This article is about the rise of authoritarianism in India and impacts on NGOs and grassroots groups.

The Rise of Authoritarianism in India

Dr Umar Khalid, a young muslim man, has been in prison for 5 years, without trial. Each bail application has been rejected – all the way from the sessions court, to high courts to the supreme court.

His crime? He gave a speech upholding the Indian Constitution that guarantees every citizen of India their rights and freedoms. He fought against a discriminatory citizenship amendment bill, which caused widespread protests against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) conservative regime. The Modi government accused Khalid of being a key conspirator in the 2020 Delhi riots that Modi’s party officials themselves have been openly seen inciting.

We won’t respond to violence with violence. We won’t respond to hate with hate. If they spread hate, we will respond to it with love. – Dr Umar Khalid

Umar Khalid’s case is not an anomaly. It is not a singular case of the failure of Indian judiciary or of gross misuse of terror laws. It is part of a long list of civil rights violations carried out by the Indian State apparatus against anyone that dares to oppose its economic and developmental policies.

Modi’s Rise to Power

Modi became a household name in 2014. Fronted by his political party, BJP, his political campaign was the first to use social media, PR agencies and corporate style advertisements to court voters. His campaign openly used the power of misinformation to twist historical facts to suit Hindutva Ideology, and to attack critics who dared to confront him. Authoritarianism thrives where there is ignorance.

A poor education system, a society that does not know or value its history, that is excessively obsessed with capitalist growth and development, a society that allows hate and bigotry to fester unchallenged, is a society that can be made to give up its rights and its freedoms.

Christophe Jafferlot, an expert on the rise of right-wing politics in India, classifies modern India as a system of electoral authoritarianism. Elections have not been suspended, but there is an exponential rise in authoritarianism. This is achieved by interfering with institutions in charge of organizing elections, making competition unequal in terms of financial resources, and restricting freedom of expression, including media independence.

As of 2025, India has reached a point where ALL of its democratic institutions – all the way from its judiciary, investigation bodies, central banks, enforcement directorates, elections commission, media and parliament have been captured.

Modi’s India now shares several similarities and patterns with Israel. This is most apparent in the rise in Israel-like tactics to subdue and subjugate minority groups. There is a chilling similarity between India’s use of bulldozers to demolish Muslim homes and businesses and Israel’s use of similar tactics to demolish Palestinian homes and properties.

India’s close friendship with Israel has resulted in arms deals that include spywares and other surveillance softwares – one of which, (Pegasus) has  been used to target Indian activists and journalists critical of the State.

A Step Back To Pre-2014 India

This slide into authoritarianism and use of terror laws to subdue, intimidate and wrongfully imprison dissenters did not begin with Modi’s regime.

While it is true that the misuse and abuse of the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) – the primary terror law being used in India today – has been higher under the BJP government, it was under previous governments that these colonial legacy laws were formed, strengthened and allowed to continue.

The National investigation Agency (NIA) was formed in 2008 under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. The abuse of power and use of State violence against voices that oppose the State’s economic/development policies is not unique to the current regime.

Violence against marginalized communities, particularly Indigenous groups, had been normalized by successive governments. 

The UPA government designated these individuals as terrorists and/or people committing terrorist acts for interfering with economic development projects, which threaten natural resources and land rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In India today, the authoritarianism under Modi and BJP is a logical conclusion to the path chosen by successive governments and its people. In failing to chart its own unique path – one that could have put ecological conservation and human rights at the center – and following in the footsteps of the western models of capitalist, imperialistic development instead – India and its people have made a grave mistake.

Impacts on Civil Society Groups/NGOs/Grassroots Groups

A majority of think tanks, research organizations, environmental and human rights groups have lost their licenses that allow them to receive foreign funding.

Specific examples of attacks on activists, and their charges, include:

• Newsclick, a media house critical of the government, offices were raided in 2023 and a number of journalists were interrogated and falsely charged with ‘receiving money to run pro-China propaganda’.
• Teesta Satalvad, secretary of the human rights organization ‘Citizens for Justice and Peace’, was arrested in 2022 under fraudulent charges. Satalvad has been demanding justice for the 2002 Gujarat riots victims and has been seeking prosecution of senior government officials.
• Safoora Zargar was framed on charges of “anti-national” activities, conspiring to overthrow the government. She was arrested in 2021 and thrown in prison while she was still pregnant. It was only after pressure from International humanitarian groups that she was granted bail.
• Disha Ravi – the co convenor of Fridays For Future – India Chapter was arrested under sedition law during the farmers movement of 2020.
• In 2019, the websites of three environmental youth based collectives were suspended for launching a nationwide campaign against the central government’s attempts to dilute one of the environmental regulatory provisions of India.

