Tag: Non State Actors

When Does Activism Become Powerful?

August 12, 2021

My colleagues and I studied places in the United States where people’s activism actually had an impact — places where leaders built a constituency and turned the actions of that constituency into countervailing power. We interviewed experts all over the country to identify these outliers, then selected six of them for deep investigation. The six represented different issues, different places and different constituencies. We asked, what do they have in common?

When Does Activism Become Powerful?

December 16, 2019

It’s about much more than amassing money or people.

From Hong Kong to Chile to the United States, people around the world are angry. They don’t have a say in things that matter in their lives. So they protest, sign petitions, call their lawmakers and organize sit-ins. Despite this enormous energy, their actions can often feel futile. How can we make them add up to something more, so people have power over the things they care about?