During the June 2020 timeframe, a national coalition of subversive organizations conducted what they referred to as “Election Simulations”. These simulations were conducted via video conferences that were recorded by a whistleblower and shared with journalist Millie Weaver. These sessions included plans for civil unrest, media manipulation, and leveraging insiders to contest election results. Their tactics included efforts to destroy the livelihood of “Trump supporters”. Trump supporters such as Mike Lindell appear to have been targeted by such tactics in the wake of the 2020 election.
These simulations appear to have been organized by Nadine Bloch who was affiliated with the leftist organization “Beautiful Trouble”. The “Election Simulation: Timeline to a Meltdown” video conference featuring Bloch as moderator included participants from all over the country representing many different organizations.
- It began as a collaborative book project: Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution (published in 2012 by OR Books, edited by Andrew Boyd and Dave Oswald Mitchell).
- The book compiled insights from over 70 activists, artists, and strategists, along with 10+ grassroots organizations (e.g., The Yes Men/Yes Lab, Ruckus Society, Code Pink, The Other 98%, Beyond the Choir, Nonviolence International, and others).
- It evolved into an open, evolving online toolbox (beautifultrouble.org), a strategy card deck/game, additional publications (like Beautiful Rising for Global South perspectives and Beautiful Solutions for liberation-focused ideas), and a global training network.
- All core content is licensed under Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0), allowing free sharing and adaptation.
- Core belief: People power, combined with creativity (humor, art, cultural resistance, guerrilla theater), can drive transformative social change and resist oppression, authoritarianism, inequality, and injustice.
- Emphasizes nonviolent direct action, strategic planning, anti-oppression principles, intersectional solidarity, and maintaining nonviolent discipline.
- Resources cover:
- Tactics (e.g., flash mobs, blockades, dilemma actions, puppetry/”puppetista” work).
- Principles (e.g., maintain nonviolent discipline, make the invisible visible, pillars of power).
- Theories (e.g., revolutionary nonviolence, abolition, anti-oppression).
- Stories of real campaigns (from Billionaires for Bush to Black Lives Matter creative actions, global protests).
- Methodologies for organizing and building resilience.
- Offers trainings (virtual/in-person, from short webinars to multi-day intensives) on strategic nonviolent action, creative campaigning, and movement-building. Over 15,000 people trained historically.
- Supports movements worldwide (e.g., Paris, Harare, Los Angeles, São Paulo) and has been used in classrooms, protests, and campaigns.
- Produced related works like multilingual card toolkits (e.g., Beautiful Action Trainer Modules for nonviolent workshops) and guides for digital activism or pandemic-era organizing.
- Maintains an active presence on social media (Instagram @beautifultroublehq, Facebook) and partners with groups focused on justice, climate, abolition, and more.
- As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (Beautiful Trouble Inc., based in New York), it relies on donations and has reported modest revenues/expenses in public filings.
- Andrew Boyd (co-founder, author, activist; also involved in Climate Clock).
- Nadine Bloch (Training Director; artist-activist focused on creative cultural resistance, nonviolent strategy, and direct action; frequent contributor to Waging Nonviolence and related publications).
- A dispersed, collaborative network of artist-activist-trainers rather than a traditional hierarchical organization.