Role of Support Organizations (NGOs/funders)

Support organizations must develop a strong understanding of the political landscape of the region and communities where support is targeted. Without such an understanding, the flow of resources easily becomes diverted and diffused into campaigns that have little bearing on the real-life experiences of those living under unjust systems.

In an authoritarian environment, the role of support organizations becomes crucial. Ensuring that support organizations do not back down and withdraw resources because the environment is challenging is of the utmost importance.

India today requires support to set up awareness amongst its people, particularly its youth. Groups that are setting up alternative education curriculums, workshops, conducting trainings to generate political literacy amongst young voters, are severely under supported. Citizen groups that conduct research, data collection, and investigative reporting need funds and resources.

Independent media is critical in a democracy – and that has collapsed entirely in India. The few that remain are being targeted, jailed and harassed. Independent journalism is another area that can benefit immensely with financial support. Think tanks, policy advocacy organizations need to be restored. Environmental and human rights groups need resources so they can continue to fight, campaign, generate awareness, and pursue legal avenues of justice.

Grassroots activists need support systems so they are protected and do not have to face the brunt of state violence alone. Legal and monetary support are crucial to grassroots groups that are fighting along the frontlines and are the primary targets of state sponsored violence.

Suggested Reflective Questions

• What similarities can you identify between your region and India pre-2014? Are there similarities to present day India?
• Have any of the democratic institutions in your region been captured by the state (judiciary, investigation bodies, central banks, enforcement directorates, elections commission, media and parliament)?
• Can you identify tactics from other repressive regions that your region is also using to target marginalized groups and/or activists?
• How are various marginalized groups (Indigenous, disabled, houseless, trans etc) treated in your region when they exist, or resist?
• What key area is your group/organization aiming to address, of those that continue to be necessary as authoritarianism progresses (alternative education, research, independent media, legal aid, physical safety aid, direct action)?
• What could solidarity with activists in India look like for our organization/group?

Explore Further

• Mining Resistance in India
• Authoritarianism: How You Know It When You See It
• Commons Conversations: Insights into Environmental Justice Movements in India with Radhika Jhaveri
• Insights from the Frontlines of Kenya
• Supporting Grassroots Justice-oriented Activists Around the World: A Year’s Worth of Learnings
• Global Grassroots Support Network
• Blueprints for Change
• Confronting Authoritarianism and Organizing Resistance: Case Studies and Lessons Learned

The post Insight from the Frontlines – India appeared first on The Commons.

Youth activists have been campaigning for environmental justice for decades. One of the key organisations involved is the Australian Student Environment Network (ASEN), which has existed for close to three decades and continues to organise today.  In the 1990s and 2000s ASEN was involved in a veritable flood of activism. The case study that follows details the network’s formation and many of the activities it has undertaken.

Case Study

It just blew me away that there were young people my age that were so committed – Anne O’Brien

In its early years ASEN organised around uranium mining, around protecting forests, and in early protests around climate change and coal. Even its logo provides an insight into its politics. The ‘A’ in ASEN is pictured like a tripod in a forest blockade, echoing the circle A of the anarchist movement. ASEN billed itself in this vein as:

a youth led organisation. It is non-hierarchical and grassroots. It is constantly evolving, depending on what students are doing in our collectives and communities. ASEN can help you set up a food co-op, participate in a national campaign, or support your local one, learn how to climb trees or shut down a coal fired power station.., ASEN works to be inclusive and explicitly breaks down sexism, homophobia, racism and class and geographical barriers.

Two key events every year came out of the ASEN milieu. Firstly the Students of Sustainability Conference (attended by up to 800 people, and beginning in 1991) and from 2006 the ASEN Training Camp, designed to skill up a core of activists for organising campaigns. SoS existed until 2020, while the Training Camps continue today.

Once a year, state convenors and national convenors were elected to help facilitate the functioning of the network. Importantly, ASEN activists often drew the links between capitalism and environmental destruction, helping articulate a broad critique of capitalism. Beyond just the environment, ASEN activists were involved in the alter-globalisation movement, in refugee rights campaigns, and in challenging gender norms. Above all ASEN recognised the importance of First Nations leadership and organised in solidarity with Indigenous people.

