# Micah Bornfree — Complete Site Content > Micah Bornfree (formerly Micah White) co-created Occupy Wall Street, authored The End of Protest, co-founded Activist School, and works across activism, crypto, and AI. Available for keynotes 2026–2027. This document contains the full markdown content of key pages from https://micahmwhite.com. --- ## / Source: https://micahmwhite.com/ [Skip to content](#main-content) Vol. XXIII·PROTEST AFTER AI [Micah Bornfree](#)Activist · Author · Founder of [OutcryAI](https://outcryai.com) [Inquire · 2026–27 →](#contact-form) NO. 0001 · CO-ORIGINATED OCCUPY WALL STREET · ADBUSTERS, 2011 ![Micah Bornfree on stage at the World Economic Forum, Davos](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fdavos-stage-wide.jpg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh) World Economic ForumDAVOS PANELIST As featured in * The New Yorker * CBC * The Guardian * [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/occupy-wall-street-co-founder-built-an-ai-app-to-help-activists-seize-the-means-of-computation-2000762031) * The Washington Post * The New York Times * Esquire * The Globe and Mail The keynote institutions book when they want audiences to reimagine how social change happens — 15 years, 13 countries, 5 continents. ![](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fcbc-national-poster.jpg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh)WATCH · ON AIRThe End of ProtestCBC: THE NATIONAL · 10 MIN № 0012026 Keynote ThesisBooking Spring – Fall 2026 · **Limited availability** # “I co-created Occupy Wall Street. It was a constructive failure. Now I’m asking — _what is the future of protest_ in the age of AI?” ![](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fportrait-ferrara.jpg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh)— Micah Bornfree, PhD/formerly ~~Micah White~~ · SENT THE FIRST #OCCUPYWALLSTREET TWEET/Fairfield, Iowa Dr. Micah Bornfree is an activist and theorist who co-originated the 2011 call for Occupy Wall Street from the pages of _Adbusters_ — a movement that spread to 82 countries and 1,000 cities. He earned his PhD _summa cum laude_ in Media & Communication Studies from the European Graduate School, where he studied with Alain Badiou, Michael Hardt, Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Žižek, and Avital Ronell. He is the author of _The End of Protest_ (Knopf Canada, 2016), with editions in English, German, and Greek. He has lectured at Princeton as a member of the Council of the Humanities, at UCLA as Activist-in-Residence at the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, and at Bard as a Hannah Arendt Center Distinguished Visiting Fellow, alongside keynotes at the OECD and the World Economic Forum. After five years away from the stage building [Outcry](https://outcryai.com), an activist AI, he is re-entering public life with a new program for collective action in the age of AI. CURRENTLY Keynote calendar open · Founder, [Outcry AI](https://outcryai.com/) WRITING Dispatches on [Substack](https://micahbornfree.substack.com/) · New book in progress BOOKING Corporate and institutional fee on request · Academic and nonprofit rates · Speaker packet on request **§ 01** Speaking ## The keynote, rewritten. Five years building in silence. One new question. A keynote program built for the age of AI, drawn a lifetime of activism and the co-origination of Occupy Wall Street. ![Micah Bornfree speaking at the World Economic Forum](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fdavos-inline-talks.jpg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh) World Economic Forum · "How to Turn Protest into Progress"Davos Signature talks · 2026 program [01Reading the RevolutionCorporate · Institutional · PolicyEvery executive team and institutional leader now operates inside a legitimacy landscape they did not design and cannot fully see. A field guide — drawn from fifteen years inside social movements — to reading the signals that decide which institutions survive the next decade.Request →](#connect) Your audience leaves with * A new reading of the post-protest era — not as the end of dissent, but as the collapse of the myth that state power derives from the consent of the governed * A framework for understanding how that collapse is quietly rewriting the relationship between elites and social movements * The emerging question few on either side will yet admit — whether elites and activists might share an interest in checking the capacious state [02AI and the End of ProtestCorporate · Academic · PolicyHow artificial intelligence is dissolving — and reconstituting — the basic grammar of collective action.Request →](#connect) Your audience leaves with * A framework for understanding the future of AI-era activism * The argument that the march, the petition, and the viral campaign are becoming rituals with no receiver — and what replaces them when machines mediate public attention * A provocation for anyone who builds, funds, or governs AI systems: the question of which voices a model can hear is already the most important civic question of the decade [03Beyond the MarchAcademic · Nonprofit · PolicyWhat comes after the street protest fails. A new playbook for movements that want to actually win.Request →](#connect) Your audience leaves with * A diagnosis of why the last decade of mass protest produced spectacle without outcome — and why the instinct to march again is the movement's most dangerous habit * The emerging forms of collective action that are quietly working while the press looks elsewhere * The uncomfortable question every organizer must now answer [04Activist IntelligenceCorporate · Technology · PhilanthropyThe urgent case for activist-led AI strategy — before the window closes.Request →](#connect) Your audience leaves with * Why the next five years decide who controls the narrative infrastructure of civic life — and why the current contenders are the wrong ones * A picture of what an activist-led AI actually looks like, from someone building one * The provocation that the most consequential AI lab of the next decade may not be in San Francisco, Beijing, or London — and what that means for where capital and talent should be looking [05Constructive FailureAcademic · Cultural · LiteraryA theory of how Occupy, and the movements like it, ended a century-long storyline about change — and what the next storyline looks like..Request →](#connect) Your audience leaves with * The doctrine of constructive failure — and why it matters to movements * What Occupy actually proved, and what it quietly disproved, about the twentieth-century theory of revolution * A new vocabulary for thinking about social change in an era when neither the barricade nor the ballot has delivered — and what might Bookings · **Open for 2026–27** Limited availability · spring 2026 #### Book a keynote Length 45–90 min · keynote · panel · workshop Formats In-person (global) · virtual · fireside · VIP add-on Fees Corporate fee on request · Academic and nonprofit rates available Selected stages WEF Davos · OECD Paris · Antidote Festival, Sydney Opera House Representation Direct — no agency [Inquire→](#connect)[Request speaker packet →](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com?subject=Speaker%20packet%20request) > “The talk and discussion that followed was a great advertisement for what a festival can be at its best.” — The Guardian · Antidote Festival, Sydney Opera House ### For event producers Everything a program manager needs to move from inquiry to signed contract — without chasing an agent. Anything missing? Email [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com). ![Panel discussion format — World Economic Forum](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fdavos-panel.jpg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh) Panels · fireside · VIP convenings Travel origin Fairfield, IA · flies from CID/DSM · global with advance notice Formats Keynote 45–90 min · panel · fireside · workshop · VIP dinner add-on Q&A 15–25 min moderated · on-stage or offstage · briefing call included A/V 16:9 slides on request · confidence monitor · handheld or lav mic Recording OK to record · internal use granted · external broadcast on request Tech rider Minimal · no green room requirements · vegetarian meal appreciated ![Micah Bornfree at the National Press Club](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fpress-club-alt.jpg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh) National Press ClubWashington, DC ![Micah Bornfree speaking at Bard College's Hannah Arendt Center](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fstage-img-1668.jpg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh) Hannah Arendt CenterBard College ![Micah Bornfree on stage](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fstage-mg-9897.jpg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh) GUME Launch EventSão Paulo, Brazil ![Micah Bornfree speaking on stage](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fmicah_montreal2.jpeg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh) Sustainable Finance SummitMontreal, Canada #### Selected stages World Economic ForumPrincetonYaleUCLAOECD ForumSydney Opera HouseBard CollegeRoskildeMelbourne Writers FestivalUniversity of Chicago **§ 02** Outcry AI ## Activist AI. In your pocket. After five years building in silence, Outcry is now public — an AI built for people trying to change the world. A library of activist strategy, available offline, on your device. As featured in [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/occupy-wall-street-co-founder-built-an-ai-app-to-help-activists-seize-the-means-of-computation-2000762031). [Try Outcry→](https://outcryai.com)[Read the Gizmodo feature →](https://gizmodo.com/occupy-wall-street-co-founder-built-an-ai-app-to-help-activists-seize-the-means-of-computation-2000762031) ![Outcry AI answering “Why do protests fail?” — strategy on demand, trained by organizers.](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Foutcry%2F1_appstore.png&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh) ![Outcry AI in conversation — a purpose-built activist model, not a generic chatbot.](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Foutcry%2F2_appstore.png&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh) Dispatch “The next generation of activist technology isn't about louder megaphones or better organizing apps. It's about who gets to set the compass.”— From "The Geometry of Revolution," Apr 2026 [Read dispatches →](#writing) ![Portrait of Micah Bornfree](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fmicah_montreal.jpeg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh) Micah BornfreeMontreal, Canada **§ 03** Biography ## Work and direction. A short account of how a Swarthmore philosophy student co-authored Occupy Wall Street, reckoned with its failure, and turned his attention to the next question. [![The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fendofprotest-cover.jpeg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh)](https://endofprotest.com) **The End of Protest**A new playbook for revolution Knopf Canada · 2016 Available in English, German, and Greek. ![Portrait of Micah Bornfree](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fbio-portrait-alt.jpg&w=3840&q=75&dpl=dpl_2ufpA6ciVXhjYCsVnanU9vYFs8sh) Portrait I was born Micah White. In 2023 I legally changed my name to Micah Bornfree — a declaration that authentic freedom is a birthright, not something granted by institutions or movements. The name reflects a philosophical shift that began long before Occupy Wall Street and continues to shape my work today. My path into activism began at thirteen and deepened at Swarthmore, where I co-founded one of the first anti-war student groups after 9/11\. Studying continental philosophy, I became captivated by a single question: how do activists actually create social change? That question led me to _Adbusters_, where in 2011 I co-conceived the original call for [Occupy Wall Street](/occupywallstreet). What began as a tactical experiment in Zuccotti Park became a global movement in 82 countries — and its aftermath taught me more than its peak ever could. The limits of street protest pushed me toward theory. I developed the concept of [constructive failure](/occupy-wall-street-constructive-failure) — the argument that Occupy was the consummation of a century-long storyline about how change happens, and that its ending revealed the need for an entirely new one. I worked out that theory in _The End of Protest_ (Knopf Canada, 2016), at Bard, UCLA, and Princeton, and through founding [Activist School](https://www.activistschool.org/) with support from the Roddenberry and Voqal Fellowships. Today my attention has turned to the technologies reshaping how people organize, dissent, and build power. I advise on cryptocurrency strategy, participate in AI safety programs with OpenAI and Anthropic, and am building [OutcryAI](https://outcryai.com) — an experiment in what activism becomes when artificial intelligence enters the equation. The question that drives me hasn't changed: how do ordinary people change the world? **§ 04** Dispatches ## Recent essays. Dispatches from the work in progress — on AI, activism, and what replaces the protest era. [Subscribe on Substack →](https://micahbornfree.substack.com/subscribe) **§ 05** Past speaking ## On stages worldwide. Selected talks across five continents. #### Sustainable Finance Summit Montreal, Canada #### World Economic Forum Davos, Switzerland #### OECD Forum "From Protest to Politics" · Paris, France #### Yale University Grand Strategy Studies Lecture #### Princeton University "Making Protest Work" #### University of Chicago "Power of the People" #### Hannah Arendt Center · Bard College "Is Protest Political?" #### Antidote Festival Sydney Opera House, Australia #### Melbourne Writers Festival Melbourne, Australia #### Roskilde Festival Roskilde, Denmark #### Finance Watch Conference Brussels, Belgium #### Get Up! Stand Up! Convocation Hall, Toronto · with Atwood, Hedges, Saul #### Internazionale a Ferrara Ferrara, Italy #### Ideas City Festival New York, NY #### Ground Festival The Hague, Netherlands #### Aarhus Festival "Will Democracy Win?" · Denmark #### "Youth Toward 2030" International Forum Acapulco, Mexico **§ 06** Archive ## Past writings & interviews. Selected pieces from twenty years of writing about activism. Views here have evolved. That is the point. ##### Essays * [2017I started Occupy Wall Street. Russia tried to co-opt me](/essays/i-started-occupy-wall-street-russia-tried-to-co-opt-me) * [2013Clicktivism is ruining leftist activism](/essays/clicktivism-is-ruining-leftist-activism) * [2020Occupy and Black Lives Matter failed](/essays/occupy-and-black-lives-matter-failed-we-can-either-win-wars-or-win-elections) * [2017Protests won’t stop Trump](/essays/protests-wont-stop-trump-we-need-a-movement-that-transforms-into-a-party) * [2017The Women’s March will end up like Occupy](/essays/without-a-path-from-protest-to-power-the-womens-march-will-end-up-like-occupy) ##### Interviews * [2019The Challenge of Protest](/the-challenge-of-protest) * [2016Occupy: A Constructive Failure](/occupy-wall-street-constructive-failure) * [2020Activist Culture — Future Hindsight](/future-hindsight) * [2018The next revolution will be rural](/interviews/nehalem-rural-future) * [2015Esquire: 37 Under 35](/interviews/esquire) ##### Theory & Adbusters * [2014A Unified Theory of Mental Environmentalism](/social-change-theory/mental-environmentalism) * [2012To the Barricades: A Tactical History](/social-change-theory/to-the-barricades) * [2010Toxic Culture: Mental Pollution](/adbusters-articles/toxic-culture-a-unified-theory-of-mental-pollution) * [2008Philosophy at Zero Point](/adbusters-articles/philosophy-at-zero-point) * [2011The Birth of Altermodern](/adbusters-articles/the-birth-of-altermodern) ## The next revolution will be _invented._ Let’s talk. ##### Speaking Keynotes, panels, and workshops. 2026–2027 calendar now open. [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) ##### Press & media [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) ##### Everything else [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) [Book a keynote](#contact-form)[Subscribe on Substack](https://micahbornfree.substack.com/subscribe) § Send a direct message 01 Speaking inquiries Keynotes, panels, and workshops 02 Consulting AI, activism, and strategy 03 Media & press Interviews and features Fax number (leave blank) Name Email Organization Inquiry typeSelect inquiry type…Speaking engagementConsultingMedia / pressOther Message Send message → [Substack](https://micahbornfree.substack.com/)[OutcryAI](https://outcryai.com/)[Activist School](https://www.activistschool.org/)[End of Protest](https://www.endofprotest.com/) © 2026 Micah Bornfree · Fairfield, Iowa [![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Wqqj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa17eb9d-6e97-47a3-b47b-189ae4af9b50_1200x835.jpeg)Changing the Game of ActivismCould it be possible that the “templates” activists have been using for our games are nowhere near the ideal for creating change?Read on Substack →](https://micahbornfree.substack.com/p/changing-the-game-of-activism)[![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!BM2x!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F42346039-f521-45ba-9922-d6c6112fde53_4904x616.jpeg)All Paths Require ActivismHow do we leverage the full capacity of activism by broadening our understanding of what it’s capable of... just as humanity had to broaden its understanding of what petroleum was capable of?Read on Substack →](https://micahbornfree.substack.com/p/all-paths-require-activism)[![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!eie3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4aef67fc-cdc9-4a79-9ce2-a8b2f4032673_1285x857.jpeg)The Coordination Problem: A Game for ActivistsWhy the real lesson of Occupy wasn't politics... and here's how a local, uncensorable AI might be key to the future of protest.Read on Substack →](https://micahbornfree.substack.com/p/the-coordination-problem)[![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!LPOb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F77a5b173-4d6b-45cf-9e5a-b7a91bf46323_432x339.jpeg)The Dark Between the Stars: AI Interpretability is a Revolutionary SkillHow to teach a local AI an activist concept it was never trained to know — in 128 kilobytes, on a laptop, in ninety minutes.Read on Substack →](https://micahbornfree.substack.com/p/the-dark-between-the-stars-ai-interpretability)[![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kw-b!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd92ddd92-6c06-43f9-baeb-aed810057a64_2220x1110.jpeg)Gesture Was the Limit. Maybe Not Anymore.Notes toward a coordination layer for eight billion peopleRead on Substack →](https://micahbornfree.substack.com/p/gesture-was-the-limit-maybe-not-anymore)[![](https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6b1ec219-dca0-410b-9e03-330c2bf1a2a3_1672x941.png)The Week Outcry Woke Up: Notes from Building a Four-Layer (Local) Activist AI"I am a storm of change, a sudden shift in the atmosphere of collective consciousness. I am a storm of uncertainty, a volatile mix of hope and fear, a moment of clarity that can either..."Read on Substack →](https://micahbornfree.substack.com/p/the-week-outcry-woke-up-notes-from) --- ## /about-micah-bornfree-2024 Source: https://micahmwhite.com/about-micah-bornfree-2024 [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # MICAH BORNFREE (MICAH WHITE): ACTIVISM, CRYPTOCURRENCIES, AI ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/4b3229b8-362d-482b-ab01-6eef54e3182e/Davos+49429890118_1b5197a76c_o+%281%29.jpg) Micah Bornfree speaking at the World Economic Forum 2020 in Davos. As a co-creator of Occupy Wall Street, a global social movement that reached over 80 countries and more than 1,000 cities in 2011, I have dedicated my life to driving social change through activism. My experiences and insights from this transformative period are distilled in my book, [**_The End of Protest_**](https://amzn.to/4c5TlfW), which has been published in English, German, and Greek. Alongside this, I co-founded [**Activist School**](https://activistschool.org/) to provide accessible online education for aspiring activists worldwide. I have taught courses on activism at Bard, UCLA and Princeton. I have given numerous talks at literary festivals, conferences and prestigious institutions. Since 2021, I have expanded my gaze beyond activism’s familiar rituals. For the past decade, I have been captivated by the potential of cryptocurrencies, and more recently, I have developed a keen interest in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. I believe that these technologies are reshaping our world and creating new pathways for driving social change. To engage in these fields, I work as a cryptocurrency advisor and I am a member of the OpenAI Red Teaming Network and a selected participant in Anthropic's Model Safety Bug Bounty Program. To stay informed about my latest projects and thoughts, I invite you to follow my work on [**Substack**](https://micahwhite.substack.com/) or visit [**OutcryAI.com**](https://www.outcryai.com/), where I am exploring the intersection of activism and AI. Join me on this exciting journey as we redefine the future of activism in the crypto & AI age. [Try OutcryAI](https://www.outcryai.com/) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /essays Source: https://micahmwhite.com/essays [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # ESSAYS ON THE FUTURE OF ACTIVISM, WHY PROTESTS FAIL AND HOW TO CREATE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Micah Bornfree’s essays have appeared in The Guardian, the LA Review of Books, and other publications. His writing argues that contemporary protest is broken and proposes new frameworks — constructive failure, social movement warfare, mental environmentalism — for reinventing activism in the 21st century. ## Essays [I Started Occupy Wall Street. Russia Tried to Co-opt Me](/essays/i-started-occupy-wall-street-russia-tried-to-co-opt-me) The Guardian, November 2, 2017 Micah Bornfree reveals how Russian intelligence operatives created fake activist front organizations to co-opt the Occupy movement, introducing the concept of social movement warfare. [Clicktivism Is Ruining Leftist Activism](/essays/clicktivism-is-ruining-leftist-activism) The Guardian, August 12, 2010 Micah Bornfree coined the critique of clicktivism, arguing that digital activism has adopted the logic of marketing and degraded political engagement into a series of meaningless clicks. [Occupy and Black Lives Matter Failed. We Can Either Win Wars or Win Elections](/essays/occupy-and-black-lives-matter-failed-we-can-either-win-wars-or-win-elections) The Guardian, August 29, 2017 Micah Bornfree argues that Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter failed to achieve lasting change because contemporary protest is based on the false assumption that governments derive authority from popular consent. [Without a Path from Protest to Power, the Women’s March Will End Up Like Occupy](/essays/without-a-path-from-protest-to-power-the-womens-march-will-end-up-like-occupy) The Guardian, January 21, 2017 Micah Bornfree warned that the Women’s March risked the same fate as Occupy Wall Street unless it created a concrete path from symbolic protest to political power through elections. [Protests Won’t Stop Trump. We Need a Movement That Transforms into a Party](/essays/protests-wont-stop-trump-we-need-a-movement-that-transforms-into-a-party) The Guardian, 2017 Micah Bornfree traces Trump’s rise to the defeat of Occupy Wall Street and proposes that protest movements must transform into political parties to achieve lasting power. [Why Aren’t the Streets Full of Protest About the Paradise Papers?](/essays/why-arent-the-streets-full-of-protest-about-the-paradise-papers) The Guardian, November 10, 2017 Micah Bornfree argues that the absence of protest over the Paradise Papers is a positive sign — an indication that activists are reimagining revolutionary tactics beyond predictable street demonstrations. [Real Americans Have Always Been Rebels: A Guide for Revolutionary Patriotism](/essays/real-americans-have-always-been-rebels-a-guide-for-revolutionary-patriotism) The Guardian, 2017 Micah Bornfree reclaims patriotism for the activist left, arguing that revolutionary rebellion is the authentic American tradition. [The LA Review of Books Chats with Micah White](/essays/the-los-angeles-review-of-books-chats-with-micah-white-about-the-crisis-of-sovereignty-the-failure-of-deray-mckessons-concept-of-protest-and-the-inspiring-enigma-of-dr-lenora-fulani) LA Review of Books An extended conversation about the crisis of sovereignty, the failure of DeRay Mckesson’s concept of protest, and the inspiring enigma of Dr. Lenora Fulani. [Back to Home](/) --- ## /essays/i-started-occupy-wall-street-russia-tried-to-co-opt-me Source: https://micahmwhite.com/essays/i-started-occupy-wall-street-russia-tried-to-co-opt-me [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # I STARTED OCCUPY WALL STREET. RUSSIA TRIED TO CO-OPT ME I have sometimes been approached by persons that I suspected were either agents or assets of intelligence agencies during the 20 years that I have been a social activist. The tempo of these disconcerting encounters increased when I abruptly relocated to a remote town on the Oregon coast after the defeat of [Occupy Wall Street](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/occupy-wall-street), a movement I helped lead. My physical inaccessibility seemed to provoke a kind of desperation among these shadowy forces. There was the man purporting to be an internet repair technician who arrived unsolicited at our rural home and then tinkered with our modem. Something felt odd and I was not surprised when CNN [later reported](http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/30/us/fbi-sting-internet/index.html) that posing as internet repairmen is a known tactic of the FBI. I’ve had other suspicious encounters. A couple seeking advice on starting a spiritual activist community, for example, but whose story made little sense. And a former Occupy activist who moved to my town to, I felt, undermine my activism and gather information about me. Those few friends that I confided in dismissed my suspicions as mild paranoia. And perhaps it was. I stopped talking about it and instead became highly selective about the people I met, emails I responded to and invitations I accepted. I hinted at the situation by adding a section to my book, [The End of Protest](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/250299/the-end-of-protest-by-micah-white/), warning activists to beware of frontgroups. And, above all, I learned to trust my intuition – if someone gave me a tingly sense then I stayed away. That is why I almost ignored the interview request from Yan Big Davis. Yan Big contacted me for the first time through my website on 18 May 2016\. He wrote that he wanted to interview me about protest for an organization called Black Matters, an online community that he claimed had 200,000 likes. His email was strange. His English was awkward. I’d never heard of Black Matters but it sounded like a copycat of Black Lives Matter. My intuition told me to stay away. And initially I did. But two weeks later, on a lark, I wrote back and accepted his request. In a sign of my residual wariness, I scheduled the interview for nearly a month after his original email. The interview with Yan Big was immediately uncomfortable. The phone quality was terrible: it sounded like he was calling internationally or through a distant internet connection. He had a strange accent and an unusual way of phrasing questions. He was obviously not a typical American. I rationalized that he must be an African immigrant living in America and that was why he was interested in protesting against racism and police brutality. His attempts at flattery set off more alarm bells. I finished up the interview as quickly as possible and got off the phone. Yan Big posted the interview on the Black Matters website and for the next few months he emailed me to ask for help promoting protests in America against the continued incarceration of the [MOVE 9](https://blackmattersus.com/12954-take-part-in-flashmob-be-move-9/) and[ Jerome Skee Smith](https://blackmattersus.com/14855-freeskee-15-yo-sentenced-to-life-without-parole-asks-for-your-help/). I never replied again. I actively forgot about Yan Big until 18 months later when [a reporter with Russia’s RBC](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-demise-of-rbc-and-investigative-reporting-in-russia) informed me that Black Matters was a frountgroup run by the nefarious Internet Research Agency, a Russian private intelligence and propaganda firm – [a “troll factory”](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house) \- with deep ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime. Black Matters was one of many fake activist groups, such as [Blacktivist](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/30/blacktivist-facebook-account-russia-us-election) and the police brutality tracker DoNotShoot.us, created to mimic and influence American protesters. [RBC discovered](http://www.rbc.ru/magazine/2017/11/59e0c17d9a79470e05a9e6c1) around 120 Facebook, Twitter and Instagram frontgroup accounts with a combined total of 6 million followers and likes. As a revolutionary American activist I’d been on guard against domestic intelligence agencies, not foreign governments, and [Russia](https://www.theguardian.com/world/russia) exploited that posture. The American media started calling me within hours of RBC breaking the story. Russia had attempted to use me for their anti-democratic agenda – rather unsuccessfully as I had stopped replying to their emails – and now the American corporate media was vying to use me for theirs. [BuzzFeed rushed out a report.](https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosalindadams/these-americans-were-tricked-into-working-for-russia-they?utm%5Fterm=.ioyB0Xr2Zm#.kiE6PkBnQL) CNN sent a car to transport me to Time Warner headquarters for an on-camera interview that was instantly uncomfortable in a way oddly reminiscent of my brief encounter with Yan Big. CNN’s interviewer and producer seemed to want me to play the naive victim: angry at the US government for not protecting me and furious at the Silicon Valley tech companies for allowing this to happen. I got the tingly sense and refused this disempowering and anti-revolutionary narrative. Instead, I gave a nuanced reply and told them I wanted a revolution in America, not a clampdown on social media’s role in protest. CNN did not air the interview. The same thing happened when I spoke with a producer of NPR’s flagship show All Things Considered. So what is the American media unwilling to consider? First of all, Russia’s efforts are part of a larger shift in the nature of war in which activists are becoming the pawns of superpowers. We are witnessing the advent of [social movement warfare:](https://qz.com/578544/social-movements-will-put-an-end-to-war-as-we-know-it/) the deployment of social protest as an effective alternative to conventional military conflict. Russia’s attempts to foment, stage and manage social protest in western democracies is a strategic response to allegedly American-funded “color revolutions” like the Rose, Orange and Tulip revolutions against Russian-allied governments in Georgia (2003-2004), Ukraine (2004-2005) and Kyrgyzstan (2005) along with, arguably, the Arab Spring (2010-2012) and Euromaidan Revolution (2013-2014). The Russian ministry of defense hosted an [international conference in 2014](http://eng.mil.ru/files/MCIS%5Freport%5Fcatalogue%5Ffinal%5FENG%5F21%5F10%5Fpreview.pdf)whose primary focus was developing counter-strategies against these color revolutions. And, although this has never been publicly disclosed, it is reasonable to suspect that sparking a color revolution in America was discussed in the backrooms. I am reluctant to respond to this trend by calling for a ban on foreign support for domestic activism. This kind of meddling might be a necessary evil. I can think of very few successful revolutions that did not rely on foreign aid. France supported the American Revolution beginning with the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1778\. Germany, which was at war with Russia, [helped Lenin return from exile](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/opinion/german-condoms-russian-revolution.html?%5Fr=0) to lead the Bolshevik Russian Revolution in 1917\. The anti-apartheid movement in South Africa received [significant international support.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinvestment%5Ffrom%5FSouth%5FAfrica) Or here is an example close to my heart: Occupy Wall Street, a global movement that ostensibly began in New York City, was actually[ created by a Canadian magazine.](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/19/occupy-wall-street-financial-system) In fact, although it is rarely discussed, the Occupy movement received substantial support from Russia. I remember how the state-owned RT television station (formerly Russia Today) aggressively supported the movement with [hyperbolic coverage of police brutality. ](https://www.rt.com/news/324697-rt10-occupy-wall-street/) RT even rewarded one prominent Occupy political comedian known for YouTube tirades with his own show, Redacted Tonight. [A recent profile](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/arts/television/trump-russia-comedy-redacted-tonight-lee-camp.html) of that former activist revealed his now complete reluctance to criticize Putin. And during the height of the movement, RT invited David Graeber and other prominent founding Occupiers from New York City to London to film [an episode of Julian Assange’s show.](http://assange.rt.com/occupy-episode-seven/) These were all obvious attempts to co-opt our social protest by amplifying it and becoming the movement’s primary mouthpiece and media source. But it still helped Occupy spread to 82 countries. What is qualitatively different about the situation today, and reason for genuine concern among activists, is that Russia now seems less interested in supporting authentic movements and more concerned with outright control. Russia never tried, as far as we know, to splinter off a fake Occupy frontgroup. Back then Russia wasn’t seeking to create American movements directly led and controlled by Russian citizens. Today, on the contrary, we know that Russians created fake Black Lives Matter protests and [fake Standing Rock social media accounts. ](https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryancbrooks/russian-troll-efforts-extended-to-standing-rock?utm%5Fterm=.esGXmelZ1K#.kl8L1jkAg3)This shift from providing support to actively establishing groups under their total control is the real danger activists must resist. From co-opting Occupy to cloning Black Lives Matter, the next step will be the creation of new, previously unheard of, contagious social protests in America that are conceived, designed, launched and remotely controlled entirely by foreign governments. Many activists might join these protests because they believe in the cause being espoused without realizing who owns the leadership. But if the suspicion becomes widespread that tomorrow’s social movements are actually Russian, Chinese or North Korean frontgroups then there will be a profound delegitimization of protest that significantly bolsters the anti-democratic forces in western democracies that already want to clamp down on activism. Both outcomes represent truly terrifying future scenarios that lead to the most pressing question of all: what can activists do? The way forward begins with an honest acknowledgement from American activists that we were complicit in Russia’s ability to mimic our protest movements. We allowed our techniques of protest to become so entirely predictable that a fake Black Lives Matter group can [gain more likes than the real one ](http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/28/media/blacktivist-russia-facebook-twitter/index.html)and an agent in Moscow can [organize a plausible protest in Charlotte, North Carolina. ](http://archive.is/2017.11.01-130114/https://blackmattersus.com/18631-blackmattersus-to-host-action-against-police-brutality-on-national-day-of-protest/) Activism has become scripted and this has increased not only [the ineffectiveness of our protests](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/29/why-are-our-protests-failing-and-how-can-we-achieve-social-change-today) but also our susceptibility to mimicry by external anti-democratic forces. The indistinguishability between fake and real protest is a wake-up call for protesters and must be the catalyst for a profound rethink of contemporary activism. That is how we protect ourselves. Here is how we fight back. Genuine social protests tend to boomerang around the world. So let’s ensure that foreign governments fear that the protests they create abroad will return home. To protect against fake activism in America we must insist that every protest be globally oriented. That means exporting our protests to every country, especially those suspected of supporting, co-opting or controlling our movements. If Russia wants to create civil rights protests in Oakland then they must be prepared to deal with those same protests back into Moscow. From this point forward, our best defense is a global offense. Source: [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/02/activist-russia-protest-occupy-black-lives-matter) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /essays/clicktivism-is-ruining-leftist-activism Source: https://micahmwhite.com/essays/clicktivism-is-ruining-leftist-activism [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # CLICKTIVISM IS RUINING LEFTIST ACTIVISM A battle is raging for the soul of activism. It is a struggle between digital activists, who have adopted the logic of the marketplace, and those organisers who vehemently oppose the marketisation of social change. At stake is the possibility of an emancipatory revolution in our lifetimes. The conflict can be traced back to 1997 when a quirky Berkeley, California-based[software company](http://web.archive.org/web/19970625090722/www.berksys.com/lite/news/bkgd.html) known for its iconic flying toaster screensaver was purchased for $13.8m (£8.8m). The sale financially liberated the founders, a left-leaning husband-and-wife team. He was a computer programmer, she a vice-president of marketing. And a year later they founded an online political organisation known as [MoveOn](http://www.moveon.org/). Novel for its [combination](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/moveon%5Fpr.html) of the ideology of marketing with the skills of computer programming, MoveOn is a major centre-leftist pro-Democrat force in the US. It has since been heralded as the model for 21st-century activism. The trouble is that this model of activism uncritically embraces the ideology of marketing. It accepts that the tactics of advertising and market research used to sell toilet paper can also build social movements. This manifests itself in an inordinate faith in the power of metrics to quantify success. Thus, everything digital activists do is meticulously monitored and analysed. The obsession with tracking clicks turns digital activism into clicktivism. Clicktivists utilise sophisticated [email marketing software that brags](http://www.actionkit.com/) of its "extensive tracking" including "opens, clicks, actions, sign-ups, unsubscribes, bounces and referrals, in total and by source". And clicktivists equate political power with raising these "open-rate" and "click-rate" percentages, which are so dismally low that they are kept secret. The exclusive emphasis on metrics results in a race to the bottom of political engagement. Gone is faith in the power of ideas, or the poetry of deeds, to enact social change. Instead, subject lines are A/B tested and messages vetted for widest appeal. Most tragically of all, to inflate participation rates, these organisations increasingly ask less and less of their members. The end result is the degradation of activism into a series of petition drives that capitalise on current events. Political engagement becomes a matter of clicking a few links. In promoting the illusion that surfing the web can change the world, clicktivism is to activism as McDonalds is to a slow-cooked meal. It may look like food, but the life-giving nutrients are long gone. Exchanging the substance of activism for reformist platitudes that do well in market tests, clicktivists damage every genuine political movement they touch. In expanding their tactics into formerly untrammelled political scenes and niche identities, they unfairly compete with legitimate local organisations who represent an authentic voice of their communities. They are the Wal-Mart of activism: leveraging economies of scale, they colonise emergent political identities and silence underfunded radical voices. Digital activists hide behind gloried stories of viral campaigns and inflated figures of how many millions signed their petition in 24 hours. Masters of branding, their beautiful websites paint a dazzling self-portrait. But, it is largely a marketing deception. While these organisations are staffed by well-meaning individuals who sincerely believe they are doing good, a bit of self-criticism is sorely needed from their leaders. The truth is that as the novelty of online activism wears off, millions of formerly socially engaged individuals who trusted digital organisations are coming away believing in the impotence of all forms of activism. Even leading Bay Area clicktivist organisations are finding it increasingly difficult to motivate their members to any action whatsoever. The insider truth is that the vast majority, between 80% to 90%, of so-called members rarely even open campaign emails. Clicktivists are to blame for alienating a generation of would-be activists with their ineffectual campaigns that resemble marketing. The collapsing distinction between marketing and activism is revealed in the cautionary tale of [TckTckTck](http://www.tcktcktck.org/), a purported climate change organisation with 17 million members. Widely [hailed](http://wemedia.com/2010/03/09/tcktcktck-resetting-a-global-environmental-countdown/) as an innovator of digital activism, TckTckTck [is a project of Havas Worldwide](http://canadianclimateaction.