movement building

The article by Micah White of Occupy Wall Street provides great advice on movement building and evolution. I’ve had people here in Detroit interested in movement building on new ventures and they’ve seen recent efforts not going so well. The reasons are continued attempts using the same methods. Once you become predictable you are conquerable and become consequentially passed over by the press and people watching it. The efforts to be heard fall short of desired goals.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Normal has never changed anything ever — Stephen Boyle[/pullquote]

Evolving movements must realize that establishing a normal process is what corporate training leads them toward. Corporatizing movements is compromizing why activism happens. We aren’t interested in normal! “Normal has never changed anything ever.” I’ve been saying this for a few years now and each time someone hears it a “lightbulb appears”. Radical change requires radical means and efforts. Guerilla warfare is an example and how the Americas won the Revolutionary War leading to independence from English regime. Much of America has lost its luster, there is little gleam in the eye of those here wishing for change. The only way it’ll happen is moving beyond those influences we hold sacred (and reliable). Relying on something is where we are losing it. We’re forgetting how to produce on our own. Community building has to learn that doing different shouldn’t be shunned but needs to be embraced as the evolutionary path needed. Getting involved in the evolution means listening and doing. Being outspoken and responsible at the same time.

As one of the original co-creators of the Occupy Wall Street movement, I’ve watched student protests sweep across campuses in Cape Town,Missouri, London and Los Angeles with a growing sense of optimism. The history of protest suggests that students are often the first to sense the opportunity for revolutionary change.

I suspect that the new wave of campus protests could be the foreshock to the global social movement that activists have been hoping for since the end of Occupy. To increase the odds, here is some advice to student protesters, based on the lessons from my time with Occupy.

First, never protest the same way twice. The birth of a new movement is exciting. But the effectiveness of a protest diminishes if the same tactic is used repeatedly. Once the occupation tactic stopped working in the face of police crackdowns and the onset of winter weather, Occupy Wall Street stopped existing.

Read more at Popular Resistance: An Occupy Wall Street Founder, Provides Advice To Student Protesters