Nicky Ison, a mid 2000s student activist at UNSW and a National Convenor of ASEN, wrote a piece boldly titled ‘Why ASEN is So Fuckin’ Cool’. She described how ASEN activists were able to revitalise environmental activism at UNSW, transcending the ‘backstabbing, hackery, long meetings going nowhere, intimidation’ that she saw as associated with student politics. For Ison:

One of the most inspiring things about ASEN is that it attempts to be the change we want to see. Not only are we working to stop climate change, old growth logging, neoliberalism and capitalism, but we are establishing structures and processes that do not perpetuate and even break down such systems. Decentralised, participatory organising is hard, particularly across this vast continent, but there are reasons why we do it… We are developing skills that will be essential in a more sustainable future, as localised and decentralised control and management is synonymous with such a future.

Julia Dehm, the Melbourne University Environment Officer in 2006, described how a strength of the network was:

the DIY attitude that we had, that we did everything ourselves, we made banners, we screenprinted t-shirts, I made so many badges! People learnt rope climbing, people learnt surveying, people learnt all these various practical skills, cooking in big quantities, bike repair, I learnt welding! So during that period there was this real DIY skill development…

Dehm concluded simply that ‘we saw ourselves as ratbags.’ When so much space in the environment campaigning sector is taken up by professionalised NGOs and small l liberal groups, a radical, grassroots, direct action focused tendency is worth remembering.

‘A really different space’: Students of Sustainability

Vital to ASEN was the annual student environment conference. This was initiated in 1991 as Students, Science and Sustainability, and later changed to Students of Sustainability (SoS). The first conference was held in Canberra. It initially attracted around 200 students annually. It was a massive camp at a university campus held during the mid semester break.

While it would later be hyperbolically denounced by National Queensland State MP Mark Stoneman as a ‘training ground for guerillas’, the early politics of the conference was fairly mild – with discussion of the philosophy of science and urban planning sitting alongside a more specific focus on the environment. Both Labor and Liberal politicians were occasionally invited to address the conference. At times environmentalists clashed with Koori activists – with 1993 seeing ‘a great deal of anger’ from Aboriginal participants critical of the lack of acknowledgement that they were on Aboriginal land.

By the mid 1990s there had been a shift to the left, and analyses started to focus more on how existing power structures were related to the causes of environmental problems. In 1996 for instance, in an interview with Green Left Weekly, NUS National Environment Officer Matt Fagan discussed the need to challenge ‘capitalist structures and consumerism’. SoS became larger too: 1996 was estimated at having 600 participants. 1996 moved away from being ‘a talkfest’ and involved more scheming for actions.

I ended up coming along to Students and Sustainability in Brisbane, that was at Griffith University. And I think it changed a lot of things for me. It just blew me away that there were people my age who were so committed and I just was very inspired by a lot of the people there. It felt like it really mattered. It was at a time where there was a lot of anti corporate stuff. I went along to a workshop that Fleur Chapman did on the World Bank and the IMF and that was really great…. I knew a little bit about it, but it was so galvanising to hear people, my peers, give workshops on this, saying we’re taking action about it.

Galvanised by SoS, O’Brien ended up attending the S11 protest against neoliberal globalisation and the World Economic Forum two months later. This was ‘life changing’ and solidified her commitment to social justice activism. Julia Dehm recalled that:

The thing that was powerful about SoS was that you feel like you’re in a really different space, and it was for me as a young person… it was a different way of living life is possible, that was quite exciting and radicalising…

SoS actively challenged gender norms – for instance one ‘genderfuck’ workshop insisted that ‘real boyz wear skirts, girly-girls wear ties’. It had a communal cooking structure – with participants required to help with cooking throughout the event. Even going to SoS was an event – for Julia Dehm one required a three-day train ride to get there with a ‘festival’ like atmosphere, building relationships with other activists. Activists in vans drove across the Nullarbor for a week, others hitchhiked and others cycled across state lines. SoS was a hub for connecting students with the wider environment movement and forming alliances.

Seth Dias, a Sydney University activist from the late 2010s, described how Students of Sustainability was:

Geared as the sort of place where young radicals could be educated, from everything from direct action skills to protest organising and left wing theory, introduction to anarchism, introduction to communism and whatever. So it was a very important structure…

There were a huge number of workshops at SoS – the 2008 conference, for instance, saw over 100. Dias met his long term partner at the event – and he wasn’t the only one.