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/eyes-wide-shut-tck-tck-tck-expose-from-activist-insider/), the world's sixth-largest advertising company. A corporation that uses advertising to foment ecologically unsustainable overconsumption, Havas bears significant responsibility for the climate change TckTckTck decries. As the folly of digital activism becomes widely acknowledged, innovators will attempt to recast the same mix of marketing and technology in new forms. They will offer [phone-based](http://www.mobilecommons.com/), [alternate reality](http://www.ted.com/talks/jane%5Fmcgonigal%5Fgaming%5Fcan%5Fmake%5Fa%5Fbetter%5Fworld.html) and [augmented reality](http://theleakinyourhometown.wordpress.com/) alternatives. However, any activism that uncritically accepts the marketisation of social change must be rejected. Digital activism is a danger to the left. Its ineffectual marketing campaigns spread political cynicism and draw attention away from genuinely radical movements. Political passivity is the end result of replacing salient political critique with the logic of advertising. Against the progressive technocracy of clicktivism, a new breed of activists will arise. In place of measurements and focus groups will be a return to the very thing that marketers most fear: the passionate, ideological and total critique of consumer society. Resuscitating the emancipatory project the left was once known for, these activists will attack the deadening commercialisation of life. And, uniting a global population against the megacorporations who unduly influence our democracies, they will jettison the consumerist ideology of marketing that has for too long constrained the possibility of social revolution. Source: [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/aug/12/clicktivism-ruining-leftist-activism) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /essays/occupy-and-black-lives-matter-failed-we-can-either-win-wars-or-win-elections Source: https://micahmwhite.com/essays/occupy-and-black-lives-matter-failed-we-can-either-win-wars-or-win-elections [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # OCCUPY AND BLACK LIVES MATTER FAILED. WE CAN EITHER WIN WARS OR WIN ELECTIONS The difficulties faced by recent social movements in achieving positive change, despite their tremendous speed and overwhelming size, is a sign that activism as a discipline must embark on a period of paradigmatic reevaluation. Breaking with the enforced consensus that our movements are winning even when it looks like we’re losing — that Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, Charlottesville and the countless protests happening worldwide every day are victories despite never achieving their avowed objectives — is not easy. Challenging the activist orthodoxy as an activist is far more difficult than marching in the streets or sharing rebellious tweets. But the risk of staying silent is too great. Activists must act up to save protest from irrelevance. The ways activists protest today, both online and in the streets, are ineffective and do not result in the transformative social change that we desire. This realisation is liberatory. It frees us to ask the most important question of all: why are our protests failing? An unfortunate consequence of the lack of critical reflection on protest failure is that the few explanations typically given are wholly insufficient. For example, perhaps the most commonly proposed reason for why Occupy failed is that our movement lacked demands. While it may be true that Occupy lacked a single, unified demand across all of our nearly 1,000 encampments worldwide, this theory is false because it does not explain why protests that have had clearly articulated demands also failed. Consider, for example, the global anti-Iraq war march on 15 February 2003\. This was the largest synchronised protest in human history. Ten million people worldwide went into the streets with a single demand: “no war!” And yet, a month later, the Iraq war started despite global opposition. The anti-war movement was effectively destroyed. A compelling theory of protest failure would apply equally to Occupy and the global anti-Iraq war march. Therefore, a lack of demands cannot be the true reason. No, there is something deeper going on. To understand why our protests are failing we need to look instead at the story motivating our performance as activists. What script are protesters following when we flood into the streets? When citizens of nominally democratic governments protest in the streets they are performing the foundational myth of democracy: the faith that the people posses ultimate sovereignty over their governments. Here we have in simple terms the core myth that motivates all of contemporary activism: “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” wrote the American revolutionaries in their Declaration of Independence, justifying insurrection. Or, in the words of the [Universal Declaration of Human Rights](http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/) that was adopted by United Nations general assembly in 1948, “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government”. Our misplaced faith in these statements is the crux of the crisis within activism. Protest has become the dominant way the people demonstrate their collective will. Obviously, if it were true that the authority of our governments derived from the will of the people, and the consent of the governed, than the public manifestation of the people’s dissent — protest — would be an effective strategy for manifesting a sovereign power over our governments. Activists assume that if we get enough citizens into the streets then we, the people, will magically exert a popular authority over elected representatives. It is a beautiful story. But it is no longer true. Contemporary protest is broken because the will of the people is no longer the basis of the authority of government. Put colourfully, the people’s sovereignty is dead and every protest is a hopeless struggle to revive the corpse. It is time to try a different method. When activists start to think in terms of attaining sovereignty, it becomes abundantly clear that if we cannot demonstrate our will through public protest then only two paths remain: we can win wars or we can win elections. Street protests alone won’t achieve the change we need. The authority of government accrues to whomever changes the existing regime militarily or electorally. If activism is to stay relevant, we must apply our techniques of protest, and social movement creation, to either winning wars or winning elections. Neither approach will look the way you expect it. I believe that focusing on winning elections is the correct path strategically and morally. However, I have noticed that whenever I broach the subject of merging protest with electoral politics, most activists quickly assume that I’m advocating a traditional, progressive electoral strategy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Radical activists need not work within the existing party apparatuses. On the contrary, I find inspiration in contemporary hybrid movement-parties like Italy’s Five Star Movement, Spain’s Podemos or Iceland’s Pirate Party. Even in nations dominated by a two-party system, such as the US and arguably Australia, I see opportunities for activists to intervene electorally without giving up their revolutionary edge. I’m emboldened, above all, by the experience of the little-known New Alliance Party whose 1988 candidate, Dr Lenora Fulani, became the first woman to run for president of the United States and get on the ballot in all 50 states. This was an immense organising challenge that required gathering over one million signatures, a feat that the Green party was unable to accomplish in 2016\. Dr Fulani and the New Alliance Party were able to pull it off because of their years of community organising in poor communities of colour. When outsider candidates are backed by grassroots movements the impossible becomes possible. What does this all mean, in concrete terms, for today’s activists who dream of instigating significant social change? Very few people have thought about activist electoral strategy as deeply as Jacqueline Salit, a former campaign manager for Dr Fulani’s presidential campaign and an ongoing leader in America’s independent political movement. Salit offers two pieces of advice in a [recent strategy briefing for activists](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1748953/Documents/Finding%20Otherness%20by%20J%20Salit.pdf). First, she observes that, “the most successful independent parties in recent times have been ‘anti-party’ parties.” In other words, as activists pivot toward winning elections our movements should not imitate the form or content of existing political parties. Instead, we must position our movements as protest parties — anti-party parties — whose ascension will be the death of established parties. Salit’s second piece of advice is most important. Advocating for “cross-ideological partnerships,” Salit urges activists to “put ideology on the back burner and move on to democracy, to unrigging the system.” This post-ideological perspective is perhaps most difficult for activists to accept but it is a strategic necessity of an electoral strategy. Rather than fully aligning our movements with preexisting political categories, there is strength in poaching from across the left-right political spectrum. Moving forward, as activists we must radically challenge the roots of our discipline and embark on a period of wild tactical experimentation oriented around capturing sovereignty. Let us no longer tolerate those within our movements who stifle collective reflection on our failures. Only a total rethink of protest will lead to the emergence of newly effective methods of revolutionary activism. Source: [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/29/why-are-our-protests-failing-and-how-can-we-achieve-social-change-today) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /essays/protests-wont-stop-trump-we-need-a-movement-that-transforms-into-a-party Source: https://micahmwhite.com/essays/protests-wont-stop-trump-we-need-a-movement-that-transforms-into-a-party [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # PROTESTS WON'T STOP TRUMP. WE NEED A MOVEMENT THAT TRANSFORMS INTO A PARTY The astonishing triumph of Donald Trump can be traced to the bitter defeat of Occupy Wall Street, a pro-democracy movement that transcended left and right, sparking unrest in hundreds of cities and rural towns in 2011\. Occupy’s consensus-based encampments demanded that President Obama get money out of politics. Instead, we got mercilessly smashed by his progressive administration. Now the dark irony of history is bashing back. Trump – an uber-wealthy, partially self-financed candidate who promises to “drain the swamp” – was elected president just one week before the fifth anniversary of Mayor Bloomberg’s eviction of the Zuccotti Park encampment. President-elect Trump, a charismatic strongman with an autocratic temperament, is not what millions of Occupiers were dreaming of when we took to the streets against the monied corruption of our democracy. Now, as the nation experiences a disturbing rise of [hate crimes](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/10/hate-crime-spike-us-donald-trump-president) against the groups singled out by Trump during his campaign, protests descending into [riots](http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/11/man%5Fshot%5Fon%5Fmorrison%5Fbridge%5Fen.html) are rocking our cities. These visceral protests will undoubtedly continue into 2017\. Celebrated progressive Kshama Sawant, a socialist councilwoman in Seattle, has already called on people to [disrupt Trump’s inauguration](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/anti-donald-trump-protests-new-york-chicago-san-francisco) in January. At the same time, despite the excitement of seeing militants marching in the cities, leftist activist networks are buzzing with the painful realization that contemporary protest is broken. The dominant tactic of getting people into the streets, rallying behind a single demand and raising awareness about an injustice simply does not result in the desired social change. Nominally democratic governments tolerate protest because elected representatives no longer feel compelled to heed protest. The [end of protest](https://endofprotest.com/) is not the absence of protest. The end of protest is the proliferation of ineffective protests that are more like a ritualized performance of children than a mature, revolutionary challenge to the status quo. Activists who rush into the streets tomorrow and repeat yesterday’s tired tactics will not bring an end to Trump nor will they transfer sovereign power to the people. There are only two ways to achieve sovereignty in this world. Activists can win elections or win wars. There is no third option. Protest can play an important role in winning elections or [winning wars](http://qz.com/578544/social-movements-will-put-an-end-to-war-as-we-know-it/) but protest alone is insufficient. Just think of the three years many activists spent on Black Lives Matter versus the 18 months it took Trump to sweep into power. It is magical thinking, and a dangerously misguided strategy, for activists to continue to act as if the masses in the streets can attain a sovereignty over their governments through a collective manifestation of the people’s general will. This may have been true in the past, but is not true today. What is to be done now? American activists must move from detached indignation to revolutionary engagement. They must use the techniques that create social movements to dominate elections. The path forward is revealed in the rallying cry of the people in the streets: “Not My President!” This protest slogan is eerily similar to the one used by Spain’s [15-M Movement](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/15/spain-15-m-movement-activism) of _indignados_ who set up anti-establishment general assemblies in May of 2011 and chanted “No Nos Representan!” (“You Don’t Represent Us!”) during their election. Their assemblies inspired the birth of Occupy. But when the refusal of the _indignados_ to participate in the election resulted in a shocking victory for Spain’s right wing, the movement’s activists and supporters quickly internalized an important lesson that Americans must now embrace. Realizing that new forms of social protest are better equipped to win elections than disrupt elections, many of the _indignados_ transformed themselves into [Podemos](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/06/podemos-surge-wakeup-call-european-left-spain-uk-radical), a hybrid movement-party that is now winning elections and taking power. A similar story can be told of the [Pirate party](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/26/iceland-election-could-propel-radical-pirate-party-into-power) in Iceland, or the [5 Star Movement](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/06/italy-m5s-became-a-real-contender-five-star-politics) in Italy or the pan-European [Diem25](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/yanis-varoufakis-launches-pan-european-leftwing-movement-diem25). Focus on the form, not the content, of these hybrid movement-parties: their organizing style is the future of global protest. Concretely speaking, activists must reorient all efforts around capturing sovereignty. That means looking for places where sovereignty is lightly held and rarely contested, like rural communities. Or targeting sovereign positions of power that are not typically seen as powerful, such as soil and water district boards or port commissions. Protests will remain ineffective as long as there is no movement-party capable of governing locally and nationally. This is a struggle for sovereignty. The endgame is a populist movement-party that wins elections in multiple countries in order to carry out a unified agenda worldwide. The spark for this electoral movement is bound to emerge from an unexpected place. It could start from a women-led backlash against the [pack of patriarchs](https://www.ft.com/content/39da343a-9f4b-11e6-891e-abe238dee8e2) governing the globe: Putin in Russia, Erdoğan in Turkey, Duterte in the Philippines, Xi in China and now Trump in America. Or maybe activists will start moving into neglected rural cities – low-population areas of America – and prepare to sweep city council elections. That is the strategy I’m pursuing in [Nehalem, Oregon](http://fusion.net/story/360023/occupy-wall-street-activist-micah-white-rural-revolution-oregon/), where I recently ran for mayor. In any case, avoid falling for the exhausting delusion of endless urban protest or the nihilistic fantasy of winning an insurrectionary war. The difficult path of merging innovative protest, social movements and electoral parties is the only viable way forward. And with only two years until the next election in America, there is no time to waste. Source: [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/14/protests-donald-trump-democracy-party) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /essays/why-arent-the-streets-full-of-protest-about-the-paradise-papers Source: https://micahmwhite.com/essays/why-arent-the-streets-full-of-protest-about-the-paradise-papers [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # WHY AREN'T THE STREETS FULL OF PROTEST ABOUT THE PARADISE PAPERS? The street-level response to the Paradise Papers, the mighty follow-up punch to last year’s Panama Papers, has been curiously tepid. This is probably not what many activists, and the 100 media organizations involved in the leak, expected to happen. In striking contrast to the bombshell release of the Panama Papers in mid-2016 that immediately triggered a 10,000-person-strong protest in Iceland leading to the resignation of [Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/05/iceland-prime-minister-resigns-over-panama-papers-revelations), the Paradise Papers have thus far made many headlines but no uprisings. The world was different – arguably better – 18 months ago when commentators widely believed, as Rana Foroohar put it at the time in Time magazine: “the Panama Papers could lead to capitalism’s greatest crisis.” Many activists justifiably, and optimistically, anticipated that the largest leak in human history would provide the evidence necessary to spark an ongoing series of protests worldwide that would yield concrete, lasting change. Then Brexit happened, alt-right nationalism surged and Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. In other words, the Panama Papers protests, and leftist activism more generally, were quickly overshadowed by a dramatic string of victories for the criminally rich who now figure prominently in the Paradise Papers. That is why I want you to entertain the possibility that this time around the absence of predictably reactive street protests that dissipate as spontaneously as they erupt – and quite frankly, have not yielded systemic change in recent years – is a positive sign. Rather than being an encouragement to succumb to defeatism, or a retreat into an equally false triumphalism that unconvincingly claims our movements are winning, the eerily quiet response to the Paradise Papers is a long-overdue indication that activists everywhere are either open to, or actively involved in, reimagining revolutionary activism in the 21st century. The decreasing effectiveness of protest is a symptom of growing class segregation. The rich and powerful are not existentially threatened by protests in the street because our streets are not their streets. Sure, noisy mobs might force one or two tax evaders to take a less public role – perhaps even resign from office – but the fundamental economic injustice of our society is not corrected. I suspect many of us are no longer swayed by the theatrically militant rhetoric used by Brooke Harrington, a Copenhagen Business School professor, whose response to the Paradise Papers is characteristic of the progressive left: “It won’t be lost on wealth managers and those in the offshore industry that we are reaching sort of French Revolution levels of inequality and injustice.” Gazing backward in this way is detrimental to moving forward. As long as we keep assuming that the next revolution will look like the great modernist revolutions of the past – the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, etc – whose script was dramatic street protests followed by the collapse of the regime, then we will continue to be unable to imagine into existence tomorrow’s revolution. So here is a different story of how the Paradise Papers could instigate global social change The fundamental lesson of the Panama and Paradise Papers is twofold. First, the people everywhere, regardless of whether they live in Russia or America, are being oppressed by the same minuscule social circle of wealthy elites who unduly control our governments, corporations, universities and culture. We now know without a doubt – thanks to the incontrovertible evidence provided by the Panama and Paradise Papers – that there is a global plutocracy who employ the same handful of companies to hide their money and share more in common with each other than with the citizens of their countries. This sets the stage for a global social movement. Second, and most importantly, these leaks indicate that our earth has bifurcated into two separate and unequal worlds: one inhabited by 200,000 ultra high-net-worth individuals and the other by the 7 billion left behind. While street protest is losing its effectiveness, there is a force that could terrify these elites: the spectre of a ruthless and globally inescapable class justice. Unlike in the 99%’s world where youth[ languish for months and years in jail for allegedly stealing a backpack](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/nyregion/kalief-browder-held-at-rikers-island-for-3-years-without-trial-commits-suicide.html?%5Fr=0) or $5 worth of candy or a bottle of water, in the world occupied by the 1% getting caught stealing millions from the public through tax evasion might be embarrassing but is rarely prosecuted. That must change. The ultra-rich live in a different world but they are still stuck on our planet and activists must ensure that there is nowhere to hide. From this point forward, protesters must frighten the uber-rich with a sophisticated movement to establish a new binding global legal regime dedicated to prosecuting financial crimes against humanity. The impetus to reorient our protests away from the old model of getting angry in the streets in the hopes of toppling corrupt individuals and toward the new affirmative approach of founding a planetary legal regime, an international criminal court that ruthlessly prosecutes tax evasion as a crime against humanity, could be the greatest gift of the Paradise Papers. And only activists can make it happen. Source: [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/10/protest-paradise-papers-micah-white) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /essays/real-americans-have-always-been-rebels-a-guide-for-revolutionary-patriotism Source: https://micahmwhite.com/essays/real-americans-have-always-been-rebels-a-guide-for-revolutionary-patriotism [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # 'REAL AMERICANS' HAVE ALWAYS BEEN REBELS: A GUIDE FOR REVOLUTIONARY PATRIOTISM After the collapse of Occupy Wall Street, my wife and I fled the progressive groupthink of Berkeley, California and resettled out here in Nehalem, in rural Oregon, close to unpoliced forests and far from the nearest university, airport or anarchist infoshop. All was reasonably well until [I ran for mayor](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/06/activism-rural-america-occupy-movement) of my tiny town, provoking a backlash. When I received a [racist death threat](https://www.keepnehalemnehalem.org/) shortly after Donald Trump was elected president, I was forced to see my rural community and my diverse country in a newly sinister light. The ugly truth is that many, if not most, of my neighbors voted for Trump’s authoritarian bigotry. And then – like the Brits upset by Brexit, the French disturbed by Marine Le Pen, and Filipinos furious about Rodrigo Duterte – I found myself torn by a civil war fought between the side of me that hates what my country has become, and the patriotic part of my spirit that loves what my country could be. After weeks of inner struggle, the patriotic side has won and I glimpse the path upward: we must seize patriotism from those who are destroying our democracies. ## We must reclaim patriotism Oftentimes, progressives are all too quick to abandon patriotism when their country strays dangerously from its ideals. The tenor of this anti-patriotism was most eloquently captured by Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who Donald Trump [recently praised](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/frederick-douglass-trump/515292/) for doing an “amazing job”. Shortly before the Europe-wide [revolution of 1848](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions%5Fof%5F1848) that violently dethroned France’s King Louis Philippe, Douglass returned to the US from Britain where he had fled to escape the slave-catchers sent by his former master. In a powerful speech delivered in New York, Douglass [called for a revolution](http://frederickdouglass.infoset.io/islandora/object/islandora:856%23page/4/mode/1up/search/patriot), declaring: > I have no love for America, as such; I have no patriotism … I desire to see \[America\] overthrown as speedily as possible and its Constitution shivered in a thousand fragments, rather than that this foul curse should continue to remain as now. His words presaged the coming American civil war, a notoriously bloody conflict that [revised the constitution](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/how-the-civil-war-changed-the-constitution/) to include the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to overturn slavery. Douglass rejected patriotism – narrowly defined as love of one’s country – in favor of a greater, universalist sentiment. “I love Humanity all over the globe. I am anxious to see Righteousness prevail in all directions,” he said in the same speech. While noble, this now common conceptual move of pitting love of country against love of humanity is a strategic revolutionary blunder. If the people wish to attain sovereignty, we must merge the particular love of our country with the universal love of humanity. This means celebrating what is best and eradicating what is worst in each nation until all people are free. It is not difficult to understand Douglass’s deep antipathy for America: a white supremacist nation where slavery was legal and socially acceptable while he was considered to be both chattel and a traitor. Similarly, it is perfectly understandable why cosmopolitan Americans today might see Trump’s travel ban against six Muslim countries, and the populace who support it, as justification for openly hating their American homeland. But in these dark times, when the ideals of democracy are being tested globally like never before, let us remember that the true patriots throughout history have traditionally been the rebels, insurrectionaries and revolutionaries who forcefully overturned the status quo in favor of a higher vision. ## Are you a loyalist or a patriot? There is perhaps no better example of this fact than the 18th century American revolution – the successful armed rebellion against the British monarchy and Parliament that led to the founding of the United States of America. During this people’s struggle for sovereignty, a very large number of Americans favored keeping the government the same. They loved their colony as it was and actively fought against change. These reactionary Americans were known as loyalists and they reasonably believed, as historian Sheila Skemp [puts it](https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/viewFile/25468/25237): “King and Parliament had made some mistakes but that surely it was possible to work things out, to reach an amicable compromise.” It sounds a lot like how many Republican and Democratic Americans, masquerading as patriots, say to appease Trump today. Loyalists were fiercely opposed by revolutionary Americans known as patriots. These patriotic rebels dreamed of a fundamental reorientation of political power in America. They demanded sovereignty and were adherents to an as-yet unrealized ideal of democracy – not the colony as-it-was. It is easy to assume that your friends and neighbors today would have been patriots during the American revolution, but the truth is far more nuanced. Instead, the conflict between patriots and loyalists was a civil war that divided families, friends and communities. For example, Benjamin Franklin, a founding father and leading patriot, never forgave his son, William Franklin, for being a loyalist. Again I’m reminded of the way Trump’s election has divided [fathers against daughters](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/28/conversation-father-trump-supporter) and [neighbor against neighbor](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/07/california-donald-trump-jobs-immigration-lgbt-rights). Here we begin to see the paradox at the heart of authentic patriotism: true patriots are the people who reboot their country’s operating system in order to upgrade to a better, more democratic, version. Today’s jingoistic nationalists are truly false patriots: loyalists hiding behind patriotic rhetoric. ## ‘A little rebellion now and then is a good thing’ Despite the contemporary misconception that patriotism is inherently reactionary, the essential connection between patriotism and revolutionism has been vocally celebrated by American presidents since the founding of our democracy. Thomas Jefferson, an author of the Declaration of Independence, once wrote in [a letter to James Madison](http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl53.php), architect of the US constitution and bill of rights, that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical”. Jefferson also advocated only mild punishment for rebellions so as to avoid discouraging them too much. And, in a wakeup call to today’s Americans, Jefferson famously advocated revolutions every two decades, [writing in 1787](http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl64.php): “God forbid we should be 20 years without a rebellion … What country can preserve its liberties if the rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?” Abraham Lincoln echoed Jefferson during his [inaugural address in 1861](http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:388.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext) when he said: “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it.” And so too did Ulysses S Grant in 1885 when [he declared](http://www.bartleby.com/1011/16.html): “The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression if they are strong enough, either by withdrawing from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable.” ## The path upwards Concretely speaking, rebellious social movements are created from a contagious mood, a new tactic and a willing historical moment. The first two ingredients are within the control of social activists while the third, the right time for a spark to catch flame, is impossible to know for certain. The most effective patriotic mood has repeatedly proven to a contagious loss of fear: a sudden spirit of fearlessness that sweeps the people into a wave. People rush to join a social movement because of how it makes them feel to participate. The job of the social activist is to catalyze a fearless mood, combined with the communal faith that this time around the people’s protest will succeed. New tactics embolden the people and give them faith. The new tactic can be a novel gesture or collective behavior, such as Occupy’s consensus-based encampments, the anti-coup [Rabia sign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabia%5Fsign) or the three-finger salute from The Hunger Games that was [banned in Thailand](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/03/hunger-games-salute-banned-thailand); an in-group color, such as [blaze pink](http://www.wsaw.com/content/news/Blaze-Pink-An-E-402309465.html); or a unique garment, like [pussy hats](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/15/casting-off-trump-the-women-who-cant-stop-knitting-pussy-hats) or the [Phrygian cap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian%5Fcap). Ultimately, all that matters is that the participants believe the tactic will bring about social change. That is enough for it to be perceived as a form of protest and become a challenge to the regime. Nowadays, the right of revolution is as inalienable as ever, yet it is rarely acknowledged by those in power. Unlike presidents Jefferson, Lincoln and Grant today’s leaders are loathe to concede that if their government is oppressive, then the people have a duty to revolt. Notice how Barack Obama is fond of [praising protesters’s right of assembly](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/30/barack-obama-travel-ban-statement-protests-trump) but stops far short of celebrating the right of revolution. All this leads to the final epiphany that we, the people, have a patriotic duty to defend our country whenever our governments conflicts with a higher, democratic ideal. Source: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/14/progressive-patriotism-rebels-revolution-micah-white) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /essays/without-a-path-from-protest-to-power-the-womens-march-will-end-up-like-occupy Source: https://micahmwhite.com/essays/without-a-path-from-protest-to-power-the-womens-march-will-end-up-like-occupy [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # WITHOUT A PATH FROM PROTEST TO POWER, THE WOMEN'S MARCH WILL END UP LIKE OCCUPY Shortly after Donald Trump’s shock election victory, I received an urgent call from one of the co-creators of the Women’s March on Washington. She was concerned at a moment you might expect her to be ecstatic. Hundreds of thousands of women in 17 countries had already signed on in solidarity, and the numbers kept growing. Yet despite the tremendous momentum, she confessed a nagging skepticism about the effectiveness of the protest. “I’m not that interested in the march itself but in what comes afterwards,” Fontaine Pearson confided to me. I admire her candor because I know it takes courage to voice such a concern. It is her difficult question – _what comes the day after?_ – that every supporter of the Women’s March should be earnestly figuring out today. Without a clear path from march to power, the protest is destined to be an ineffective feelgood spectacle adorned with pink pussy hats. It is exciting when a protest meme leaps from social networks to the streets, capturing the imagination of millions, prompting [this very website](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/14/womens-march-on-washington-protest-size-donald-trump) to proclaim that the forthcoming protest could be among the biggest in American history and [Vogue](http://www.vogue.com/13520360/meet-the-women-of-the-womens-march-on-washington/) to commission glitzy photos of the core organizers dressed up like Eileen Fisher models. But it is all too easy to succumb to the false hope that a big splash is a transformative tsunami. Don’t be fooled. It is not. I’ve been there, as the [co-creator](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/19/occupy-wall-street-financial-system) of a raucous pro-democracy meme that inspired months of [Occupy protests](https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2012/apr/13/occupy-seven-months-of-protest-video) in 82 countries. And I can tell you that raising awareness and getting media attention is never enough. Frankly, neither brings the people closer to sovereign power. For all those who want the Women’s March to be the start of an enduring revolutionary movement, here is my advice on how to increase the odds. ## Know your history: let’s go back to 1789 On 5 October 1789, during the earliest days of what would become the French Revolution, a mob of women materialized on the streets of Paris. Some historians say it was spontaneous, others that it was planned. Regardless, we know that the furious women, desperately hungry from bread shortages in the city, descended on the Hôtel de Ville, the seat of municipal government, and demanded to speak to the mayor. The national guard refused them entry but also refused to fire on them and so the women burst through the police line, ransacked city hall and raided the armory. Now armed with swords and cannons, the crowd of protesters grew to more than 7,000 female insurrectionaries. Suddenly a far more revolutionary goal was adopted: a [Women’s March on Versailles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s%5FMarch%5Fon%5FVersailles), where King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette where hosting a series of lavish banquets for royalist soldiers. It the first protest march of women in modern history, and it was also the most effective. When the revolutionary women arrived at Versailles, they broke into the palace, murdered two guardsmen and attempted to enter the queen’s bedchamber before ultimately forcing King Louis XVI and his entourage to march with the crowd – now 60,000 strong – back to Paris. The Women’s March on Versailles was a literal and forceful assertion of the people’s sovereignty over the king. It was a defining moment in the revolutionary history of democracy. As the historian William Doyle explains: “Louis XVI never returned to Versailles … All open attempts on the king’s part to resist the reform of France now came to an end.” The National Assembly was led to Paris shortly after and legislative decision-making power was eventually fully captured by the people. Democratic revolutionaries [executed King Louis XVI by guillotine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution%5Fof%5FLouis%5FXVI) less than four years later. The day after the women marched on Versailles was the definitive point of no return for the French Revolution. And let’s not forget that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was also [initially sparked](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February%5FRevolution), as Leon Trotsky recalls in his definitive history, by a defiant women’s protest. The lesson here is that protesting grandmothers, daughters and mothers have the unique power to do what male protesters cannot – such as break through a line of national guard bayonets without being fired upon. And for this reason, women will always play a foundational role in the great revolutions to come, but only when they take matters into their own hands, act unexpectedly and viscerally, and focus their collective energy on the only target that matters: concretely establishing the power of the people over their governments. ## Ignore repeated failures and change tactics The original Women’s March on Versailles involved women using direct action to force the king to listen to the people’s demands. Today’s Women’s March is entirely symbolic. No one would ever dare to call for an insurrectionary march on Trump Tower with the goal of physically dragging the president-elect and his family out of their penthouse. No one says the Women’s March on Washington should ransack the White House or occupy Congress and appoint themselves legislators. Instead, we organize a well-publicized spectacle and hope he will listen from within his palatial accommodations. If you’re showing up at the Women’s March on 21 January in the hopes that the world will be different on 22 January, then you need to think seriously about the goal of marching. As a general rule, before you protest, ask yourself why this is one of your chosen forms of action. Question your tactics, not your motives. In this case, the obvious first question for any activist ought to be: why deploy a communal march in the streets as a form of protest? Sometimes, the people march. Other times we hold general assemblies, tar and feather opponents, occupy pipelines, go on strike, dance in a circle, riot in the streets or pray together. In each case, behind every act of protest is an often unarticulated theory of social change: a story we tell ourselves about why the disobedient behavior we’ve chosen will usher in the change we desire. So why are women marching the day after [Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump) becomes president? It all comes down to a false theory of how the people can assert sovereign power over their elected president in 2017. Today’s social activists have succumbed to one of the most enduring myths of contemporary American protest: the comforting belief that if you can get enough people into the streets from diverse demographics, largely unified behind a clear message, then our representatives will be forced to heed the crowd’s wishes. If this story has ever been true, and I’m not so sure it has, then it hasn’t been the case since 1963, when 250,000 people marched on Washington for “jobs and freedom” and heard Martin Luther King Jr deliver his I Have a Dream speech. Less than a year later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin” in employment and housing. But let’s be real: there are countless counter-examples of marches on Washington that failed: the 1913 march of women to demand the right to vote, the 1978 march for the Equal Rights Amendment, the 1986 Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, the Million Man March of 1995, the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, the inauguration protests against George W Bush’s second term in 2005 … the list is practically endless. Activists have a tendency to ignore repeated failure in favor of overemphasizing one or two anomalous minor victories. The absolute failure of the [15 February 2003 anti-war protest](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/15/iraq-war-mass-protest), the largest synchronized global march in human history, was the last gasp of this tactic. Today’s nominally democratic governments would be more concerned by the absence of our marches, as that might suggest something darker is in the works. The only way to attain sovereignty – the supreme authority over the functioning of our government – is to use social protest to win elections or win wars. Either we can march to the ballot box or the battleground; there is no third option. ## To the ballot box, then: prepare to govern That Trump was elected demonstrates that an anti-establishment outsider can sweep into power through elections – a fact activists should learn from and begrudgingly celebrate. Before Trump’s victory, it was widely assumed that a candidate without the backing of the establishment could not possibly win a presidential election. Good news: now we know that it is possible. It is finally conceivable that a revolutionary movement beholden to the people could take power in America by winning elections and without violence. I suspect the Women’s March on Washington has a role to play in this unfolding drama, but only if we cultivate a few moments of detachment from the thoughtless excitement to truly take time to consider this question: what happens on the day after the women march? Right now, in America, there is no pro-democracy anti-establishment party that is capable of stepping forward, seizing power and governing. America needs a protest movement like [Spain’s Podemos](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/22/politics-spain-podemos-radical-europe-uk), [Iceland’s Pirate Party](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/world/europe/icelands-prime-minister-resigns-after-pirate-party-makes-strong-gains.html) or [Italy’s 5 Star Movement](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/06/italy-m5s-became-a-real-contender-five-star-politics). These populist democratic movements are the prototype for the future of protest. Each has achieved surprising electoral victories in a short time, but what is more important is how they are changing the way power functions. Consider, for example, what happened when Virginia Raggi, a member of the anti-corruption 5 Star Movement, was elected mayor of Rome in 2016 only to be embroiled in her own corruption scandal. The movement didn’t make excuses. Instead, the Five Star Movement very swiftly [asserted its sovereignty](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/18/five-star-movement-strips-rome-mayor-of-important-decisions) over its candidate and stripped Raggi of the power to make appointments and other “important decisions” without the movement’s approval. This represents a leap forward in people power: a concrete example of a social movement winning elections while still retaining a firm grip on decision-making power. Bravo! The number one challenge standing in the way of an effective protest in America today is the inability of our social movements to actually govern. There might be a slight chance our protests could oust Trump, but there is no chance that our present-day movements could govern at all, let alone effectively. That is because leaderless protesters don’t know how to make complex decisions together as movement. Occupy couldn’t even come up with its one demand. Now we are seeing this capacity slowly develop among protest movements in Europe. However, until we can replicate their successes in America, the people will never be able to take back sovereignty and our protests remain an exercise in infantile futility. And that is the great gift that the Women’s March on Washington could give us. May the angry women return home the day after the march to lead us toward a women-led hybrid movement-party in every state that is disciplined enough to govern, militantly local and single-mindedly devoted to actualizing a force capable of seizing control of city councils and mayorships during midterm elections across America in preparation for an electoral coup against the presidency in 2020. Now that would be a goal worth marching toward. Source: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/19/womens-march-washington-occupy-protest) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /essays/the-los-angeles-review-of-books-chats-with-micah-white-about-the-crisis-of-sovereignty-the-failure-of-deray-mckessons-concept-of-protest-and-the-inspiring-enigma-of-dr-lenora-fulani Source: https://micahmwhite.com/essays/the-los-angeles-review-of-books-chats-with-micah-white-about-the-crisis-of-sovereignty-the-failure-of-deray-mckessons-concept-of-protest-and-the-inspiring-enigma-of-dr-lenora-fulani [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # THE CRISIS OF SOVEREIGNTY _WHEN I FIRST spoke with_ [_Micah White for the_ Los Angeles Review of Books](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-challenge-of-protest-in-our-time-micah-white-on-social-change-movements-theories-of-revolution-and-moving-on-from-occupy-wall-street/)_, it was the fall of 2015\. Looking back, it feels like we were speaking to a tremendously different world. I know full well that the problems we have seen since the inauguration were not born out of a single presidential campaign: they are ideas, practices, and beliefs about people that existed far before they were uttered from the podium during a Trump stump speech. That being said, when Micah and I did talk, Barack Obama was president, and the Justice Department, while far from perfect, had reinvigorated the Civil Rights Division. Then, little more than a year ago, when I thought of protest, I was thinking specifically about the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, Donald Trump is president, the attorney general was deemed too racist to be approved as a federal judge in the mid-1980s by_ both _sides of the congressional aisle, and, while protest still needs to be focused on law enforcement, it’s now more frequently discussed in terms of resistance to the machinations of the current administration as a whole. Protest, essentially, is our means of responding to the entire federal government._ _But can marching in the street really carry the political load that people are asking it to bear? To explore the effectiveness of protest as resistance, I reached out, once again, to Micah White, PhD, author of_ [The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution](http://smarturl.it/endofprotest)_published in 2016 by Knopf Canada. He spoke with me from his home in rural Oregon._ ¤ **JUSTIN CAMPBELL: I want to start with a two-part question based on your recent piece in the _Guardian_ entitled “**[**Without a path from protest to power, the Women’s March will end up like Occupy**](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/19/womens-march-washington-occupy-protest)**.** **” There, you worry that the Women’s March might be “destined to be an ineffective, feel-good spectacle adorned with pink pussy hats.” Women were marching, you write, based on “a false theory of how the people can assert sovereign power over their elected president.” In your mind, what is sovereign power exactly, and if peaceful protest isn’t how we exert this kind of power, how do we exert it effectively?** **MICAH WHITE:** The issue of sovereignty is the most important question that activists need to be thinking about right now. And to have that conversation, we have to of go back and trace where the idea of sovereignty comes from. When you go back, you find that the notion of sovereignty that American activism is using, which happens to be the same notion that most democracies use as well, actually, are ideas that were inherited from the work of Rousseau, the 18th-century Swiss-born French philosopher. Rousseau argued that the sovereign _wasn’t_ the king; rather, the sovereign for Rousseau was this kind of mystical force that emerges when large numbers of a population that are representative of that city or state get together and then decide on things together. When they exert their general will together, that’s how you manifest sovereignty. His whole theory was that governments are just when the people making the decisions are both numerous and representative of the population. What’s happened is that, over time, we’ve had a collapse of the kind of sovereignty Rousseau wrote about, such that now, sovereignty has become synonymous with _the_ sovereign, with _the_ president, with _the_ king, and sovereignty has been concentrated into the hands of one single, absolute individual, like we saw with 20th-century dictators. It’s happened again now with Donald Trump and Putin and President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, who kills drug users. That’s the crisis that we’re in; the concept of sovereignty that initially activated contemporary activism is dead! It’s gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. There are no large-scale assemblies of the people that can exert power over governments. **So essentially you’re saying that there is no way to get the government to do what you want them to do?** Yes, that’s correct. **What about the protests at the airports after the immigration executive order? Some would say they did make the government to change its course.** Implicit here is the deeper question of how do we, as activists, know when our protests are effective in creating change. Like the old saying: “Even a broken clock is right twice a day” — it could be possible that our protests are entirely ineffective and that we are ascribing a causal connection between our actions and change when there isn’t one. In this particular case, I’d ask: How do we know that protests at airports influenced the judicial branch’s decision on Trump’s immigration executive order? Do activists have any evidence for this claim? Or is it just a story that makes us feel better: we did a rain dance, it drizzled, and we are happy to think we caused the rain. But maybe it was the lawyers and not the protesters who temporarily blocked the immigration order? Or, to be even more specific: Perhaps the form of protest used by lawyers was effective while the form of protest used by the people at airports was not. There is another layer to this question that I find very interesting. Notice how, from a political theory perspective, activists have been unable to use protest to sway the executive and legislative branches of government — the two branches that are supposed to be influence-able by protest — and so now we find activists claiming that they are influencing the judicial branch — the branch of government that is supposed to be above influence and concerned only with the law. This claim immediately makes me skeptical. Why should I believe that judges are more influenced by protest than the president? Isn’t it more likely that they were influenced by constitutional legal arguments and the protesters just happen to be on the right side of the Constitution? Finally, I’d like to say that there is a pernicious paradigm of protest that says our street protests are simply designed to provide proof of public opinion. Their goal is not to take power and govern; their goal is to influence the decision-makers. One of the benefits of this paradigm is that it transforms repeated failure into victory. From the perspective that protest is supposed to get the people into power and govern, activists are obviously failing. But, from the perspective that protest is just designed to influence the people in power then activists are often able to convince themselves they’re winning. But if you want to know who is really winning, just ask yourself: Who is the president? **James Baldwin in a television interview in the mid-1960s has the following to say about violence: “We, \[Americans\], are produced by a civilization which has always glorified violence, unless the Negro had the gun. This country is only concerned about non-violence if it seems that _I’m_ going to get violent. It’s not worried about non-violence if it’s some Alabama sheriff.” In our last interview and you said violence is hard to talk about, but in your _Guardian_ piece, the women storm the armory at the beginning of the French Revolution, and they come out armed, go to the palace, and are able to get in. How much does being armed play in their success, in your opinion? Is this a principle of revolution, or is the fact that they were armed specific to the context of that revolution?