social movements
Time to pick a side | Jason Mogus – Netchange
Civic institutions in Trump’s America face difficult questions about whether they are still equipped to achieve their social missions without major adjustments to their thinking, strategy, and work. A growing number of activists today think civic institutions will be...
This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twenty-First Century
There is a craft to uprising – and this craft can change the world. From protests around climate change and immigrant rights, to Occupy, the Arab Spring, and #BlackLivesMatter, a new generation is unleashing strategic nonviolent action to shape public debate and...
Occupying the Movement Action Plan
The Movement Action Plan described by activist Bill Moyer gives a useful lens through which to view this. In Bill’s typology, Occupy Wall Street would be called a trigger event, bringing stark injustices into everyday conversation…
Black Lives Matter and America’s long history of resisting civil rights protesters
Black Lives Matter activists have received plenty of criticism from political candidates and their supporters and surrogates. The majority of Americans haven’t embraced the activists’ message or strategies, either; fewer than a third of Americans said Black...
A Radical Alliance of Black and Green Could Save the World
But first the two movements will have to rediscover their shared roots in a fundamental critique of an economy and a society that value things more than lives. As in the environmental world, many in the black community are seeing limits to traditional advocacy…...
Merdeka and the Morning Star: Civil Resistance in West Papua
Jason Macleod is a member of the Change Agency team: a dedicated activist educator, mentor and strategist. Having dropped out of university in 1991, Jason hitched to northern Queensland then made his way to Papua New Guinea. Hiking and paddling the Sepik, he made his...
A theory of nonviolent action: How civil disobedience works
In A Theory of Nonviolent Action, Stellan Vinthagen draws on these examples as well as a rich collection of other historical social events that represent nonviolence movements that combined resistance and constructive change. With this groundbreaking book, Vinthagen...
Learning activism: The intellectual life of contemporary social movements
What do activists know? Learning Activism is designed to encourage a deeper engagement with the intellectual life of activists who organize for social, political, and ecological justice. Combining experiential knowledge from his own activism and a variety of social...
People Power Manual: Campaign Strategy Guide
The Campaign Strategy Guide was the first instalment of the People Power Manual, a resource created for organisers, activist educators and facilitators. Campaign strategy needn’t be mystifying, lonely or stressful. Social movements become more powerful as more people...
The New Now: Working Together for Social Change
The recent victories related to the rights of LGBT people have been astounding. The success on LGBT issues, especially marriage equality, is often attributed to a coordinated, unwavering, laser-sharp focus on changing policy at both the state and federal levels. So it...
What’s wrong with the radical critique of the People’s Climate March?
Last Sunday’s march was an important step toward building a popular movement for climate justice, which, in turn, is a necessary condition for more radical actions… Having the most radical-sounding solutions in the world is all for naught if those solutions are...
“Transactions, Transformations, Translations: The Metrics of Movement Building” with Manuel Pastor
Social movements change narratives as well as policies, hearts as well as minds. But ultimately, one needs to demonstrate impact, particularly in a philanthropic world that is increasingly evidence driven. In this talk, Pastor presents the key elements of movement...
The end of activism and the renaissance of organizing
I am not an activist. I don’t believe in activism. I think activism, as it is generally practiced in the United States, is more often than not a cop out and an excuse by some to avoid doing the heavy lifting of organizing. What is the difference, you might ask,...
The AIDEX 91 protest: A case study of obstructive direct action
Ian McIntyre’s 2011 Masters thesis and oral history on the 1991 AIDEX protest. This thesis will provide a history of the AIDEX ‘91 protest. In doing so it will seek to understand why the issue of arms fairs arose at this time as well as how and why a particular...
Sending the protest message
Brian Martin and J0rgen Johansen ask: what makes a protest action effective? Heads of government are coming to town. Let’s organise a protest! We’ll have a massive rally and march. Those who want to can blockade the venue. We’ll make our concerns...
Schweik Action Wollongong
SAW is a small voluntary group in Wollongong, Australia, fostering awareness of nonviolent responses to aggression and repression. Nonviolent action includes leafletting, rallies, strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, fasts and many other methods of social action. Nonviolent...
Readings on activism and campaigning
A great reading list crowdsourced by the members of the e-Campaigning Forum and research into UK community activism and organising. The list focuses on campaigning and advocacy, values and frames, communication, online activism, community organising, networks, social...
Movement Action Plan wiki
The Movement Action Plan is a strategic model for waging nonviolent social movements developed by Bill Moyer, a US social change activist. The MAP, initially developed by Moyer in the late 1970s, uses case studies of successful social movements to illustrate eight...