From the preface to Rules of Activism, by Charles Euchner (Polity Press, 2025).
Play a simple thought experiment.
Imagine the United States without its long traditions of political activism. Ordinary Americans participate in politics. They speak out at public hearings, sign petitions, lobby officeholders, file lawsuits, and vote. But when they get rejected, they have no other options for political action. They do not demonstrate, march, strike, boycott, divest, occupy, or subvert everyday activities to gain a voice in politics.
What would American democracy look like without political activism? In this alternate universe, the movement to abolish slavery would falter. The labor movement would be stillborn. The suffragist movement would die a slow death. The civil rights movement would never advance beyond Booker T. Washington’s accommodation of segregation. The feminist movement would never define or confront the “problem without a name.” When America went to war, only a few lonely voices would speak out in opposition. Debates about the dangers of nuclear power and the arms race would be confined to narrow scientific communities. Other issues—like civil liberties, mass incarceration, abortion, health care, the environment, toxic dumping, gay rights, and animal rights—would receive limited public discussion.
Without activism, America could be a hollowed-out, broken, often cruel place. A “war of all against all” would rig the game for the wealthy, the well-connected, the fit, and the lucky. Think of this America as Pottersville, the town in the frustrated imagination of George Bailey in Frank Capra’s classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Decency is possible in Pottersville, but few people have much hope for realizing their truest aspirations. And no good process exists for advocating reform.
Democracy requires dissent and protest to achieve its ideals. Without dissent, in fact, democracy is a nonsensical, absurd ideal. After all, how can a democracy debate the great issues of the day without the voices of nonconformists and visionaries?
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Now, let’s explore the issue more positively.
America’s rich tradition of activism does exist, and it has helped to transform the nation and the world. Activism has helped people on the margins of society to confront illogical, obsolete, corrupt, and mean-spirited ways of thinking. Activists have rallied workers and mothers, confronted bosses and gangsters, preserved the land and water, protected the ill and weak, demanded answers from elites—and, often, blocked or subverted the worst practices of a broken system. In fact, whatever is beautiful and decent in America owes something to activists’ risky and often thankless work.
The impact of American activism extends far beyond the U.S. In fact, America’s most significant export might be its tradition of dissent. Wherever people seek to make their politics more democratic, they turn to the ideals and traditions of American activism. The Irish liberation movement, the anti-colonial revolution, the antiwar and peace movements, the crusade against apartheid in South Africa, the rebellion of the old Soviet bloc, and the movement to confront the climate crisis all looked to America for inspiration and guidance. Activists worldwide have read the great works of American dissent: Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Susan B. Anthony, Mother Jones, Martin Luther King, Ella Baker, Betty Friedan, Gene Sharp, and more. American activism has contributed to the curriculum of democratic movements worldwide. They have studied the events that transformed America: the Underground Railroad, the suffragists’ jailing and hunger strikes, the sit-down strikes of auto workers, the Montgomery bus boycott, the Moratorium against the Vietnam War, and the mass demonstrations outpouring of Black Lives Matter.
The Modern Age of Activism
We live in the age of political activism. In the last half-century, political and social movements transformed politics.
The Civil Rights Revolution has been the pivot of modern American history. From the 1950s to the 1970s, a coalition of blacks, students, people of faith, and workers took to the streets to demand equal rights for all people regardless of color. The civil rights cause spawned the antiwar movement, the student movement, and the feminist revolution. Since then, activists have defined virtually every issue in American politics: the environment, nuclear power, toxic dumping, the handicapped, abortion rights, community preservation, gay rights, AIDS, animal rights, and more.
In the twenty-first century, the Internet has seemed to power a new wave of activism. For a year, starting in December 2010, protests spread across the Middle East, forcing the abdication of despots in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen. As the Arab Spring crested, the Occupy movement swept across the rest of the world. Long-suppressed anger over growing economic inequality burst into the open. In 951 cities across 82 countries, activists took over public squares and buildings. Under the slogan “We are the 99 Percent,” they put inequality at the top of the political agenda. Time magazine declared “The Protester” its 2011 Person of the Year. MIT Technology Review declared a new political era: “The mobile phone, the Net, and the spread of information—a deadly combination for dictators.”
After Donald Trump’s first election in 2016, protests spiked again. The day after his inauguration in January 2017, the Woman’s March brought 5.6 million anti-Trumpers into the streets worldwide—the biggest demonstration in history. A year later, after a gun massacre in Parkland, Florida, students organized a nationwide day of protests that brought millions more onto the streets. Then, under the banner of Black Lives Matter, a coalition of groups in 2020 mobilized 15 million to 26 million people to fill the streets to demand an end to police brutality against people of color. As they rallied for their causes, marchers chanted: “This is what democracy looks like!”
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This apparent ease of protest seemed to promise a new age of citizen participation. Suddenly, thanks to the Internet and social media, activism looked simple: Identify a grievance, put out a call, show up. When enough people fill the streets (about 3.5 percent of the population, by one reckoning), activists can defeat even the most brutal dictators.
But the powers of new technology cut both ways. To be sure, activists can mobilize the masses quickly. But their opponents can use technology to oppose and subvert activists. Opponents of reform can use the Internet to spread misinformation, troll activists, set up false flags, and rally their forces to harass protesters. With no real standards for social media, groups like QAnon and the Proud Boys can subvert activists and their allies.