After overcoming its early failings, crucial to SoS was the part played by Indigenous activists, and the emphasis on Indigenous solidarity. At the 1996 conference, for instance, around 20% of the speakers were Indigenous people, while in 2008 Indigenous activists gave critical accounts of the federal government’s “intervention” into their communities. At this conference, Indigenous speakers further criticised coal, uranium mining and the dumping of nuclear waste on Aboriginal land. Dias recalled that:

SoS was really important in my political education because it was where I first met some of the Indigenous organisers who taught me a lot about the world. I remember there was one plenary about Aboriginal deaths in custody or campaigns for sovereignty generally. One of the speakers went on a full on monologue about how the reconciliation campaign is fucked and how things like Recognise are really damaging… And I was like ‘wooo’, these are all things that I thought were quite good, but it made me realise how tokenistic they are or how they’re not going to lead to the kind of change we need. And I kind of put all these things together and realised you can’t actually have justice for Indigenous people and stop deaths in custody without a fundamental change to the capitalist system… those conferences helped me put all those things together.

ASEN activist and former national convenor Holly Creenaune stressed how the conferences emphasised that colonialism was an ongoing process, and recalled vividly:

The format of them, there was always a strong welcome to country and a large Indigenous contingent. Always had an elders tent and attempted to kind of bring in Aboriginal people leading resistance battles against mining, including the Lake Cowal gold mine in western NSW… And to really hear about those impacts and to connect that to 200 odd years of invasion and occupation, and situate the current environmental injustice as a part of a continued understanding of occupation. I think that was really politicising for a lot of people, when you go through school you learn about Captain Cook and Governor Macquarie and if you’re lucky you might learn a little about Aboriginal people but… invasion and colonisation is at best referred to as something historical. And so I think the centrality of Aboriginal led battles and Aboriginal leadership in social movements was really key to those conferences and the campaigns and actions that came out of it.

From the mid-nineties SoS began regularly organising protests as well. In 1997 after the end of the Townsville conference, students travelled to the Northern Territory to protest the Ranger uranium mine and the proposed Jabiluka mine. Anne O’Brien recalled after the 2002 conference in Perth, a bus filled with students went up the Western Australian coast, even organising a naked protest at Ningaloo Reef. It culminated in a memorable protest at Port Hedland immigration detention centre. O’Brien recalls that:

We had the vigil all night outside Port Hedland detention centre, it was amazing. We played music and danced and heard stories from the refugees. They threw food in bundles over the razor wire and hot tea in thermos glass. It just was a really powerful moment. Some of the refugees remembered that for years to come and they called us the ‘party on the beach’ [because the centre is near the beach]

SoS always saw a tension between more personal workshops (often derided as ‘lifestylist’) and more explicitly political issues. Yet despite the limitations of lifestylism, for many involved it was a moment of transformational, radical pedagogy. In the SoS programs that I have had access to, the large majority of the workshops were quite political in some way. It saw the development of tight-knit networks of people, who would go on to participate in movements for social change.

Jabiluka and the formation of ASEN

Let’s go back a bit. While ASEN was officially formed at the Students and Sustainability conference in 1997, it was the experience of concrete campaigning that cohered ASEN, most notably the campaign against the Jabiluka uranium mine.

In 1998, Energy Resources Australia began construction of the mine in the Northern Territory’s Kakadu National Park, on the land of the Mirrar people. Aboriginal traditional owners Yvonne Margarula and Jacqui Katona argued that there had been limited consultation with the Mirarr and that the mine violated their claims to the land. An eight month blockade of the site was established. Throughout the eight months, around five thousand people participated in the blockade, and there were over six hundred arrests.

Environmental student activists throughout the country soon began prioritising the campaign, raising funds for students to travel there. During the mid-semester break, there was a particularly strong influx of students, and the blockade grew to over 600. Civil disobedience became an important strategy for the activists, with specifically designated ‘arrestable’ protesters breaking the law and disrupting the construction process, through methods such as locking on to machinery and blockading entrances to the site. Scott Alderson, the Queensland NUS environment officer for 1998, recalled how large numbers of student activists were involved and on one occasion:

We did a big lock-on … I think it was an old Kingswood station wagon. We originally rolled that up in front of the gates, and had a huge almost conical shaped lock on device, with a lot of people in the car locked in on it and everything like that. That took a fair few hours … to get everyone removed … I think (on another occasion) they arrested over a hundred people in one day. And they couldn’t process everyone in one day, so a lot of people stayed in the cell overnight.

