ACTIVISM

ac·​tiv·​ism ˈak-ti-ˌvi-zəm 

: a doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue

political activism

environmental activism

There are different types of activism:

the citizen, reformer, change agent, and rebel

CITIZEN

Effective

  • Promotes positive national values, principles, symbols, eg democracy, freedom, justice, nonviolence

  • Normal citizen

  • Grounded in center of society

  • Promotes active citizen-based society where citizens act with disinterest to assure the common good

  • The active citizen is the source of legitimate political power

  • Acts on “confirmatory basis” concept

  • Examples: King and Mandela

Ineffective

  • Naïve citizen: Believes the ‘official policies’ and does not realize that the power holders and institutions serve special elite interests at the expense of the majority and the common good

  • Super-patriot: Gives automatic obedience to power holders and the country

REFORMER

Effective

  • Parliamentary: Uses official mainstream system and institutions, eg courts, legislature, city hall, corporations to get the movement’s goals, values, alternatives adopted into official laws, policies and conventional wisdom

  • Uses a variety of means: lobbying, lawsuits, referenda, rallies, candidates etc

  • Professional Opposition Organizations (POOs) are the key movement agencies

  • Watchdogs successes to assure enforcement, expand success, and protect against backlash.

  • POOs nurture and support grassroots

Ineffective

  • Dominator/patriarchal model of organizational structure and leadership

  • Organizational maintenance over movement needs

  • Dominator style undermines movement democracy and disempowers grassroots

  • “Realistic Politics”: Promotes minor reforms rather than social changes

  • Co-optation: POO staff identify more with official powerholders than with movement’s grassroots

CHANGE AGENT

Effective

  • Organizes People Power and the Engaged Citizenry, creating participatory democracy for the common good

  • Educates and involves majority of citizens and whole society on the issue

  • Involves pre-existing mass-based grassroots organizations, networks, coalitions, and activists on the issue

  • Promote strategies and tactics for waging long-term social movement.

  • Creates and supports grassroots activism and organizations for the long term

  • Puts issue on society’s political agenda

  • Counters new powerholder strategies

  • Promote alternatives

  • Promotes paradigm shift

Ineffective

  • Too utopian: Promote visions of perfectionistic alternatives in isolation from practical political and social action

  • Promote only minor reform

  • Movement leadership and organizations based on patriarchy and control rather than participatory democracy

  • Tunnel vision: advocates single issue

  • Ignores personal issues and needs of activists

  • Unconnected to social and political social change and paradigm shift

REBEL

Effective

  • Protest: Says NO! to violations of positive, widely held values

  • Nonviolent direct action and attitude; demonstrations, rallies, and marches including civil disobedience

  • Target: Powerholders and their institutions eg government, corporations

  • Puts issue and policies in public spotlight and on society’s agenda

  • Actions have strategy and tactics

  • Empowered, exciting, courageous, risky, center of public attention

  • Holds relative, not absolute, truth

Ineffective

  • Authoritarian anti-authoritarian

  • Anti-American, anti-authority, anti-organization structures and rules

  • Self-identifies as militant radical, a lonely voice on society’s fringe

  • Any means necessary: disruptive tactics and violence to property and people

  • Tactics without realistic strategy

  • Isolated from grassroots mass-base

  • Victim behavior: Angry, dogmatic, aggressive, powerless

  • Ideological totalism: Holds absolute truth and moral, political superiority

  • Strident, arrogant, egocentric; self needs before movement needs

  • Irony of negative rebel: Negative rebel similar to agent provocateur

Author: Bill Moyer