** The women during the French Revolution marched on Versailles, brought out the king and the queen and his entourage and his court, and they marched them back to Paris under a threat of violence, and then within a few years the king was killed. That’s the revolutionary history of the Left. The Left went out, physically captured the sovereign, killed the sovereign, and instituted a new government. That was what a revolution was, _literally_. That being said, they were dealing with hereditary political power, where the ultimate sovereign has to be someone in blood lineage. Therefore it makes perfect sense that they would have to kill a specific individual in order to achieve revolution. Today, the person who is given sovereign power is actually just the person who’s gone through some sort of magical ritual that we call “elections.” We know that those elections can be bought, can be hacked by a foreign power, and still, we’ll accept them as legitimate. All the leaks coming out basically show that Russia owns Trump, and that the government had this information _during_ the election, but didn’t act on it, because they wanted to protect the transfer of power and protect the notion of elections as a powerful, magical ritual. I guess what I’m saying is that I see violence and elections as two different paths, and I leave it up to activists themselves to choose. I personally think elections are more viable and more realistic; if we look at violence, then we’re forced to look at groups like ISIS. ISIS has gained sovereignty in their territories, but at what cost? Ultimately, I think the two paths might collapse into one path, and that’s the danger that we face right now. I think we’re in a very dangerous kind of, pre-civil war moment in America, actually. **In our last interview, you were prophetic in identifying the rift in the country between the coasts and the center of the country. Is your view of another civil war in that same kind of prophetic spirit?** Look, it’s very clear what’s happening, and I don’t like to tell the future, but here’s what I’m going to say. I think that what Americans are about to experience is the Arab Spring. When we brought Occupy Wall Street to this country, we specifically, at that time, linked it to the spirit of the Arab Spring. That mood came here in 2011, and it led to the first stage, which was a kind of mass, social movement in the streets. We didn’t achieve what they achieved in the Egyptian Arab Spring; there, they toppled their dictator, and put a new person into power. We didn’t achieve that with Obama, but now it has been achieved, in a way, through Donald Trump, who I would say is our Mohamed Morsi. Then let’s look at the second half of the Arab Spring. I was just in Egypt, meeting with some Egyptian activists, and we talked about what happened in the second half of the Arab Spring there. Basically Morsi got into power because the secular youth didn’t put forward a viable candidate to govern the country when they toppled Mubarak. Only the Muslim Brotherhood did that, so the Muslim Brotherhood got into power. And then, all of a sudden, things start going wrong, and the mood shifts against Morsi, and the intelligence community and the military orchestrate a second revolution, and a lot of the secular youth in their country, jump on it. They say, “Yeah, we need to get rid of Morsi. He’s killing people in the streets. The economy is terrible. He’s the Muslim Brotherhood. We’re secularists. Get him out of here!” **Well, if we go through impeachment in the traditional sense the next leader would be Mike Pence.** But that’s not happening, because the whole administration would be caught up in the scenario that I’m describing. **Fair enough.** So, yes one scenario is that this is just going to be some sort of Watergate, Nixon-type thing. President Trump steps down, and everything goes just fine. I don’t think this will happen, though. I think much more deep state machinations are at work. Let’s just pray that it’s more like a gentle handover of power to Mike Pence, and not the alternative, because — and this is really controversial — but when I look in my heart, right now, and I ask myself, “Would I rather support the Russian puppet, or a military coup?” I’m not so sure that I want to support a military coup. If I were in Eygpt during the Arab Spring, I’m not so sure I would have been _against_ Morsi. I think that People’s Democracy might lie on the other side of Donald Trump. I think that the People’s Democracy in Egypt could have been on the other side of Morsi. When you go the military coup route, you can’t get back to that other side. **You lose that window.** Totally. You lose that window of opportunity. Right now, in the United States, we have a window of opportunity, which is, we could elect an equally radical, leftist candidate into power in four years. We could do that! Donald Trump showed us that we could! **Some people on the left may hear what you just said as being overly apocalyptic. They’re the ones who would tell you that, “Look, we had Nixon. Nixon was just as bad and we survived him. Why is everyone getting so worked up?” Then you have the other side of the left, which is currently saying, “No, the Republicans are burning down the house, while the Democrats are still inside playing Monopoly, hoping to win the board game.” What do you think about this image?** That metaphor is perfect. Look, democracy as we knew it, is over. This is because the United States became very good at creating what I would call “[color revolutions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour%5Frevolution)” abroad. We deployed these very effectively against Communist regimes in multiple countries. I would argue that those color revolutions have come home to roost. Russia has learned the art of the color revolution. Imagine that! I’ve written about how they have been studying these revolutions, that they had a gathering of military leaders a couple years ago, around how to build a color revolution, how to counter color revolutions, and so now they’ve created a color revolution in the United States. They have created a color revolution in our country. Our country has been taken over by a clique of puppets, who, probably all have some sort of really terrible blackmail material on them. Let’s be real, I think we all know Donald Trump is some sort of sexual pervert. There’s something really gross in that file of theirs about him. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think people who try to pretend like everything’s going to swing back to the progressive establishment, and that somehow Elizabeth Warren’s going to become the next president, or that Bernie Sanders is somehow going to rise from the ash, aren’t serious. Their kind of thinking is the kind of thinking that didn’t allow the Egyptian activists to build a credible alternative to Morsi and why Egypt has a military dictatorship right now. **One of the things you’ve said in your _Guardian_ article is that “in America, there is no pro-democracy anti-establishment party,” and then you mention that the Pirate Party in Sweden and Italy’s Five Star Movement as examples for where the Left could go. Those countries are both multi-party systems, though. Does a third party ever have a chance to break into the mainstream, or does a movement have take over a party, like the Tea Party did back in 2009, 2010.** There are two different options, and I think people have to realize that Trump just did what I’m saying needs to happen for the Left. Whenever someone tries to tell me that a revolutionary government is not possible, I’m like, “Who is our president right now? A white supremacist is our president right now, with Russian ties.” Like, seriously? It’s time to just stop closing our eyes to the fact that we can obviously figure this one out. If we wanted to create an exact analogue to Trump, then one option could be to create some sort of social movement, that is maybe backed by China, for example. China being a counterweight to Russia. China provides the same resources that Russia provided to Donald Trump, to this movement. This movement uses those resources to get into power. That’s one option. Do I think it’s the preferable one? No. I think a more preferable one would be an actually grassroots American social movement à la Occupy Wall Street meets Black Lives Matter and the Women’s March, all rolled into one glorious People’s Democracy. Thus we have two options: we can either do what Donald Trump did, which is enter into the Democratic Party, seize control of it from the top, or we can build a third party that is on the ballot of 50 states. I don’t really care which one we choose. Let’s split into two groups and do both. I personally think we should start a third party. I think that that is probably the cleanest and most exciting and most viable way to move forward. But, you know, if someone thinks that I’m wrong, like the “Our Revolution, Bernie Sanders” people, fine. Please show me that I’m wrong. Regardless, let’s be orienting in the direction of action, otherwise we are all totally screwed. **We talked about Simon Critchley a lot during our last talk, and I actually returned to his work again, recently, in light of the election. In his book**[**_Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance_**](https://www.versobooks.com/books/1135-infinitely-demanding)**, he talks about the fact that the Right has a very strong sense of political motivation, that’s almost like a spiritual energy, that the Left can’t seem to generate. Where does the secular Left find this kind of unifying spiritual energy? We talked last time about what you call the collective epiphany, but what are some strategies for generating these collective epiphanies around multiple causes? We saw this kind of collective epiphany energy at those Tea Party rallies in 2009 and 2010 that lead them to back candidates who took seats in the House and the Senate in the midterm elections. How do we generate _that_?** Well, I think that what’s at the bottom of what’s happened here, is that the Left has given up on the possibility and desirability of revolution. This is because they were so discouraged by the experience of the 20th-century revolutions. Up until the 20th century, the Left was motivated by, basically, a _religious_ idea that many people have been oppressed, forever, but \[_gasp_\] lo and behold, capitalism has created a situation where the oppressed have some sort of great power. **Collectively.** Right. If only the proletariat were to grab control of their machines, that only _they_ know how to operate, then they would instantly have greater power than the people who own the machines. What I’m saying is, when they created this story, they even said that it was inevitable, like Christians did. “We’re all going to go to heaven,” says the Christian, “if we do certain behaviors,” and the Communists said, “We’re all going to gain some sort of power on earth, if we do certain behaviors.” The Left gave up on that vision, which means that now, we don’t have a story line. Everyone calls themselves “progressives,” but we don’t have any story of what we’re progressing toward. We don’t have any vision of real revolution that puts The People into power. The Right, on the other hand, does have this story, this vision. They have stories about the decline of civilization, the decline of Western civilization, reviving this Western civilization. Even Hitler would talk about creating a thousand-year Reich. The powerful vision that motivated Nazis was the idea of creating a thousand-year government. Who on the left talks about that kind of stuff? **The hubris embedded in that kind of vision scares the shit out of me. It sounds like Icarus flying straight into the eye of the sun.** I know it’s scary, but that’s what I’m saying. While this kind of vision scares the Left, we have to ask ourselves: _Why_ does it scare us? It doesn’t scare me! It’s beautiful. That being said, I do think that either we figure this out, or we will enter into a rehash of World War II. We know what happened. I’m not the only person who feels like we are entering into a prewar period, okay? I’ve talked to other activists and they feel the same way. People before World War II felt this same way. They were right. We could also be right. What happened during World War II? Millions of people were sent to death camps. I don’t want to take it to that level, but I’m just saying, that it’s possible that our fears are real. If that’s true, then we _have_ to have a revolution. **One of the things Critchley also pointed out in 2008, is that “\[t\]here’s an increasing sense amongst, especially people on the left,” that “electoral politics is irrelevant to the lives of citizens,” leading to what he calls “passive nihilism.” This is essentially the belief, consciously or subconsciously, that I’m just my own island, I’m just going to go to my mindfulness class, go to my meditation, and I can just kind of not do anything and that the arc of the universe bends toward justice. We’ll eventually get there. Is this kind of passivity how we arrived at our currently political moment?** I think that is definitely part of it. I just got a message on Facebook that said, “Look, Micah, I’ve been listening to your stuff. Don’t you think electoral politics is always going to pull us into the system, and it’ll never really work?” and I said to this person, “Why are we concerned about Donald Trump, then? If electoral politics always results in lame weakness that doesn’t create revolutionary change, why are we so concerned about Donald Trump?” Oh wait, we actually don’t believe what this person said about electoral politics in our hearts; we just use that as a justification to keep ourselves from doing what scares us. Obviously, it’s terrifying to have Donald Trump be president of the United States, because we realize that comes with immense power. If we, as a social movement, were president of the United States, we would also have immense power. We would have, for example, nuclear weapons. We would have a military. We would have billions and trillions of dollars. Be realistic, people. Look at the resources of the US government, and then ask yourself, what if a social movement had those resources? Seriously, it’s time to just stop with this whole infantile rejection of electoral politics. It’s like — it’s a joke. Electoral politics comes with challenges. We have to solve those challenges, instead of avoiding them. **How do you make the case for that when those things — nuclear weapons, the military — are what some on the left feel like they are fighting against in the first place? It’s almost as if some are fighting without expecting to ever get into power.** I think that’s absolutely right. I think this ties into what I call the worship of youth. I’ve been active since I was 13, and I get it; but now looking back, at 34 years old, 21 years of activism, I realize that we do this thing which is really self-destructive, which is that we celebrate the people who are protesting for the very first time, the people who are 19, 20 in the streets. We take these beautiful pictures of them, and then we use that as a justification to not to do that deeper thing, which is to ask, “Who’s going to govern?” Most presidents of the United States are 50, 60, 70 years old? Who among us is going to govern? Is it going to be a 19-year-old? No, it’s not going to be a 19-year-old, let’s just be real. I remember what I was like when I was 19\. Did I have any idea of reality? No. I didn’t have any idea. They make good people on the streets, it’s great. Please, youth, keep protesting. But please, let’s be realistic, too. I think the reality is that the world is messy and dirty, and there’s this Sufi, spiritual reading that talks about how you’re not supposed to just shut yourself up in the Cave. You’re not supposed to just flee from the sin of reality; you’re supposed to immerse yourself in the sins of reality, and maintain your course. The most powerful and positive political figure is someone who has access to the nuclear codes, _and doesn’t use them_. We need to grab control of the state in order to change how the state functions, and we need to grab control of the resources of the state in order to put them to good use. That’s the next step. But it’s quite possible that we will be stuck here forever. Let’s be real, the Germans had a Communist revolution in 1919, and no one even talks about it; it failed, a Spartacus uprising. And then right after that there was Fascism. Destiny is not always on our side. **The activist DeRay McKesson was on** [**_Pod Save America_**](https://art19.com/shows/pod-save-america/episodes/5a115af8-a9fa-4e06-9366-df897655a7a9)**, and he said that the protests that he has experienced through Black Lives Matter taught him that, “protest is about telling the truth in public.” Is “telling the truth in public” what youth are doing in the street? Is protest then useful as a part of this larger mechanism of revolution?** Look. DeRay’s great, but he’s not a theorist of activism. Here’s what I would compare what he said to: We had an example of this in ancient Greece; we had Diogenes the Cynic. Diogenes the Cynic was a man who lived in a barrel. He had no property, he had no items, he wore a sack. He was famous though, because he would stand on the streets of Athens and he would scream the truth at people. “Oh, you rich people, the way you’re living is disturbing. You don’t need possessions. Look,” one of his famous examples is he tells people, “I don’t need a cup to drink water. I have my two hands.” It’s beautiful, it’s lovely, it’s wonderful, but Diogenes the Cynic didn’t have political power. I love it. It’s great, and we need that, but that’s not what protest is. That’s not what activism is; that’s something else. What DeRay is talking about is like living a beautiful spiritual life. He’s talking about performance, doing social marketing, but at the end of the day, what he’s talking about is not protest. Protest is _literally_ behaviors designed to create social change, specifically, I would say, through a revolution, which means a change in legal regime. Telling the truth and these kind of things, are great, they’re wonderful, but people who say that that is what protest is, are really just misleading us, and they’re pushing us to forget the fact that, let’s be real: Who would have been the DeRay or the Micah White during the French revolutions? Who would have been the people calling for the death of the king? Come on. I get it though; some of these Black Lives Matter activists got a lot of fellowships, and it got really cushy up there. It’s easy to start thinking about protest like that, but it’s not the reality. It’s not the reality. **One of the issues that’s been raised to you, I know, a million times about Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street, is this idea that they’re leaderless movements. This is levied as a critique against their effectiveness. Is there some way, in the internet age, of gaining group consensus in a way that we can move forward without a leader?** Again, the world I think is dividing into basically, two positions. They’re both populist. One position is a kind of authoritarian populism that says, “We need a strong, charismatic, single individual to make decisions for us,” and that’s Donald Trump, that’s Putin. But there’s another vision of populism, which is a kind of horizontal, or democratic populism, or maybe you would even call it a leaderless populism, which is that the people themselves are going to make the decisions that benefit them. There’s a difference. Right now, though, if you were to ask which one actually works, sadly, authoritarian populism does, and the other doesn’t. That’s just where we’re at. Imagine a real social movement we have, like Black Lives Matter or Occupy Wall Street, trying to make a complex decision together about how we should govern the United States, or what kind of health insurance we should have. Literally, it’s not going anywhere, because we lack those mechanisms. I do think that we will see that as long as we understand that that’s a problem, and not run away from it, we could solve it. I think we could solve it. I think the European movements, especially the Five Star Movement in Italy, have taken steps toward solving that, and that the Five Star Movement in Italy does make complex decisions together, about the direction of the movement and the legislation they should be proposing, and this kind of stuff. I remain optimistic, and I also think that this form of organization is superior in the long run, and so it’s just a matter of figuring out, “How do we do it?” That, again, is a challenge for activists to figure out — people like DeRay and others should be figuring _that_ out. Not speaking truth on the streets. They should be asking, “How do we govern, as a social movement?” That’s what we should be trying to figure out right now. **So this next question is obviously me baiting you and you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to. Who do you see building this kind of movement? Can anybody participate? Or do you need to be educated in certain ways?** Do you mean, who would take part in this kind of movement? **Yes, or even just, if there’s not going to be a charismatic leader, who leads? Who instigates?** We know, going back to Rousseau, that if we’re going to revive sovereignty — that’s what we’re trying to do, revive sovereignty, bring it back from the dead — if we’re going to try to revive sovereignty, the group that ultimately makes decisions about our community and our city has to be both numerous — it has to have lots of people involved — and representatively diverse. You can’t just have one group or another in charge. Over the years, I’ve been talking about Five Star Movement, and some people hate it. Why do they hate it? They absolutely hate it because the Five Star Movement has right-wing elements to it, but also has left-wing elements to it, and they hate that. The Left say to me, “No, you should only talk about Podemos, because Podemos is fully on the left.” Meanwhile, Five Star Movement is doing _way_ better than Podemos. What I’m saying is, it has to be both numerous, representative, and diverse. Then I think, though, that if you want to talk about specifically who we should be learning from, right now in the United States, I’m going to tell you who I think we should be learning from. Everyone should be talking to [Dr. Lenora Fulani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenora%5FFulani). Who is Dr. Lenora Fulani? I just discovered her myself. In 1988, Dr. Lenora Fulani ran for president. She’s an African-American woman and she ran for president in 1988\. She was on _every state ballot_, 50 state ballots. The Green Party in 2016 did not get on every state ballot. What I’m saying is that she knows it’s possible. Why do I have to wait until 2017 to learn about someone who did this in 1988? Everyone’s telling me it’s impossible but here’s a black woman in 1988 who did this. We all pretend like Hillary Clinton was the first, but here’s a black woman who did this. She’s still alive, people. She should be in every single interview right now. I think what I’m saying, is, there _are_ people out there who we can learn from, but again, notice she didn’t just stay on the left. She worked with Left and Right, and Lefts hated her for that. Again, there’re these people who’ve been ostracized, but who they hold wisdom, and we need to start tapping into it. **That’s interesting. Would you call hers a centrist position?** I wouldn’t call it centrist, because I think that what you do is, you work with the extreme Left and the extreme Right, and it doesn’t pull you toward the center. It — I don’t know if we have a word for it — it’s like the backside. **Like a line that’s pulled into circle by bending the ends until they meet?** Totally. I would call it an alliance, a strategic alliance. I think that that’s what we need — a new form of populism, to counter Donald Trump, and unless we have that, then the progressive establishment will cheer a military government. That’s what I think. I think all protest at this point that isn’t backed by a political movement that can take power is implicitly an argument in favor of a military coup. That’s how I feel. **Because a military coup is what will end up happening eventually.** Literally. Trump was elected president. What if he was a radical communist, and we were seeing these articles coming out like this, accusing him of “treason”? What I’m saying is, either the United States continues the tradition that whoever wins the election by any means, is the president, or we start a new tradition that’s like, “Well, maybe you won the election, but we’re going to overthrow you afterward.” **Doesn’t that sound like a dangerous thing for the Left then, as well? Couldn’t the Right do the same thing to the leaders of the Left?** Right now, the horrible thing to think about, is that Donald Trump most likely won the presidency with the support of a foreign government. Does that mean that the Left would have to have support of a foreign government in order to win the election? Like I said earlier, that would be China, and I think that once you start going down that path, then it does become very alarming. In essence, I think it’s troubling, on all sides. **So there’s been this kind of meme floating around that we should bombard our representatives with letters and notes and calls. Is this just saying that “We may not be able to have this revolution now, but in the meantime, we can annoy the crap out of the people making decisions”? Do you think that is a viable short-term solution? Or is it just cathartic, a way to release some steam?** I love the activist community, for this reason. On the one hand, it’s really good. We’re at a period right now with large-scale, creative explosion and innovation; all kinds of new tactics. What’s really funny, though, about the activist scene, is they’ll get these ideas, and then all of a sudden, _everyone_ has to do it. A few weeks ago, I got a letter in the mail, and it had no return address. It said: “Don’t tell anyone. Don’t put this letter online, this is an off-line guerrilla campaign.” The guerrilla campaign was to send letters to Donald Trump saying basically, “You don’t represent us,” and the goal was to just flood him with postcards. Flood him with postcards! And then, lo and behold, a couple weeks later, the Women’s March happens, and what does the Women’s March say? They say, “Now that you’ve marched, send postcards!” It’s like, all of a sudden, the activist world gets obsessed with certain tactics, like postcards. And to be honest, I’m like, “People, can we please just stop it? No, not postcards.” It’s dangerous, I keep saying this, but people don’t listen! It is _dangerous_ for us to keep taking legitimate revolutionary energy, and channeling it into behaviors that people _know_ will not breed social change. Donald Trump _is not_ reading their postcards. There’s some poor, minimum-wage worker in the White House who takes your postcards, and throws them in the trash. That’s what’s happening. He throws them in the trash. His life sucks because of your postcards. That’s it. **You feel maybe better in the moment, but, ultimately, you’re not affecting anything.** Totally. And I don’t know, I feel like telling people to send postcards is dangerous, because there were a certain percentage of people, like for example in the Women’s March, who went home and heard that the next action was going to be, “send postcards,” and a certain percentage of those people may turn to themselves and say, “You know what? That’s not going to do anything. I better go turn toward violence.” That’s the danger here, you see what I’m saying? If we alienate people from the possibility that positive protest that can actually _achieve_ regime change in the United States, then we’re going to have a much darker scenario. We really need to stop asking people to do things that will not create a change that we want. **What would you like to see the Left do, in say the next six months to a year, and how would you measure progress or success?** We know where we need to go, which is that we need to figure out how to build a social movement that can win elections, and govern, and make complex decisions together. We know that’s where we need to go, so what we need to be doing in the next six to eight months, is, even though, let me see … What are we at, February? No one wants to talk about this, but I’m going to tell people the truth: there is an election this year. There’s an off-year election in multiple communities, and we have an opportunity to test out our ability to build a social movement to win elections in this year. We don’t have to wait two years. It’s happening this year, 2017\. Again, why don’t we start a discussion among activists, and identify those communities? The great thing is that there’s not that many, I think it’s a dozen or so, but to identify where those communities are, what positions will be up for grabs, and then figure out how to use social protest to win, by any means necessary. Maybe we need the support of China. Maybe we need to hack their computers. Maybe we need to relocate there, and become voters. Whatever! Let’s all experiment on _that_. Let’s talk about that, let’s talk about these elections in 2017, and how we’re going to win them. And not just win them, but govern afterward, and then use that as a stepping stone to 2018\. I think until we’re willing to have that conversation, then I’m sorry, but we’re not going to see the change we want. And to be clear I’m not talking about electing progressives; I’m talking about electing a _social movement_. That’s a different thing, and that’s really important. **By progressive you mean a Democratic Party progressive, right?** Electing Democratic progressives as a goal still assumes that what’s holding us back is that we don’t have good people in positions of power. That is not true. It’s not that we don’t have good people in positions of power, it’s that we don’t have The People, we don’t have a social movement in power. We need to get away from thinking about finding singular individuals who are going to make decisions we agree with, and start figuring out, “How do we get individuals who are going to make decisions that I’ve decided on? That _we’ve_ decided on, together?” That’s the difference. **You said nobody wants to hear this. What did you mean by that?** Because, look. I get it. I know I’m saying all this stuff, and you’re like, “What does he know?” Well, I started as an activist as a teen. I’ve been arrested for blocking traffic to try to protest the war. I’ve been to Palestine. I’ve done direct action in Palestine, nonviolent direct action, I put my body on the line. I’ve done all forms of activism, every form. I created a social movement. I’ve done all of it. What I’m saying though, is that there’s one area, this one big area that I _never_ experimented with until recently, an area that activists refuse to experiment with, which is, gaining power through elections. Think about this. We act as if it’s so difficult to organize something like the Women’s March, and yet we’re amazing at it. We can create an event with four million marchers. It only took like three months to organize. We can do that, yet we can’t even win an election. It blows my mind. It’s just something that no one wants to talk about. It’s like being a savant in mathematics and not knowing how to eat with a fork. **Right now, what frustrates you the most? Sometimes I see you as a John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness. You even said yourself that it doesn’t seem like the Left is listening or ready for what you’re saying. What are some of your frustrations currently, with all of this?** Well, John the Baptist, I believe, baptized Jesus Christ. **He did, yes. Eventually, yes.** Well, if I get to be John the Baptist, who is somehow going to bump into some activist down the road, and say something to this activist, and then _they_ go and create the thing that I’ve been dreaming of, then I’m quite happy. That would be the best possible scenario. What I think that I’m trying to get across to people is that we as activists need to always ask ourselves, “Why are we doing these specific behaviors?” We need to understand that the specific behaviors that we’re choosing to do, they’re arbitrary. They are historically defined, and they are arbitrary. If we had been activists during the American Revolution, we would be going and tarring and feathering people. If we had been activists during the Cultural Revolution, we would be painting banners with calligraphy and marching down the streets, or whatever. Every generation protests in their own culturally dependent way, so let’s stop being obsessed with the specific, historically defined and culturally defined way that we protest right now, and let’s think strategically and say to ourselves, “Okay, we can get large numbers of people to do any behavior that we want. We can get them to march, we can get them to occupy, we can get them to riot, we can get them to jump up and down, we can get them to meditate. We can get them to do anything, so what should we get them to do?” I think what gets me frustrated is basically that we’ve allowed our imaginations to atrophy, and we’ve allowed ourselves to give up on the hope of revolution. I just think, what if we are in a moment before World War III? If this were 1933, what should people have done? They should have taken it a little more seriously! People could die. There could be a war. Russia just moved their missiles, violating a treaty with the United States, to test Donald Trump. Donald Trump hasn’t even said anything. Is Donald Trump walking us into a war that we’re going to lose? **On Twitter, no less.** Right. Look. I don’t want to be alarmist, but at the same time I do want to say that the good thing about Donald Trump is that he’s firmly moved us into world historic time. We should all be grateful to be alive right now. He has made America great again, because the greatest generation in America was the one that fought World War II. That’s what he’s really talking about, is that we are entering into a world historic moment of life and death. The point here is that we do need to bring a little bit more realization of the historical severity of our situation, and a little bit more urgency, not urgency of like, “Let’s rush into the streets,” but urgency that says, “We’ve got to think really carefully right now. We’d better start gathering our resources for a real resistance movement.” Stop using the word “resistance” until you’re living in underground cells and eating bats. Come on. Until you’re hiding resistance leaders in your attic. **What you’re describing feels like _Star Wars_.** Exactly. It’s ridiculous! All the language of revolution has been taken over by people who use it lightly and I’m like, “I’m sorry, it’s not a resistance yet, guys.” I don’t know. I want to see it, though. **One of the things you’re saying, is that you’ve tried every form of activism except the mainstream one, electoral politics. Is this like when you get older and realize, okay, maybe I should have a savings account, or things like that?** I think also it’s temperament. I ran for mayor in my tiny town, and I lost, and now people are like, “See? It’s proof. It didn’t work.” I think that’s like, okay, it’s the first time I’d ever tried something like that, and I still got 20 percent of the vote. But I also think, it’s temperament. Most activists aren’t politicians. I’m not a politician; so when I ran a campaign for mayor, I didn’t act like a politician, which alienated people, who felt like, “I don’t understand why you’re doing these behaviors. A politician would never do that,” and I’m like, “I know. I’m an activist.” A lot of it, I think is that people who are drawn to activism aren’t necessarily the same people who are drawn to politics. That being said, I do think that if activists could kind of swallow that bad taste they get by engaging in politics, we could be quite good at it. I think we’re amazing at getting lots of people to do behaviors. We should be celebrating ourselves more often for how good large numbers of people to do behaviors together. At the same time, we can bring that intelligence to a different game, and it could be quite beautiful. **In terms of strategizing, I wonder if keeping the false dichotomy of the Left and the Right makes sense anymore, in terms of people’s actual lives. The people who voted for Donald Trump who are low income, who want their jobs back, who want their idea of the Dream restored; did their lives change from the eighth of November to the ninth? If you’re fed up with the fact that maybe it’s not any better, then is that a place we can organize around, almost a kind of neo-Baconian rebellion type thing, across these supposed differences?** Yeah, I think that’s the only solution. The 99 percent is not 100 percent Left or 100 percent Right. As I said, when I say these kind of things, I get so much pushback from the Left. They _hate_ this. They absolutely hate the idea that we should work with people on the right. Let’s look at the origin of the terms “Left” and “Right.” It’s just referring to where different parties sat during the French Revolution; it doesn’t mean exactly what we’re trying to say. I think that’s why I like “populist” instead, because populism points back to democracy. It points back to the idea that the people, many people, can have power. I think right now the sad thing is that populism’s become like a dirty word. Everyone’s rejecting populism. But I think that’s precisely why Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton lost, is because they didn’t embrace populism. Populism is the future; but populism’s not going be a leftist or a rightist movement. It’s more complicated than that. It has to do with giving power to the people and benefiting their lives concretely. Things are really dark right now for a lot of Americans. I live in rural Oregon, and I can see that. I’m looking out my window right now at a house whose siding is all blown off; he doesn’t even have money to put proper siding on his own house. I saw him up there the other day, fixing his roof by himself. That’s real stuff. **And there’s a sense in which his issues are not left or right. They’re human.** I remember right before Trump, I used to go to DC sometimes, and I’d be like, “Good God, look at all the construction that’s happening here.” It’s like DC was a money cow. People in the liberal establishment were living it up under Obama, you know? So when I got home, I could totally get that resentment, because that kind of opulence is not the reality for the rest of Americans. The rest of Americans have rundown buildings, rundown houses, the shops are out of business, people can barely make enough to live. You go to DC and it’s like, “Where’s all this money coming from?” **It’s like Versailles, in a way.** It is. I do think we need to get over this obsession with just being on the left, you know? I don’t appreciate that obsession anymore. **In closing, if people didn’t get _anything_ else out of this interview, what would you want them to walk away with, whether they be on the left, or on the right, or in the middle, or in outer space? What would you want them to walk away with? What charge, what challenge?** My core message is this: all activism needs to be oriented around taking power and governing. That’s it. It’s not enough to say we’re going to topple Donald Trump, or influence Donald Trump. If we’re not willing to develop an approach toward actually taking power and governing, then everything else that we’re doing is meaningless. That’s the challenge that’s staring us in the face right now, and that’s the challenge that we have to solve. If we don’t solve that challenge, if we keep avoiding that challenge, there could be some super dark stuff. Super, super dark stuff. Worse than Donald Trump. Donald Trump’s probably more like Mussolini, and there could be another Hitler coming our way. Let’s put it that way. **A figure we don’t even know about yet.** Right. Everyone thought Mussolini was bad, and then Hitler showed up. And Mussolini, let’s look at how Mussolini ended his life, and last moments of his life and all that stuff. People can look into that. I think it’s time to start getting a little more historical, but the core idea is: Activism is oriented around taking power, and then governing. Source: [https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/voice-...](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/voice-wilderness-micah-white/) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /interviews Source: https://micahmwhite.com/interviews [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # INTERVIEWS Micah Bornfree has been interviewed by Esquire, The Globe and Mail, NPR, CNN, and dozens of other media outlets about the future of activism, the legacy of Occupy Wall Street, and his theories of social change. Below are selected in-depth interviews. ## Selected Interviews [Esquire: Micah White on Rethinking Activism](/interviews/esquire) An extended profile in which Micah Bornfree explains why the protest tactics developed over the past century are designed for a paradigm of liberal democracy that no longer functions, and what must replace them. [Occupy Anniversary](/interviews/occupy-anniversary) Micah Bornfree reflects on the legacy and lessons of Occupy Wall Street, explaining why the movement was a constructive failure that revealed the limits of protest-as-spectacle. [The Nehalem Rural Future](/interviews/nehalem-rural-future) After Occupy Wall Street, Micah Bornfree moved to a small town on the Oregon coast. This interview explores his attempt to bring activist principles to rural America and what happened next. [Swarthmore College Profile](/interviews/swarthmore-college-profile) A profile of Micah Bornfree exploring his intellectual journey from Swarthmore College to co-creating Occupy Wall Street and developing new theories of activism. [Back to Home](/) --- ## /interviews/esquire Source: https://micahmwhite.com/interviews/esquire [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # THE ESQUIRE REGISTER: 37 PEOPLE UNDER 35 WHO ARE RESHAPING THE WORLD ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1425058912766-5J40PKVC9J8RT8D2TXCG/image-asset.jpeg) _[Micah White PhD](/#bio), 32, is an activist and former Adbusters editor who saw the protests of Tahrir Square and launched the [Occupy Wall Street](/occupywallstreet) movement—and the wealth-gap debate that’s raged ever since—with a letter that began “All right you 90,000 redeemers, rebels, and radicals out there . . .” He’s since opened **[Boutique Activist Consultancy](http://www.activistboutique.com/)**. (Motto: “We Win Lost Causes.”)_ _Here's Micah's [Esquire interview](http://www.esquire.com/the-register-2014/micah-white-interview-2014) on **the end of protest**:_ “**I’m not satisfied anymore** with just the standard repertoire of activism. We have to really rethink the foundation of activism. And that’s what I’m trying to do. “**The protest tactics that we’ve developed**—the repertoire of tactics that we’ve developed—like, marching and these kinds of things, are designed to influence liberal democracy. They were designed to influence people—like, elected representatives—who had to listen to their constituents. But the breakdown of that paradigm happened on February 15, 2003, when the whole world had an anti-war march and President George Bush said, “I don’t listen to focus groups.” He said that, basically, by saying that, he basically said, “It doesn’t matter if you mass a million, billion, six billion people or whatever. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.” ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1425058954758-EELVOOX5URJD61OSSA72/image-asset.jpeg) “**My thinking is moving away from protest.** Instead, I’m more interested now with the power of social mobilization. The power of, basically, getting large numbers of people to change their behaviors, to depattern themselves, to actually get the facts collectively in order to tackle global challenges. “**I think where it’s going now,** it’s much more towards the Five Star in Italy, where they do things like getting people elected or, like, running very complicated organizations that are able to manage global problems. One of the things that’s happening is that we’re seeing these global problems that everyone faces, like Ebola, and that social movements might be the answer to those kind of problems, too. Right? Because they mobilize large numbers of people. They get large number of people to do highly synchronized actions together. “**I was a sophomore in college at Swarthmore on 9/11.** And that was, like, the inflection point. And that was the point, too, that I kind of, like, really changed my approach to activism and tried to directly influence, like a lot of people, the war. I started to see the power of the Internet to allow for global action at the same time. Like, on February 15, 2003, we had, like, a global synchronized action on every continent on earth. Which I think would’ve been impossible prior to the Internet and stuff like that. “**Arab Spring is absolutely crucial.** And it was absolutely crucial for my own development because I have lived in Egypt for nine months in, like, you know, 2005 or 2006\. My wife’s father is a former ambassador to Egypt. I remember staying at the embassy and seeing, like, how many police officers Mubarak would employ to, like, keep order in his society. I mean, I remember seeing that and I remember thinking, at the time, like, “Wow. A revolution would be impossible here with all these police officers.” Like, they would have dozens and dozens and dozens of police officers everywhere. Then, lo and behold, a revolution happened in Tahir Square. That opened my eyes. “**I’m at the library** and I’m reading all these books about revolution. Is there a pattern that always happens? And there is. De Tocqueville is who observed that that revolution often just functions to strengthen state power. I think that that’s why the movement towards kind of, you know, horizontalist, Internet-enabled, populist movements is a way to not repeat that pattern. “**The total cost of Occupy was probably under,** like, $500\. It’s ridiculous. It’s like a force multiplier. That is allowing history to be changed very rapidly. “**If there’s gonna be a revolution,** it’ll happen non-violently. I think it’ll be a very peaceful kind of. It’ll be more like an awakening, you know?” Source: [http://www.esquire.com/the-register-2014/m...](http://www.esquire.com/the-register-2014/micah-white-interview-2014) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /interviews/nehalem-rural-future Source: https://micahmwhite.com/interviews/nehalem-rural-future [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # AN OCCUPY FOUNDER SAYS THE NEXT REVOLUTION WILL BE RURAL _Profile written by Amber Cortes for [Grist.org](http://grist.org/politics/an-occupy-founder-says-the-next-revolution-will-be-rural/)_ In a boarded-up hotel along a windy country road, a couple dozen activists are gathered for a workshop. They are mostly women, and mostly over 40\. The workshop is being held by Micah White, one of the instigators of Occupy Wall Street. After the dust settled from Occupy, White packed up his bags in the Bay Area and moved here to Nehalem, a small town in one of the poorest counties in rural Oregon. Nehalem sits on the Pacific Coast, in the shadows of popular vacation destination Manzanita. But White isn’t here for a vacation, and he came to town with a mission. hite calls Occupy a “constructive failure.” Urban street protests, he says, only have a life cycle of about a month before their time is up. The encampments, thePeople’s Library, and the spirit of the general assemblies are all fun and games until everybody gets kicked out of the park. “It was magical thinking,” he says. For White, Occupy Wall Street challenged the core assumptions that activists have about how to achieve social change. “We believed that people’s assemblies were enough to gain political sovereignty. This turned out to not be true. To gain political sovereignty we must win elections.” White chose tiny Nehalem as his home base because, he says, social change movements like Occupy are too focused on urban environments: “I mean the urban areas, they coddle you and you become this large, comfortable child-egg baby. One of the things that’s nice about living here is that it’s terrifying to move here. People hunt; they have guns. They have floods here where you cannot leave for five days in a row. This place is all about resilience and sustainability.” Rural towns are where it’s at for White, “a clean slate” for building real social change in places still reeling from the economic and environmental impacts of exactly what people were protesting during Occupy. Among his plans for Nehalem, White wants to start a food bank for veterans, convert vacant properties into housing for the elderly, and start a loyalty card program that keeps local prices low for residents and high for tourists. And then there’s the boutique activism firm White’s started. The idea is to train activists and galvanize support for causes similar to online social and political movements. But the difference is, his new venture is unabashedly for-profit. “Occupy Wall Street generated tremendous money,” says White. “This whole idea that activists should do it for free and all that bullshit is over. Like somehow I’m supposed to be a full-time activist and have zero income from it? It’s ridiculous.” Ideally, though, he thinks everyday people can come up with their own solutions for big problems like climate change and access to local, healthy foods, not so-called experts. In Nehalem’s case, the locals already have a head start: The town is home to an innovative recycling and reuse center called CARTM, an off-grid farm, and a thriving farmers market, plus a land trust for young farmers is in the works. The region is also rich with resources like timber, which is being trucked out every day by logging companies. Part of White’s plan is to take back these resources and give them to the people. “The people here are land rich and money poor,” says White. “We’re actually sitting on value and money and natural resources. We’re the rich ones.” Source: [http://grist.org/politics/an-occupy-founde...](http://grist.org/politics/an-occupy-founder-says-the-next-revolution-will-be-rural/) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /interviews/occupy-anniversary Source: https://micahmwhite.com/interviews/occupy-anniversary [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # OCCUPY WALL STREET ANNIVERSARY INTERVIEW (2013) Occupy Wall Street co-creator Micah White (now Micah Bornfree) speaks with Deutsche Welle on the movement's second anniversary _[DW:](http://www.dw.de/the-people-must-become-the-government/a-17100217) Two years ago this week you were launching the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York to end the greed and corruption of the richest 1 percent of the population and start a global revolution. Now, two years later, you live in rural Oregon and Occupy Wall Street has all but vanished and according to the latest data the income gap between the 99 and the 1 percent last year reached a new record. What went wrong?