In the second semester of 1998, a ‘Defer Second Semester’ campaign was launched — encouraging students to take the semester off and travel to or stay at the Jabiluka blockade.

Beyond the camp, Jabiluka Action Groups in the major cities popped up. Including students as well as community activists, the groups organised rallies against the mine, major blockades of North company offices in Sydney and Melbourne and helped raise awareness. One blockade of North in Melbourne lasted a week.

After eight months of campaigning, the activists were winning the public relations battle — with polling suggesting that two-thirds of the Australian public opposed the construction of the mine. Although in October the onset of the Northern Territory wet season forced the closure of the blockade camp, and the conservative Howard government won re-election, the activism had impact. Amidst falling prices for uranium, Energy Resources Australia abandoned the construction of the mine. In 2005 a treaty with the Mirrar people was signed, guaranteeing consultation with them before the commencement of any new uranium projects. A memorable victory. Out of all this came the consolidation of ASEN, which would develop over the following years.

Initially, ASEN was closely tied to the National Union of Students (NUS) environment office. Throughout ASEN’s early years, the NUS environment officer automatically became the ASEN co-ordinator. But in 2001, a member of the Democrats with no background in environmental activism became the environment officer. This encouraged a renewed push to develop ASEN’s autonomous structures. In January 2003 a national ASEN gathering was held at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, and for the first time ASEN co-ordinators were directly elected by the network. By 2005, this new level of co-ordination was beginning to take off. The threat of Voluntary Student Unionism, eventually passed by the Howard government, where student unions would be stripped of funding was a key factor in encouraging the creation of a stronger network. One article from an ASEN-produced ‘Green Bloc Zine’ declared enthusiastically:

This year it seems that everything is finally coming together. ASEN is coming into its own, as a super organised, inspiring force poised on the brink of changing the Australian political landscape forever. The most dedicated, creative and intelligent student environmental activists of this generation are involved. We are working in partnerships and getting support from all Australian Environmental NGOs. We are going through a period of reflection and self- organisation to make sure we do it right.

In 2006 ASEN was registered as a not-for-profit association, and an inaugural, five day long ASEN training camp was held in the Hunter Valley. It was later moved to a location near Canberra. The training camps drew around eighty activists for their first several years. With the support of environment NGOs, national ASEN convenors were paid a stipend to help organise the network. A regular publication, Germinate, was established with several issues released annually.

‘These beautiful places were being destroyed’: Forest campaigning in Victoria

Another crucial environmental campaign was ‘forest defending’ in East Gippsland in Victoria, stopping old growth logging that would destroy the rich biodiversity of the forest. 2005-2006 saw the mobilisation of hundreds of students to the forests, participating in actions, learning about ecology, going on walking trails, and participating in militant direct actions, such as blockades and tree sits. Visiting the forests was highly motivating, making them see that, as one activist put it ‘these beautiful places were being destroyed’. In the lead up to the Victorian state election in 2006, the Victorian campaigners organised one action per week for an entire year.

The main organising hub of the campaign, the Goongerah Environment Centre (GECO) building, was about five and a half hours drive from Melbourne, and even further by public transport. From there, it was another few hours to the forests themselves, where all the actions were. Simply getting out to the forests was therefore quite difficult. Holly Creenaune recalled:

 There was a lot of logistics to making it happen… we really did lean on the resources of student unions, I think I drove my first semi electric vehicle which I think was from Monash! That car took a beating in the bush… Borrowed vehicles from UNSW, got student unions to contribute, the food co-ops were a really big part of that… that made putting on those gatherings actually affordable for people to attend. And a lot of car pooling, and a lot of desperate borrowing of vehicles… I remember I met some woman in a pub in the Strawberry Hills hotel in Surry Hills, told her all about East Gippsland, what an incredible fight it was, got her to lend us her car the next day, drove it to East Gippsland and then I wasn’t the driver but someone wrote it off! That was a bad day. Everyone was fine. We were all just uni students, young people, most people didn’t have a car, or didn’t have a lot of money to spare.

There were actions in the city, twice bringing tripods to blockade Swanston Street. Numerous fundraiser gigs were organised, to support those who had been arrested in blockades or fundraise more generally. At the state election, Labor committed to saving 40000 hectares of forests – a significant victory. Here students supported an ongoing campaign and made a decisive contribution to its success. Creenaune recalls that the organising was key to shaping the political understanding of students:

There was a core of people that organised them from across NSW and Victoria … The vast majority are still deeply involved in fights for environment and climate justice… I think we also learned a lot about the history of the struggle in East Gippsland as well, so when you’re first starting to become an activist and some of the first stories you hear are about the blockade, I think that really shaped our sense of how change happens, and how if people take action together they can actually win… That was a really motivating thing, that we got to continue this battle that people had been in for decades, that had had successes but there was more to fight for.

