Dilemma Actions for a Time of Federal Injustice

by Mandy Morgan March 27, 2025

In 2025, working within the federal system—whether as a researcher, contractor, or civil servant—has never felt more fraught. Programs supporting veterans, mental health, and suicide prevention are being gutted. Equity-focused initiatives are under political siege. The chilling rise of online “watchlists” targeting DEI professionals sends an unmistakable message: dissent will be punished, and even neutrality may no longer be tolerated.

This moment demands more than quiet perseverance. It demands strategic action—and perhaps, resistance.

But how? When walking away risks livelihoods, and staying risks our integrity, what tools do we have?

One powerful tool: the dilemma action.

What Is a Dilemma Action?

A dilemma action is a nonviolent tactic that forces power-holders into a lose-lose situation. If they ignore the action, they allow activists to succeed. If they suppress it, they expose their own cruelty or hypocrisy. Think Gandhi’s Salt March, where arresting peaceful marchers made the British Raj look brutal. Or the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, where stopping humanitarian aid exposed Israeli aggression.

Dilemma actions reveal contradictions. They expose injustice, not just through words but through spectacle and consequence. They force decision-makers to choose between two bad options—each one bringing scrutiny, backlash, or unexpected momentum for the cause.

Right now, as federal systems become more opaque and punitive, we need these tactics more than ever.

What Dilemma Actions Could Look Like Now

🔹 For Community-Based Practitioners

You’re on the frontlines—delivering services, holding space, and advocating for the vulnerable. Your power lies in proximity and public trust. Consider:

• “Broken Tools” Day: Host a coordinated day of action where clinics and CBOs publicly display broken or outdated equipment (or empty shelves), explicitly tied to funding cuts. Post signs: “This broken fax machine is how we’re supposed to deliver trauma care. Thank Congress.”
• Transparency tactics: Publish the before-and-after of funding cuts. Create photo essays, zines, or Instagram reels that show what was lost—and who’s harmed. Make the damage visible. Make silence untenable.
• Community Accountability Hearings: Organize grassroots “hearings” where clients and community members testify to the harms of recent policy changes. Invite electeds. Record it. Publish it. Make it an emotional event. If officials attend, they risk facing uncomfortable truths. If they decline, put up an empty chair. They appear indifferent or cowardly.
• Partner with unlikely allies: Frame your work using conservative values—like community resilience or local problem-solving—while pushing progressive outcomes. This co-optation flips the script and puts policymakers in a rhetorical bind.

🔹 For Academics and Researchers

You’re the knowledge base. The system relies on your data—but often tries to control how it’s framed. Your leverage is moral authority and evidence.

• Redacted Reports Release: Publicly release a heavily redacted version of a federally funded report, blacking out key findings that “couldn’t” be included due to political constraints. Add a bold note: “Redacted due to misalignment with current federal messaging.”
• Teach the dilemma: Use your classrooms, webinars, or public talks to explain how systems punish truth-tellers. Train your students not only in methods, but in resistance.
• Build dual pipelines: For every government-funded study, build a public companion piece—a plain-language blog, an infographic, a zine for impacted communities. If the feds won’t tell the truth, you still can.

🔹 For Federal Employees and Contractors

You’re inside the system. Your position gives you visibility—and risk. But that also makes you crucial.

• Silent Meeting Protests: Organize a coordinated silent protest during agency-wide Zoom calls or town halls. Turn cameras off, change usernames to phrases like “We Remember the Cuts” or “I Work in a Ghost Department.”
• Leak what matters, document everything: If a program is being dismantled, share the story (anonymously, if needed). Archive the evidence. Help others understand what’s being lost.
• Slow down unethical rollouts: Bureaucratic resistance—sometimes called “malicious compliance”—can delay harmful policies. Follow every step of procedure to the letter. Document contradictions. Force internal reviews.
• Exit with impact: If you leave, consider doing it publicly—with a resignation letter that names the harm and invites others to speak up. One letter may not topple a system, but it can open the floodgates.

What Makes a Dilemma Action Work?

Drawing from activist theory, including Sørensen and Martin’s 2025 analysis of dilemma actions, here are five ingredients that heighten impact:

1. Moral clarity: Your action must align with widely shared values—equity, care, honesty, freedom. That makes suppression look worse.
2. Surprise and creativity: Bureaucracies are slow. Be nimble. Be weird. Be unexpectedly joyful. It disorients control systems.
3. Public visibility: Without an audience, there’s no dilemma. Use media, art, storytelling. Make sure someone’s watching.
4. Constructive alternative: Show what could be. Your action isn’t just protest—it’s a model of a better system.
5. Uncomfortable choices for power-holders: The best dilemma actions force decision-makers to choose between retreat and repression—both of which give you fuel.

It’s About Who We Become.

Let’s design our actions—not just for what they accomplish, but for what they reveal. Let’s turn the moral contradictions of the moment into spotlighted choices for those in power. And let’s help each other endure the risk of choosing justice when compliance would be easier.

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