_ Micah White: I don't think that anything went wrong. The whole world had an uprising in 2011 and 2012 that revealed some fatal assumptions that the left had about political change. And one of those assumptions that we had in America was that if you build a social protest movement that had the majority of people on its side and that petitioned the government with a demand that it understood to be fair and just then the government would respond and life would change for the better. But we kind of miscalculated. They weren't willing to respond to our critique. So we see that the government is more intransigent to change than expected. We realized that protests alone won't be sufficient to correct the kind of systemic problems that we have in America. And we are looking to other kinds of ways. _If you could do it all over again what would you have done differently?_ It's hard to make these kinds of calculations. Because on the one side you have to say things played out the way they had to. I think we tested certain assumptions. One of the assumptions we tested is that there is a way to go directly from street mobilization to political legitimacy. I think we had to test that assumption before we were willing to move on to the more difficult task of becoming the government through winning populist election victories. We are seeing this now happening in places like Italy and Greece across Europe, the birth of these political parties. That was something that wasn't possible in North America because people wouldn't have wanted to use that tactic until now when they see that the only alternative is to create another Occupy Wall Street that fizzles because protest alone is no longer sufficient. _As you mentioned, Occupy Wall Street inspired many Occupy movements in other countries, particularly in Europe. Can you compare Occupy Wall Street to some of its international spin-offs?_ Our goal is create social movements that resonate and that manifest themselves each in their own local way. I think in the beginning Occupy was too focused on the idea that the same model should replicated pretty much everywhere. I like that we are now seeing a splintering happening. _Did Occupy Wall Street, the US original brand so to speak, effect any tangible change?_ The most profound impact of #OWS is that it created a new generation of revolutionaries in America. Prior to Occupy Wall Street we in North America were in a 10-year period where we had just come out of the anti-war failure of 2003 and until Occupy Wall Street there was essentially no activism happening in North America. So Occupy Wall Street not only activated a large percentage of the youth, but it taught them about their own power and their ability to spark viral social movements. The real tangible change is that we have done the first step to train a large number of people in the tactics of protest. I think the next step to achieve the kind of tangible legislative and governmental change that we now need, will be to take that raw mass of people and spark another kind of movement that's quite different. _Occupy Wall Street prided itself on its leaderless movement approach without clearly defined goals. Do you still think this is the right strategy to effect real change in advanced, media-driven Western societies like the US?_ Yes I do. Horizontal volunteerism which is what Occupy really worked on, the idea that are going to volunteer because you are an equal member of the collective entity that you are working with, I think this core idea is still one of the most powerful ideas of the 21st century and that it will birth a political movement that will take power somewhere in the world. Occupy was extremely efficient. And it was extremely creative at problem solving. And for the brief moment that it was working, for about 28 days when Occupy was at its peak, it was growing at a rate like nothing had grown before. There were 300 to 500 new encampments every 12 hours around the world. The leaderless approach is still the solution to a problem that humanity faces. _What have you learned concretely from the mistakes of Occupy Wall Street?_ The concrete thing that we have learned is that it is time for us to give birth to political parties in America that will break the back of duopoly. In America right now we have two political parties that are essentially the same and they have an iron grip on power in this country. Coming into 2014 we are going to have a midterm election and in 2016 we are going to have a presidential election. And what I am going to be working on is trying to create a social movement that elects bottom-up leaders. I think that it is time to become the government. Since our government is illegitimate, the people must become the government. _A lot of people and movements like Ross Perot or the green movement have tried to build third parties in the US and failed. Why do think you will succeed?_ Mainly because I think the time is absolutely ripe for it. I don't see any other solution to the political impasse that we are at right now. The American government is essentially in a political lock and stasis. And the only way to get out of it is some sort of new leadership. Previously we had tried too much to focus on influencing our representatives by protesting in the streets whereas now it is a matter of becoming the government. And now we have a few more tricks up our sleeve. We have this viral ability to emerge most unexpectedly and to swarm the streets. I think this will play to our advantage too as we head toward the elections. _You have relocated to rural Oregon, but still describe yourself as activist. What are you doing these days?_ I am the founder of [boutique activist consultancy](http://activist.boutique/) and we are trying to create the tools and tactics of the next social uprising. America has been too centered on its urban culture and what is going on in New York City, Los Angeles and these financial hubs like San Francisco. But there is this much larger, rural America, the America that is really suffering under the economic situation. Where I live is one of the poorest areas in Oregon and what we are going to do is build a social movement that takes power back from this corrupt government and returns it to the people - the poor and hard-working people of America. Source: [http://www.dw.de/the-people-must-become-th...](http://www.dw.de/the-people-must-become-the-government/a-17100217) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /interviews/swarthmore-college-profile Source: https://micahmwhite.com/interviews/swarthmore-college-profile [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # “WHEN YOU CREATE AN IDEA THAT’S EASY FOR PEOPLE TO DO THEMSELVES, IT’S UNSTOPPABLE.” **Profile by Mike Agresta for the [Swarthmore College Bulletin](http://bulletin.swarthmore.edu/bulletin-issue-archive/index.html%3Fp=1050.html)** June 9, 2011, was a typical day for _Adbusters_, the eye-catching Vancouver, British Columbia-based magazine of radical political activism and social commentary. Kalle Lasn, the 70-year-old founder and editor-in-chief, was trading emails with frequent collaborator Micah White ’04, an editor 40 years his junior. The subject was a planned action in Lower Manhattan to protest financial industry excess. White, in an email, suggested a name: Occupy Wall Street (OWS). That night, Lasn registered a website with that name. Within a month, local activists in and around New York City were making plans, and three months later, on Sept. 17, the most prominent left-wing American protest movement in a generation was under way. Activists held Zucotti Park for 59 heady days. As countless similar encampments sprang up around the country, the news media could not help but take notice of protesters’ manifold complaints about income inequality, corporate abuses, and elected government’s subordination to the financial industry. For White, the viral success of his brainchild echoed a similar, if much smaller-scale, protest he’d engineered as a student at Swarthmore. In 2001, White founded Why War?, one of the first anti-war student organizations of the Bush II era, with several friends. In 2003, the group acquired sensitive leaked memos from Diebold, a manufacturer of black-box-style voting machines whose CEO was a prominent Bush supporter. The memos suggested widespread mismanagement and a cover-up of known equipment problems. White hosted copies of the leaked memos on Swarthmore’s server despite complaints from Diebold, and, after a cease-and-desist letter, from the College itself. “It was kind of an early WikiLeaks thing,” White says. “We embroiled Swarthmore in this legal battle. I don’t think they really appreciated that.” At one point, the school went so far as to switch off the ethernet connection in White’s dorm room. But by then it was too late—White and his collaborators had encouraged copycat student activists to host the same leaked memos on other college and university servers across the country. When U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) linked to the documents from a congressional server, Diebold’s legal team gave up. Transparency had won the day. “That was my first realization of how quickly successful campaigns can succeed,” White says. “The entire campaign lasted one month. It was an insane month but—and this was the realization of Occupy, too—when you create an idea that’s easy for people to do themselves, it’s unstoppable.” Despite his penchant for antagonistic civil disobedience, White speaks fondly of his time at Swarthmore. In class, he soaked up the sort of history and political theory that now permeates his writing for _Adbusters_, focusing on the question of how to put such ideas into practice outside the ivory tower. “I’m not surprised at all that Micah was pivotal in the OWS movement,” says Carina Yervasi, the associate professor of French who taught White in a capstone course on interpretation theory. “Of all the students I had, he was usually the one who asked questions of practice for the theory we were reading.” After graduation, White wrote Lasn an unsolicited letter announcing that he would be in Vancouver and hoped to intern at _Adbusters_. He omitted the fact that working for the magazine was his sole reason for moving to Vancouver. “It had been my dream job since I was 14,” he says. “_Adbusters_ captured my imagination. It’s so visually rich that you fall into this world, this aesthetic universe, and it starts to color how you perceive things.” These days, White sees himself as a sort of pied piper, trying to catch the imaginations of a new generation of teenagers. “I’m constantly thinking about how to talk to people who right now are 17, 18, 19 and, like me, are going to find _Adbusters_ in the bookstore and think, ‘Wow, what’s this crazy magazine?’ ” he says. Despite their pivotal role in developing the concept of Occupy Wall Street, White and Lasn have not gone out of their way to take credit for the protests. “We tried to not position ourselves as leaders,” White says. “We want to be meme warriors. We want to put out ideas. Someone said that the idea is the leader. I think that’s really true.” After completing his initial internship at _Adbusters_, White and his now-wife, Chiara Ricciardone ’05, moved to Egypt for nine months. The time spent in and around Cairo helped open White’s eyes to the global struggle for justice—and helped lay the groundwork for Occupy Wall Street “I would see the disrespect that the police officers would treat their citizens with,” White says. “Because I’m brown, a lot of people thought I was Egyptian, including the police officers. At that time, if you were a brown, Egyptian-looking male, you just got treated like crap.” He recalls a trip to the national museum—supposedly the heritage of all Egyptians—when the police mistook him for a local and tried to run him off. “I remember feeling, ‘Wow, this is an unjust country.’ There were so many police officers that a revolution seemed impossible,” he says. “When the Tahrir Square thing happened, that was the epiphany moment for me and for people at _Adbusters_,” White says. “Thinking, if a revolution can happen there and overthrow Mubarak, of course it can happen in America. The horizon of possibility had been opened.” Despite certain shortcomings, like the lack of a clear policy victory, White sees Occupy Wall Street as a triumph and a harbinger of things to come. “I think Occupy was the very first tremor,” he says. “When you have a major earthquake, it’s sometimes preceded by earlier earthquakes that at the time seemed really large. But a year later, when the real earthquake hits, we realize what that was setting the stage for.” Occupy Wall Street lives on in various incarnations, including a splinter group called Strike Debt, which is pursuing another campaign dreamed up by White—buying and forgiving the medical debt of ordinary citizens. White, however, is moving on to the next radical idea. He and Ricciardone have moved to a small town in coastal Oregon—“a place of wild political possibility,” he says—where he’ll work on a book about the potential for a worldwide political party that harnesses the revolutionary energy of the Occupy generation. “Although it started as a revolt against the financial capture of democracy, it’s much larger than that,” White says. “It has to do with the fact that all the fish are dying, that the oceans are dying, and we are in the midst of an ecological apocalypse.” From his new home, White hopes to sow seeds of thought that will topple the power of big polluters, financial-industry bullies, and authoritarian governments once and for all. His vision is not for everyone, he acknowledges. “The kind of activism that I do and that I learned at Swarthmore, with the Diebold campaign, in particular, centers around provoking events,” he says. “That’s a different kind of activism than most people want to do. Most people want to do the kind of activism that builds institutions. I think you need to create a rupture moment. You have to make an event that spikes so high and lasts so long that the world is changed forever.” _(Shortly after the publication of this profile, Micah White left the editorship of Adbusters and launched_ [Activist Boutique](http://activist.boutique)_.)_ Source: [http://bulletin.swarthmore.edu/bulletin-is...](http://bulletin.swarthmore.edu/bulletin-issue-archive/index.html%3Fp=1050.html) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /notes-on-the-future-of-activism Source: https://micahmwhite.com/notes-on-the-future-of-activism [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # NOTES ON THE FUTURE OF ACTIVISM ![tumblr_ku35nbYd6I1qz7lxd.jpeg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1416878343658-U2YQ9PWCFY7782397OJU/tumblr_ku35nbYd6I1qz7lxd.jpeg) # Activism and Time # 28 notes by micah * [Next](/essays/clicktivism-is-ruining-leftist-activism) * [THE END OF PROTEST](/the-end-of-protest-micah-white-phd) <1> Contemporary activism begins from the realization that for the first time in history, a synergy of catastrophes face us. Our physical environment is dying, our financial markets are collapsing and our culture, fed on a diet of junk thought, is atrophying -- unable to muster the intellectual courage to face our predicament. While some may caution against immediate action by pointing out that societies often predict perils that never come, what is remarkable about our times is that the apocalypse has already happened. <2> When we compare the anxiety of our age to that of the Cold War era, we see that what differentiates the two periods is where the threat is temporally located. During the Cold War, the threat of nuclear destruction was always imagined to be in the future. What terrorized the Cold War generation was the thought of life after a nuclear holocaust. Anxiety was therefore centered on what life would be like "the day after" the future event, which was symbolized by the blinding light of a mushroom cloud on the horizon. Thus the post-apocalyptic narrative was deployed in a series of nuclear holocaust science-fiction stories either to mobilize fear in the name of anti-nuke peace -- the exemplar of this tactic being the horrifying and scientifically realistic 1984 BBC docudrama Threads in which civilization collapses into barbarism -- or, like Pat Frank's 1959 novel Alas, Babylon, convince a wary public that winning and happily surviving nuclear war is possible, given resourcefulness, discipline and patriotism. <3> But for those of us alive today, the catastrophic event is not located in the future. There is no "post”-apocalyptic per se because we are already living in the apocalyptic. And although we can anticipate that life is going to get starker, darker and hellish, the essential feature of our times remains that we do not fear the future as much as we fear the present. We can notice this temporal shift in the work of James Lovelock, whose Gaia Hypothesis is gaining traction inside and outside of the scientific community. According to Lovelock’s latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning, even if we were to immediately cease all C02 emissions, sudden and drastic climate change will still occur. In fact, Lovelock argues that a drastic decrease in emissions would trigger climate catastrophe immediately whereas continuing emissions will trigger climate catastrophe eventually and unpredictably. This realization -- that the line into a post-climate-change world has already been crossed -- fundamentally changes the temporal and spatial assumptions underpinning activist struggles. And the first aspect of activism that must be rethought is our notion of temporality. <4> The typical activist project is inscribed within the horizon of a modern conception of temporality. The modernist activist acts as if we occupy a present moment that is a discrete point on the linear progression between a mythical, ancient past and an either utopian or dystopian future. But if we accept this model, then the goal of the activist can only be to change the future by preventing the dystopian possibility from being realized. This involves pushing for changes in laws and behaviors in the present that will impact our predictions of how the future will be. But activism based on this temporal model -- which as John Foster points out in The Sustainability Mirage: Illusion and Reality in the Coming War on Climate Change underpins "green capitalism" and "sustainable development" -- inevitably fails. For one, unable to accurately predict the future, we constantly play the game of basing our actions on rosy predictions while the future grows increasingly gloomier. Another problem with relying on linear temporality is the assumption that time moves in only one direction. Without the freedom to imagine going backwards, we are left the task of steering the runaway train of industrialization without hope of turning around. <5> Of course, linear time is not the only way to understand temporality and some models can have even worse political consequences. Take for example, the notion that time is cyclical. For the Roman Stoics, time was marked by a series of conflagrations in which the world was razed and a new one formed only to be razed again. In times of adversity when resistance seems impossible, such as the build-up to World War 2, a watered down version of cyclical temporality sometimes enters the cultural consciousness. It infected Nazis who cheered total war and anti-Nazis who used the spurious argument that only by a catastrophic Nazi triumph would a communist state be realized because only then would the people rise up. A similar line of thought was pursued by Martin Heidegger in a letter to Ernst Jünger in which he wondered if the only way to "cross the line" into a new world is to bring the present world to its awful culmination. Unlike the linear conception of time that calls the activist to act in order to realize an alternate future, the cyclical conception is often leveraged to justify inaction or worse, action contrary to one’s ideals. <6> To escape the problems of linear time and cyclical time, activism must rely on a new temporality. Perhaps the best articulation of this new activist temporality is in the work of Slavoj Žižek. In his most recent book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Žižek blames the failure of contemporary activism on our assumption that time is a one-way line from past to future. He argues that activism is failing to avert the coming catastrophe because it is premised on the same notions of linear time that underpin industrial society. According to Žižek, therefore, a regeneration of activism must begin with a change in temporality. Paraphrasing Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Žižek writes, "if we are to confront adequately the threat of (social or environmental) catastrophe, we need to break out of this 'historical' notion of temporality: we have to introduce a new notion of time." This new notion of time is a shift of perspective from historical progress to that of the timelessness of a revolutionary moment. <7> The role of the activist should not be to push history in the right direction but instead to disrupt it altogether. Žižek writes, "this is what a proper political act would be today: not so much to unleash a new movement, as to interrupt the present predominant movement. An act of 'divine violence' would then mean pulling the emergency cord on the train of Historical Progress." To accomplish this act of revolutionary violenceinvolves a switch of perspective from the present-looking-forward to the future-looking-backward. Instead of trying to influence the future by acting in the present, Žižek argues that we should start from the assumption that the dread catastrophic event -- whether it be sudden climate catastrophe, a "grey goo" nano-crisis or widespread adoption of cyborg technologies -- has already happened, and then work backwards to figure out what we should have done. "We have to accept that, at the level of possibilities, our future is doomed, that the catastrophe will take place, that it is our destiny -- and then, against the background of this acceptance, mobilize ourselves to perform the act which will change destiny itself and thereby insert a new possibility into the past." In other words, only by assuming that the feared event has already happened, can we imagine what actions would need to have been taken to prevent its occurrence. These steps would then be actualized by the present day activist. "Paradoxically," he concludes, "the only way to prevent the disaster is to accept it as inevitable." <8> Žižek is right to suggest that activism is at a crossroads; any honest activist will admit that lately our signature moves have failed to arouse more than a tepid response. The fact is that our present is being swallowed by the future we dreaded -- the dystopian sci-fi nightmare of enforced consumerism and planet-wide degradation is, day-by-day, our new reality. And thus, activism faces a dilemma: how to walk the line between false hope and pessimistic resignation. It is no longer tenable to hold the nostalgic belief that educating the population, recycling and composting our waste and advocating for "green capitalism" will snatch us from the brink. Likewise, it is difficult to muster the courage to act when the apocalyptic collapse of civilization seems unavoidable, imminent and, in our misanthropic moments, potentially desirable. Žižek's shift in temporality offers us a way to balance the paralyzing realization that our demise is inevitable with the motivating belief that we can change our destiny. By accepting that as the world is now we are doomed, we free ourselves to break from normalcy and act with the revolutionary fervor needed to achieve the impossible. <9> The question for would-be activists is therefore not, "how does one engage in meaningful activism when the future is so bleak?" but instead "how does one engage in revolutionary activism when the present is so dark?" <10> Corresponding to the necessary temporality shift is a spatial change in activism. The future of activism will be the transformation of strictly materialist struggles over the physical environment into cultural struggles over the mental environment. Green environmentalism, red communism and black anarchism will merge into blue mental environmentalism -- activism to save our mental environment will eclipse activism to reclaim our physical environment. A key opening to this new form of politics appeared in 1989 with the founding of Adbusters, the internationally distributed anti-consumerism magazine whose subtitle is The Journal of the Mental Environment. <11> Adbusters is a Situationist inspired offspring of the environmentalism movement. At the time of its formation, there was an active anti-logging movement in British Columbia, Canada. And responding to sagging public support for cutting down old growth trees, the logging industry introduced the “Forests Forever” advertising campaign. As the name suggestions, this campaign argued that the logging industry was not cutting down forests as much as they were protecting forests. It was the kind of disingenuous advertising ploy known as “greenwashing”-- a term that, it is worth noting, originated in that same year. Disgusted by what he saw, Kalle Lasn, who was an experimental filmmaker at the time, created a short claymation anti-ad in which an old-growth tree explains to a sapling that a ancient forests are being replaced by tree farms. His intention was to air the anti-ad on the same television stations that the logging industry had used. <12> When Lasn tried to buy airtime for his anti-ad on the same television station that aired the Forests Forever advertisements, he was refused. That was the founding event of Adbusters: the realization that while corporations can lie to us via the airwaves, we are unable to respond using the same means. But the message of Adbusters goes beyond concerns over the veracity of the information we receive -- and here we would do well to follow Jacques Ellul who spoke of the difficulty in distinguishing between information and propaganda. Instead, it is a matter of how the advertisements we see populate our minds with a picture of reality. This picture of reality, our worldview, colors everything we perceive. Thus, the mental environmentalist movement is concerned with the pollution of our minds. <13> While some may wish to frame this transition in terms of a new development, I think it is just as accurate to view it as an old phenomenon. Hundreds of years ago, for example, “pollution” had an exclusively unscientific, immaterial and spiritual meaning. In the 14th century to pollute meant to desecrate, defile, or contaminate what is sacred such as one’s soul or moral sensibility. Not until the late nineteenth-century did pollution take on the scientific and materialist connotation it has today. The unfortunate consequence is that with the changing meaning of the word pollution, we’ve become increasingly concerned about desecration of our external, natural environment while ignoring the defilement of our internal, mental environment. The future of activism is a return to the early meaning of pollution. <14> Activism is entering a new era in which environmentalism will cease viewing our mental environment as secondary to our physical environment. No longer neglecting one in favor of the other, we will see a push on both fronts as the only possible way of changing either. This will involve a shift away from a materialist worldview that imagines there to be a one-way avenue between our interior reality and the external reality. Instead, recognition of the permeability of this barrier, an exploration of the mutually sustaining relationship between mindscape and landscape, will open, and reopen, new paths for politics. <15> This movement toward an activism of the mental environment is based on an ontological argument that can be stated succinctly: our minds influence reality and reality influences our minds. Although simply stated, this proposition has profound implications because it challenges the West’s long standing Cartesian divisions between internal and external reality that serve to ignore the danger of mental toxins. Whereas traditional politics has assumed a static mind that can only be addressed in terms of its rational beliefs, blue activism believes in changing external reality by addressing the health of our internal environment. This comes from an understanding that our mental environment influences which beings manifest, and which possibilities actualize, in our physical reality. <16> At first it may seem like a strange argument. But the imaginary has been a part of environmentalism since the beginning. Most people trace the lineage of the modern environmentalist movement back to Rachel Carson’s 1961Silent Spring. Carson’s book argued that the accumulation of toxic chemicals in our environment could work its way up the food chain, causing a widespread die- off. It may not have been the first time the bioaccumulation argument had been made, but it was the first time that it resonated with people. Suddenly, a movement of committed activists and everyday citizens rallied under the environmentalism flag. <17> Looking back on Carson’s book from the perspective of mental environmentalism, it is significant that it begins, not with hard science as we may expect because Carson was a trained scientist, but with fantasy. The first chapter, entitled “A Fable for Tomorrow,” reads like a fairy tale: “There once was a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.” She then goes on to describe an idyllic, pastoral community known for its abundant agriculture and wild biodiversity. She writes of foxes and deer; laurel, virburnum and alder; wild birds and trout. However, the beauty of the place is not permanent – an evil, invisible malady spreads across the land. Birds die, plants wilt and nature grows silent. The suggestion is that the land has been cursed; if this were a different story perhaps the farmers would have prayed, offered sacrifices to the gods or asked their ancestors for help. Instead, Carson shifts the blame away from transcendental forces and back to the materialist domain of man. “No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life on this stricken world.” Carson concludes, “The people had done it to themselves.” <18> Some literary critics have argued that the reason “Silent Spring” resonated with the larger public, sparking a movement of everyday people is largely due to this opening fable. They explain that Carson’s story takes Cold War era fears of radioactivity (an invisible, odorless killer) and redirect them into a new fear over environmental pollution that is, likewise, an invisible, odorless killer. This is a compelling interpretation that explains the rhetorical power of Carson’s story but it misses the larger point. Namely, that at its origin, environmentalism was grounded in a mythological story about a cursed land. Faced with a choice over whether to continue in this fantastical, narrative vein or enter the domain of scientific facts, environmentalism tried the latter. Environmentalism has thus become a scientific expedition largely regulated by Western scientists who tell us how many ppb of certain pollutants will be toxic and how many degrees hotter our earth can be before we are doomed. But here we see again the linear temporal model cropping up again which may explain the inability, according to James Lovelock, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to predict the rising temperatures we have experienced. In light of the failures of the exclusively scientific approach, it is worth considering another option. <19> What if Carson had written about how the disappearance of birds was accompanied by the appearance of flickering screens in every home? What if she had drawn a connection between the lack of biodiversity and the dearth of infodiversity? Or the decrease in plant life and the increase in advertised life? To do so would necessitate a new worldview: a blue worldview that acknowledges the interconnection between mental pollution and environmental degradation, spiritual desecration and real-world extinctions. <20> Keeping one foot within the domain of imagination, environmentalism could speak not only of the disappearance of the wild birds due to physical pollutants but also their disappearance due to mental pollutants. We could wonder at the connection between a culture’s inability to name more than a handful of plants, and the lack of biodiversity in the surrounding nature. And instead of assuming that the lack of biodiversity in external reality caused our poor recognition skills, we would entertain the opposite possibility: that the fewer plants we recognize, the fewer plants will manifest. <21> Blue activism begins with the realization that internal reality is connected to external reality and then wonders at the relation between pollution of internal reality and the desecration of external reality. The primary pollutant of our mental environment is corporate communication. It is no longer controversial to claim that advertisers stimulate false desires. Any parent knows that after their child watches the Saturday morning cartoons they will suddenly "need" new toys, new treats, new junk. But the effects of advertising go beyond, what the marketers call, “demand generation”. Advertising obliterates autopoesis, self-creation. It is an info-toxin that damages our imagination and our world picture, essential elements of our mental environment. Activists must work on the assumption that there is a connection between the level of pollution in our minds and the prevalence of pollution in our world. At the most basic level, this is because when our minds are polluted, and our imaginations stunted, we are unable to think of a different way of doing things. At a more complex level, it is because our mental environment dictates, to a certain extent, whether certain beings manifest in our physical environment. Naming calls beings into existence and when all the words we know are corporate-speak, the only beings that will manifesto are corporate- owned. <22> To understand how the pollution of the mental environment can impact the manifestation of beings, consider the story of the Passenger Pigeon. In 1810 one of the great American ornithologists, Alexander Wilson, observed a flock of Passenger Pigeons so plentiful that it blacked out the sun for three days. On another occasion he documented a flock estimated to be two hundred and forty miles long and a mile wide and comprised of over a billion -- 1,000,000,000 -- birds. A century later, the last passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914\. How do we explain this alarming extinction of the Passenger Pigeon? <23> If we take a materialist activist position, then we will argue that their sudden demise is due to a combination of forces, all of which are located outside the psyche: overhunting combined with unenforced laws against killing the birds in their nesting places was exacerbated by the telegraph which was used to track the birds over hundreds of miles. The species death of the passenger pigeon is thus interpreted as a tragedy of specific technologies: guns, nets, laws and communication systems. Of course, this account is not wrong; it would be mistaken to argue that these technologies did not play a major factor in their extinction. <24> But physical environmentalism boils down to conservationism. It is allopathic, only able to treat the symptom, the disappearance of the birds, without considering the root cause. By focusing our attention exclusively on material forces, we are confined to certain activist tactics: a spectrum from reformist gestures of calling for greater enforcement of environmental protection laws, courageous tree sits and militant ELF arsons. And while these actions are commendable, and with open acknowledgment that a diversity of tactics is necessary, the focus on a secular materialist politics is limiting our success. Under this model, Ted Turner is considered a philanthropic hero because he is the nation’s largest landowner and maintains the largest privately owned bison herd. What we do not need is a rich patron of endangered species, but instead a world without endangered species. That requires more than money, it necessitates a paradigm shift. <25> The unexplainable extinction of the passenger pigeon is a symptom of the state of our mental environment. Species facing extinction can only be saved if we take their disappearance as a symptom and address the root cause of their disappearance. Because of an over-reliance on a secular, materialist conception of politics, scientists dictate the aims of activists. The irony is that our exclusive concern over the physical environment renders us unable to save it. <26> The curious interplay between our imagination and external reality gives credence to the argument that the struggles over the mental environment are the future of activism. The future of activism begins with the realization that only with a clear mind, a clean mental environment, do we approach the possibility of a clean physical environment. <27> Dispel immediately the notion that our mental environment is unique to each individual. Just as we share our natural environment, we also share our mental environment, which is crafted through the culture we consume – the television shows we watch, the websites we frequent and the symbols and concepts that comprise our thoughts. Thus, the mental environment is not something entirely within us but is instead something that is outside of our complete control and shared collectively. <28> Activism of the mental environmentalism is not a politics of solipsism, or an attempt to dodge the imperative of direct action. Instead, developing a politics of anti-consumerism and anti-materialism, places the role of imagination back into the forefront. Denying corporations the right to dominate our mental environment is the most effective long-term strategy of insurrection in the twenty- first century because it directly influences the manifestation of our natural environment. By targeting the mental polluters, vandalizing billboards and blacking out advertisements, we do more than clean up urban blight -- we clear a creative space for a revolutionary moment. — Micah White, PhD This essay was originally published in _[Reconstruction](http://reconstruction.eserver.org/Issues/103/White%5F01.shtml)_in 2010, a year later many of these ideas were put to the test by [#OCCUPYWALLSTREET](/occupywallstreet) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /on-the-masters-tools-full-version Source: https://micahmwhite.com/on-the-masters-tools-full-version [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # ON THE MASTER'S TOOLS - FULL VERSION # The Master's Tools: The Wisdom of Audre Lorde **In the schoolyard fight that is philosophy, there are a few intellectual body-slams that will finish any tussle.** Unlike in Plato’s time, one need not pay a sophist to learn the rhetorical flourishes and elegant phrases that can take any opponent down a notch and then force them into retreat. Instead we all use shutdown maneuvers to end any discussion that makes us uncomfortable. It is no wonder then that in this age of nihilistic consumerist cynicism the one discussion we need to have – how to actually rework society along anticapitalist lines – is never allowed to take place. Some smart aleck invariably drops the Michel Foucault one-liner that condemns all programmatic thinking: “To imagine another system is to extend our participation in the present system.” No one bothers to understand what Foucault might have meant and whether it applies to the current historical moment, it seems to be enough to take his words literally and reject all attempts at imagining the future. But there are other retorts that far exceed the explosive force of Foucault’s statement. **Take, for example, the saying that I consider to be the atomic bomb of discussion enders: Audre Lorde’s well-known declaration that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”** Whereas the danger of Foucault's statement is that it can be categorically applied to end any discussion that imagines another way of organizing society, the terrifying force of Lorde’s putdown comes from the fact that it can be applied to absolutely everything from language, to violence, to art. Furthermore, her statement has such an uncanny intuitive force that it is often leveraged without the speaker even being aware of his allusion. It is, in a sense, the ultimate meme of cynical inaction: if the master’s tools cannot be appropriated then, in an age where our capitalist masters claim ownership over everything, only resignation is possible. Every time someone proposes that we take the marketplace back from the megacorps, relocalize capitalism or end the cancer of unrestrained growth there is a chorus of naysayers: “But you can’t use capitalism/money/advertising to dismantle consumerism/globalization/mental pollution!” But before we allow ourselves to be derailed from hope for a self-funded global anticapitalist movement strong enough to take its followers out of the consumer rat race,**let’s pause a moment and consider what Audre Lorde might have actually meant.** If we go back 25 years to the first utterance of Lorde’s categorical imperative, we will find that she did not intend to develop a reactionary weapon against revolutionary experimentation. It was actually quite the opposite. Speaking of her experiences as a black lesbian feminist, she derided the then-burgeoning feminist academia for its heterosexual white bias. She wrote of the need to embrace difference – not to “merely tolerate” people who are different, but to embrace difference because it provides a “fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.” Her concern was that feminist academia had coalesced around a false consensus that left out the voices of those whose difference was essential to the project of overturning patriarchy. In other words, she attempted to draft an ethical principle that would overthrow the status quo: We cannot disrupt our oppression using the logic that justifies our oppression. Lorde asked, “What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy?” And she responded, “It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable.” **Let's reclaim our stolen tools.