With old growth forest logging largely ending on public land in Victoria in 2024, the campaign was yet another example that showed that collective action can win.

Clean energy campus campaigns

ASEN activists also worked locally. Campus environment collectives across Australia organised trail blazing campaigns for clean energy on campus. At Sydney University, activists initiated a campus referendum – the first in 27 years – on the issue of whether the campus should purchase 20% clean energy. A petition with 4000 signatures was organised, and 16 of the 17 faculties signed on. The vote went in their favour, with 92% of students voting for the purchase. At Monash University, activists similarly organised, resulting in Vice Chancellor Richard Larkins agreeing to a 15% GreenPower purchase. RMIT saw some success too, with the university committing to a 20% purchase in 2009 and investing $6.2 million into energy efficiency.

‘We can’t dig our way out of climate change’: Climate camp and direct action

One of ASEN’s key contributions to the climate movement was its role in the 2008 Climate Camp in Newcastle. Inspired by Climate Camps in the UK, the camps were a tactic designed to bring people together for a week of discussion and action against the fossil fuel industry. ASEN’s Students of Sustainability Conference was deliberately held in Newcastle that year, in order to promote the Climate Camp. Despite freezing conditions in the Newcastle winter, several hundred people pitched tents and got involved.

A mass action was held on Sunday 13^th July, of which the media reported that 1000 people attended. The action was held at the Newcastle coal train line, with plans cooked up to disrupt the site using direct action. Despite ‘160-odd’ police, with water cannon, horses and dogs, activists were able to infiltrate the railway line, to huge cheers from the crowd outside. Sneaky direct action took place, fooling the police. Teams of zombies and clowns were tasked with slowing down the police, and helping spread out the police line. This gave the opportunity for teams of arrestable activists to get onto the train as an act of civil disobedience.

Climate Camp was key in introducing mass direct action to the movement in Australia. Wenny Theresia, a key organiser in ASEN, reflected that Climate Camp was ‘a movement space’, bringing diverse people working on climate change together. She continued that it was:

Geared towards giving everyone present an experience of mass collective direct action in a safe, supportive and participatory environment. By and large a successful model of mass direct action in the numbers of ppl involved, the no’s of arrests, the experimentations in participatory decision-making on a mass scale…. CC’s have certainly played a massive role in legitimising DA [direct action] on climate change within and outside of the climate movement. It’s been the vehicle that’s given a lot of ppl the confidence and skills to be involved in DA

Later groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Blockade Australia and School Strike for Climate have taken up this legacy. NSW Climate Camps were organised at Helensburgh and at the Bayswater coal-fired power station in the Hunter Valley in 2010. Perhaps the main successor to this tradition is Rising Tide’s ‘People’s Blockade’ of the Newcastle Coal Port, which continues to this day and has resulted in hundreds of arrests. Beyond 2010, ASEN has been involved in the mass movements for climate justice, such as the climate strikes.

Conclusion

What is the significance of ASEN? The activists I talked to constantly stressed its long term role in politicising and radicalising a core of people. Julia Dehm recalled that there was, “a quite comprehensive politicisation of people who were involved in the movement… A lot of people have become lifelong activists…”

For Holly Creenaune:

I think some of that broader politics of liberation and First Nations justice is baked into an entire generation of people who went through that movement together. And so now in the protests against Gaza I am just seeing all my old friends there… I think it shows that there was a shared political analysis there… a political commitment to grassroots radical action and solidarity.

Julia Dehm also argued that there was an openness and willingness to employ a diversity of tactics, allowing for people to get involved in different ways. Yet activists also reflected on weaknesses. Intriguingly, Anne O’Brien argued that this diversity of tactics could in itself create a weakness, which was:

from the do it yourself kind of attitude. If you say that today you’re going to run this campaign over there and this campaign over here and this campaign over there, it means that you have lots of little campaigns just pottering on… That means you can’t win big things from those campaigns, you can just win little things… We didn’t really know how to scale up… And we didn’t really scale up because we didn’t trust top-down organising. I still don’t have an answer to that.

