Activism

• 1. Introduction

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  Activism names something humans have done for as long as they have lived in groups: organized efforts to promote or resist change toward what they see as a common good. In the 1st century BC, a former gladiator named Spartacus led a revolt in the Roman Empire in which 6,000 slaves were eventually crucified along the road from Capua to Rome. That uprising, recorded as the Third Servile War, is one of the earliest documented examples of collective protest in history. Nearly two thousand years later, in 1930, thousands of Indians followed Mahatma Gandhi on the Salt March, defying colonial taxes in a campaign that ended with 60,000 people imprisoned and, ultimately, national independence.

  Between those two moments lies every form of organized human resistance imaginable. What counts as activism? When does it cross into something else? And how have the tools available to activists shaped what they can actually achieve? Those are the questions this documentary will explore.

• 2. The Word and Its History

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  The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the English word "activist" to 1915 in its political sense, with "activism" following by 1920. For decades the word carried no inherently political meaning. As late as 1969 it was defined simply as "the policy or practice of doing things with decision and energy." Social action, meanwhile, was described in that same era as "organized action taken by a group to improve social conditions," also without any normative political charge.

  What changed that definition was a surge of new social movements in the United States during the 1960s. After that decade, activism came to be understood as a rational and legitimate democratic form of protest or appeal. The term shifted from a description of energetic conduct to a label for a specific kind of civic engagement. That shift is more significant than it might appear. Calling an act "activism" rather than "revolt" or "disturbance" changes how governments, courts, and the public respond to it.

• 3. A Repertoire of Tactics

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  Charles Tilly developed the concept of a "repertoire of contention" to describe the full range of tactics available to activists at any given time and place. The repertoire is not invented fresh by each new movement. It consists of methods proven effective by past activists: boycotts, petitions, marches, sit-ins, hunger strikes, and letter-writing campaigns. Any new activist or social movement can draw on this shared inheritance.

  New tactics can enter the repertoire as well. Douglas Schuler proposed the idea of an "activist road trip" as one entirely novel example. Innovations often arise in response to police suppression or opposition from counter-movements. Once a new tactic proves effective, it spreads to others through a social process called diffusion and may become a permanent addition to the collective toolkit.

  One consistent pattern stands out across the research: nonviolent tactics generally draw more public sympathy than violent ones, and are more than twice as effective at achieving stated goals. That gap between public sympathy and operational effectiveness matters for movements choosing how to act.

• 4. The Digital Turn

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  The Arab Spring protests beginning in late 2010 brought Internet activism into a global lens. People across Middle Eastern and North African countries used social networking to share information about protests, including videos recorded on smartphones, placing their situation before an international audience in near real time. It was one of the first occasions in which citizen-activists used social networking to bypass state-controlled media and communicate directly with the world.

  The tactics developed during those events spread outward. The 15-M Movement in Spain in 2011, Occupy Gezi in Turkey in 2013, and others adopted similar approaches. Research shows that left-wing and right-wing online activists use digital and legacy media differently. Left-wing activists are more likely to engage in hashtag activism and offline protest. Right-wing activists are more likely to manipulate legacy media, migrate to alternative platforms, work strategically with partisan media, and use what researchers describe as strategic disinformation and conspiracy theories.

  A separate but related development is the rise of franchise activism: decentralized networks of activists that are self-organized and leaderless. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one named example of a digital rights organization working to protect people's rights in relation to new technologies. These decentralized structures raise questions about accountability and coordination that older movement forms did not face.

• 5. Economic and Consumer Power

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  Free produce movement activists of the late 1700s protested slavery by boycotting goods produced with slave labor. That same logic of economic pressure runs through contemporary consumer activism: vegetarianism, veganism, and freeganism all operate as boycotts of particular product categories. Simple living, described as a minimalist lifestyle intended to reduce materialism and conspicuous consumption, is another form. Tax resistance sits at the far edge of this spectrum as a form of direct action and civil disobedience.

  Shareholder activism adds a different lever. When shareholders use an equity stake in a corporation to pressure management, their goals range from financial objectives like restructuring cost to non-financial ones such as divestment from particular countries or the adoption of environmentally friendly policies.

  At the largest scale, the study of 400 richest Americans found substantial evidence of both liberal and right-wing activism that went well beyond ordinary political donations. That same research found that old money is, on the whole, more uniformly conservative than new money. A separate study examined how the activism of the wealthy has often increased economic inequality, though it is sometimes now directed toward reducing it.

• 6. Art, Craft, and Science

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  Fashion activism was coined by Celine Semaan as an umbrella term for political and social movements within the fashion industry. It employs a participatory approach to political activity and gives consumers tools to support change specifically in that sector.

  Craft activism, also called craftivism, is a visual form of activism that sends short, clear messages through creative work. Those who practice it are called craftivists. Art activism more broadly, sometimes called artivism, uses visual art for social or political commentary. Research has found that art activism can activate utopian thinking, which is imagining an ideal society different from the present one, and that this kind of thinking increases collective action intentions.

  Science activism stands somewhat apart from the others. It may seek to better communicate the benefits of science, protect scientific funding, or respond to what practitioners see as politicization of specific fields. The March for Science, held around the world in both 2017 and 2018, was a prominent recent example. Researchers working in this space argue that effective science activism must account for individual sense of self, aversion to proposed solutions, and social perceptions, rather than relying on information delivery alone.

• 7. The Activism Industry

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  Helena Alviar Garcia combined activism with her work as a legal scholar, offering one example of activism carried out through professional channels rather than through street protest. Judges, too, may employ what is called judicial activism to advance their own conception of the social good, though whether a specific decision qualifies as activist is itself a contested political question.

  Some organizations engage in activism so intensively that the activity functions as an industry. Most such organizations are non-profits or non-governmental organizations. They typically do not manufacture goods. Instead they mobilize personnel to recruit funds and gain media coverage. Lobbying, the direct influencing of government decisions, is one common tactic; in the United States, federal law regulates it specifically.

  Governments can shape the activism industry indirectly by granting or withholding tax relief for donations. Many governments encourage public support of non-profits through tax exemptions for charitable contributions. The same governments may attempt to restrict the political activity of tax-exempt organizations, creating a legal boundary that activists and their lawyers regularly navigate. Where that boundary sits is never fully settled, which means the legal environment for organized activism remains a live contest.