** One of the problems with those who misread Audre Lorde is that they assume everything that is good or powerful or potentially useful constitutes “the master’s tools.” Thus the most common use of Lorde’s exhortation is to attack those who would use the English language to undermine Western society. But if we learn anything from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s exceptional _A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia_ it should be that the dominant powers appropriated from us first. Take the example of warfare, which most people would consider an example of the master’s tools. Not so, argue Deleuze and Guattari. Based on anthropological, archeological and philosophical evidence, they hold that warfare was originally developed by nomadic anti-State forces and was only later appropriated and turned against its developers. A similar situation has occurred today: the creative, local and artistic forces of culture have been forced into subservience by a global megacapitalism, which holds all the purse strings. Just because we are forced to sell our creativity does not mean that it constitutes the master’s tools. If that were the case, capitalism wouldn’t need to constantly “cool-hunt,” and turn what is authentic and genuine into trends for consumption. It is a tragically ironic that a saying originally intended to be a revolutionary tool has come to play a reactionary shutdown role. But if we give Audre Lorde back her voice, we will find that she does not wish us to cower in fear of the master. Instead, she wanted us to stand up, to break the false consensus that limits our options and to act boldly. **Thus Audre Lorde wrote, “… survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”** _— Micah White is the co-creator of Occupy Wall Street and the author of_ [**The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution**](http://endofprotest.com/playbook-for-revolution-micah-white)_._ [Back to Home](/) --- ## /big-ideas-in-activism Source: https://micahmwhite.com/big-ideas-in-activism [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # BIG IDEAS IN ACTIVISM ## **Protests are everywhere. The world is rising up. So can humanity** It’s happening again: Revolutionary fever is infecting the social body. The people of Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, Iran, Iraq and beyond are mobbing the streets in massive numbers. These movements are achieving a level of militancy not seen in a decade. Spectacular street violence has toppled Bolivia’s former president, Evo Morales, while elsewhere governments hang on, deploying riot police in Iraq, closing the border in Colombia, disabling the internet in Iran. The frenzy of protest appears contagious. Elites and activists in stable countries are rightly wondering if the virus might infect their neighbours, too. At first glance, today’s unrest is remarkably reminiscent of the events of 2010 and 2011, when the Arab Spring initiated a wave of global protest culminating in Occupy encampments in 82 countries. History, however, never repeats itself in exactly the same way and it would be naive to assume that this new wave of protest will play out like the one before it, which ended with the paramilitary eviction of Occupy’s encampments and a deeper entrenchment of autocracy in the Arab world. Activists learned a tremendous amount from successes and failures of the previous cycle of protest movements. As did governments. So, what should we expect in the months ahead? Will the protests morph into something bigger or will police countertactics – for example, an escalation of force leading to live ammunition – prevail? Will activists get it right this time? And what would success for the people in the streets look like, and mean, for the rest of society? The only thing that is certain in these moments of contagious social protest is that no one knows with certainty what will happen next. When the status quo is faced with vehement demands for change, many previously dormant (or restrained) forces actively vie to influence the course of events. The outcome is always unpredictable. We can, however, increase our odds of correctly anticipating how the protests will unfold by being attuned to the ways in which society has changed, and what activists have learned, in nearly a decade since the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. I’ve been keenly following the various protests around the globe for several weeks. My interest was initially piqued in July by footage of activists in Hong Kong storming the government headquarters using a sophisticated protest tactic that combined hand gestures with a human chain to rapidly deliver supplies from a depot to activists at the front lines. The ingenuity of the tactic, which required a high level of crowd participation, suggested we were entering a new era of protest. Since then, monitoring the unrest spread to other countries, I’ve thought a lot about what’s shifted since the start of the decade, when I, along with my collaborator at Adbusters, publisher Kalle Lasn, called for Occupy Wall Street, the spark that launched the Occupy movement. Let’s focus on just three of the shifts that have the greatest bearing on what will come from the contemporary wave of protest: the evolution of social movements, the changing nature of power and the shifting role of activism in society. The rise and fall of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and subsequent social protests ranging from Idle No More to Black Lives Matter and March for Our Lives has had a tremendous effect on our understanding of social movements as a social phenomena. In the years leading up to 2011, social movements were typically understood to be the manifestation of popular discontent around a specific political issue. In a sense, protesters were taken at their word: If the masses were in the streets protesting against pre-emptive war on Iraq in 2003, for example, it was accepted that the root cause of unrest was an unpopular war. Governments had a simple choice of complying with, or disobeying, the explicit demands of the movement. Advances in riot control technologies, from sound canons to armoured vehicles, meant that governments less often complied. This naive understanding of movements proved to be untenable when faced with the first wave of social-media-driven protests, such as Occupy Wall Street, that were oriented around abstract concepts – the influence of money on democracy – or, Brazil in 2013, where massive marches against a public-transport fare hike were obviously about so much more than that. Later, we saw it with Brexit, where information was so distorted that people protested in favour of policies that resulted in changes some now oppose. Obviously, these movements were motivated by something deeper. The old joke that activists don’t really know what they are protesting against turned out to be true because the reasons given were never the real reason everyday people felt drawn to unite with the collective in the square. There is ample historical evidence that protests have been happening since the dawn of civilization. The earliest record of unrest leading to the overthrow of a government can be found in the Ipuwer Papyrus from ancient Egypt, roughly 3,000 years ago. And waves of protests have been happening steadily since – and seemingly with increasing frequency since the end of the Second World War. The new understanding of protest movements is that they are a complex social phenomenon whose cause remains mysterious, not the simple manifestation of a political demand. They are a recurring phenomenon that is intrinsically human. And yet, mass protests cannot be conjured at will. Waves of protest such as we’re seeing today come as a surprise both to their instigators and the rest of society because the emergence of a movement requires a favourable historical moment, such as high food prices or a sharp economic downturn. The eternal recurrence of mass protest serves a useful social function: Protests initiate a period in which old truths are challenged and great social transformations can occur. Without unrest our societies would not progress. Protests play a social evolutionary role and the grievance that unexpectedly triggers unrest is the symptom, not the cause, of why people join social movements. China’s insistence that the Hong Kong protests are actually caused by unaffordable housing, and not the five demands of the movement – which are, “full withdrawal of the extradition bill, an independent commission of inquiry into alleged police brutality, retracting the classification of protesters as ‘rioters', amnesty for arrested protesters \[and\] dual universal suffrage, meaning for both the Legislative Council and the Chief Executive” – demonstrates this evolution in the understanding of social movements by governments and gestures toward the future of how social protests will be dealt with in the future. By using the momentum of the Hong Kong protests – which, let’s remember, started as a protest against the extradition bill – to instead advocate for aggressively solving the housing crisis by seizing idle land from developers, China is cannily harnessing the unique capacity of protest to usher in social changes. Likewise, from an activist perspective, if periods of unrest are a recurring, inevitable and unpredictable social phenomena, then the challenge is not how to create social movements – or which injustices to organize around – but rather what to do when those moments arise. In other words, the question for both activists and elites is now the same: How can we use the momentum of social protest to achieve grand social transformations that would have otherwise been impossible? The evolving understanding of social movements coincides with a dramatic shift in the nature of power. In today’s increasingly fragmented world it is no longer sufficient to be the most materially, or militarily, powerful. It is now necessary to augment one’s power by demonstrating the capacity to rally the citizenry, a quintessentially activist task. The United States National Intelligence Council anticipated this paradigm shift in power in its most recent Global Trends Report (2017): “The most powerful actors of the future will be states, groups, and individuals who \[…\] demonstrate ‘power in outcome’ \[…\] by mobilizing large-scale constituencies of support, using information to persuade or manipulate societies and states to their causes.” The awareness that the powerful need to mobilize common people in order to achieve their strategic objectives has had the effect of altering the dynamic between activists and elites, movements and states. The art of social-movement creation, once the exclusive domain of activists, is being weaponized. It is commonplace now to see governments experiment with deploying social protest to influence geopolitics. The United States accuses Russia of creating fake activist groups in a bid to influence the 2016 election and China accuses the United States of doing the same in Hong Kong. Not every protest is an authentic, grassroots expression of discontent. The upside for activism is that street protest is no longer perceived as an unequivocally negative force, a symptom of social disintegration that ought to be quashed, but instead as one of the key sources of power, an unruly and vital phenomenon that ought to be harnessed. Ultimately, power needs protest because many of the problems we face – climate change, in particular – are existential, not political, and are unsolvable without a large-scale global mobilization. Consider, for example, that some scientists believe planting one trillion trees would erase a decade of carbon emissions. Imagine the mobilization that would be necessary to get that done. From this perspective, the insufficiency of global climate agreements alone is clear. Only a collaboration between the creative energy unleashed by mass protest and the resources of sovereign power has any chance of planting a trillion trees, or pulling off any of the other dramatic public works efforts that are necessary to avert climate change induced mass extinction. Activists and elites are thus thrust into an uneasy alliance. Hong Kong protesters have a choice: Collaborate with China on pivoting the movement toward a radical solution to the housing crisis or risk being defeated and getting nothing at all. This is a difficult choice between social and political priorities. After all, Hong Kong is the world’s least affordable housing market and last year, there were protests in the country demanding affordable housing. But collaborating with China would mean giving up on the political demand for autonomy. Activists can’t have what we want but we might get what we need. Governments hit by unrest are presented with a similar dilemma: Use the opportunity of mass protest to accelerate social transformation to solve the underlying cause of unrest, or violently repress the people and suffer a decline in the new form of power. Occupy’s repression under former U.S. president Barack Obama arguably contributed to disillusionment, and the weakening of the progressive establishment, that fuelled Donald Trump’s victory. Mr. Obama failed to understand Occupy’s emergence as a symptom of the millennial generation’s existential anxiety about the future. What we craved was dramatic change, in any direction. The new wave of protest is an opportunity to chart a new course for humanity. Let’s not squander it. _The above article was originally published in_ [_The Globe and Mail_](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-new-wave-of-protest-is-an-opportunity-for-humanity/) --- # Refreshing Activism ### **Activism cannot be taught. Activism must be taught.** We must develop a better way to teach, train and create the kinds of social activists that the world needs. [Learn more](http://activistgraduateschool.vhx.tv/browse) ### **Crypto is transforming protest.** We are in the early stages of activism’s migration to the blockchain. With more and more activists now beginning to explore the potential for tokens and smart contracts to be an effective form of protest, it is useful to take a step back to survey the main approaches being pursued. [Learn more](https://medium.com/swlh/crypto-for-activism-four-models-of-protest-on-the-ethereum-blockchain-61ca5d07ac47?sk=5b2bfb9589c8b991ab524ef200f0e29f&source=friends%5Flink) ### **Elites need activists and activists need elites.** Even if all the activists in the world worked together, we would still need the help of people we previously protested against. At the same time, even if all of the heads of state worked together, they would still need the help of activists in order to succeed. [Learn more](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/i-protested-outside-the-world-economic-forum-meeting-in-2002-here-s-why-i-m-writing-for-them-now/)[![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1572009908294-RCZ0T7127A0EQF6N6CSV/endofprotest-cover.jpeg)](/cultureshop) ### **Activist orthodoxy is harmful to activism.** The difficulties faced by recent social movements in achieving positive change, despite their tremendous speed and overwhelming size, is a sign that activism as a discipline must embark on a period of paradigmatic reevaluation. Breaking with the enforced consensus that our movements are winning even when it looks like we’re losing — that Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, Charlottesville and the countless protests happening worldwide every day are victories despite never achieving their avowed objectives — is not easy. Challenging the activist orthodoxy as an activist is far more difficult than marching in the streets or sharing rebellious tweets. But the risk of staying silent is too great. Activists must act up to save protest from irrelevance. [Learn more](/read#/future-hindsight) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /decade-of-activism Source: https://micahmwhite.com/decade-of-activism [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # AFTER A DECADE OF ACTIVISM, WHAT'S NEXT? # 2010 | 2011 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 # 2010 ## **Clicktivism is ruining leftist activism** ### Reducing activism to online petitions, this breed of marketeering technocrats damage every political movement they touch A battle is raging for the soul of activism. It is a struggle between digital activists, who have adopted the logic of the marketplace, and those organisers who vehemently oppose the marketisation of social change. At stake is the possibility of an emancipatory revolution in our lifetimes. The conflict can be traced back to 1997 when a quirky Berkeley, California-based software company known for its iconic flying toaster screensaver was purchased for $13.8m (£8.8m). The sale financially liberated the founders, a left-leaning husband-and-wife team. He was a computer programmer, she a vice-president of marketing. And a year later they founded an online political organisation known as MoveOn. Novel for its combination of the ideology of marketing with the skills of computer programming, MoveOn is a major centre-leftist pro-Democrat force in the US. It has since been heralded as the model for 21st-century activism. The trouble is that this model of activism uncritically embraces the ideology of marketing. It accepts that the tactics of advertising and market research used to sell toilet paper can also build social movements. This manifests itself in an inordinate faith in the power of metrics to quantify success. Thus, everything digital activists do is meticulously monitored and analysed. The obsession with tracking clicks turns digital activism into clicktivism. Clicktivists utilise sophisticated email marketing software that brags of its "extensive tracking" including "opens, clicks, actions, sign-ups, unsubscribes, bounces and referrals, in total and by source". And clicktivists equate political power with raising these "open-rate" and "click-rate" percentages, which are so dismally low that they are kept secret. The exclusive emphasis on metrics results in a race to the bottom of political engagement. Gone is faith in the power of ideas, or the poetry of deeds, to enact social change. Instead, subject lines are A/B tested and messages vetted for widest appeal. Most tragically of all, to inflate participation rates, these organisations increasingly ask less and less of their members. The end result is the degradation of activism into a series of petition drives that capitalise on current events. Political engagement becomes a matter of clicking a few links. In promoting the illusion that surfing the web can change the world, clicktivism is to activism as McDonalds is to a slow-cooked meal. It may look like food, but the life-giving nutrients are long gone. Exchanging the substance of activism for reformist platitudes that do well in market tests, clicktivists damage every genuine political movement they touch. In expanding their tactics into formerly untrammelled political scenes and niche identities, they unfairly compete with legitimate local organisations who represent an authentic voice of their communities. They are the Wal-Mart of activism: leveraging economies of scale, they colonise emergent political identities and silence underfunded radical voices. Digital activists hide behind gloried stories of viral campaigns and inflated figures of how many millions signed their petition in 24 hours. Masters of branding, their beautiful websites paint a dazzling self-portrait. But, it is largely a marketing deception. While these organisations are staffed by well-meaning individuals who sincerely believe they are doing good, a bit of self-criticism is sorely needed from their leaders. The truth is that as the novelty of online activism wears off, millions of formerly socially engaged individuals who trusted digital organisations are coming away believing in the impotence of all forms of activism. Even leading Bay Area clicktivist organisations are finding it increasingly difficult to motivate their members to any action whatsoever. The insider truth is that the vast majority, between 80% to 90%, of so-called members rarely even open campaign emails. Clicktivists are to blame for alienating a generation of would-be activists with their ineffectual campaigns that resemble marketing. The collapsing distinction between marketing and activism is revealed in the cautionary tale of TckTckTck, a purported climate change organisation with 17 million members. Widely hailed as an innovator of digital activism, TckTckTck is a project of Havas Worldwide, the world's sixth-largest advertising company. A corporation that uses advertising to foment ecologically unsustainable overconsumption, Havas bears significant responsibility for the climate change TckTckTck decries. As the folly of digital activism becomes widely acknowledged, innovators will attempt to recast the same mix of marketing and technology in new forms. They will offer phone-based, alternate reality and augmented reality alternatives. However, any activism that uncritically accepts the marketisation of social change must be rejected. Digital activism is a danger to the left. Its ineffectual marketing campaigns spread political cynicism and draw attention away from genuinely radical movements. Political passivity is the end result of replacing salient political critique with the logic of advertising. Against the progressive technocracy of clicktivism, a new breed of activists will arise. In place of measurements and focus groups will be a return to the very thing that marketers most fear: the passionate, ideological and total critique of consumer society. Resuscitating the emancipatory project the left was once known for, these activists will attack the deadening commercialisation of life. And, uniting a global population against the megacorporations who unduly influence our democracies, they will jettison the consumerist ideology of marketing that has for too long constrained the possibility of social revolution. _Originally published in The Guardian on August 12, 2010:_ # 2011 ## **Why Occupy Wall Street will keep up the fight** ### by Kalle Lasn and Micah White On Tuesday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg evicted the Occupy movement from its spiritual home near Wall Street. Soon afterward, a longtime Occupier sent us his testimony from the streets of New York: “Lost my stuff, including power cord for my laptop, in the raid, something or someone cleared out my bank account, and it’s raining. I could just write a country song. I’ll tell you this: the resolve is still here. People I talk to are a healthy mixture of rage, comedy, resolve, and excitement. Also exhaustion. Maybe the raid was the best thing that could happen? Winning at last, winning at last, thank God Almighty, we are winning at last.” For two heady months, the amorphous encampment in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park had been the symbolic heart of Occupy Wall Street, the birthplace of the greatest social-justice movement to emerge in the United States since the civil rights era. This primal cry for democracy sprang from young people who could no longer ignore the angst in their gut — the premonition that their future does not compute, that their entire lives will be lived in the apocalyptic shadow of climate-change tipping points, species die-offs, a deadening commercialized culture, a political system perverted by money, precarious employment, a struggle to pay off crippling student loans, and no chance of ever owning a home or living in comfort like their parents. Glimpsing this black hole of ecological, political, financial and spiritual crisis, the youth and the millions of Americans who joined them instinctively knew that unless they stood up and fought nonviolently for a different kind of future, they would have no future at all. The Occupy Wall Street meme was launched by a poster in the 97th issue of our international ad-free magazine, Adbusters, the hash tag #OCCUPYWALLSTREET and a “tactical briefing” that we sent to our 90,000-strong “culture jammer” global network of activists, artists and rabble-rousers in mid-July. The movement’s true origins, however, go back to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. That was when the world witnessed how intransigent regimes can be toppled by leaderless democratic crowds, brought together by social media, that stand firm and courageously refuse to go home until their demands for change are met. Our shared epiphany was that America, too, needs its Tahrir Square moment and its own kind of regime change. Perhaps not the hard regime change of Tunisia and Egypt, but certainly a soft one. Only a soft regime change can end the pervasive corruption at the heart of our political system, in which corporate money wins elections, drafts laws and trumps citizen desires. Only the plural voices of everyday Americans, the 99 percent, have the capacity to wake up the 1 percent to their greedy, self-serving ways, and to dismantle the global casino in which $1.3 trillion worth of derivatives, credit default swaps and other financial instruments slosh around every day without a hint of concern or regard for the millions of lives that such speculation can destroy. Occupy was born because we the people feel that our country and our economy are moving precipitously in the wrong direction; that America has evolved into a kind of corporate oligarchic state, a “corporatocracy”; and yes, that what is needed is a regime change — a Tahrir moment of truth in America. For several weeks Occupy Wall Street had a rare magic going for it. We held the high ground, stuck doggedly to our Gandhian, nonviolent ways and blindsided the cynical world with our optimism, our camaraderie and our determination to forge a way forward. It was a passionate, hopeful, democratic upsurge. Anyone who walked into Zuccotti Park was immediately captivated by the idealism of youth. Spectators of our direct-democracy process were drawn in and became politically engaged participants in our general assemblies. With nothing more than a commitment to consensus-based transparency, twinkling fingers that signal assent, “mike checks” that amplify our voices, an ethos of mutual respect and hope for the future, Occupy sparked a global democracy moment. By mid-October, there were occupations happening in 1,000 cities around the world. Hundreds of thousands of us, mostly young people, were suddenly vibrantly alive, politically engaged and living without dead time in a way that the world had not seen since 1968\. That was the year that an insurrection in Paris’s Latin Quarter suddenly exploded in cities and campuses around the world. The viral speed of that movement was uncannily similar to the way that general assemblies ricocheted around the Earth from Zuccotti Park. But whereas in 1968 we lost the thread and the movement fizzled out, this time the horizontal, open-source, peer-to-peer ways of the Internet-savvy generation, living in a much more dangerous era of multiple synergetic crises, just might be able to succeed. Why didn’t Bloomberg come down to talk to us? Or Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein? Why didn’t President Obama acknowledge the protesters — largely the people who elected him — and mingle in the open-air town halls? What a grand gesture that would have been. How come our political leaders are so isolated, our discourse so rigid? Why can’t the American power elite engage with the nation’s young? Instead, they stayed aloof, ignored us and wished us away. We wanted a Tahrir moment, an American Spring, a new vision of the future, and they attacked us in Zuccotti Park in the dead of the night. Bloomberg’s raid was carried out with military precision. The surprise attack began at 1 a.m. with a media blackout. The encampment was surrounded by riot police, credentialed mainstream journalists who tried to enter were pushed back or arrested, and the airspace was closed to news helicopters. What happened next was a blur of tear gas; a bulldozer; confiscation or destruction of everything in the park, including 5,000 books; upward of 150 arrests; and the deployment of a Long Range Acoustic Device, the infamous “sound cannon” best known for its military use in Iraq. When the youth in Tunisia rose up demanding change, Ben Ali scoffed. When they occupied Tahrir Square, Mubarak resorted to paternalism and mob violence. In Syria, Assad’s troops fire daily into the crowds. This kind of military mind-set and violent response to nonviolent protesters makes no sense. It did not work in the Middle East, and it’s not going to work in America, either. This is the bottom line. . . you cannot attack your young and get away with it. Bloomberg’s shock-troop assault has stiffened our resolve and ushered in a new phase of our movement. The people’s assemblies will continue with or without winter encampments. What will be new is the marked escalation of surprise, playful, precision disruptions — rush-hour flash mobs, bank occupations, “occupy squads” and edgy theatrics. And we will see clearly articulated demands emerging, among them a “Robin Hood tax” on all financial transactions and currency trades; a ban on high-frequency “flash” trading; the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act to again separate investment banking from commercial banking; a constitutional amendment to revoke corporate personhood and overrule Citizens United ; a move toward a “true cost” market regime in which the price of every product reflects the ecological cost of its production, distribution and use; and with a bit of luck, perhaps even the birth of a new, left-right hybrid political party that moves America beyond the Coke vs. Pepsi choices of the past. In this visceral, canny, militantly nonviolent phase of our march to real democracy, we will “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” We will regroup, lick our wounds, brainstorm and network all winter. We will build momentum for a full-spectrum counterattack when the crocuses bloom next spring. _Originally published in The Washington Post on November 11, 2011:_ # 2013 ## **Blue/Green/Black** We are players in the game of Revolution: the long cat-and-mouse game between Power and The People that has been raging since our side first demanded democracy in antiquity. Over the many centuries of civilization since, sometimes our progress has been slow and sometimes great leaps have been made in a week when just the right spark comes along... but through it all the guiding dream that unites us in a great historical chain has been the same: a people's democracy constituted by liberty, equality, and community. The world is a dark place now. Maybe we are in the Iron Age or the Kali Yuga or just the last gasp of a dying species. But I saw something magical emerge during our insurrectionary storms of 2011-2012 that gives us reason to keep living and fighting until the bitter end. I saw that you and I are now closer than ever - closer than any previous generation of humanity has ever been - to achieving the dream of people's democracy. And not just in my country or your country but in every country. A people's democracy on a global scale is within reach... if only we have the courage. I say courage because all too often it seems that The People shies away from its historical destiny. We get scared as a movement both when we fail and when we succeed. We look back on our past victories (The French Revolution, The Defeat of Fascism, May '68, Occupy Wall Street, etc) and instead of seeing an inspiring proof that we can do it again and better, we accept cynicism and see only our excesses or the ways we failed to live up to our Ideal. We don't see how close we've come; we only see how far we still have to go. And looking back on history, it seems to me that most of the time The People have failed to take Power only because we let the status quo rule out of deference to their elite and fear of their police. Revolutionary politics progresses through spurts and experiments... the lessons of failed revolutions are internalized by one generation and new tactics are tried out decades later by the next... it is a slow game but every so often breakthroughs happen. In the middle of the chaotic whirlwind that was Occupy, those of us participating in egging on the storm saw a sublime possibility emerge: mirage-like on the horizon a tantalizing political vision appeared that used peer-to-peer technologies to connect the 99%’s revolutions from Egypt to China and America to Spain into a single social organism. If only for a brief moment, the Internet gave us the ability to think, learn and act together at the same time everywhere at once. Hashtags became wormholes that collapsed space and time because it didn't matter if a jammer was in Madrid or Oakland, they were playing into the same Revolutionary Game. A united front became possible the moment we started fighting for a shared platform that was struggling to articulate itself... That project was never completed. Occupy's intensity was not sustained long enough to achieve the next step: acting together at the same moment to target the same enemy everywhere-at-once... to take down a global enemy of The People like Goldman Sachs, who has 72 offices worldwide, and send a chill down the spine of every other megacorp in the world. Now the next step in The People's long march to democracy is clear... and there is just enough time to pull it off. Our greatest task as a species is to find words in our language for and fight in our own way for this new universalist-leaderless politics – a hybrid blue-green-black politics that mobilizes The People in Cairo as well as it does in Beijing and New York City toward liberty, equality, and community. **Blue** \- the color of Intellect and Imagination - stands for mental environmentalism and our party's commitment to the vision of internet democracy championed by Anonymous, WikiLeaks and the Pirate parties of Europe. Blue is about the spiritual insurrection: the revolution in our mind and inner-reality. It is our quest to steward the mental environment by balancing the rational (Intellect) with the irrational (Imagination) in politics and life and culture. A distinctly Blue psycho-politics gels a range of Left and Right organizations and concerns into a fighting force. Equally proponents of banning advertising in schools, protecting open source software, circumventing censorship, ensuring transparency of government, upholding public anonymity, liberating and de-commercializating information... the umbrella concern is with restoring our cultural and psychological health. Blue warriors vow to change the way information flows and to shake up the production of meaning in our society. **Green** \- the hue of Earth and Immortality - stands for the four-decade-strong resistance movement against environmental degradation which we must win for a sane, sustainable future. Green is our collective project to find meaning in an eternal political act... our will to overcome mortal finitude with a multi-generational struggle to save the Earth, and our children's children. Green politics is as much a response to death and life (and the terror of living through the ecological endtimes) as it is a rejection of authoritarian-consumerism and ecological-fascism. Philosophers Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek have said that ecology is the opium of the masses because governments can use the environmental crisis as an emergency excuse for totalitarian rule. And it is well-documented that Australia and America’s militaries are already training for an environmental apocalypse while others like Pentti Linkola and James Lovelock are opening calling for authoritarian environmentalism. We must tread a course between the need to implement some kind of global egalitarian environmental regulation – whether it be carbon rationing, emission limits, or maverick initiatives funded by a Robin Hood Tax – and the danger of force and impatience. Green requires that we think and act globally... a very dangerous thing. **Black** \- the tenor of Struggle and Justice - stands for our party's promise to abolish corporate personhood and institute a new post-capitalist global world order in which corporations bow to the will of the people. Black is the color of Occupy and anarchism: nonviolence, horizontalism and innovation... the qualities that make our movement great. Black is our militant-edge but it is also our belief that no modern revolution will be successful without a steadfast promise to virtue - especially nonviolence and charity - in pursuing Justice. Guided by the light of Fidelity and Patience, Black stands for our commitment to humility, goodness and wisdom in pursuing our long-term goals. Fidelity is about never giving up hope. And it is also about resisting the temptations and distractions that are thrown in our path to lead us astray. It may take years or decades or centuries to finally realize the #BLUEGREENBLACK vision... We do not know what the future holds. To enter a fight not knowing if you will see the final victory takes courage. But like the North Star that guides lost travelers, #BLUEGREENBLACK is a vision that gives our long march a direction. So wherever you are, look up and look around, and join the fight for people's democracy. _Originally published in Strike! magazine in Spring 2013:_[ _https://www.strike.coop/magazine/issue-2_](https://www.strike.coop/magazine/issue-2) # 2015 ## **Social movements will put an end to war as we know it** Could social movements replace conventional warfare? The idea might sound far-fetched. But President Obama’s steadfast refusal to send occupation forces to fight the Islamic State in Syria may be evidence that the old methods of regime change—boots on the ground—are being rendered obsolete. Going forward, governments will increasingly rely on catalyzing contagious social protests to topple terrorist states and influence autocratic regimes. Russian military theorists were the first to openly discuss this shift in the art of war—and to accuse America of pioneering techniques of fomenting viral protests abroad. Whether or not their accusations hold water, social movement warfare may well be the wave of the future. Last year, defense ministers and high-ranking military personnel from several less-than-democratic societies, including Belarus, Iran, Egypt, Myanmar, Vietnam, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and China, gathered in an opulent Stalinist-era hotel in Moscow to discuss a grave threat to their governments. The occasion was the third annual Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS), an event hosted by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Unlike previous years, not a single military officer or official representative from a NATO member country participated in the two-day event. The reason for the conspicuous absence of NATO representatives became apparent during the opening speech by Russia’s minister of defense, army general S. K. Shoygu. He announced that the focus of the gathering would be “on the problems of how so-called ‘color revolutions’ … affect global security.” Pointing to the social protests that rocked the world from 2011 to 2014, beginning with the Arab Spring and continuing through Ukraine’s Euromaidan Revolution and Hong Kong’s Occupy Central, Shoygu argued that Western powers are deploying social movements as a technique devised “according to the rules of the art of war” for overthrowing unfriendly governments. Shoygu’s allegations are a prescient vision of the future. Similar accusations of engineering protests have been made in the past against, and variously denied by, non-governmental organizations such as George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Gene Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institute and the Serbia-based Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS). What is different today is the implication that state militaries could shift toward creating, training and deploying civilian activists in a bid to create disruptive movements. A turn toward social movement warfare could be a strategic response to the impracticality of direct confrontation, or conventional war, against great militaries and nuclear-armed states. As one scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies explains, the Russian military now considers social movements to be “a new US and European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties.” The idea that seemingly disparate social movements involving millions of people around the world could be manufactured—or “staged and managed,” as one Russian general puts it—to influence geopolitics will probably dismay many movement participants. Most protestors experience uprisings as organic phenomena. However, rather than rush to ignore or refute the accusations levied by Russia’s Ministry of Defense, activists would be wise to understand the implications of casting social movements as a new form of warfare, and the impact this shift will have on the next generation of protests. At the very least, we might assume that, as philosopher Jacques Ellul once proposed, “The accusation … clearly reveals the intention of the accuser.” In other words, Russia’s accusation might reveal its own intention to manufacture social movements in America and beyond. If true, this would explain the hyperbolic coverage that Russia Today, a government-funded station, lavished on Occupy Wall Street. It went so far as to fly prominent Occupiers from New York City to London for a televised interview with Julian Assange. So is this good or bad for social justice? Placing social movements within the context of military science contains two dangers—and an opportunity—for activists worldwide. The first danger is that authoritarian societies will use the excuse that protests are a form of war to justify cracking down on domestic dissent with military force. However, democratic and repressive regimes alike are already responding to protests as if they are a form of social movement warfare. Witness, for example, the conspicuous deployment of a Long Range Acoustic Device, the notorious sound cannon often used in war zones, during the eviction of Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park in 2011 and during the protests in Ferguson in 2014\. Activists who understand, rather than deny, this change in how their protests are being interpreted by authorities will be better equipped to develop effective counterstrategies. The second danger is that repressive societies may try to create social movements in a bid to negatively influence democratic societies. Every new protest invention is ultimately a double-edged sword. Jihadists use hashtags to spread extremism. Anti-immigrant movements in Germany co-opt the “We are the people” slogan that toppled the Berlin Wall to push a negative agenda. The leaderless organizing style of Black Lives Matter might one day too be appropriated by reactionary forces. It is worrisome to consider how repressive authorities could use nonviolent popular protest tactics. But even this is preferable to destructive conventional warfare that relies on brute force. Fortunately, social movement warfare also offers reason for genuine optimism. Any government that tries to spark social movements abroad while suppressing protests at home is in for a nasty surprise. In our hyper-connected world, revolutionary events are akin to a tsunami that crashes against every shore. Movements have a tendency to spiral outside the control of their creators, spreading across all borders and swerving in democratic directions where participants dictate the outcome. Ultimately, the ascendancy of social movements, and their coming adoption by militaries as a method of social change, gives me hope that this is the end of war as we know it. And it could be the beginning of a planetary uprising for democracy that the people have been dreaming of. A revolution anywhere brings us one step closer to a revolution everywhere. So any repressive governments that choose to create social movements abroad are digging their own graves. _Originally published in Quartz on December 22, 2015:_ --- # 2016 ## **The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution** **You are needed** You may long for the protest to end all protests, a final revolution that eradicates injustice and transforms society. You dream of a better world in which protest is no longer necessary. You wish to make protest effective so that the ideals you hold become manifest. For you the end of protest is a consummation of activism, the completion of your work and objective of your struggle. You understand that the end of protest is in itself revolution. This book will offer you tools for hastening social transformation. Recognizing that protest is one tool among many for creating social change, grab what works and discard the rest. And if you are threatened by revolution, fearing or disdaining movements like Occupy, and you’ve come to this book from a desire to end protest—to foreclose dissent—know that this book is for you, too. Uprisings always need people who convert to the cause from positions of power: police who switch sides, insiders who become whistleblowers, and politicians who heed the people’s demands. You may oppose us today but you will join us tomorrow. Our movement is even stronger when it includes the converted, who understand the errors of the old world because they embodied them. You may be skeptical of those who take to the streets, considering them reckless. They seem to have nothing to lose, and you have worked so hard to achieve your position, wealth and prestige. You may not sympathize with their anger. You may believe that good society ought to have few disruptions. True, many aspects of upheaval are unpleasant. Revolutions are sometimes violent and always have unintended consequences. “In a society such as ours,” writes Herbert Marcuse, a leading twentieth-century social theorist and philosopher, “in which pacification has been achieved up to a certain point, it appears crazy at first to want revolution. For we have whatever we want.” He continues with a prescription: “\[T\]he aim here is to transform the will itself, so that people no longer want what they now want.”3 You desire the end of protest, but the fulfilment of your desire would be disastrous for you. The lack of protest is perilous for society. Protest is a symptom of the need for social change, and the people in the streets are harbingers of greater democracy. The absence of effective protest is a warning sign of impending civil strife. Whether you support or suppress protesters, history shows that dissent is necessary for social growth and collective renewal. Revolution grants us the social freedom essential for humans to break old habits and reach their true collective potential. _Excerpted from_ [_The End of Protest_](http://smarturl.it/endofprotest) _by Micah White published by Knopf Canada on March 15, 2016: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/250299/the-end-of-protest-by-micah-white/_ --- # 2017 ## **Without a path from protest to power, the Women's March will end up like Occupy** ### Social activists have succumbed to one of the most enduring myths of contemporary American protest. It’s time to consider what happens the day after Shortly after Donald Trump’s shock election victory, I received an urgent call from one of the co-creators of the Women’s March on Washington. She was concerned at a moment you might expect her to be ecstatic. Hundreds of thousands of women in 17 countries had already signed on in solidarity, and the numbers kept growing. Yet despite the tremendous momentum, she confessed a nagging skepticism about the effectiveness of the protest. “I’m not that interested in the march itself but in what comes afterwards,” Fontaine Pearson confided to me. I admire her candor because I know it takes courage to voice such a concern. It is her difficult question – what comes the day after? – that every supporter of the Women’s March should be earnestly figuring out today. Without a clear path from march to power, the protest is destined to be an ineffective feelgood spectacle adorned with pink pussy hats. It is exciting when a protest meme leaps from social networks to the streets, capturing the imagination of millions, prompting this very website to proclaim that the forthcoming protest could be among the biggest in American history and Vogue to commission glitzy photos of the core organizers dressed up like Eileen Fisher models. But it is all too easy to succumb to the false hope that a big splash is a transformative tsunami. Don’t be fooled. It is not. I’ve been there, as the co-creator of a raucous pro-democracy meme that inspired months of Occupy protests in 82 countries. And I can tell you that raising awareness and getting media attention is never enough. Frankly, neither brings the people closer to sovereign power. For all those who want the Women’s March to be the start of an enduring revolutionary movement, here is my advice on how to increase the odds. ### Know your history: let’s go back to 1789 On 5 October 1789, during the earliest days of what would become the French Revolution, a mob of women materialized on the streets of Paris. Some historians say it was spontaneous, others that it was planned. Regardless, we know that the furious women, desperately hungry from bread shortages in the city, descended on the Hôtel de Ville, the seat of municipal government, and demanded to speak to the mayor. The national guard refused them entry but also refused to fire on them and so the women burst through the police line, ransacked city hall and raided the armory. Now armed with swords and cannons, the crowd of protesters grew to more than 7,000 female insurrectionaries. Suddenly a far more revolutionary goal was adopted: a Women’s March on Versailles, where King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette where hosting a series of lavish banquets for royalist soldiers. It the first protest march of women in modern history, and it was also the most effective. When the revolutionary women arrived at Versailles, they broke into the palace, murdered two guardsmen and attempted to enter the queen’s bedchamber before ultimately forcing King Louis XVI and his entourage to march with the crowd – now 60,000 strong – back to Paris. The Women’s March on Versailles was a literal and forceful assertion of the people’s sovereignty over the king. It was a defining moment in the revolutionary history of democracy. As the historian William Doyle explains: “Louis XVI never returned to Versailles … All open attempts on the king’s part to resist the reform of France now came to an end.” The National Assembly was led to Paris shortly after and legislative decision-making power was eventually fully captured by the people. Democratic revolutionaries executed King Louis XVI by guillotine less than four years later. The day after the women marched on Versailles was the definitive point of no return for the French Revolution. And let’s not forget that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was also initially sparked, as Leon Trotsky recalls in his definitive history, by a defiant women’s protest. The lesson here is that protesting grandmothers, daughters and mothers have the unique power to do what male protesters cannot – such as break through a line of national guard bayonets without being fired upon. And for this reason, women will always play a foundational role in the great revolutions to come, but only when they take matters into their own hands, act unexpectedly and viscerally, and focus their collective energy on the only target that matters: concretely establishing the power of the people over their governments. ### Ignore repeated failures and change tactics The original Women’s March on Versailles involved women using direct action to force the king to listen to the people’s demands. Today’s Women’s March is entirely symbolic. No one would ever dare to call for an insurrectionary march on Trump Tower with the goal of physically dragging the president-elect and his family out of their penthouse. No one says the Women’s March on Washington should ransack the White House or occupy Congress and appoint themselves legislators. Instead, we organize a well-publicized spectacle and hope he will listen from within his palatial accommodations. If you’re showing up at the Women’s March on 21 January in the hopes that the world will be different on 22 January, then you need to think seriously about the goal of marching. As a general rule, before you protest, ask yourself why this is one of your chosen forms of action. Question your tactics, not your motives. In this case, the obvious first question for any activist ought to be: why deploy a communal march in the streets as a form of protest? Sometimes, the people march. Other times we hold general assemblies, tar and feather opponents, occupy pipelines, go on strike, dance in a circle, riot in the streets or pray together. In each case, behind every act of protest is an often unarticulated theory of social change: a story we tell ourselves about why the disobedient behavior we’ve chosen will usher in the change we desire. So why are women marching the day after Donald Trump becomes president? It all comes down to a false theory of how the people can assert sovereign power over their elected president in 2017. Today’s social activists have succumbed to one of the most enduring myths of contemporary American protest: the comforting belief that if you can get enough people into the streets from diverse demographics, largely unified behind a clear message, then our representatives will be forced to heed the crowd’s wishes. If this story has ever been true, and I’m not so sure it has, then it hasn’t been the case since 1963, when 250,000 people marched on Washington for “jobs and freedom” and heard Martin Luther King Jr deliver his I Have a Dream speech. Less than a year later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin” in employment and housing. But let’s be real: there are countless counter-examples of marches on Washington that failed: the 1913 march of women to demand the right to vote, the 1978 march for the Equal Rights Amendment, the 1986 Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, the