides whether anything is said from the front, and the answer is usually nothing.

6. The note taker writes it down: time, description, which direction they were filming, whether anybody was named out loud, and whether they were asked to stop and by whom.

And the honest part. In most places there is no right to stop somebody photographing in a public space, asking will not work, and requesting it on camera produces the clip. Your answer is position, not permission. What is true where you are differs and this page states no country’s law, so ask your national civil liberties organisation or the body that advises Jewish institutions on security, and write down who told you and when.

If a face has already been published with a name attached, that person opens what is findable about you and when it comes at you tonight, not next week.

Hostile encounters

Somebody will turn up wanting a confrontation. This is normal, it is manageable, and almost everything that goes wrong here goes wrong because somebody engaged.

Do not engage. Not to correct them, not to answer the question, not to explain. You will not persuade somebody who came to shout, and the outcomes available are neutral or bad. Move your own people instead, as above. Distance solves nearly everything. It leaves them shouting on their own, which is a much weaker position than shouting at somebody.

Never allow two facing lines. The moment it becomes a line of your people opposite a line of theirs it stops being an incident and becomes a standoff, and standoffs escalate without anybody deciding to. Break it by moving. Turn the group, walk on, start something from the front to give people a reason to look the other way.

Including when the hostile person is Jewish. Somebody may arrive with a placard saying not in my name, wanting to be filmed arguing with you. That clip is worth more to them than anything they could say, and it travels furthest of all. Same answer, and it is harder to follow.

A counter-protest is different from one hostile person. It has its own stewards, cameras and plan, so keep distance and use the police contact you rang beforehand. The international standard treats two assemblies as something to be kept apart rather than a reason to cancel either, worth knowing if you are asked to move.

Get people out if it is not safe. Ending twenty minutes early is a small cost. Nothing achievable in those twenty minutes is worth somebody being hurt.

If somebody is hurt, unwell or detained

Welfare handles the person. Somebody else handles everything else, so whoever is receiving help is not also managing a crowd. Note the time, what happened and who was involved while it is fresh, and do not put a version of events into the world before you know one.

If somebody is detained, do not crowd it. Note the time, the location and which officers, make sure somebody can contact whoever needs contacting, and use the legal support arrangement you set up when planning. If you did not set one up, that goes on the list for next time.

Talking to officials

Be direct and polite. Say who is in charge, what the event is, when it finishes and how many people you expect. Most of it is administrative, and you may have to explain calmly and once what a chant means or why a date matters, because the officer in front of you probably knows nothing about this subject.

Given an instruction or a condition, ask what it is precisely, note who gave it and at what time, and comply while you check. Arguing on the spot achieves nothing and there is usually a route to challenge afterwards, which your note is what makes possible. If you are told that something plainly antisemitic is not a police matter, take the officer’s name, number and the time, and do nothing further there.

Ending it, and the walk to the station

Finish at the time you announced. Say from the front that it is finishing, thank people, and tell them which way to leave.

Then the part that matters most. Keep stewards in place until the site is genuinely clear, and keep the vests on. Anybody wearing a kippah, a Magen David or a badge stays identifiable the whole way home, alone at exactly the moment your stewards have gone.

So nobody leaves alone. Pair people up, walk groups to the station, and send two stewards along the route at the end. Watch who is left last, and do not let it be the four people who are most identifiable and least confident.

And feed the people who held roles. They did not get to attend, they have been working throughout, and the welfare person has been looking after everybody except themselves.

Say the six back, then two messages

Fill in the blanks154 words

Before the briefing, from memory: what are the six steps for somebody filming faces, and which roles must never be held by the same person? Step one and step two are the ones people get wrong.

Then, while it is fresh, two things and go home. Check the note taker has times written down, and send one short message to everybody who had a role. The proper version of that is the debrief.

If somebody points a camera at a participant’s face, then I will turn my back on them, move our people to the marked position, and say nothing to the camera.

If a confrontation starts to become two lines, then I will move our group rather than hold the ground, even where holding it feels like the braver thing.

If anything at all has happened, then I will ask people not to leave alone and arrange it rather than announce it.