Political organizing requires long, hard work. Thanks to the new media, it’s easier than ever to connect with the masses and get them to argue issues online or even show up at a rally. But that makes it harder than ever to get people to do the painstaking work of organizing, educating, and direct action.
Take it from Srdja Popovic, one of the leaders of the Otpor movement that deposed the murderous dictator Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. Popovic loves the street drama of activism: holding mass rallies, mounting provocative street theater, confronting tyrants directly. “But it’s never enough to throw a party,” Popovic says. “After all, people go to parties every day, and nothing really comes of them except maybe a hangover. If you really want to change the world, you’re going to need what we call in the business a vision of tomorrow.”
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Democracy is based on the idea that people can use elections, the legal system, and wide-ranging policy debates to pursue their policy goals. In America, two parties dominate. Republicans represent big business, small government, a robust military, and “traditional” family values, to name a few issues; Democrats represent the middle class, immigrants and minorities, working people, and investment in education, health care, individual liberties, and a social safety net. At least, that is how the parties have defined themselves since the New Deal.
But both parties often spurn the basic needs and desires of the American people. Mainstream politicians depend on the support of well-heeled constituencies and donors—and they also fear the loudest voices in the media and in their coalition. Even when the public expresses clear policy preferences, reforms are blocked by a phalanx of partisans, ideologues, and special interests.
Consider a seminal study of political power in the United States. Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page analyzed 1,779 public policy contests in the two decades before 2002. For each of these contests, Gilens and Page gathered data about the policy preferences of the majority, the income breakdowns of survey respondents, and the outcomes of those contests. Gilens and Page explore the policy preferences and success or failure of three major groups: economic and business elites, interest groups, and the general public.
“Both individual elites and organized interest groups (including corporations, largely owned and controlled by wealthy elites) play a substantial part in affecting public policy, but the general public has little or no influence,” Gilens and Page concluded.
The elites, in fact, wield a virtual veto over policies in all realms. “A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one out of five in favor) is adopted only 18 percent of the time, while a proposed change with high support (four out of five in favor) is adopted 45 percent of the time,” Gilens and Page report. Unless their cause aligns with organized interest groups, the success of average citizens’ preferences “drops precipitously, to non-significant, near-zero levels.”
Pause for a moment to let that sink in: Without the OK of elites, mass preferences have a “near-zero” chance of succeeding.
Interest-group lobbying usually does not match citizen preferences. In only 36 percent of the time did interest groups favor change; 55 percent of time they opposed change. For sure, ordinary people sometimes benefit when elites win. When lobbies for hospitals, pharma, and insurance win, they may spin off benefits for average Americans. Workers in those industries get jobs and patients get insurance coverage. Even then, beneficiaries must accept rules that limit their options.
Since the time of the Gilens-Page study, the biases of policymaking have become more extreme. Inequality has reached historic levels. Power has been more concentrated in “complexes” of a a few major corporations in every sector: tech, military weaponry, health care, media, airlines, automakers, pharmaceuticals, banking, agriculture and food processing, gaming, semiconductors, and home improvement. Many question the validity of Lincoln’s description of the American experiment: “Of the people, by the people, for the people.”
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Most issues, most days, do not provoke protest or dissent. Even in the face of deep inequality or violations of basic rights, most people accept unjust situations. Most people believe the adage that “you can’t fight City Hall” or are simply preoccupied with their day-to-day lives. They may understand the harm and unreasonableness of inequality, violations of basic rights, homelessness, or environmental destruction. But awareness does not necessarily lead to political action. To move from problem to action, people must understand the issues, assess the political landscape, recruit activists and organize them, devise strategies and tactics, and finally take action.
Before each major political movement in America, most people accepted a wide range of policies and arrangements they now reject. Before the civil rights movement, racism was considered an acceptable part of a complex society. Early in the Vietnam War, Americans considered the war a necessary part of the Cold War. Before the gay rights movement, homosexuality was considered a form of psychological deviance. In all of these cases, political activism eventually arose to challenge these situations. But it took time and effort—and often, great sacrifice.
When people come together to explore issues of common concern, they usually start with mainstream politics: going to public meetings, circulating petitions, joining lawsuits, volunteering in campaigns, and voting in elections. But that often does not work. So many of them—about a quarter of the population, at some point in their lives—embrace some form of activism.
It’s not easy. “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable,” Martin Luther King said. “Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
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America’s tradition of activism is, of course, imperfect. Advocates for every cause have their own limits and prejudices. Ideologues can be narrow and dogmatic. Sometimes, when victory is within reach, they falter. Sometimes, when defeat comes, they find scapegoats. They can get ugly, even violent.
A few examples make the point. Abolitionists often failed to rise above the prejudices of the day; they opposed slavery but still considered blacks inferior, deserving fewer rights than whites. Suffragists frequently opposed workers and blacks seeking fundamental rights. Over their long history, labor unionists have been hostile to blacks and women and opposed environmental and antiwar activists. Civil rights and student activists in the 1960s were often misogynistic and homophobic. The farmworkers movement of Cesar Chavez attacked illegal immigrants as “wetbacks.”
But most activists strive to set and meet higher standards. When they articulate the values of democracy, fairness, equality, and tolerance, activists set high standards for themselves and society. In the process, many confront their own prejudices and limitations.
In a sense, activism poses a dare for all of us to rise to the highest aspirations of a fair and decent society. In the words of Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”