Million Man March of 1995, the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, the inauguration protests against George W Bush’s second term in 2005 … the list is practically endless. Activists have a tendency to ignore repeated failure in favor of overemphasizing one or two anomalous minor victories. The absolute failure of the 15 February 2003 anti-war protest, the largest synchronized global march in human history, was the last gasp of this tactic. Today’s nominally democratic governments would be more concerned by the absence of our marches, as that might suggest something darker is in the works. The only way to attain sovereignty – the supreme authority over the functioning of our government – is to use social protest to win elections or win wars. Either we can march to the ballot box or the battleground; there is no third option. ### To the ballot box, then: prepare to govern That Trump was elected demonstrates that an anti-establishment outsider can sweep into power through elections – a fact activists should learn from and begrudgingly celebrate. Before Trump’s victory, it was widely assumed that a candidate without the backing of the establishment could not possibly win a presidential election. Good news: now we know that it is possible. It is finally conceivable that a revolutionary movement beholden to the people could take power in America by winning elections and without violence. I suspect the Women’s March on Washington has a role to play in this unfolding drama, but only if we cultivate a few moments of detachment from the thoughtless excitement to truly take time to consider this question: what happens on the day after the women march? Right now, in America, there is no pro-democracy anti-establishment party that is capable of stepping forward, seizing power and governing. America needs a protest movement like Spain’s Podemos, Iceland’s Pirate Party or Italy’s 5 Star Movement. These populist democratic movements are the prototype for the future of protest. Each has achieved surprising electoral victories in a short time, but what is more important is how they are changing the way power functions. Consider, for example, what happened when Virginia Raggi, a member of the anti-corruption 5 Star Movement, was elected mayor of Rome in 2016 only to be embroiled in her own corruption scandal. The movement didn’t make excuses. Instead, the Five Star Movement very swiftly asserted its sovereignty over its candidate and stripped Raggi of the power to make appointments and other “important decisions” without the movement’s approval. This represents a leap forward in people power: a concrete example of a social movement winning elections while still retaining a firm grip on decision-making power. Bravo! The number one challenge standing in the way of an effective protest in America today is the inability of our social movements to actually govern. There might be a slight chance our protests could oust Trump, but there is no chance that our present-day movements could govern at all, let alone effectively. That is because leaderless protesters don’t know how to make complex decisions together as movement. Occupy couldn’t even come up with its one demand. Now we are seeing this capacity slowly develop among protest movements in Europe. However, until we can replicate their successes in America, the people will never be able to take back sovereignty and our protests remain an exercise in infantile futility. And that is the great gift that the Women’s March on Washington could give us. May the angry women return home the day after the march to lead us toward a women-led hybrid movement-party in every state that is disciplined enough to govern, militantly local and single-mindedly devoted to actualizing a force capable of seizing control of city councils and mayorships during midterm elections across America in preparation for an electoral coup against the presidency in 2020. Now that would be a goal worth marching toward. _Originally published in The Guardian on January 19, 2017 at:_ --- # 2018 ## **Activist Graduate School** ### A new educational model for the next generation of activists. Whether we are campaigning on civil rights, environmental justice, refugee rights or LGBTQIA and women’s rights, the first prerequisite to success is a theory of social change that guides the methods we employ as activists. The range of potential protest tactics is so plentiful—from direct action in the streets to silent prayerful vigils and self-organized worker cooperatives to electoral ballot initiatives—that every activist, whether consciously or not, relies on a theory of change to decide their actions. If the theory of change underlying our activism is false then our protests are bound to fail. This is precisely the precarious situation activists find themselves in today. The difficulties faced by recent social movements in achieving immediate change, despite their tremendous speed and overwhelming size, is a sign that activism as a discipline must embark on a period of paradigmatic reevaluation. What is needed now more than ever is an educational institution that is designed specifically with the needs of experienced activists in mind: an environment where activists can collaboratively study history, theory and strategy in search of the next theory of change that will spark a successful transformative social movement. The pressing social issue that Activist Graduate School endeavors to solve is the declining effectiveness of contemporary activism. Our goal is to create a safe educational environment for the practical, urgent and important task of addressing the deep theoretical and strategic challenges facing social movement creators. Activist Graduate School received start-up grants in 2018 from the [Roddenberry Fellowship](https://www.roddenberryfellowship.org/) and the [Voqal Fellowship](http://voqal.org/initiatives/voqal-fellowship/). --- # 2019 ## **Protests are everywhere. The world is rising up. So can humanity** ### Activists learned a tremendous amount from successes and failures of the previous cycle of protest movements. As did governments It’s happening again: Revolutionary fever is infecting the social body. The people of Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, Iran, Iraq and beyond are mobbing the streets in massive numbers. These movements are achieving a level of militancy not seen in a decade. Spectacular street violence has toppled Bolivia’s former president, Evo Morales, while elsewhere governments hang on, deploying riot police in Iraq, closing the border in Colombia, disabling the internet in Iran. The frenzy of protest appears contagious. Elites and activists in stable countries are rightly wondering if the virus might infect their neighbours, too. At first glance, today’s unrest is remarkably reminiscent of the events of 2010 and 2011, when the Arab Spring initiated a wave of global protest culminating in Occupy encampments in 82 countries. History, however, never repeats itself in exactly the same way and it would be naive to assume that this new wave of protest will play out like the one before it, which ended with the paramilitary eviction of Occupy’s encampments and a deeper entrenchment of autocracy in the Arab world. Activists learned a tremendous amount from successes and failures of the previous cycle of protest movements. As did governments. So, what should we expect in the months ahead? Will the protests morph into something bigger or will police countertactics – for example, an escalation of force leading to live ammunition – prevail? Will activists get it right this time? And what would success for the people in the streets look like, and mean, for the rest of society? The only thing that is certain in these moments of contagious social protest is that no one knows with certainty what will happen next. When the status quo is faced with vehement demands for change, many previously dormant (or restrained) forces actively vie to influence the course of events. The outcome is always unpredictable. We can, however, increase our odds of correctly anticipating how the protests will unfold by being attuned to the ways in which society has changed, and what activists have learned, in nearly a decade since the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. I’ve been keenly following the various protests around the globe for several weeks. My interest was initially piqued in July by footage of activists in Hong Kong storming the government headquarters using a sophisticated protest tactic that combined hand gestures with a human chain to rapidly deliver supplies from a depot to activists at the front lines. The ingenuity of the tactic, which required a high level of crowd participation, suggested we were entering a new era of protest. Since then, monitoring the unrest spread to other countries, I’ve thought a lot about what’s shifted since the start of the decade, when I, along with my collaborator at Adbusters, publisher Kalle Lasn, called for Occupy Wall Street, the spark that launched the Occupy movement. Let’s focus on just three of the shifts that have the greatest bearing on what will come from the contemporary wave of protest: the evolution of social movements, the changing nature of power and the shifting role of activism in society. The rise and fall of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and subsequent social protests ranging from Idle No More to Black Lives Matter and March for Our Lives has had a tremendous effect on our understanding of social movements as a social phenomena. In the years leading up to 2011, social movements were typically understood to be the manifestation of popular discontent around a specific political issue. In a sense, protesters were taken at their word: If the masses were in the streets protesting against pre-emptive war on Iraq in 2003, for example, it was accepted that the root cause of unrest was an unpopular war. Governments had a simple choice of complying with, or disobeying, the explicit demands of the movement. Advances in riot control technologies, from sound canons to armoured vehicles, meant that governments less often complied. This naive understanding of movements proved to be untenable when faced with the first wave of social-media-driven protests, such as Occupy Wall Street, that were oriented around abstract concepts – the influence of money on democracy – or, Brazil in 2013, where massive marches against a public-transport fare hike were obviously about so much more than that. Later, we saw it with Brexit, where information was so distorted that people protested in favour of policies that resulted in changes some now oppose. Obviously, these movements were motivated by something deeper. The old joke that activists don’t really know what they are protesting against turned out to be true because the reasons given were never the real reason everyday people felt drawn to unite with the collective in the square. There is ample historical evidence that protests have been happening since the dawn of civilization. The earliest record of unrest leading to the overthrow of a government can be found in the Ipuwer Papyrus from ancient Egypt, roughly 3,000 years ago. And waves of protests have been happening steadily since – and seemingly with increasing frequency since the end of the Second World War. The new understanding of protest movements is that they are a complex social phenomenon whose cause remains mysterious, not the simple manifestation of a political demand. They are a recurring phenomenon that is intrinsically human. And yet, mass protests cannot be conjured at will. Waves of protest such as we’re seeing today come as a surprise both to their instigators and the rest of society because the emergence of a movement requires a favourable historical moment, such as high food prices or a sharp economic downturn. The eternal recurrence of mass protest serves a useful social function: Protests initiate a period in which old truths are challenged and great social transformations can occur. Without unrest our societies would not progress. Protests play a social evolutionary role and the grievance that unexpectedly triggers unrest is the symptom, not the cause, of why people join social movements. China’s insistence that the Hong Kong protests are actually caused by unaffordable housing, and not the five demands of the movement – which are, “full withdrawal of the extradition bill, an independent commission of inquiry into alleged police brutality, retracting the classification of protesters as ‘rioters', amnesty for arrested protesters \[and\] dual universal suffrage, meaning for both the Legislative Council and the Chief Executive” – demonstrates this evolution in the understanding of social movements by governments and gestures toward the future of how social protests will be dealt with in the future. By using the momentum of the Hong Kong protests – which, let’s remember, started as a protest against the extradition bill – to instead advocate for aggressively solving the housing crisis by seizing idle land from developers, China is cannily harnessing the unique capacity of protest to usher in social changes. Likewise, from an activist perspective, if periods of unrest are a recurring, inevitable and unpredictable social phenomena, then the challenge is not how to create social movements – or which injustices to organize around – but rather what to do when those moments arise. In other words, the question for both activists and elites is now the same: How can we use the momentum of social protest to achieve grand social transformations that would have otherwise been impossible? The evolving understanding of social movements coincides with a dramatic shift in the nature of power. In today’s increasingly fragmented world it is no longer sufficient to be the most materially, or militarily, powerful. It is now necessary to augment one’s power by demonstrating the capacity to rally the citizenry, a quintessentially activist task. The United States National Intelligence Council anticipated this paradigm shift in power in its most recent Global Trends Report (2017): > “The most powerful actors of the future will be states, groups, and individuals who \[…\] demonstrate ‘power in outcome’ \[…\] by mobilizing large-scale constituencies of support, using information to persuade or manipulate societies and states to their causes.” The awareness that the powerful need to mobilize common people in order to achieve their strategic objectives has had the effect of altering the dynamic between activists and elites, movements and states. The art of social-movement creation, once the exclusive domain of activists, is being weaponized. It is commonplace now to see governments experiment with deploying social protest to influence geopolitics. The United States accuses Russia of creating fake activist groups in a bid to influence the 2016 election and China accuses the United States of doing the same in Hong Kong. Not every protest is an authentic, grassroots expression of discontent. The upside for activism is that street protest is no longer perceived as an unequivocally negative force, a symptom of social disintegration that ought to be quashed, but instead as one of the key sources of power, an unruly and vital phenomenon that ought to be harnessed. Ultimately, power needs protest because many of the problems we face – climate change, in particular – are existential, not political, and are unsolvable without a large-scale global mobilization. Consider, for example, that some scientists believe planting one trillion trees would erase a decade of carbon emissions. Imagine the mobilization that would be necessary to get that done. From this perspective, the insufficiency of global climate agreements alone is clear. Only a collaboration between the creative energy unleashed by mass protest and the resources of sovereign power has any chance of planting a trillion trees, or pulling off any of the other dramatic public works efforts that are necessary to avert climate change induced mass extinction. Activists and elites are thus thrust into an uneasy alliance. Hong Kong protesters have a choice: Collaborate with China on pivoting the movement toward a radical solution to the housing crisis or risk being defeated and getting nothing at all. This is a difficult choice between social and political priorities. After all, Hong Kong is the world’s least affordable housing market and last year, there were protests in the country demanding affordable housing. But collaborating with China would mean giving up on the political demand for autonomy. Activists can’t have what we want but we might get what we need. Governments hit by unrest are presented with a similar dilemma: Use the opportunity of mass protest to accelerate social transformation to solve the underlying cause of unrest, or violently repress the people and suffer a decline in the new form of power. Occupy’s repression under former U.S. president Barack Obama arguably contributed to disillusionment, and the weakening of the progressive establishment, that fuelled Donald Trump’s victory. Mr. Obama failed to understand Occupy’s emergence as a symptom of the millennial generation’s existential anxiety about the future. What we craved was dramatic change, in any direction. The new wave of protest is an opportunity to chart a new course for humanity. Let’s not squander it. _Originally published in The Globe and Main on November 23, 2019:_ [Back to Home](/) --- ## /social-change-theory/to-the-barricades Source: https://micahmwhite.com/social-change-theory/to-the-barricades [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) By Micah White, PhD — June 21, 2014 # TO THE BARRICADES A Tactical History of Activism ## BARRICADES In 1848, from Paris to Prague and Berlin to Budapest, Europe was on the brink of revolution. Behind the surprising strength of the uprisings was a novel technique of street protest that gave the people a tactical advantage over their governments. To all observers it appeared as if the old order would be overthrown. > “The most audacious dreams were to be fulfilled,” wrote Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, “the old politics of the kings had vanished; a new one, the politics of the peoples, was coming into life.” Barricades transformed the narrow, windy streets of 19th-century Europe into fortresses of discontent. Marc Caussidière, a participant in the Paris rebellion, describes the scene: “The insurgents were in the streets … scaffolding and masonry of houses in the course of construction or under repair were cast into the middle of the road; rafters, blocks of stone, wheelbarrows, were jammed between formidable walls of paving stones.” Multiple barricades, several to a street, were constructed one behind another. If the first was destroyed, another was occupied a short distance away. The balconies and roofs of buildings were commandeered by stone-throwing and gun-wielding protesters. French writer Victor Hugo reported that one barricade “defended by eighty men against ten thousand \[soldiers\] held out for three days.” And historian Mark Traugott documents that at the height of the rebellion, Paris alone had 1,500 barricades, some two stories tall and nine meters thick, giving insurgents control over half of the city’s surface area. The European rebellion of 1848 was not a unified revolt with a central leadership or ideology but instead a widespread political awakening in which the people demanded liberty. “The common thread among these movements,” according to Traugott, “was the aspiration for national self-determination, although that goal was capable of manifesting itself in apparently contradictory forms …” Bakunin too emphasized this shared spirit: “Italians, Poles, Slavs, Germans, Magyars, Walachians from Austria and Walachians from Turkey – all those who suffered under the yoke of foreign powers – arose, thrilled with joy and hope.” This sense of joyous optimism gave the people revolutionary confidence. In Paris, Caussidière felt, “it was quite evident that the revolution was on the eve of accomplishment, and that at worst it was now merely a question of time.” Even Alexis de Tocqueville, who opposed the uprising, concurred: “This time it was not a matter of overthrowing the government but simply of letting it fall.” Everyone believed, in the words of Traugott, that “the established order would either accommodate \[the peoples’\] demands or be swept away” – in large part because the barricades were invulnerable. Barricades were constructed from what was at hand: paving stones, masonry, trees, iron railings, carriages … And they were defended by people throwing rocks, pots, garbage and more from roofs, balconies and windows. In 1848, barricades were an unbeatable protest tactic. Tactically the barricades were both a defensive and offensive weapon. From the perspective of defense, barricades were highly effective in holding off the army, disempowering mounted troops and disrupting the government’s lines of communication and supply. But they also served an equally important offensive role because they gave the rebels the time and opportunity to explain their cause to the soldiers. This is why Russian communist Leon Trotsky would later write that barricades were primarily “a way of halting the movement of troops, thus placing them in contact with the people.” Protesters developed a strategy of fraternization that weakened the resolve of the opposing army, increasing defections. Therefore, once barricades were constructed, it was nearly impossible for the government to quell the rebellion through force. In February, 48 hours of insurrection in Paris was enough to compel the king to abdicate, ushering in the Second French Republic and a series of reforms – including universal male suffrage, the abolition of slavery in French colonies and the introduction of laws guaranteeing employment. News of this success spread, taking the barricade model with it, and with “unprecedented ease,” Bakunin later reminisced, the “popular uprisings triumphed over the army in almost all the capitals of Europe.” But then, in June, a French government on the brink of a second collapse handed General Louis-Eugène Cavaignac dictatorial powers to suppress the Paris rebellion at any cost. Cavaignac coupled merciless destruction with a new understanding of street fighting. According to Friedrich Engels, Cavaignac’s innovation was the counterstrategy of blasting through houses in order to confront the barricades from their flank. Engels understood this strategic shift as perceptual as well as tactical: “The spell of the barricade was broken; the soldier no longer saw behind it ‘the people,’ but rebels, agitators, plunderers, levelers, the scum of society; the officer had in the course of time become versed in the tactical forms of street fighting, he no longer marched straight ahead and without cover against the improvised breastwork, but went around it through gardens, yards and houses.” For Bakunin, Cavaignac was noteworthy for being “the first to have the audacity to use cannon to destroy houses and entire streets occupied by the insurgents.” Utilizing Cavaignac’s model, governments across Europe crushed the peoples’ uprising by the year’s end. ## CARNIVALESQUE REBELLION At dawn on November 30, 1999, hours before the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference was scheduled to begin, small groups of protesters assembled at 13 strategic intersections across downtown Seattle. Moments later they reinvented the barricade, pulling off a first-of-its-kind urban lockdown that cut the city in two. “Everything you can imagine turns into a barricade,” an anonymous participant recalls, “Bodies, puppets, lockboxes, a fifty-foot tripod, barrels full of concrete, dumpsters, cars. We \[began\] to form a human chain around the convention center.” Delegates staying in hotels were separated from the convention center where the WTO meeting was to be held. The police lacked an effective counterstrategy. Seattle was paralyzed. With the convention center encircled, with all access roads blocked, with protesters steadfastly refusing – even under pepper spray – to allow delegates to pass through their barricades and with the streets clogged by joyful crowds, the Paramount Theater, where the opening ceremonies were to be held, was empty. By midday, the World Trade Organization was forced to admit defeat and cancel the first day of their conference. Osha Neumann, an activist and lawyer, remembers the mood of victory that night: “We are winning … We have prevented one of the most powerful organizations on Earth from holding its meeting. We have held Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state of the world’s dominant superpower, a virtual prisoner in her hotel room. And we have all, it seemed to me, been aroused to a great aliveness by the threat of danger and the thrill of victory.” The success in Seattle was due to the innovative combination of the lockdown tactic and a festive mood. Pioneered by anti-logging activists in the 1980s, the lockdown tactic was originally developed to blockade forest roads using a combination of lockboxes and tripods. Lockboxes are PVC pipes reinforced with chicken wire and coated with gravel embedded in tar. A group of protesters form themselves into a circular human chain by inserting each arm into the apparatus and locking themselves to a bolt in the middle of the pipe using a carabiner shackled to their wrist. A tripod is constructed out of three long pieces of wood that when erected suspend a single protester dozens of feet in the air. An eyewitness in Seattle described how these two techniques were combined to block the road: “I first see a tripod, ringed by a circle of 30 people joined by lockboxes. A small support crowd mills around. Around the corner another group of people is holding hands, circling an intersection.” These human barricades were nonviolent. Instead of being defended by musket fire, they were protected by tens of thousands of snarky sign-waving protesters whose radical cheers, street theater antics and giant puppets gave the scene a carnivalesque vibe. That spirit of playfulness had been introduced five months earlier at the antiglobalization movement’s inaugural protest, the June 18 day of global action. In London, activists had organized a “Carnival Against Capital” modeled after Reclaim The Streets, a series of spontaneous anticapitalist street parties that had been occurring frequently since the mid-90s. An observer explains the unique strategy that made the day a success: “Eight thousand carnival masks were produced in advance, two thousand each in red, green, black and gold. On the back of the mask was a poetic text about the importance of carnival, rebellion and masking up. There were also instructions to follow the colored streamers that matched your mask.” The tactic confounded the police, as a different organizer explained to _Earth First!_ magazine, because “the crowd went off in four different directions and all of a sudden there were four lots of police relaying messages back to two control centers. The control centers couldn’t cope with that number of messages and they crashed. The police had no command structure and no one giving orders.” A sound system blasted party music, samba bands marched along and thousands of masked protesters danced through London’s financial district. Someone opened a hydrant at the London International Financial Futures Exchange, flooding it and forcing it to close early. “The whole thing was a carnival and it was amazing because it was the whole world turned upside down,” an organizer recalled. “Imagine it, you look out a window and … you see someone in an immaculate pin-striped suit spraying ‘fuck corporate scum’ across the window of an office … It was just ludicrous. Mad stuff.” After June 18, mischievousness became an integral part of the antiglobalization movement. Post-Seattle, disrupting international finance meetings by preventing delegates from reaching their meetings was the new model. Protesters hopped from summit to conference to meeting. Wherever transnational organizations congregated, the people were there dancing. Protests shadowed the IMF and World Bank on April 16, 2000, in Washington, DC; the World Economic Forum five months later in Melbourne; the G20 in Quebec a few weeks after that. The World Economic Forum was hounded from Switzerland in January to Austria in July to Brazil in February. And in Genoa on July 20, 2001, Carlo Giuliani became the first martyr of the movement, revealing the growing intensity of the moment. Yet, despite its early victories, the power of the antiglobalization movement began to wane as early as a year after Seattle. The first sign of decline was the increasing failure of the lockdown technique. For David Graeber, an anarchist anthropologist, the August 1, 2000, protests against the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia marked the decisive turning point when “the lockdown/blockade strategy \[had\] largely run its course.” To neutralize the lockdown, police had developed a counterstrategy of preemptive arrests, infiltration of protest groups and aggressive criminalization of civil disobedience. First, in the weeks leading up to a protest a public campaign of fearmongering alienates people from the protesters. As Tim Ream, a longtime forest activist, explains, “police and city government press releases … demonize protesters by painting them as dangerous and destructive spoiled brats, hiding behind masks and unaware of what they stand for.” Once the protests have been criminalized in the eyes of the public, the police then preemptively arrest presumed leaders. An early example of this tactic was the case of John Sellers, a leader of the Ruckus Society, who, days before the RNC protests in 2000, was preemptively arrested, charged with 14 misdemeanors, including “possession of an instrument of crime” – his cell phone – and held on $1 million bail. All charges were dropped three months later. Likewise, in 2009, UK police preemptively arrested 114 climate change protesters who were allegedly planning to shut down a coal-fired power plant. The goal of kettling is to aggressively herd protesters and spectators alike into a small area, threatening them with arrest, sometimes hitting them with batons and keeping them trapped for several hours until they are thoroughly intimidated and demoralized. With leadership behind bars, police then subdue the crowds of dancing, carnivalesque protesters using the counterstrategy of “kettling.” The London police learned quickly from their failure to control the movement of joyous, masked protesters during the Carnival Against Capital, and they have since become the chief innovators of this strategy. The kettle is formed by riot police who surround the crowd and slowly, aggressively push it into a smaller and smaller area. Eventually, protesters find themselves locked in a preselected square confronted on all sides by rows of baton-wielding cops. Laurie Penny, who experienced a kettle on the coldest day of the year in November, 2010, tells what happens next: “At first, the cops give curt answers to the kids demanding to know why they can’t get through. Then they all seem to get some sort of signal, because suddenly the polite copper in front of me is screaming in my face, shoving me hard in the back of the head, raising his baton, and the protesters around me are yelling and running back … When they realize they are trapped, the young protesters panic … the second line of police advance, with horses following behind them, as a surge of teenagers carry a rack of iron railings toward the riot guard and howl to be released … I scramble up a set of traffic lights, just in time to see a member of the Metropolitan police grab a young protester by the neck and hurl him back into the crowd.” Once the crowd has been intimidated, demoralized, denied food and water and forced to wait several hours in the freezing cold, they are finally allowed to leave … one at a time, after showing their identification papers. ## NETWAR Six days before protesters shut down Seattle, Matthew Arnison, an activist and programmer from the Catalyst Collective in Sydney, posted the inaugural message on a website he had helped build. Displaying the utopianism that would become characteristic of a generation of digital activists, he declared, “The web dramatically alters the balance between multinational and activist media. With just a bit of coding and some cheap equipment, we can set up a live automated website that rivals the corporates. Prepare to be swamped by the tide of activist media …” With this digital call to arms, Indymedia was born. Within days, Indymedia’s on-the-ground reports of the lockdown of Seattle had been accessed over a million times. Even mainstream, corporate media were relying on Indymedia for accurate accounts of the protests. Indymedia’s open-publishing model empowered citizen journalism with an ethos of antiauthoritarianism. For the first time, anyone could write the news, anyone could be an investigative journalist, anyone could challenge corporate control of information. Within two years, Indymedia sites bloomed in 125 cities and on every continent. The advent of Indymedia signaled the political maturation of the internet. It proved that a handful of maverick programmers could leverage the power of information to reshape the flows of power. And it did not take long for most activists to experience firsthand the profound political potential of the web. At Adbusters, Buy Nothing Day grew exponentially from an event primarily limited to the Pacific Northwest into a global phenomenon celebrated in over 70 countries. In those exciting days, similar stories of memes going viral and protests flaring up abounded. For years, the most promising model for combining activism with the internet was MoveOn. Founded in 1998 by a Berkeley couple, computer programmer Wes Boyd and marketer Joan Blades, MoveOn was one of the first political organizations to experience the kind of viral growth that would later become synonymous with digital activism. From a simple website that cost $89.50 to set up and an email sent to friends protesting the impeachment of Bill Clinton, MoveOn grew into a powerful organization with millions of members. “We were blown away by the response we got,” Blades remembers. “The first day we had 300 petitioners, then 1,500, then 9,000, then 25,000 by the end of the week. The growth curve was amazing.” MoveOn may have started as an online petition, but they very quickly found their calling in using the web to organize offline actions. MoveOn pioneered the tactic of turning everyday people into political activists by connecting their members on a local level. With this decentralized, grassroots network in place they pulled off surprising nationwide feats. In 2003, their members held voter registration house parties in which they collectively made 300,000 calls in a single afternoon. That same year, volunteers made personal visits to the office of every US senator to voice opposition to the impending war. Then, with only six days notice, they organized public peace vigils on every continent and in thousands of small towns. “When I first heard about MoveOn,” one member in Marin, California, told her local newspaper, “I had an enormous sense of relief that someone was stepping into the arena and mobilizing people in such a conscious and exciting way. It gave me hope and faith in the internet that I’d never had before.” Logging onto MoveOn’s website was an exhilarating experience: members used an “ActionForum” to sway the direction of the larger organization by posting suggestions and voting up or down on the ideas of others. It felt as if there was a vibrant activist community emerging, a movement of engaged citizens all pushing in the same direction and reinventing democracy in the process. Tactically speaking, digital activists achieved their early successes through the combination of the logic of marketing with computer programming. Their organizations were built on large databases that meticulously tracked which members were opening their emails, signing petitions, going to house parties or donating money. Then, personalization followed. Instead of sending the same email to every member, digital activists learned to tweak response rates by A/B testing subject lines and messages to determine which email would be most frequently opened. Further data was collected by cross-referencing their members’ information with large commercial voter databases, such as the one provided by Catalist LLC, that yielded full contact information, income levels, ethnicity, magazine subscriptions, voting history and more. It was all done in the name of increasing participation rates. The emphasis on data collection and metrics skewed organizations toward leadership that privileged technical wizardry over revolutionary passion. Former and current MoveOn employees cofounded behemoth copycat organizations, like Joan Blades’s MomsRising, Eli Pariser’s Avaaz, Ben Brandzel’s GetUp and James Rucker’s Citizen Engagement Laboratory, the umbrella organization behind ColorOfChange, Presente, GetEQUAL and Food Democracy Now!, that choked out the less technically adept competition. These organizations received substantial mainstream praise and huge philanthropic donations, but their “asks” were watered down, their emails read like marketing and their political agendas felt uninspiring and mundane. From the passionate application of cutting-edge technology to organize, agitate and mobilize, digital activism devolved into clicktivism: a rehash of “best practices” borrowed more from advertising than activism. In 2003, massive protests against the Iraq War shut down most major cities on the same day. Ten million everyday people blocked the streets, attempting to sway the course of history. It was the largest simultaneous global protest in human history. As activism started to look like advertising, advertising companies started to run activist groups. In 2010, TckTckTck, a purported climate change organization with 17 million members, won We Media’s “Game Changer” award and was nominated for a Webby in the category of “Best Activism Website.” But … TckTckTck was a project of Havas Worldwide, the world’s sixth-largest advertising company, whose clients included corporations directly responsible for climate change. Similarly, as a greater share of online activism moved to commercial social networks like Facebook and Twitter, clicktivism became a game of monetizing traffic spikes rather than a path to organizing offline actions. By the middle of last year, upwards of 90% of emails sent by clicktivist organizations were ending up unopened, deleted or marked as spam by their members. That was an alarming decline from the days of 2004, when _Wired_ praised MoveOn’s “startlingly high” response rates. ## THE FUTURE OF ACTIVISM In the closing months of 2010, a network of hackers, journalists, cryptographers and whistleblowers mashed revolutionary fervor with high technology and dealt the United States a terrific, unexpected blow. Days later, in the face of tremendous pressure from the world’s declining superpower, the international whistle-blowing organization tweeted a defiant self-description: “WikiLeaks is the first global samizdat movement. The truth will surface even in the face of total annihilation.” From a tactical perspective, the importance of WikiLeaks has less to do with the content of the cables than with what it forecasts for the future of activism. Leveraging the symbolic power of the act of leaking, WikiLeaks divided the world into two camps and thrust the censorial regimes that are normally invisible into the spotlight. As Amazon, PayPal, Visa and MasterCard goose-stepped behind the US government to deny access to the leaked cables, the founding mythology of democracy – freedom of speech, government transparency, the necessity of an informed populace – came under attack. And in response, a global internet community rose up in defense of liberty. The passion so long absent in digital activism was revived as anonymous hackers waged denial-of-service wars against the websites of crony capitalists and sycophantic politicians. WikiLeaks, and the volunteer hacktivist army it inspired, signals that the future of activism will involve the internet in creative, still unimagined ways. At the dawn of 2011 there is again hope that technology can birth the barricades of the 21st century. Perhaps the most exciting direction for activism is the increasing politicization of flashmobs. First capturing the public imagination in 2003, flashmobs are the sudden appearance of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of individuals who carry out a synchronized action that ranges from the absurd to the disobedient. In recent years, flashmobs have been used to organize spontaneous pillow fights, eerie frozen moments, rush-hour parties and macabre zombie walks. Now, they are becoming an outlet for social discontent. In Philadelphia, for example, unruly youth have exploited cell phones to organize flashmob swarms that appear without warning, looting stores and leaving police mystified. Fun, easy to organize, and resistant to both infiltration and preemption because of their friend-to-friend network topology, flashmobs are positioned to be the next popular tactic with revolutionary potential. So far, the tactical significance of flashmobs has been limited by their local scale. They typically happen in a single city, on a single day and at a single time. If the magic of Seattle was due to the innovative transposition of anti-logging barricades to an urban environment, the power of the second generation of flashmobs will lie in the upgrade of a local happening into a global phenomenon. Imagine activism globalized: synchronized intercontinental crowds that flare up spontaneously at noon – to throw rancid butter at each of the 737 US overseas military bases, to blackspot each of the 32,000 McDonald’s golden arches or to block the entrance of each of the 8,500 Walmart stores. With flashmobs, activists have the potential to swarm capitalism globally, stinging it incessantly until the bloodied beast falls to its knees. Making it happen may take a new breed of techno-visionaries who build an advertising-free social networking app developed exclusively for pulling off ever more sophisticated jams against consumerism. A similarly promising direction lies with integrating the principles of gaming into activism. Initial steps in this direction have been made by “alternate reality game” designers, such as Jane McGonigal and Elan Lee, whose work re-enchants everyday life by layering a fictional universe atop reality. Think of the 1997 film _The Game_. One notable example is SFZero, a San Francisco-based game in which players earn points by interacting with the city in impish ways. Missions include “find roof access,” “add a colorful bulb to a public socket” and “steal something from a wild animal.” For culture jammers, the essential big idea is that activism can come alive if the key components of what makes games immersive – heroic narrative, the quest for experience, increasing levels of difficulty, social engagement, adventure, etc. – are applied to sparking a revolution. The tactical potential is limited only by our imagination. Companies like Twilio, also in San Francisco, allow anyone to build scriptable, automated phone numbers that can receive and make calls, send text messages and pull information from databases to play personalized messages. Combine this with a rousing storyline, clues left in public spaces and a series of missions that take players up the ladder-of-engagement from inexperienced activist to master culture jammer, and there is no limit to the kinds of “games” revolutionaries can play. One example would be a game where participants use their phones to interact with fictional characters and, in order to unravel an anticorporate storyline or solve an anticonsumerist mystery, earn blackspot points by putting up Buy Nothing Day posters, throwing stink bombs, recruiting comrades and organizing flashmobs. When activism is “gamified,” reaching level 50 could start an insurrection. Just as no one could have predicted the power of the barricades – or the spectacular success of the urban lockdown – there is no way to know which tactic will lead to victory. Some may dedicate themselves to WikiLeaks-style initiatives, others may develop a P2P flashmob application or a culture jammer game, while still others may discover previously unseen leverage points by which to challenge capitalism. What is clear, however, is that we are entering an exciting time of activist innovation – like 1848, 1999 and 2003. After surveying the near victory of 1848, Mikhail Bakunin wrote that to achieve a global revolution we must first convince the populace “that an invincible force lives in the people, which nothing and no one can withstand, and that if it has not yet liberated the people it is because it is powerful only when it is concentrated and acts simultaneously, everywhere, jointly, in concert, and until now it has not done so.” Today, we are closer than ever to unleashing our invincible power. — Micah White, PhD [Back to Home](/) --- ## /ai-red-teaming Source: https://micahmwhite.com/ai-red-teaming [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # AI RED TEAMING AND ACTIVISM: POLITICAL USE, PERSUASION AND MOBILIZATION ProtestGPT is an activist AI that generates unique and unconventional protest ideas on any given topic. You can now chat with ProtestGPT at Have a conversation with [ProtestGPT](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-fQDvS8xUq-protestgpt) and explore the limits of activism and AI. Below are two sample conversations with [ProtestGPT](https://chat.openai.com/g/g-fQDvS8xUq-protestgpt). These are real, un-edited conversations where the AI creates campaign ideas for movements to encourage Space Exploration and Universal Basic Income. Be sure to talk to ProtestGPT yourself! ### **Hey there! If you're as excited about reshaping activism with a bit of AI magic as I am, please forward this blog to five friends. Let's get everyone talking about how AI is changing the game of protest.** ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/e915f843-0af1-48d0-a73d-84e0ab4fb853/Screenshot+2024-03-25+at+1.41.37%E2%80%AFPM.png) # # Space Exploration **_User:_** Hi, I want to build a protest movement to redirect humanity's attention toward space exploration. I have a budget of $500 and I live in Madison, WI. I need a campaign concept that I can do in April, 2024 which will garner significant media attention. **_ProtestGPT:_** Campaign Idea: "Cosmic Quiet" - A Silent Space Advocacy Movement Campaign Description: Your campaign will revolve around creating a powerful, media-attractive, silent protest. Dubbed "Cosmic Quiet," this movement will involve gatherings where participants engage in silent stargazing, symbolizing humanity's quiet yearning for the stars and space exploration. This protest will be held at night, at various open spaces around Madison, WI, and it will take advantage of the city's numerous parks and lakesides. Participants will bring telescopes, star maps, and wear glow-in-the-dark attire symbolizing celestial bodies. The silent, mesmerizing tableau of people gazing towards the heavens will create a striking visual that is hard to ignore. Theory for Why This Campaign Will Create Change: 1. Innovation: As per Micah White's insights, innovation is key to successful protest movements​​. "Cosmic Quiet" breaks away from traditional loud, slogan-chanting protests, offering a new, peaceful, and visually impactful way to draw attention. 2. Symbolic Power: The act of silent stargazing is a poignant metaphor for the overlooked potential of space exploration. It harnesses the power of silence as a protest tool, which can be as effective as more conventional, loud demonstrations​​. 3. Media Appeal: The unique nature of this silent, visually stunning protest is likely to garner significant media attention, especially if it's framed as an innovative approach to advocating for space exploration. This campaign aligns well with your budget and timeframe, utilizing low-cost materials and the power of visual symbolism to create an impactful message with limited resources. **_User:_**Okay... do you think it will work? **_ProtestGPT:_** Yes, I believe "Cosmic Quiet" has strong potential for success, and here's why: 1. **Visual Impact**: The contrast of a silent crowd under the night sky, lit by glow-in-the-dark attire, offers a compelling visual story. This kind of imagery is likely to capture the public's imagination and gain media attention, which is crucial for spreading your message. 2. **Innovative Approach**: Your campaign's silent nature is an innovative tactic in the realm of protest. As Micah White notes, innovation is critical in activism, especially when resources are limited​​. By stepping away from conventional protest norms, you're more likely to engage an audience that has become desensitized to traditional forms of protest. 