The global pandemic has spawned new forms of activism – and they’re flourishing
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the world was experiencing unprecedented levels of mass mobilization. The decade from 2010 to 2019 saw more mass movements demanding radical change around the world than in any period since World War II. Since the pandemic struck, however, street mobilization – mass demonstrations, rallies, protests, and sit-ins – has largely ground to an abrupt halt in places as diverse as India, Lebanon, Chile, Hong Kong, Iraq, Algeria, and the United States.
The near cessation of street protests does not mean that people power has dissipated. We have been collecting data on the various methods that people have used to express solidarity or adapted to press for change in the midst of this crisis. In just several weeks’ time, we’ve identified nearly 100 distinct methods of nonviolent action that include physical, virtual and hybrid actions – and we’re still counting. Far from condemning social movements to obsolescence, the pandemic – and governments’ responses to it – are spawning new tools, new strategies, and new motivation to push for change.
In terms of new tools, all across the world, people have turned to methods like car caravans, cacerolazos (collectively banging pots and pans inside the home), and walkouts from workplaces with health and safety challenges to voice personal concerns, make political claims, and express social solidarity. Activists have developed alternative institutions such as coordinated masksewing, community mutual aid pods, and crowdsourced emergency funds. Communities have placed teddy bears in their front windows for children to find during scavenger hunts, authors have posted live-streamed readings, and musicians have performed from their balconies and rooftops. Technologists are experimenting with drones adapted to deliver supplies, disinfect common areas, check individual temperatures, and monitor high-risk areas. And, of course, many movements are moving their activities online, with digital rallies, teach-ins, and information-sharing.
Such activities have had important impacts. Perhaps the most immediate and life-saving efforts have been those where movements have begun to coordinate and distribute critical resources to people in need. Local mutual aid pods, like those in Massachusetts, have emerged to highlight urgent needs and provide for crowdsourced and volunteer rapid response. Pop-up food banks, reclaiming vacant housing, crowdsourced hardship funds, free online medical-consultation clinics, mass donations of surgical masks, gloves, gowns, goggles and sanitizer, and makingmasks at home are all methods that people have developed in the past several weeks. Most people have made these items by hand. Others have even used 3D printers to make urgently-needed medical supplies. These actions of movements and communities have already saved countless lives.
Although many of these methods may seem to have little visible impact, these activities are likely to strengthen civil society and highlight political and economic issues in urgent need of change. In Chile, women have launched a feminist emergency plan that includes coordinating caring duties and mutual support against gender-based violence. In Spain, more than 15,000 people have joined a rent strike this April demanding the suspension of rents during the lockdown. Many have engaged in dissent without leaving their homes. As the Washington Post recently highlighted, many youth activists are moving their weekly global climate strikes online, conducting tweetstorms, developing toolkits for civic action, organizing teach-ins, and developing accessible websites about climate change. Organizers in the UK have developed a series of seminars on movement building and mutual aid. Groups engaged in these activities now will improve their capacity for impact and transformation once the global lockdown is behind us.
Of course, some people have also responded to the pandemic and government policies with defiance. Groups or communities have ignored public health guidance by gathering in groups for rallies, protests, or worship services. A pastor in the US state of Kentucky held an Easter service in defiance of the state’s ban on public gatherings. The action was met with a mandatory two-week quarantine for all attendees, but follows similarly defiant moves by evangelical churches in Florida and Louisiana. In Nevada parishioners, angry their church had been closed, held a rolling series of protests in the parking lots of local Walmart stores. And occasionally, people have taken action informed by conspiracy theories. Several youths in the UK, for example, vandalized a series of phone masts in response to the unfounded claim that 5G cellular technology spreads the coronavirus. The diffusion of Zoombombing shows that not everyone innovating new tactics is acting in solidarity with those suffering from the pandemic. But the number of people using these countermobilization techniques pales in comparison to the number using acts of support, mutual aid and solidarity.
What is clear is that people power is adapting to, and even flourishing within, the unprecedented global crisis. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as our collective creativity is regularly evolving with the times. Emergencies often prove to be the forge in which new ideas and opportunities are hammered out. While it is impossible to predict what the long-term effects of such growing skill and awareness may be, it’s clear that people power has not diminished. Instead, movements around the world are adapting to remote organizing, building their bases, sharpening their messaging, and planning strategies for what comes next.
Know of a method of nonviolent action that we haven’t documented yet? We’re still crowdsourcing; you can submit it here.
Erica Chenoweth is the Berthold Beitz professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at Harvard University
Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick is associate professor of political sociology at the University of San Diego and associate professor of social movements and human rights at the University of Nottingham
Jeremy Pressman is an associate professor of political science and director of middle east studies at the University of Connecticut
Felipe G Santos is a research associate at the University of Manchester
Jay Ulfelder is an unemployed American political scientist and data scientist