O’Brien recalled that there was an inability to get out of the university bubble and engage high schoolers or people at TAFE. Julia Dehm reflected that there was a lack of a strong sense of activist history, and a training of participants in a deeper level of theory.

Despite these weaknesses, ASEN took a radical, anarchistic approach to social change and tried to put it into practice. One early article simply dubbed SoS as being about ‘how to change the world in three days’. As Creenaune summed up sharply, it wasn’t about ‘helping rich people buy Teslas’. It was about being grassroots, about seeing the environment as not a single issue but as entwined with an array of other oppressions under capitalism. This is an analytic lens we still urgently need today.

Explore Further

• The Revolution Begins in Bankstown! The 1999 University of Western Sydney Campus Occupation
• For Educators Grappling with Student Protests, Here’s how to Play a Supporting Role
• University of Sydney Students Uncover and Protest Discrimination of Aboriginal People in New South Wales, 1965
• The Freedom Ride
• Hope & Solidarity in Global Student Movements for Palestine
• Inside the Student Movement that Forced Ireland’s Trinity College to Divest from Israel
• The Jabiluka Blockade – 22 years on
• Campaigns to End Logging in Australia (Commons Conversations Podcasts)
• From Little Things Big Things Grow: Events That Changed Australia
• People’s History of Australia Podcast
• Activism and Campaign History: Start Here

The post ‘We saw ourselves as ratbags’: The Australian Student Environment Network appeared first on The Commons.

The Commons is building a Tactics Toolkit with helpful guides on a broad range of campaign actions. 

The Tactics Toolkit will be a special part of our rebuilt Commons website – coming soon! In the meantime you can access guides as we add them here.

Each tactics guide explains what the tactic is, its benefits and challenges, how to put it into practice, and includes examples and case studies (with videos), deeper resources, and links to related guides.

Do you have a tactic guide to add to the toolkit, or funds to help us build it? Get in touch!

Tactics

Accountability Session

Accountability Session – The Accountability Session is a tactic used in community organising to demonstrate power and hold decision-makers accountable.  

Bird-dogging

Bird-dogging – This tactic involves neither birds or dogs! It’s all about tracking your target and showing up at public forums to put your issue on the agenda. 

Flash Mobs

Flash Mobs – A spontaneous, contagious, and often celebratory protest that often uses social media or word of mouth to gather people on short notice in a particular place at a particular time. – Beautiful Trouble

Sit-ins

Sit-ins – A sit-in involves occupying an indoor space and holding it for a period. 

Tripods

Tripods – A tripod is an independent, free standing three pole structure that is lashed or clamped together and occupied by a person to blockade a road – Earth First Direct Action Manual

Methods of Nonviolent Action

The Tactics Toolkit builds on the classic 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp. Sharp defined different categories of tactics:

• The Methods of Nonviolent Protest and Persuasion
• The Methods of Social Noncooperation
• The Methods of Economic Noncooperation: Economic Boycotts
• The Methods of Economic Noncooperation: The Strike
• The Methods of Political Noncooperation
• The Methods of Nonviolent Intervention

Noncooperation

Noncooperation – Noncooperation is when we deliberately and strategically do not cooperate with our opponent.

Explore Further

• 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp
• Civil Resistance Tactics in the 21st Century
• The Tactic Star
• Tactics Resources in the Commons Library
• A Tactic Typology
• Campaign Strategy: Training and Planning Tools
• Tactics – Templates, Worksheets & Checklists for Changemakers

The post Tactics Toolkit appeared first on The Commons.

Do you support the effectiveness of social movements by gathering and sharing key lessons, tools and learning resources?

Whether you’re a full time movement librarian, or a campaigner, trainer or researcher who plays this role as well, this session is for you!

This session will: 

• Share tips for gathering and sharing movement knowledge 
• Explore examples from people around the world – including you! 
• Foster connections between individuals doing similar work
• Gather further input into the Best Practice Guide on Social Movement Knowledge Gathering and Sharing, of lasting value to current knowledge sharers, and those who come after us 

By combining our collective expertise we can strengthen our practices, with many potential ripples through the movements and communities we serve.

We look forward to exchanging with you!

Holly (The Commons Social Change Library) and Kenzie (the Global Grassroots Support Network)

Details

90 minute webinar on Zoom:

• 5pm Monday 2 March EST (North America) / 9am Tues 3 March EDT (Australia)
• Check the time and date in your location.
• Register to receive the Zoom link.

Best Practice Guide

Explore the Best Practice Guide on Social Movement Knowledge Gathering and Sharing.