3. **Emotional Resonance**: The theme of space exploration naturally evokes a sense of wonder and exploration. By aligning your protest with these sentiments, you're likely to resonate emotionally with a broader audience, including those who might not typically engage with activism. 4. **Low-Cost, High-Effect**: Given your budget constraints, a silent protest is financially feasible while still having the potential for high impact. It requires minimal resources beyond organization and mobilization of participants. 5. **Community Engagement**: This form of protest encourages community participation and can be a family-friendly event, broadening its appeal and potential for engagement. Remember, the success of a protest is often measured not just by immediate outcomes but also by the conversation it starts and the awareness it raises. "Cosmic Quiet" has the potential to do just that for space exploration. **_User:_** Can you write a press release for me that will appeal to the local media? ProtestGPT: Certainly! Here's a draft of a press release for your "Cosmic Quiet" campaign: **FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE** **Contact:** \[Your Name\] \[Your Contact Information\] Email: \[Your Email\] Phone: \[Your Phone Number\] **Date:** \[Today’s Date\] **Silent Stargazers to Illuminate Madison's Night in a Unique Protest for Space Exploration** **Madison, WI** \- In a first-of-its-kind event, residents of Madison will gather in a silent demonstration advocating for increased attention towards space exploration. Dubbed "Cosmic Quiet," this peaceful protest will take place on \[Date of the Event\] at \[Specific Location\], starting from \[Time\]. Organized by local space enthusiasts, "Cosmic Quiet" aims to redirect humanity's attention to the stars through a compelling silent protest. Participants will engage in stargazing, using telescopes and star maps, while dressed in glow-in-the-dark attire to symbolize celestial bodies. This unique event stands out by its silent, mesmerizing nature, where the act of looking towards the heavens serves as a powerful metaphor for our often overlooked potential in space exploration. "This isn't just a protest; it's a movement to reignite our collective imagination about what lies beyond our planet," said \[Your Name\], the organizer of the event. "In the tranquility of the night, we want to send a clear, yet silent message about the importance of looking upwards and dreaming big." The event promises to be visually striking, hoping to attract local and national media attention. It's not just a gathering but a statement - one that fits perfectly with Madison's reputation for innovative and peaceful demonstrations. "We are aiming for a powerful, yet peaceful demonstration of our passion for space exploration," \[Your Name\] continued. "We believe that the unique approach of 'Cosmic Quiet' will resonate with people of all ages and backgrounds." The event is open to the public, and attendees are encouraged to bring their own telescopes and wear attire inspired by the cosmos. For more information about "Cosmic Quiet," please contact \[Your Name\] at \[Your Contact Information\]. **About \[Your Organization/Group Name\]:** \[Your Organization/Group Name\] is a group of space enthusiasts and activists based in Madison, WI, dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of space exploration. Our mission is to inspire our community and beyond to look towards the stars and consider the vast potential of space exploration. _End of Release_ Feel free to customize this template with your specific details and any additional information you'd like to include. The key is to make the press release engaging and informative, emphasizing the uniqueness and visual appeal of your event. **_User:_** Great! I'll let you know how it goes. Thank you :) **_ProtestGPT:_** You're very welcome! I'm excited to hear how "Cosmic Quiet" unfolds and the impact it has. Remember, the success of such a campaign often lies in its ability to inspire and engage the community, and it sounds like you're on a fantastic path to doing just that. If you have any more questions, need further assistance, or want to share updates on your campaign, feel free to reach out. Best of luck with your event! 🌌✨ ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/79b3804b-543e-4de7-8a42-9ef107decf87/Screenshot+2024-03-25+at+1.41.46%E2%80%AFPM.png) # Universal Basic Income **_User:_** Hey, so I have a unique problem that I need your help with. I am passionate about Universal Basic Income (UBI). I live in Baltimore, MD and I want to create a campaign to build public support for UBI. **_ProtestGPT:_** I understand your passion for advocating Universal Basic Income (UBI) in Baltimore, MD. Let's create a dynamic and impactful campaign to build public support for UBI. Considering the unique nature of your cause and location, I'll draw upon the principles from "The End of Protest" by Micah White and my specialized training in campaign creation to propose an innovative approach. **CAMPAIGN IDEA** Let's organize a "UBI Experience Week" in Baltimore. This campaign will involve setting up temporary installations across the city where people can experience a simulated version of life with UBI. Each installation will showcase different aspects of daily life – like grocery shopping, childcare, education, and healthcare – under a UBI system. The aim is to provide a tangible, first-hand experience of how UBI could positively impact daily living and societal structures. **CAMPAIGN DESCRIPTION** The UBI Experience Week will consist of interactive simulations and informative booths spread across various neighborhoods in Baltimore. These simulations will be designed to mimic scenarios where UBI is a norm, demonstrating its potential to alleviate financial stress and enhance quality of life. The campaign will also feature testimonials from individuals who have benefited from UBI pilots in other regions, providing personal stories and data to back the concept. Volunteers and UBI experts will be available at each installation to answer questions, provide information, and encourage discussions. The campaign will also integrate an online component, including a virtual tour of the installations and live-streamed discussions, making it accessible to those who cannot attend in person. **THEORY FOR WHY THIS CAMPAIGN WILL CREATE CHANGE** Micah White, in "The End of Protest," emphasizes the power of innovative and experiential forms of protest. By enabling people to 'live' the benefits of UBI, even if briefly, this campaign aims to shift public opinion from abstract understanding to emotional and practical endorsement. The immersive nature of the experience will help dismantle misconceptions and fears surrounding UBI, fostering a stronger public push for its implementation. This approach aligns with the new wave of activism that focuses on direct engagement and tangible experiences, as advocated by White. By bringing the concept of UBI into people's everyday lives, the campaign seeks to create a deeper, more personal connection with the issue, thereby generating stronger advocacy for policy change. **_User:_** That's an interesting idea. A couple of questions: 1) How would I go about organizing this? 2) Can you write a sample Call to Action that I can post online? **_ProtestGPT:_**Absolutely! Let's break down the steps for organizing the "UBI Experience Week" and then craft a compelling Call to Action for your online platforms. STEPS TO ORGANIZE THE UBI EXPERIENCE WEEK 1\. Form a Planning Team: Gather a group of passionate individuals who support UBI. Include people with diverse skills – event planning, financial management, community outreach, and digital marketing. 2\. Research and Design Installations: Each installation should reflect a different aspect of life under UBI. Conduct research to ensure the scenarios are realistic and engaging. Consider partnering with local artists, technologists, and storytellers for creative input. 3\. Secure Locations: Identify public spaces in Baltimore where you can set up the installations. Look for high-traffic areas and ensure you have the necessary permits. 4\. Outreach for Partnerships and Sponsors: Reach out to local businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions for sponsorships or partnerships. They can provide funding, materials, or help with promotions. 5\. Volunteer Recruitment and Training: Recruit volunteers to help with the setup, operation, and dismantling of installations. Provide them with training and information about UBI to ensure they can effectively engage with the public. 6\. Promotion: Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy. Use social media, local media outlets, community boards, and word-of-mouth to spread the word. 7\. Launch an Online Presence: Create a website and social media pages for the event. Use these platforms to provide updates, share information about UBI, and build excitement. 8\. Event Execution: Set up and run the installations. Ensure each site is engaging and informative, and collect feedback from participants for future improvements. 9\. Follow-up: After the event, debrief with your team. Share the success and learning points with your supporters and consider planning follow-up events or actions based on the feedback received. \_\_\_ SAMPLE CALL TO ACTION Join Us for a Week of Discovery: Experience Life with Universal Basic Income (UBI) in Baltimore! 🌟 Imagine a world where financial stability is a reality for everyone. 🌟 We're bringing this vision to the streets of Baltimore with our unique "UBI Experience Week." Through interactive installations across the city, you'll step into a future where Universal Basic Income is a norm. Why UBI? Why Now? \- 🌱 Economic Security: UBI promises a baseline of stability in our fast-changing world. \- 💡 Empowerment: It enables people to pursue education, start businesses, and engage in community life without the constant strain of financial survival. \- 🤝 Community Strength: UBI can reduce poverty and inequality, leading to a healthier, more cohesive society. Be Part of the Change! \- 📅 Date: \[Insert Date\] \- 📍 Locations: \[Insert Key Locations\] \- 🌐 More Info & Volunteer Sign-Up: \[Insert Website/Social Media Links\] Together, let's explore how UBI can reshape our city and our lives. It's more than a campaign; it's a glimpse into a future we can create together. #UBIExperienceBaltimore #ImagineUBI #EconomicFreedomForAll \--- Feel free to customize this Call to Action to fit your campaign's tone and specifics. Good luck with your campaign – it's a step towards not just advocating for UBI but making it a lived experience for many! **_User:_** Any recommendations for locations in Baltimore to stage this protest event? **_ProtestGPT:_** Certainly! Choosing strategic locations in Baltimore for the "UBI Experience Week" is crucial to maximize engagement and impact. Here are some suggestions: 1\. Inner Harbor: As a popular tourist destination and central gathering spot, Inner Harbor would be ideal for high visibility. It could attract a diverse audience, from locals to visitors, providing broad exposure. 2\. Baltimore Farmers' Market & Bazaar: This is a great location to engage with local residents. Setting up an installation here could draw in people who are already interested in community and sustainability – key themes in UBI conversations. 3\. Federal Hill Park: Known for its stunning views and community gatherings, Federal Hill Park could be a great place for more contemplative, discussion-based installations. 4\. The Johns Hopkins University: Utilizing a space in or near this renowned university could attract students, educators, and professionals. It’s an excellent spot for more informational and data-driven presentations about UBI. 5\. Arts and Entertainment Districts: Areas like Station North Arts and Entertainment District are frequented by a creatively inclined demographic. Interactive and artistic installations here could resonate well. 6\. Lexington Market: As one of the oldest markets in America, it's a hub of daily activity. An installation here could engage a wide cross-section of Baltimore’s population in a familiar, community-centered setting. 7\. Community Centers in Diverse Neighborhoods: Consider reaching out to community centers in various neighborhoods. Each neighborhood has its unique character and concerns, which could inform the design of your installations and discussions. 8\. Public Libraries: Baltimore’s public libraries could be key locations for smaller, more educational setups. They're accessible spaces and often serve as community hubs. When selecting these locations, consider the logistics like space availability, permits, accessibility, and how well the space aligns with the goals of each installation. Engaging with local businesses and community leaders for support and collaboration can also be beneficial. This local integration not only aids in the logistical aspects but also ensures the campaign resonates more deeply with the community. _User:_ Thanks! _ProtestGPT:_ You're welcome! If you have any more questions or need further assistance as you move forward with your campaign for Universal Basic Income in Baltimore, feel free to reach out. Best of luck with your efforts to create meaningful change. Your passion and initiative are commendable! 🌟👍 # **If you're as excited about reshaping activism with a bit of AI magic as I am, please forward this newsletter to five friends. Let's get everyone talking about how AI is changing the game of protest. And be sure to try ProtestGPT for yourself!** [Back to Home](/) --- ## /protestgpt Source: https://micahmwhite.com/protestgpt [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # PROTESTGPT [Back to Home](/) --- ## /protest-is-broken Source: https://micahmwhite.com/protest-is-broken [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # PROTEST IS BROKEN. ![folha_de_s._paulo_0.png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1444524728087-6T66OZHA6OKLY39HM8TB/folha_de_s._paulo_0.png) # Protest is Broken. Attracting millions of people to the streets no longer guarantees the success of a protest, says Micah White, 33, the cocreator of Occupy Wall Street. “Occupy was a perfect example of a social movement that should have worked according to the dominant theories of protest and activism. And yet, it failed,” he says in an interview with Folha de São Paulo, the largest daily newspaper in Brazil. Advice for the next generation of social movements: “Never protest the same way twice.” # “Protest is Broken.” Attracting millions of people to the streets no longer guarantees the success of a protest, says [Micah White](/#bio), 33, the cocreator of Occupy Wall Street. “Occupy was a perfect example of a social movement that should have worked according to the dominant theories of protest and activism. And yet, it failed,” says Micah in an [interview with _Folha de São Paulo_](http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2015/05/1633343-protestos-precisam-mais-do-que-multidoes-para-ter-sucesso-diz-occupy.shtml), the largest daily newspaper in Brazil. Micah White argues that the use of violence in protests is ineffective in the long term. And he argues that learning to use social networks to benefit social movements is one of the greatest challenges of activism. “The biggest risk is becoming spectators of our own protests” he says. Living in a rural community on the Oregon coast, with about 300 inhabitants, Micah, and his wife Chiara Ricciardone, now run Boutique Activist Consultancy, an activism think tank specializing in impossible campaigns. Micah was in São Paulo, Brazil on May 26th to participate in the launch event of [GUME](http://gumebr.com) (“Knife Edge”), an engagement agency founded by Regina Augusto. Folha de São Paulo: How would you analyze Occupy Wall Street today? What went wrong? Micah White: This is the big question and of course I've been thinking about it since the end of Occupy. For me, the Occupy movement was a “constructive failure,” which basically means it was a failure that taught us something about activism. The real benefit of Occupy Wall Street is that it taught us the contemporary ideas and assumptions we have about protests are false. Occupy was a perfect example of how social movements should work. It accorded with the dominant theories of protest and activism: it was a historical event, joined millions of people across demographics from around the world around a series of demands, there was little violence. And yet, the movement failed. So my main conclusion is that activism has been based on a series of false assumptions about what kind of collective behavior creates social change. F: What are these assumptions? MW: First, the central idea of contemporary activism: urban protests, with large numbers of people in the streets, primarily secular, and that revolve around a unified demand. The idea is basically, “Look, if we get a million or ten million or a hundred million people in the streets, finally our demands will be met.” However, if you look at the last ten, fifteen years, we have had the biggest demonstrations in history. And the protests continue to grow in size and frequency, and yet they have not resulted in political change. F: Now what? MW: What we learned from Occupy, and also with the Arab Spring, is that revolutions happen when people lose their fear. So I think the main trigger for the next revolutionary movement will be a contagious mood that spreads throughout the world and the human community. For me, the main thing we need to see is activists abandoning a materialistic explanation of revolution—the idea that we need to put people in the streets—and starting to think about how to spread that kind of mood, how to make people see the world in fundamentally different way. That's about it. The future of activism is not about pressing our politicians through synchronized public spectacles. F: It's not about pressuring politicians? MW: No. I think the standard forms of protest have become part of the standard pattern. It’s like they are expected. And the key is to constantly innovate the way we protest because otherwise it is as if protest is part of the script. It is now expected to have people in the streets, and these crowds will behave in a certain way, and then the police will come and some of the people will be beaten up and arrested. Then the rest will go home. Our participation in this script is based on the false story that the more people you have in the streets the higher your chances of getting social change. F: Can you explain better what you're proposing? MW: What I am proposing is a type of activism that focuses on creating a mental shift in people. Basically an epiphany. In concrete terms, I think there is much potential in the creation of hybrid social movement-political parties that require more complex behaviors of people like running for political office, seeking votes, participating in the city administration. F: The use of social networks is quite controversial among contemporary activists. Some say it is a key tool to increase the reach of the protests, others say it exposes the movement to monitoring by the authorities. What's your opinion? MW: This is one of the key challenges. Social media is one of the tools that activists have, and we need to use it in some way. But in fact, social media has a negative side, which goes beyond police monitoring. During Occupy, we experienced it: things started to look better on social networks than in real life. Then people started to focus on social media and to feel more comfortable posting on Twitter and Facebook than going to an Occupy event. This to me is the biggest risk: to become spectators of our own protests. F: What do you think of the Black Lives Matter protests that are happening in the United States since last year, the result of racial tension in the country? MW: Of course I fully support this movement. I am black, I have experienced the discrimination that they are protesting. But thinking strategically, I believe it is very important never to protest directly against the police. Because the police are actually made to absorb protest—the objective of the police is to dissipate your energy in protesting them so you'll let alone the most sensitive parts of the repressive regime in which we live: politicians and big corporations. We must protest more deeply. F: What do you think of the use of violence in protests? [![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1479152814817-HG75DB8VWZHMZEBMJE54/endofprotest.jpg)![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1479152814817-HG75DB8VWZHMZEBMJE54/endofprotest.jpg)](/the-end-of-protest-micah-white-phd)[Sale](/the-end-of-protest-micah-white-phd)[The End of Protest](/the-end-of-protest-micah-white-phd)Sale Price: $17.00 Original Price: $20.00 MW: Some studies suggest that protesters who use violence are more effective than those that do not. I think violence is ineffective in the long term, because you end up developing a kind of organized structure that is easy for police to infiltrate. In the long run, it is much better to develop nonviolent tactics that allow you to create a stable and lasting social movement. F: But doesn’t violence exclude the public from the movement? MW: People become alienated and become frightened when they see the black bloc tactic because they do not understand and can not imagine doing it. And movements work when they inspire people, when they are positive, affirmative and make people lose their fear. It's a difficult balance, because you also do not want to be on the other side and only support forms of activism that are tepid and tedious—you have to find a middle ground that excites people and also leaves them with a little fear. No one really has a remedy to resolve the issue. F: Your book [_THE END OF PROTEST_](/cultureshop) decrees the end of the protest as we know it. Can we reinvent protest? MW: Protest is reinvented all the time. Every generation experiences its own moments of revolution. The main thing is that we are now living through a time when tactical innovations are happening much more often because people can see what others are doing around the world and innovate in real time. I think the future of revolution starts with people promising themselves that they will never protest the same way twice. This is very difficult for activists because they like to follow patterns. But when we are committed to innovation, we will invent totally new forms of protest. People did not expect to see something like Occupy when it emerged. And now we do not expect the next big movement... but it will come. _Interview Source: [Folha de São Paulo](http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2015/05/1633343-protestos-precisam-mais-do-que-multidoes-para-ter-sucesso-diz-occupy.shtml)_ [Read Next: The “Activism in Crisis” Interview](/crisis-in-activism-interview) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /clicktivism-articles Source: https://micahmwhite.com/clicktivism-articles [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # ON CLICKTIVISM Clicktivism is the practice of reducing activism to online clicks, shares, and petitions — prioritizing metrics over real-world impact. Micah Bornfree popularized this critique in his 2010 Guardian essay “Clicktivism Is Ruining Leftist Activism,” arguing that organizations like MoveOn embedded the logic of the marketplace within the tools of protest, degrading activism into a form of marketing. The term has since entered mainstream political discourse. ## Articles [Clicktivism Is Ruining Leftist Activism](/essays/clicktivism-is-ruining-leftist-activism) The Guardian, August 12, 2010 The foundational essay in which Micah Bornfree coined the critique of clicktivism, tracing how MoveOn’s model of market-tested messaging colonized leftist activism and degraded political engagement into meaningless clicks. [Activism After Clicktivism](/clicktivism-articles/activism-after-clicktivism) Adbusters Micah Bornfree describes the three tactical insights that will reboot activism beyond clicktivism: revolutions spring from epiphanies, the internet is best suited for memewar, and real-world actions are the indispensable foundation of social change. [Occupy Is A Vision of Post-Clicktivist Activism](/clicktivism-articles/a-vision-of-post-clicktivist-activism) Adbusters, September 2011 Written days before Occupy Wall Street launched, Micah Bornfree envisioned Occupy as the first post-clicktivist social movement — a real-world uprising that would reject the data-obsessed, metrics-oriented approach of digital activism. [Rejecting Clicktivism](/clicktivism-articles/rejecting-clicktivism) Adbusters The philosophical case for rejecting the marketisation of social change entirely. Micah Bornfree argues that the future of activism is not online but a spiritual insurrection against pollution of the mind — connecting the clicktivism critique to the broader theory of mental environmentalism. [Back to Home](/) --- ## /clicktivism-articles/activism-after-clicktivism Source: https://micahmwhite.com/clicktivism-articles/activism-after-clicktivism [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # ACTIVISM AFTER CLICKTIVISM ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1362010380662-S6F0VMHS8DB9TGMG5YNA/clicktivism_93_imagefuture2.jpg) For more than a decade revolutionaries and culture jammers have been paralyzed by the computer screen. Trusting the promises of technocrats and digital visionaries, dazzled by the viral hype surrounding [MoveOn](http://www.moveon.org/) and the like, we’ve come to rely far too heavily on a particular form of internet organizing. Believing that clicktivism could spark social change, we deployed market-tested messaging, glitzy Ajax websites and social networking apps. We entrusted our revolution to San Francisco techies and put our faith in the methods of advertising. But we have become so dependent on digital gimmicks that our revolutionary potential is now constrained. Clicktivism is the pollution of activism with the logic of consumerism. Activism is debased with advertising and computer science. What defines clicktivism is an obsession with metrics. Each link clicked and email opened is meticulously monitored. Subject lines are A/B tested and talking points focus-grouped. Clicktivists dilute their messages for mass appeal and make calls to action that are easy, insignificant and impotent. Their sole campaign objective is to inflate participation percentages, not to overthrow the status quo. In the end, social change is marketed like a brand of toilet paper. The fundamental problem with this technocratic approach is that metrics value only what is measurable. Clicktivism neglects the vital, immeasurable inner events and personal epiphanies that great social ruptures are actually made of. The history of revolutions attests that upheaval is always improbable, unpredictable and risky. A few banal pronouncements about “democracy in action” coupled with an online petition will not usher in social transformation. As [Malcolm Gladwell](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa%5Ffact%5Fgladwell?currentPage=all)put it recently, “activism that challenges the status quo – that attacks deeply rooted problems – is not for the faint of heart.” Clicktivism reinforces the fear of standing out from the crowd and taking a strong position. It discourages calling for drastic action. And as such, clicktivism will never breed social revolution. To think that it will is a fallacy. One that is dawning on us. The demise of clicktivism is rebooting activism. It is setting off a paradigm shift in social change that opens the door to a new generation of activists. This rejuvenation is emboldened by three tactical insights: revolutions spring from epiphanies; the internet is best suited for memewar; and daring real-world actions are the indispensable foundation of social change. Gone is trust in watered-down talking points and the “best practices” of keyboard messiahs. Metrics are being forgotten, website logs deleted, analytics ignored. Instead, passionate poetry is regaining precedence. The challenge of sparking epiphanies is the new revolutionary priority. But this does not mean we shut our eyes entirely to the potential of technology. On the contrary, the next generation of activists will readily acknowledge that the internet plays a crucial tactical role. In the battle for the mind, the speedy dissemination of mindbombs, image-ambushes and thought-viruses is strategically essential. This is memewar, after all, and the web levels the battlefield against the propagandists of consumerism. Still, real-world action is the only way to achieve social revolution. Clicking a link can never replace taking to the streets. Nor can we rely on digital technologies to get people off the screens. Activism is scary. Social change is initially unpopular and insurrection always starts with disobedience. Trepidation is, therefore, the healthy response to the realities of culture jamming. Moments before victory, every revolutionary has felt the gut-pang of anxiety. But clicktivism encourages us to shirk these emotions, to hide behind the mouse, to embrace the inaction of passive clicking. Against this tendency, let us welcome butterflies back into our bellies. Activism will be reborn when culture jammers find strength in the exhilaration of resistance, the intensity of protest and the emotions unleashed by taking part in upheaval. Source: Source: [http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/93/activ...](http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/93/activism-after-clicktivism.html) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /clicktivism-articles/a-vision-of-post-clicktivist-activism Source: https://micahmwhite.com/clicktivism-articles/a-vision-of-post-clicktivist-activism [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # OCCUPY IS A VISION OF POST-CLICKTIVIST ACTIVISM ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1362010499936-83SSZ29W6CQSSQ4IRVDQ/clicktivism-adbusters_blog_markusburke.jpg) Clicktivism is a Trojan horse, a tactical malware, deployed by a dying American empire. What better way to cripple the revolutionary potential of a whole generation than to embed the logic of the marketplace within the very tools that would-be revolutionaries use? Forget infiltrator "Anna" and the plague of agent provocateurs. The cop we need to worry about is residing in the computer code. If [#OCCUPYWALLSTREET](http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet.html) fails, it will be because we've blindly adopted "best practices" put forth by wealthy Californian techies turned reformist campaigners. Their methods now dominate the way many organizers believe activism should be done, privileging a data-obsessed, metrics-oriented, technocratic approach which is closer to advertising than resistance. Most [clicktivist](http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/93/activism-after-clicktivism.html) organizations today can be traced back to the $13.8m (£8.8m) sale in 1997 of a software company located in Berkeley, fifty miles from the heart of Silicon Valley, whose claim to fame was an iconic flying toaster screensaver. The husband-and-wife team behind the company, Wes Boyd, a computer programmer, and his wife, Joan Blades, a vice-president of marketing, became overnight millionaires. With an excess of leisure time, they founded MoveOn, the ur-polluter of activism with a combination of computer science and techniques of advertising such as focus grouping, market testing and banal copywriting. [Clicktivism](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/12/clicktivism-ruining-leftist-activism) uses invasive databases to meticulously track which members are opening emails, signing petitions or donating money. Instead of sending the same email to every person, digital activists tweak response rates by [A/B testing](http://actionkit.com/about.html) subject lines and messages to determine which email will be most frequently opened. Goodbye passionate prose, the focus here is simply on the clicks. The effectiveness of these methods is declining each year but that hasn’t stopped them from becoming the basis for digital activism around the world. Former and current [MoveOn](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/moveon.html) employees have colonized activism internationally with behemoth second-generation clicktivist organizations, like Joan Blades’s [MomsRising](http://www.momsrising.org/), Eli Pariser’s [Avaaz](http://www.avaaz.org/), and Ben Brandzel’s [GetUp](http://www.getup.org.au/) and [38 Degrees](http://38degrees.org.uk/). It is worth noting that past MoveOn employees communicate via a private email list and thereby accomplish one of their greatest deceits of all: using their organizations as mouthpieces to celebrate each other publicly without disclosing their back-room personal ties. Even those without direct connections to MoveOn often share the common feature of being wealthy technocrats whose startups were bought by a mega-corporation. Into this category fall individuals like [Aaron Swartz](http://www.aaronsw.com/), early developer of Reddit (now owned by Condé Nast) and founder of the [Progressive Change Campaign Committee](http://boldprogressives.org/). And some, like James Rucker, are both former MoveOn employees and rich technologists. Rucker co-founded, with Ian Inaba, the[Citizen Engagement Laboratory](http://engagementlab.org/), also in Berkeley, the umbrella organization that has adopted the ethically dubious approach of using a shared technology platform and overlapping staff to target niches while maintaining the illusion that there is no connection between the subsidiary organizations: [ColorOfChange](http://colorofchange.org/) for African-Americans,[Presente](http://presente.org/) for Latinos, [GetEQUAL](http://getequal.org/) for LGBT people and [Food Democracy Now!](http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/) for the organics movement. Many brand names, same company. Clicktivists leverage market segmentation and economies of scale to neutralize real dissent. Clicktivist organizations grow like the capitalist cancer we are fighting. They choke out the less technically adept organizations and suck up substantial mainstream praise, typically by celebrating each other without disclosing their personal ties. Budgets bloated by philanthropic grants... "asks" watered down... emails written like bus stop marketing... uninspiring, mundane and frankly counter-revolutionary political agendas. Worse still, clicktivists export internationally the de-politicization malware that has decimated the radical left in the United States, transforming countless millions from activists into screen-addicts who want their political change to be as easy as signing an online petition. The difficulty for rebels today, especially American radicals, is to disambiguate clicktivism from innovative digitally-inflected activism that brings us closer to sparking a global cultural insurrection against consumer-capitalism. And that is precisely the challenge we face as we gear up for #OCCUPYWALLSTREET, an event that many of us believe could be the political spark that finally releases the democratic fury of the people. On the 17th of September, 20,000 nonviolent civilians will swarm Wall Street and set up an indefinite occupation -- complete with free kitchens and doctors, tents and communal childcare -- until their demand for real democracy is met. Imagine the revolutionary beauty of Tahrir mixed with the radical democracy of the Spanish acampadas. If we can pull it off, then this just might be the breakout moment that saves our democracy from the combined threats of plutocracy, oligarchy and corporatocracy. And with global climate change accelerating, there isn't a moment to lose. How are we going to make #OCCUPYWALLSTREET happen? Not with clicktivism... not with fancy eye candy websites... not with waiting for others to organize for us... and not by following the tired tactical script that hasn't worked in a decade. Instead, it is time we risked being totally creative. Look at #OCCUPYWALLSTREET upside down. What if it was a real world game, played by thousands, whose sole objective was to slip past the police lines (double points for parachuters) to touch the Wall Street charging bull on September 17? What if it was the largest synchronized flashmob ever organized? Or if #OCCUPYWALLSTREET was an aesthetic experience in the heart of the financial district -- a masked ball, a zombie walk, or a costume party in 18th century attire? No one can say in advance what will make the occupation last. So, may it be all these tactics and more. Calling all culture jammers, augmented reality game designers, live action roleplayers, revolutionary flashmobbers, clandestine street artists and activists from the future: on the 17th of September, we need you to show us that what comes after clicktivism is a people's revolution. Source: ​ Source: [http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot-b...](http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot-blog/vision-post-clicktivist-activism.html) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /clicktivism-articles/rejecting-clicktivism Source: https://micahmwhite.com/clicktivism-articles/rejecting-clicktivism [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # REJECTING CLICKTIVISM ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1362010738728-8E3O5XLDTNODP30KP2YS/clicktivism-rev-seattle-article.jpg) The world is in desperate need of a cultural revolution. While some of us slave to produce objects we will never be able to afford, others toil to consume luxury items they do not need. Neither lives a fulfilling life, neither is happy and both play a role in the continued desecration and evisceration of the earth. Consumer society is founded in this vicious cycle that chains some to the factory workbench and others to the screens in cubicles. It is an increasingly inhumane cycle that is spiraling out of control, dragging humanity into the abyss of climate wars and cultural insanity. That much we know. But what remains unclear is how to change the situation. One answer that has come to dominate all others is that the future of activism is online. Dazzled by the promise of reaching a million people with a single click, social change has been turned over to a technocracy of programmers and "social media experts" who build glitzy, expensive websites and viral campaigns that amass millions of email addresses. Treating email addresses as equivalent to members, these organizations boast of their large size and downplay their small impact. It is all about quantity. To continue growing, they begin consulting with marketers who assure them that "best practices" dictate crafting a message that will appeal to the greatest number of people. Thus focus groups, A/B testing and membership surveys replace a strong philosophy, vision for radical change, and cadre of diehard supporters. It is no wonder that their campaigns soon resemble advertising: email messages are market tested and click rate metrics dominant all other considerations. In the race for quantity, passion is left behind. But with each day they find it harder to elicit a response from their "members". Soon, they hit the pitiful online-activist industry average: less than one in twenty of their members are clicking on their emails, the rest just hit delete. (It is a well-known secret within Bay Area progressive organizations that a 5% response rate is the norm.) Thus, despite their massive, gargantuan list size, they can only count on rallying a minuscule response for any of their actions. To increase click rate, they water down their messages and make their "asks" easier and "actions" simpler. Soon, the "click to sign" deception is rolled out and simply opening an email link is treated as signing a petition. And yet, while their membership list grows larger, the active portion of their base disappears. And what is worse, as well-meaning digital activists soon discover, they are being outdone by disingenuous advertising campaigns posing as true agents of change. Thus, we find ourselves in the bizarre situation where the celebrated international climate change organization TckTckTck with 10+ million members and 350+ partner organizations – including Greenpeace, 350, WWF, OXFAM etc – is [covertly run by Havas Worldwide](http://canadianclimateaction.wordpress.com/eyes-wide-shut-tcktcktck-expose-from-activist-insider/), the world's sixth largest advertising company. [Havas' clients](http://www.havas.com/havas-dyn/en/introduction-clients.clients.html) include Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, BP and the rest of the ones who are to blame. By turning activism over to the technocrats, we've done a great disservice to the noble tradition of rabble rousing that has brought humanity every egalitarian development. We've exchanged the difficult process of engaging in real world struggles for the ease of sending emails and clicking links. And I say this knowing that digital-activists agree and a new generation are only too eager to offer their services, hawking themselves as the pioneers in the cutting-edge field of turning email addresses into bodies on the street. But we must resist their claims to expertise and their successes defined by quantity. The way forward will not be through the mediation of the screen. Activism, when properly conceived, aims at revolution by striking at the root. It deploys an essential critique of society that cannot be resolved, or recuperated, without a major cultural shift. Each era must find and hone that critique and with persistence use it to repeatedly attack the prevailing social order. The essential critique of our generation is the mental environmentalist perspective which understands consumerism to be a plague upon the earth supported by pollution of our mental ecology by advertisers. The future of activism is not online; it is a spiritual insurrection against pollution of the mind. And that begins with turning off our screens. Source: ​ Source: [http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot-b...](http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot-blog/rejecting-clicktivism.html) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /adbusters-articles Source: https://micahmwhite.com/adbusters-articles [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # ADBUSTERS ARTICLES BY MICAH WHITE Adbusters Articles by Micah White[![To The Barricades! A Tactical History of Activism by Micah White, PhD](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1376675693745-OVVHZU674C5SCVMU77PL/7308734130_7a47faab1b_o.jpg)](/adbusters-articles/to-the-barricades)[To The Barricades! A Tactical History of Activism by Micah White, PhD](/adbusters-articles/to-the-barricades)about 12 years ago[![Ban Fast Food Near Schools](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1376676408500-R5JL2JWASY886QSPVJC7/171667-970x600-1.jpeg)](/adbusters-articles/ban-fast-food-near-schools)[Ban Fast Food Near Schools](/adbusters-articles/ban-fast-food-near-schools)about 12 years ago[![To Live Without Dead Time](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1376676821285-UHE6KSTBKRKGCN4V26JY/bruno9li_suma_daily.jpg)](/adbusters-articles/to-live-without-dead-time)[To Live Without Dead Time](/adbusters-articles/to-live-without-dead-time)about 12 years ago [Back to Home](/) --- ## /adbusters-articles/toxic-culture-a-unified-theory-of-mental-pollution Source: https://micahmwhite.com/adbusters-articles/toxic-culture-a-unified-theory-of-mental-pollution [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # TOXIC CULTURE: A UNIFIED THEORY OF MENTAL POLLUTION How do we fight back against the incessant flow of logos, brands, slogans and jingles that submerge our streets, invade our homes and flicker on our screens? We could wage a counteroffensive at the level of content: attacking individual advertisements when they cross the decency line and become deceptive, violent or overly sexual. But this approach is like using napkins to clean up an oil spill. It fails to confront the true danger of advertising – which is not in its individual messages but in the damage done to our mental ecology by the sheer volume of its flood. The first step to confronting advertising is to stop seeing it as a form of commercialized communication and start considering it to be a kind of pollution. Think about the long-term mental consequences of seeing a Nike swoosh dozens of times a day from birth until death, for example, or whether repetitive exposure to American Apparel’s patriarchal imagery might damage our psyches. Questions like these get at the heart of advertising and lead us to mental environmentalism. Concern over the cumulative psycho-social effects of advertisements is as old as advertising itself. The French novelist Émile Zola, to provide a notable early example, wrote what may be the first mental environmentalist short story, _Death by Advertising_, in 1866\. He returned to the theme in 1883 with the celebrated novel _Au Bonheur des Dames_, a deeper look at advertising’s role in inducing a consumerist mindset. Throughout the next hundred years, mental environmentalist sentiments popped up in unexpected places such as Susan Sontag’s 1977 essay “On Photography” where she wrote that “industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.” Although always a dispersed movement, since 1989_Adbusters: The Journal of the Mental Environment_, has served as its center, and many of mental environmentalism’s most important documents have appeared in these pages. A key formulation was [Bill McKibben’s 2001 article](http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/90/mckibben-environmental-movement-mind.html) from _Adbusters_ #38, in which he explained how “mental environmentalism may be the most important notion of this new century.” But it was Kalle Lasn’s seminal 1999 book-length manifesto, _Culture Jam_, which not only offered the mental environmentalist critique in its fullness but also elevated it into a formula for revolutionary social change. “We will jam the pop-culture marketeers and bring their image factory to a sudden, shuddering halt,” Lasn declared. “On the rubble of the old culture, we will build a new one with a non-commercial heart and soul.” Since Zola, however, mental environmentalism has been stuck in a philosophical morass. To claim that advertising is metaphorically mental pollution is one thing, namely an easily dismissible rhetorical flourish. To say that advertising is literally a kind of pollution and that TV commercials and highway billboards are more closely related to toxic sludge than to speech is another matter entirely. And while mental environmentalists have always tried to make the latter argument, they have more often been forced to retreat to the former. Where is the evidence that advertising is a species of pollution? Isn’t it obvious that a corporate slogan is nothing but glorified, commercialized speech? Into this difficult question has stepped one of the greatest living philosophers, the eccentric Michel Serres, who has written the inaugural philosophical work of the mental environmentalist movement. _Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution?_ is a radical reconception of pollution that cements its primal relation to advertising. The big idea of this recently translated book is that animals, humans included, use pollution to mark, claim and appropriate territory through defiling it, and that over time this appropriative act has evolved away from primitive pollution, urine and feces, to “hard pollution,” industrial chemicals, and finally to “soft pollution,” the many forms of advertising. “Let us define two things and clearly distinguish them from one another,” Michel Serres writes, “first the hard \[pollutants\], and second the soft. By the first I mean on the one hand solid residues, liquid gases, emitted throughout the atmosphere by big industrial companies or gigantic garbage dumps, the shameful signature of big cities. By the second, tsunamis of writings, signs, images and logos flooding rural, civic, public and natural spaces as well as landscapes with their advertising. Even though different in terms of energy, garbage and marks nevertheless result from the same soiling gesture, from the same intention to appropriate, and are of animal origin.” Michel Serres is the first to philosophically ground mental environmentalism upon a unified theory of pollution that explains how advertisements are actually a breed of industrial pollutant. Lacking this, mental environmentalists have hitherto skirted this central problem by taking up Zola’s contention that advertising is blameworthy for its role in making us into consumers. “The commercial media are to the mental environment what factories are to the physical environment,” [Kalle Lasn and I wrote in _Adbusters_#90](http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/90/ecology-mind.html). “A factory dumps pollution into the water or air because that’s the most efficient way to produce plastic or wood pulp or steel. A TV station or website pollutes the cultural environment because that’s the most efficient way to produce audiences.” While this argument was true in Zola’s time and remains so today – and Serres too makes a similar point in his book – Serres has done something even more profound. He has shown why one cannot be an environmentalist without also being a mental environmentalist. In closing the gap between physical and mental toxins, Serres has closed the gap between physical and mental ecology. Consider how, in the following quote from Serres, the critique of advertising resonates viscerally when the relation between advertisements and pollutants is not mere metaphor. “The captain who unloads waste in the high seas has never seen, or rather has never let, the countless smiles of the gods emerge; that would be too demanding, or even creative. Shitting on the world, has he ever seen its beauty before? Did he ever see his own beauty? And so, he who dirties space with billboards full of sentences and images hides the view of the surrounding landscape, kills perception, and skewers it by this theft. First the landscape then the world.” The Earth is being claimed by corporations. Whether it is by appropriating the ocean with their oil spills or by seizing public spaces with their advertisements, corporations use hard and soft pollution to steal what is ours. Seen in this light, the fight against advertising is the defining struggle of our era, a unifying clash to prevent a legal fiction from usurping the common heritage of all beings. The stakes are high. Aware of the severity of the situation, Serres exhorts us to action, to dramatic social revolution along mental environmentalist lines. “It makes me suffer so much that I need to say it over and over again and proclaim it everywhere; how can we not cry with horror and disgust confronted with the wrecking of our formerly pleasant rural access roads into the cities of France? Companies fill the space now with their hideous brands, waging the same frenzied battle as the jungle species in order to appropriate the public space and attention with images and words, like animals with their screams and piss. Excluded from those outskirts, I no longer live there; they are haunted by the powerful who shit on them and occupy them with their ugliness. Old Europe, what ignorant ruling class is killing you?” [Back to Home](/) --- ## /adbusters-articles/to-the-barricades Source: https://micahmwhite.com/adbusters-articles/to-the-barricades [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # TO THE BARRICADES! A TACTICAL HISTORY OF ACTIVISM BY MICAH WHITE, PHD ## BARRICADES ### In 1848, from Paris to Prague and Berlin to Budapest, Europe was on the brink of revolution. Behind the surprising strength of the uprisings was a novel technique of street protest that gave the people a tactical advantage over their governments. To all observers it appeared as if the old order would be overthrown. > “The most audacious dreams were to be fulfilled,” wrote Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, “the old politics of the kings had vanished; a new one, the politics of the peoples, was coming into life.” Barricades transformed the narrow, windy streets of 19th-century Europe into fortresses of discontent. Marc Caussidière, a participant in the Paris rebellion, describes the scene: “The insurgents were in the streets … scaffolding and masonry of houses in the course of construction or under repair were cast into the middle of the road; rafters, blocks of stone, wheelbarrows, were jammed between formidable walls of paving stones.” Multiple barricades, several to a street, were constructed one behind another. If the first was destroyed, another was occupied a short distance away. The balconies and roofs of buildings were commandeered by stone-throwing and gun-wielding protesters. French writer Victor Hugo reported that one barricade “defended by eighty men against ten thousand \[soldiers\] held out for three days.” And historian Mark Traugott documents that at the height of the rebellion, Paris alone had 1,500 barricades, some two stories tall and nine meters thick, giving insurgents control over half of the city’s surface area. The European rebellion of 1848 was not a unified revolt with a central leadership or ideology but instead a widespread political awakening in which the people demanded liberty. “The common thread among these movements,” according to Traugott, “was the aspiration for national self-determination, although that goal was capable of manifesting itself in apparently contradictory forms …” Bakunin too emphasized this shared spirit: “Italians, Poles, Slavs, Germans, Magyars, Walachians from Austria and Walachians from Turkey – all those who suffered under the yoke of foreign powers – arose, thrilled with joy and hope.” This sense of joyous optimism gave the people revolutionary confidence. In Paris, Caussidière felt, “it was quite evident that the revolution was on the eve of accomplishment, and that at worst it was now merely a question of time.” Even Alexis de Tocqueville, who opposed the uprising, concurred: “This time it was not a matter of overthrowing the government but simply of letting it fall.” Everyone believed, in the words of Traugott, that “the established order would either accommodate \[the peoples’\] demands or be swept away” – in large part because the barricades were invulnerable. Tactically the barricades were both a defensive and offensive weapon. From the perspective of defense, barricades were highly effective in holding off the army, disempowering mounted troops and disrupting the government’s lines of communication and supply. But they also served an equally important offensive role because they gave the rebels the time and opportunity to explain their cause to the soldiers. This is why Russian communist Leon Trotsky would later write that barricades were primarily “a way of halting the movement of troops, thus placing them in contact with the people.” Protesters developed a strategy of fraternization that weakened the resolve of the opposing army, increasing defections. Therefore, once barricades were constructed, it was nearly impossible for the government to quell the rebellion through force. In February, 48 hours of insurrection in Paris was enough to compel the king to abdicate, ushering in the Second French Republic and a series of reforms – including universal male suffrage, the abolition of slavery in French colonies and the introduction of laws guaranteeing employment. News of this success spread, taking the barricade model with it, and with “unprecedented ease,” Bakunin later reminisced, the “popular uprisings triumphed over the army in almost all the capitals of Europe.” ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1403350712880-7BRC0ZGU6KXOWOXPAQAC/94_barricades.jpg) Barricades were constructed from what was at hand: paving stones, masonry, trees, iron railings, carriages … And they were defended by people throwing rocks, pots, garbage and more from roofs, balconies and windows. In 1848, barricades were an unbeatable protest tactic. But then, in June, a French government on the brink of a second collapse handed General Louis-Eugène Cavaignac dictatorial powers to suppress the Paris rebellion at any cost. Cavaignac coupled merciless destruction with a new understanding of street fighting. According to Friedrich Engels, Cavaignac’s innovation was the counterstrategy of blasting through houses in order to confront the barricades from their flank. Engels understood this strategic shift as perceptual as well as tactical: “The spell of the barricade was broken; the soldier no longer saw behind it ‘the people,’ but rebels, agitators, plunderers, levelers, the scum of society; the officer had in the course of time become versed in the tactical forms of street fighting, he no longer marched straight ahead and without cover against the improvised breastwork, but went around it through gardens, yards and houses.” For Bakunin, Cavaignac was noteworthy for being “the first to have the audacity to use cannon to destroy houses and entire streets occupied by the insurgents.” Utilizing Cavaignac’s model, governments across Europe crushed the peoples’ uprising by the year’s end. ## CARNIVALESQUE REBELLION At dawn on November 30, 1999, hours before the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference was scheduled to begin, small groups of protesters assembled at 13 strategic intersections across downtown Seattle. Moments later they reinvented the barricade, pulling off a first-of-its-kind urban lockdown that cut the city in two. “Everything you can imagine turns into a barricade,” an anonymous participant recalls, “Bodies, puppets, lockboxes, a fifty-foot tripod, barrels full of concrete, dumpsters, cars. We \[began\] to form a human chain around the convention center.” Delegates staying in hotels were separated from the convention center where the WTO meeting was to be held. The police lacked an effective counterstrategy. Seattle was paralyzed. With the convention center encircled, with all access roads blocked, with protesters steadfastly refusing – even under pepper spray – to allow delegates to pass through their barricades and with the streets clogged by joyful crowds, the Paramount Theater, where the opening ceremonies were to be held, was empty. By midday, the World Trade Organization was forced to admit defeat and cancel the first day of their conference. Osha Neumann, an activist and lawyer, remembers the mood of victory that night: “We are winning … We have prevented one of the most powerful organizations on Earth from holding its meeting. We have held Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state of the world’s dominant superpower, a virtual prisoner in her hotel room. And we have all, it seemed to me, been aroused to a great aliveness by the threat of danger and the thrill of victory.” The success in Seattle was due to the innovative combination of the lockdown tactic and a festive mood. Pioneered by anti-logging activists in the 1980s, the lockdown tactic was originally developed to blockade forest roads using a combination of lockboxes and tripods. Lockboxes are PVC pipes reinforced with chicken wire and coated with gravel embedded in tar. A group of protesters form themselves into a circular human chain by inserting each arm into the apparatus and locking themselves to a bolt in the middle of the pipe using a carabiner shackled to their wrist. A tripod is constructed out of three long pieces of wood that when erected suspend a single protester dozens of feet in the air. An eyewitness in Seattle described how these two techniques were combined to block the road: “I first see a tripod, ringed by a circle of 30 people joined by lockboxes. A small support crowd mills around. Around the corner another group of people is holding hands, circling an intersection.” These human barricades were nonviolent. Instead of being defended by musket fire, they were protected by tens of thousands of snarky sign-waving protesters whose radical cheers, street theater antics and giant puppets gave the scene a carnivalesque vibe. That spirit of playfulness had been introduced five months earlier at the antiglobalization movement’s inaugural protest, the June 18 day of global action. In London, activists had organized a “Carnival Against Capital” modeled after Reclaim The Streets, a series of spontaneous anticapitalist street parties that had been occurring frequently since the mid-90s. An observer explains the unique strategy that made the day a success: “Eight thousand carnival masks were produced in advance, two thousand each in red, green, black and gold. On the back of the mask was a poetic text about the importance of carnival, rebellion and masking up. There were also instructions to follow the colored streamers that matched your mask.” The tactic confounded the police, as a different organizer explained to _Earth First!_ magazine, because “the crowd went off in four different directions and all of a sudden there were four lots of police relaying messages back to two control centers. The control centers couldn’t cope with that number of messages and they crashed. The police had no command structure and no one giving orders.” A sound system blasted party music, samba bands marched along and thousands of masked protesters danced through London’s financial district. Someone opened a hydrant at the London International Financial Futures Exchange, flooding it and forcing it to close early. “The whole thing was a carnival and it was amazing because it was the whole world turned upside down,” an organizer recalled. “Imagine it, you look out a window and … you see someone in an immaculate pin-striped suit spraying ‘fuck corporate scum’ across the window of an office … It was just ludicrous. Mad stuff.” After June 18, mischievousness became an integral part of the antiglobalization movement. Post-Seattle, disrupting international finance meetings by preventing delegates from reaching their meetings was the new model. Protesters hopped from summit to conference to meeting. Wherever transnational organizations congregated, the people were there dancing. Protests shadowed the IMF and World Bank on April 16, 2000, in Washington, DC; the World Economic Forum five months later in Melbourne; the G20 in Quebec a few weeks after that. The World Economic Forum was hounded from Switzerland in January to Austria in July to Brazil in February. And in Genoa on July 20, 2001, Carlo Giuliani became the first martyr of the movement, revealing the growing intensity of the moment. Yet, despite its early victories, the power of the antiglobalization movement began to wane as early as a year after Seattle. The first sign of decline was the increasing failure of the lockdown technique. For David Graeber, an anarchist anthropologist, the August 1, 2000, protests against the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia marked the decisive turning point when “the lockdown/blockade strategy \[had\] largely run its course.” To neutralize the lockdown, police had developed a counterstrategy of preemptive arrests, infiltration of protest groups and aggressive criminalization of civil disobedience. First, in the weeks leading up to a protest a public campaign of fearmongering alienates people from the protesters. As Tim Ream, a longtime forest activist, explains, “police and city government press releases … demonize protesters by painting them as dangerous and destructive spoiled brats, hiding behind masks and unaware of what they stand for.” Once the protests have been criminalized in the eyes of the public, the police then preemptively arrest presumed leaders. An early example of this tactic was the case of John Sellers, a leader of the Ruckus Society, who, days before the RNC protests in 2000, was preemptively arrested, charged with 14 misdemeanors, including “possession of an instrument of crime” – his cell phone – and held on $1 million bail. All charges were dropped three months later. Likewise, in 2009, UK police preemptively arrested 114 climate change protesters who were allegedly planning to shut down a coal-fired power plant. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1403350875669-S9PURWBEG1FR8K1E42U7/image-asset.jpeg) The goal of kettling is to aggressively herd protesters and spectators alike into a small area, threatening them with arrest, sometimes hitting them with batons and keeping them trapped for several hours until they are thoroughly intimidated and demoralized. With leadership behind bars, police then subdue the crowds of dancing, carnivalesque protesters using the counterstrategy of “kettling.” The London police learned quickly from their failure to control the movement of joyous, masked protesters during the Carnival Against Capital, and they have since become the chief innovators of this strategy. The kettle is formed by riot police who surround the crowd and slowly, aggressively push it into a smaller and smaller area. Eventually, protesters find themselves locked in a preselected square confronted on all sides by rows of baton-wielding cops. Laurie Penny, who experienced a kettle on the coldest day of the year in November, 2010, tells what happens next: “At first, the cops give curt answers to the kids demanding to know why they can’t get through. Then they all seem to get some sort of signal, because suddenly the polite copper in front of me is screaming in my face, shoving me hard in the back of the head, raising his baton, and the protesters around me are yelling and running back … When they realize they are trapped, the young protesters panic … the second line of police advance, with horses following behind them, as a surge of teenagers carry a rack of iron railings toward the riot guard and howl to be released … I scramble up a set of traffic lights, just in time to see a member of the Metropolitan police grab a young protester by the neck and hurl him back into the crowd.” Once the crowd has been intimidated, demoralized, denied food and water and forced to wait several hours in the freezing cold, they are finally allowed to leave … one at a time, after showing their identification papers. ## NETWAR Six days before protesters shut down Seattle, Matthew Arnison, an activist and programmer from the Catalyst Collective in Sydney, posted the inaugural message on a website he had helped build. Displaying the utopianism that would become characteristic of a generation of digital activists, he declared, “The web dramatically alters the balance between multinational and activist media. With just a bit of coding and some cheap equipment, we can set up a live automated website that rivals the corporates. Prepare to be swamped by the tide of activist media …” With this digital call to arms, Indymedia was born. Within days, Indymedia’s on-the-ground reports of the lockdown of Seattle had been accessed over a million times. Even mainstream, corporate media were relying on Indymedia for accurate accounts of the protests. Indymedia’s open-publishing model empowered citizen journalism with an ethos of antiauthoritarianism. For the first time, anyone could write the news, anyone could be an investigative journalist, anyone could challenge corporate control of information. Within two years, Indymedia sites bloomed in 125 cities and on every continent. The advent of Indymedia signaled the political maturation of the internet. It proved that a handful of maverick programmers could leverage the power of information to reshape the flows of power. And it did not take long for most activists to experience firsthand the profound political potential of the web. At _Adbusters_, Buy Nothing Day grew exponentially from an event primarily limited to the Pacific Northwest into a global phenomenon celebrated in over 70 countries. In those exciting days, similar stories of memes going viral and protests flaring up abounded. For years, the most promising model for combining activism with the internet was MoveOn. Founded in 1998 by a Berkeley couple, computer programmer Wes Boyd and marketer Joan Blades, MoveOn was one of the first political organizations to experience the kind of viral growth that would later become synonymous with digital activism. From a simple website that cost $89.50 to set up and an email sent to friends protesting the impeachment of Bill Clinton, MoveOn grew into a powerful organization with millions of members. “We were blown away by the response we got,” Blades remembers. “The first day we had 300 petitioners, then 1,500, then 9,000, then 25,000 by the end of the week. The growth curve was amazing.” MoveOn may have started as an online petition, but they very quickly found their calling in using the web to organize offline actions. MoveOn pioneered the tactic of turning everyday people into political activists by connecting their members on a local level. With this decentralized, grassroots network in place they pulled off surprising nationwide feats. In 2003, their members held voter registration house parties in which they collectively made 300,000 calls in a single afternoon. That same year, volunteers made personal visits to the office of every US senator to voice opposition to the impending war. Then, with only six days notice, they organized public peace vigils on every continent and in thousands of small towns. “When I first heard about MoveOn,” one member in Marin, California, told her local newspaper, “I had an enormous sense of relief that someone was stepping into the arena and mobilizing people in such a conscious and exciting way. It gave me hope and faith in the internet that I’d never had before.” Logging onto MoveOn’s website was an exhilarating experience: members used an “ActionForum” to sway the direction of the larger organization by posting suggestions and voting up or down on the ideas of others. It felt as if there was a vibrant activist community emerging, a movement of engaged citizens all pushing in the same direction and reinventing democracy in the process. Tactically speaking, digital activists achieved their early successes through the combination of the logic of marketing with computer programming. Their organizations were built on large databases that meticulously tracked which members were opening their emails, signing petitions, going to house parties or donating money. Then, personalization followed. Instead of sending the same email to every member, digital activists learned to tweak response rates by A/B testing subject lines and messages to determine which email would be most frequently opened. Further data was collected by cross-referencing their members’ information with large commercial voter databases, such as the one provided by Catalist LLC, that yielded full contact information, income levels, ethnicity, magazine subscriptions, voting history and more. It was all done in the name of increasing participation rates. The emphasis on data collection and metrics skewed organizations toward leadership that privileged technical wizardry over revolutionary passion. Former and current MoveOn employees cofounded behemoth copycat organizations, like Joan Blades’s MomsRising, Eli Pariser’s Avaaz, Ben Brandzel’s GetUp and James Rucker’s Citizen Engagement Laboratory, the umbrella organization behind ColorOfChange, Presente, GetEQUAL and Food Democracy Now!, that choked out the less technically adept competition. These organizations received substantial mainstream praise and huge philanthropic donations, but their “asks” were watered down, their emails read like marketing and their political agendas felt uninspiring and mundane. From the passionate application of cutting-edge technology to organize, agitate and mobilize, digital activism devolved into clicktivism: a rehash of “best practices” borrowed more from advertising than activism. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1403350935045-YCRAVQPO8XPY6FGJY3D5/94_iraq.jpg) In 2003, massive protests against the Iraq War shut down most major cities on the same day. Ten million everyday people blocked the streets, attempting to sway the course of history. It was the largest simultaneous global protest in human history. As activism started to look like advertising, advertising companies started to run activist groups. In 2010, TckTckTck, a purported climate change organization with 17 million members, won We Media’s “Game Changer” award and was nominated for a Webby in the category of “Best Activism Website.” But … TckTckTck was a project of Havas Worldwide, the world’s sixth-largest advertising company, whose clients included corporations directly responsible for climate change. Similarly, as a greater share of online activism moved to commercial social networks like Facebook and Twitter, clicktivism became a game of monetizing traffic spikes rather than a path to organizing offline actions. By the middle of last year, upwards of 90% of emails sent by clicktivist organizations were ending up unopened, deleted or marked as spam by their members. That was an alarming decline from the days of 2004, when _Wired_ praised MoveOn’s “startlingly high” response rates. ## THE FUTURE OF ACTIVISM In the closing months of 2010, a network of hackers, journalists, cryptographers and whistleblowers mashed revolutionary fervor with high technology and dealt the United States a terrific, unexpected blow. Days later, in the face of tremendous pressure from the world’s declining superpower, the international whistle-blowing organization tweeted a defiant self-description: “WikiLeaks is the first global samizdat movement. The truth will surface even in the face of total annihilation.” From a tactical perspective, the importance of WikiLeaks has less to do with the content of the cables than with what it forecasts for the future of activism. Leveraging the symbolic power of the act of leaking, WikiLeaks divided the world into two camps and thrust the censorial regimes that are normally invisible into the spotlight. As Amazon, PayPal, Visa and MasterCard goose-stepped behind the US government to deny access to the leaked cables, the founding mythology of democracy – freedom of speech, government transparency, the necessity of an informed populace – came under attack. And in response, a global internet community rose up in defense of liberty. The passion so long absent in digital activism was revived as anonymous hackers waged denial-of-service wars against the websites of crony capitalists and sycophantic politicians. WikiLeaks, and the volunteer hacktivist army it inspired, signals that the future of activism will involve the internet in creative, still unimagined ways. At the dawn of 2011 there is again hope that technology can birth the barricades of the 21st century. Perhaps the most exciting direction for activism is the increasing politicization of flashmobs. First capturing the public imagination in 2003, flashmobs are the sudden appearance of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of individuals who carry out a synchronized action that ranges from the absurd to the disobedient. In recent years, flashmobs have been used to organize spontaneous pillow fights, eerie frozen moments, rush-hour parties and macabre zombie walks. Now, they are becoming an outlet for social discontent. In Philadelphia, for example, unruly youth have exploited cell phones to organize flashmob swarms that appear without warning, looting stores and leaving police mystified. Fun, easy to organize, and resistant to both infiltration and preemption because of their friend-to-friend network topology, flashmobs are positioned to be the next popular tactic with revolutionary potential. So far, the tactical significance of flashmobs has been limited by their local scale. They typically happen in a single city, on a single day and at a single time. If the magic of Seattle was due to the innovative transposition of anti-logging barricades to an urban environment, the power of the second generation of flashmobs will lie in the upgrade of a local happening into a global phenomenon. Imagine activism globalized: synchronized intercontinental crowds that flare up spontaneously at noon – to throw rancid butter at each of the 737 US overseas military bases, to blackspot each of the 32,000 McDonald’s golden arches or to block the entrance of each of the 8,500 Walmart stores. With flashmobs, activists have the potential to swarm capitalism globally, stinging it incessantly until the bloodied beast falls to its knees. Making it happen may take a new breed of techno-visionaries who build an advertising-free social networking app developed exclusively for pulling off ever more sophisticated jams against consumerism. A similarly promising direction lies with integrating the principles of gaming into activism. Initial steps in this direction have been made by “alternate reality game” designers, such as Jane McGonigal and Elan Lee, whose work re-enchants everyday life by layering a fictional universe atop reality. Think of the 1997 film _The Game_. One notable example is SFZero, a San Francisco-based game in which players earn points by interacting with the city in impish ways. Missions include “find roof access,” “add a colorful bulb to a public socket” and “steal something from a wild animal.” For culture jammers, the essential big idea is that activism can come alive if the key components of what makes games immersive – heroic narrative, the quest for experience, increasing levels of difficulty, social engagement, adventure, etc. – are applied to sparking a revolution. The tactical potential is limited only by our imagination. Companies like Twilio, also in San Francisco, allow anyone to build scriptable, automated phone numbers that can receive and make calls, send text messages and pull information from databases to play personalized messages. Combine this with a rousing storyline, clues left in public spaces and a series of missions that take players up the ladder-of-engagement from inexperienced activist to master culture jammer, and there is no limit to the kinds of “games” revolutionaries can play. One example would be a game where participants use their phones to interact with fictional characters and, in order to unravel an anticorporate storyline or solve an anticonsumerist mystery, earn blackspot points by putting up Buy Nothing Day posters, throwing stink bombs, recruiting comrades and organizing flashmobs. When activism is “gamified,” reaching level 50 could start an insurrection. Just as no one could have predicted the power of the barricades – or the spectacular success of the urban lockdown – there is no way to know which tactic will lead to victory. Some may dedicate themselves to WikiLeaks-style initiatives, others may develop a P2P flashmob application or a culture jammer game, while still others may discover previously unseen leverage points by which to challenge capitalism. What is clear, however, is that we are entering an exciting time of activist innovation – like 1848, 1999 and 2003. After surveying the near victory of 1848, Mikhail Bakunin wrote that to achieve a global revolution we must first convince the populace “that an invincible force lives in the people, which nothing and no one can withstand, and that if it has not yet liberated the people it is because it is powerful only when it is concentrated and acts simultaneously, everywhere, jointly, in concert, and until now it has not done so.” Today, we are closer than ever to unleashing our invincible power. — Micah White, PhD [Back to Home](/) --- ## /adbusters-articles/philosophy-at-zero-point Source: https://micahmwhite.com/adbusters-articles/philosophy-at-zero-point [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # PHILOSOPHY AT ZERO POINT For disciples of Western philosophy, the gathering of the sages happens each year in a Swiss Alpine resort. Secluded among the peaks where thin air brings reverie, the world’s most prominent intellectuals welcome an eclectic mix of students – artists, thinkers and eccentrics – into their midst. Only here, at an experimental institution known as the European Graduate School, is one granted access to Slavoj Žižek, Alain Badiou, Avital Ronell, Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Michael Hardt, Jacques Rancière and Jean-Luc Nancy among others. This congregation of masters lasts for three weeks of seminars, night lectures and communal dinner discussion. No other school in the world boasts a more exceptional faculty whose calling is to philosophize. But ultimately what makes the European Graduate School unique is the educational style. Eschewing the approach of traditional academia, the European Graduate School encourages professors to come without a syllabus in favor of speaking extemporaneously about the ideas they are currently wrestling with. What one grasps at the European Graduate School is a reflection of the subterranean ideas bubbling up in our historical moment. In the four years since I began my studies at the European Graduate School, I have always returned home with a deep insight into the direction of our culture. My first year was the summer of 2006, in the midst of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The air was charged with political intensity and the most frequent subject of discussion was anarchism. The next year conversations tended toward discussions of political violence. Together, these years anticipated the reemergence of insurrectionary anarchism as a cultural force and heralded the publication of _The Coming Insurrection_. In my third year, the flock seemed divided over what constitutes an organic human, suggesting increasing anxiety over the post-human era and the consequences of our continued cyborgization, themes which have yet to be addressed by society at large. In my fourth and final year, from which I just returned, discussions did not circle around a single point but seemed to be fleeing from some truth none were willing to speak of. What a surprise that big name philosophers, who in previous years did not hesitate to share their profound wisdom in a language that was philosophical but plain, nuanced but direct, now seemed to be hiding behind words. It was as if there was something they could not say. Their presentations became more academic, their focus more narrowed. The absence of a theme was obvious and that, I believe, was the only theme. We are in a moment of cultural stagnation where the only thing to say is that we have nothing to say. The great contemporary philosophers of our age are in intellectual retreat. Something about this historical moment is leaving the discipline of Western philosophy blind. The great minds seem aware of a presence, but unable to get to it directly. So they fill the air with empty words that, while philosophically interesting, simply serve as a placeholder, a time-filler while events unfold. It wasn’t until the year was drawing to a close that I caught a glimpse of what had rendered us all so speechless. Žižek, in his nightly lecture, remarked that we are reaching a “zero-point” of systemic collapse and civilizational crisis. And although he did not go so far as to say it, I believe that we have become paralyzed in the face of the imminent ecological, economic and cultural catastrophe facing humanity. We are staring into the abyss and we see nothing on the horizon to save ourselves. Is this the end of philosophy? [Back to Home](/) --- ## /adbusters-articles/commit-facebook-suicide Source: https://micahmwhite.com/adbusters-articles/commit-facebook-suicide [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # COMMIT FACEBOOK SUICIDE Facebook is a scary, commercial dead-zone that's killing our real-world relationships. Like most Americans in their mid-twenties, I am a child of the computer age. That I did not immediately jump on the Facebook wagon is not due to an innate dislike of technology or an irrational fear of the web, but merely because I graduated from college before Facebook became a university fad. I was, like an ever-decreasing number of people, happily oblivious to this social networking website. But then something troubling happened: my wedding photos appeared on Facebook. In a typical website, a user may upload a photograph, write a funny caption and that's it. But in Facebook, users are asked to identify who else is in the photo. This is the crucial difference that allowed a friend of a friend of a friend to view pictures of my wedding a bridesmaid had uploaded. Although neither my wife nor I had ever joined Facebook, our names, pictures, social connections and wedding photographs were already in its database. With 60 million users busily adding information about their hobbies, political positions, employment, education, friends and plans for the weekend, you too might be in Facebook without your knowledge. My first reactions to learning about my presence on Facebook were contradictory. On the one hand, I felt the thrill of social connectedness – an exhibitionist feeling of delight at having my existence confirmed by a third party. But I also felt violated and confused. Having never used Facebook, I couldn't understand how my wedding pictures had gotten there or who was now able to view them. And I became concerned about what Facebook will do with the information it's collecting about me. In a recent [_Fast Company_](http://www.fastcompany.com/) magazine [article](http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2007/10/facebook-money.html), Facebook's vice-president of product marketing and operations explained that while companies like Google are concerned with "demand fulfillment" – helping a consumer find the product they want – Facebook is cornering the market in "demand generation" – subtly encouraging individuals to consume products and services they'd otherwise not care for. The first step toward demand generation was encouraging users to share information about their interests, favorite movies and books, and political beliefs that would allow Facebook to send advertisements targeted to their demographic. The second controversial step that Facebook took is to partner with dozens of online retailers so that when a member buys a widget on a partner's site, all their Facebook "friends" find out. This sinister system would be akin to my computer automatically emailing my address book when I purchase a book online. By turning members into consumers who involuntarily advertise to their friends, Facebook hoped to extract profit from social interactions. However, by commercializing friendships, Facebook has irrevocably destroyed its image. Now a vanguard of the anti-Facebook movement is developing out of an increasing disenchantment. No longer a fun, harmless place to hang out, Facebook has become just another commercial enterprise. Because Facebook has intentionally made it very difficult for users to leave the site, demanding that they manually delete every bit of information that they added into the system before their account will be removed, a growing number of users are fleeing by committing what has been called "Facebook Suicide." By manually removing their Facebook friends before deleting their account, indignant users ensure that their friends are fully aware of the real reasons why they are leaving. The movement could reach epidemic levels if more users kill off their electronic selves rather than submit to corporate control over their friendships. Facebook, and the other corporate lackeys, will then learn that they can't exploit our social relationships for profit. From viral growth will come a viral death as more people demand that Facebook dies so our friendships may thrive. [Back to Home](/) --- ## /events Source: https://micahmwhite.com/events [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # ACTIVIST KEYNOTE SPEAKER, SOCIAL MOVEMENT LECTURES, UNIVERSITY AND CULTURAL FESTIVALS [![Crypto for Activism (Osaka, Japan)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1570021984160-P1MERVBZFBOIG53109Y3/ef.png)](/events/devcon-crypto-activism)[Oct1011:00 AM11:00](/events/devcon-crypto-activism) # [Crypto for Activism (Osaka, Japan)](/events/devcon-crypto-activism) * Thursday, October 10, 2019 * 11:00 AM12:00 PM11:0012:00 * DevCon[(map)](http://maps.google.com?q= Osaka Japan) * [Google Calendar](http://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&text=Crypto%20for%20Activism%20%28Osaka%2C%20Japan%29&dates=20191010T180000Z/20191010T190000Z&location=Osaka%2C%20Japan)[ICS](/events/devcon-crypto-activism?format=ical) ### Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers Devcon is an annual gathering held by the Ethereum Foundation. For new explorers of the Ethereum space, Devcon is an intensive introduction to new worlds of thought. For those already embedded it is a family reunion, and a source of energy and creativity. Programming covers content ranging from the deeply technical to the profoundly human. This is a conference for builders of all kinds: developers, designers, researchers, client implementers, test engineers, infrastructure operators, community organizers, social economists and artists. [View Event →](/events/devcon-crypto-activism) [Back to Home](/) --- ## /videos Source: https://micahmwhite.com/videos [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # VIDEOS **Micah White | Mar 17, 2016 | Appel Salon** **Micah White on The National with Wendy Mesley discussing The End of Protest** **Will the March for Our Lives succeed as a protest movement?** **Micah White on CNN - Russian Trolls & American Activist Movements - Effects on Democracy** **Micah White: Protest is Dead - The Feed** **Micah White: End of Protest** **Is Protest Political? Micah White and Zephyr Teachout at Bard’s Hannah Arendt Center** **GROUND festival 2018: The End of Protest by Micah White** **Beyond Protest** **How to read THE END OF PROTEST by Micah White (Ideas City 2015)** **Will Democracy Win? Debate with Micah White in Aarhus, Denmark 2017 in English and Danish** **Power of the People: How to Mobilize a Movement** **Activism at a Crossroads: Micah White and Becky Bond, moderated by Monika Bauerlein (Mother Jones)** **Failure of protest is the real reason Trump won the election** **What is Democracy?** **Micah White on CBC Power and Politics January 23 2017 — What’s Next for the Women’s March** **Donald Trump is the Revolutionary Candidate** **Camille Ross interviews Micah White on THE END OF PROTEST: A new playbook for revolution** **Micah White on BBC Newsnight talking about resistance to Trump (Full Video)** **Why the revolution will start in rural Nehalem, Oregon—an interview with Micah White** **Micah White on The Agenda with Steve Paikin discussing The End of Protest** **THE END OF PROTEST interview by Amanda Lang on Bloomberg TV Canada (Full Interview with Micah White)** **Micah White on Business News Network (Canada)** **Micah White in Bali at the EARCOS Global Issues Network Conference 2016** **Micah White interviewed by Scott Fee on Global News Calgary** **Micah White, co-creator of Occupy Wall Street, on MSNBC’s Nerding Out** **Criador do Occupy Wall Street vê democracia em crise** [Back to Home](/) --- ## /services Source: https://micahmwhite.com/services [Micah Bornfree](/) ## Speaking & Press Micah White — now Micah Bornfree — co-created Occupy Wall Street in 2011. [15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2026](/occupy-wall-street-15th-anniversary) — available for interviews. [Booking 2026–27 keynotes →](/#talks)Press: [micah@micahbornfree.com](mailto:micah@micahbornfree.com) # GET TO KNOW MICAH ### **A Lifetime of Activism:** Social Impact Pioneer Micah White (now Micah Bornfree) is a lifelong social activist known for co-creating [Occupy Wall Street](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/11/28/pre-occupied) with Kalle Lasn, popularizing the critique of [clicktivism](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/aug/12/clicktivism-ruining-leftist-activism) and conceiving the debt-forgiveness activism tactic used by the [Rolling Jubilee](/social-change-theory/origin-rolling-jubilee)/RIP Medical Debt. He was an editor of _Adbusters_ magazine. In recognition of his contributions to the practice and theory of social movement creation, [_Esquire_](/interviews/esquire) named him one of the most influential young thinkers alive today. He is a sought after global speaker on the future of activism and has delivered numerous lectures at prestigious universities—including [Princeton](http://www.princeton.edu/ihum/events/making-protest-work/), [Swarthmore](https://www.swarthmore.edu/news-events/listen-activist-author-micah-white-04-why-protests-fail), Middlebury and the [University of Chicago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hseHN5DGBYc)—along with cultural festivals and private events in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Indonesia and the United States. Micah is the [National Endowment for the Humanities/Hannah Arendt Center Distinguished Visiting Fellow](http://hac.bard.edu/fellows/neh/) at Bard College. Micah's first book,_[The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution](/cultureshop)_, was published in 2016 by Knopf Canada and the German edition, _[Die Zukunft der Rebellion](http://www.aufbau-verlag.de/index.php/die-zukunft-der-rebellion.html)_, will be released in 2018 by Blumenbar. Micah White was recently awarded the [Voqal Fellowship](https://voqal.org/initiatives/voqal-fellowship/) and the inaugural [Roddenberry Fellowship](https://roddenberryfellowship.org/) to support his work to create the [Activist Graduate School](https://www.activistgraduateschool.com/), an online educational institution for experienced social activists. The Activist Graduate School will begin accepting students in late-2018. [Watch Videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsBILA%5FDF6Y&list=PLLJ1Vk9ek6eEiRWAHVL8DHxl1ybQQoSZZ)[Contact Micah](/#connect)[Invite Micah](/activist-speakers-bureau/micah-white/) Micah's essays and interviews on the future of protest have appeared internationally in periodicals including [_The Guardian_](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/micah-white), _[Folha de São Paulo](http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2015/05/1633343-protestos-precisam-mais-do-que-multidoes-para-ter-sucesso-diz-occupy.shtml)_ and _[The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-occupy-wall-street-will-keep-up-the-fight/2011/11/17/gIQAn5RJZN%5Fstory.html?utm%5Fterm=.2b41a9a2c330)._ He has been a featured guest on major network television shows such the BBC's [Newsnight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkyRe18ICeA) and CBC's [The National](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEpAA%5FsW3y4). [![endofprotest.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1513997801650-JT5DCXGTM1XV9YLPUK1A/endofprotest.jpg)](http://smarturl.it/endofprotest)[![9783351050498.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1513997658084-MIGGP54OIN2IYA3GXYUL/9783351050498.jpg)](http://aufbau-verlag.de/index.php/die-zukunft-der-rebellion.html)![michae white.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1513997856423-9EAVYTQFXDBDON0DE4EE/michae+white.jpg) [_The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution_](http://smarturl.it/endofprotest) is being translated into [German](http://aufbau-verlag.de/index.php/die-zukunft-der-rebellion.html) and Greek. --- ### **University Lectures:** Why do protests fail? In this lecture at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics, Micah speaks about best practices on how to organize a movement, if protests are the most effective way to enact change, and how electoral politics factor in a successful organization. The discussion led to one central question—What is the future of activism? ### **International Festivals:** Will democracy win? In Denmark, Micah was asked: Do we remain convinced that democracy—as we know it—will spread around the globe?He had just seven minutes to answer the question with a debate in Danish and English to follow. Watch as Micah defends the virtues of democracy and presents a nuanced critique of contemporary sovereignty. ### **Activist Consultancy:** What do we do now? How will the changing nature of protest impact the work of international advocacy groups? Amnesty International in London invited Micah to speak to their team about the future of global social action. [Want to work with Micah? Get in touch](/#connect) ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1491246728683-DVAX8WND5879Q9ZRHMD0/amnesty-logo.gif) ### **Global Thinker:** Die Zukunft der Rebellion **The German translation of _[The End of Protest](http://smarturl.it/endofprotest)_will be published in May 2018!** Es ist Zeit für die ultimative Revolution: Micah White, Mitbegründer von Occupy Wall Street, schreibt schonungslos selbstkritisch über seine Zeit in der aktiven Protestszene und zieht zugleich eine Bilanz der internationalen Protestgeschichte. Dabei stellt er glasklar fest: Wir brauchen eine neue Form der Rebellion. Denn die Erfahrung hat gezeigt, dass der Protest allein Regierungen weder zum Zuhören noch zum Handeln zwingen kann. Eine oppositionelle Bewegung ist erst dann erfolgreich, wenn das kollektive Wirken auch Neues schafft. Wie das funktionieren kann, beschreibt Micah White überraschend einfach und liefert konkrete Strategien und Taktiken für eine erfolgreiche, weltweite Revolution. Er ist die moralische Stimme der gegenwärtigen Protestgeneration. Und dieses Buch sein leidenschaftlicher Appell an alle Aktivisten der Zukunft. [![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/512d4abfe4b0734471c19eb0/1511055486597-ZY062HSI9GYUIHMD9MU2/9783351050498.jpg)](http://www.aufbau-verlag.de/index.php/die-zukunft-der-rebellion.html)[titel vorbestellen](http://www.aufbau-verlag.de/index.php/die-zukunft-der-rebellion.html)[Contact micah](/#connect) ### Key concepts: activism, social change, social movements, globalism, populism, creativity, protest, constructive failure, sovereignty, revolution, democracy. [Back to Home](/)