Best practice guides are created to pool the institutional and lived experience knowledge of Global Grassroots Support Network (GGSN) members, who are individuals and/or part of organizations that provide support to grassroots groups/activists. The purpose of these guides is to make this shared knowledge more accessible to improve the support provided to grassroots movements.

This guide was developed in collaboration with the Commons Social Change Library. The guide explores, broadly, social movement knowledge gathering and sharing practices for people that support grassroots activists and organizers. The guide will be discussed during, and added to after, the March webinar.

Explore Further

• Commons Library Skills Sessions
• Weaving the Threads Together: How to Document Your Campaign
• How the Commons Library Responds to Needs in Movements
• Global Grassroots Support Network Collection

The post Strong Movements Share Knowledge! Webinar & Resources appeared first on The Commons.

After an extreme weather event, climate organizers can seize the opportunity to push for tangible policy change. This article was originally published on Waging Nonviolence. The Commons have made a few minor formatting changes e.g. added headings and quote blocks.

Creating New Momentum

The European climate movement is faltering. State repression has escalated. Authoritarianism is on the rise. And even though most people around the world support climate action, they consistently underestimate how much others care — giving people the sense their concern is not shared. Groups like Just Stop Oil and Climate Defiance deserve credit for keeping climate in the headlines. But any movement whose only visible face is civil disobedience will struggle to expand beyond its core.

So what could create renewed momentum?

Every day, extreme weather events are creating a new wave of climate activists, many of whom have never attended a protest or signed a petition. These are people whose homes have flooded or whose communities have been destroyed by storms or wildfires. For them, climate change isn’t abstract. Their houses are literally on fire.

These communities are facing immediate crisis, and they’re in the headlines with increasing regularity. From these tragedies, there’s a window of possibility for political change.

Between 2000 and 2019, floods alone affected over 1.65 billion people globally, killing more than 100,000. Rising temperatures made last year’s Valencia floods twice as likely and 12 percent more intense. Super Typhoon Odette in the Philippines caused $800 million in damages. Vermont’s 2023 flooding resulted in $1 billion in damage claims.

For climate organizers, these events do something that years of advocacy often can’t: They make the connection between fossil fuels and real harms immediate and visceral.

Recent research published in Nature found that while exposure to extreme weather alone doesn’t automatically increase support for climate policy, “subjective attribution” does. When people understand that a specific disaster was worsened by climate change and can connect it to specific corporate actors, their opinions shift.

Climate attribution science has become sophisticated enough to quantify how much a company’s emissions contributed to making a specific storm deadlier. Shell, for instance, is historically responsible for 41 billion tons of CO2 — more than 2 percent of global fossil fuel emissions. This isn’t abstract anymore. It’s evidence that can be used in courtrooms, legislative hearings and public campaigns.

This also creates a powerful economic pressure point. Climate disasters already cost insurers roughly $600 billion in losses from 2002 to 2022, yet many continue underwriting new fossil fuel projects. When disasters strike, this contradiction becomes politically untenable.

We’ve looked at three places where communities organized around extreme weather and won concrete victories — not just raising awareness or getting media traction, but tangible policy change and corporate accountability.

3 Places where Communities Organized

Vermont: Bipartisan Coalition after Consecutive Floods

When Vermont experienced catastrophic flooding in July 2023, causing over $1 billion in damage, it came 12 years after Tropical Storm Irene, which had also caused devastation. Two such major floods galvanized an unusual coalition, which deliberately crossed party lines. The coalition’s strategy was pragmatic and studiedly nonpartisan. Environmental groups like Vermont Natural Resources Council and the Sierra Club joined forces with farmers whose fields had been destroyed and small business owners whose livelihoods were underwater. State Sen. Dick Sears framed the Climate Superfund Act around a principle everyone could understand: “The polluter pays” — those responsible for damage should pay for it.

Being bipartisan in these times is noteworthy in itself. Extreme weather events might be that rare thing that can overcome the paralyzing power of polarization and change the political arithmetic. The bill passed the Vermont Senate 21-5 and became law in May 2024 — the first of its kind in the U.S. It requires fossil fuel companies that have produced more than 1 billion metric tons of CO2 to pay their share of Vermont’s climate damages.

What made this work? Organizers centered affected communities, used climate attribution science to make connections concrete, framed the campaign around a morally-uniting principle — “polluters pay” — rather than partisan climate politics, and moved quickly while memories of flooded homes were still fresh in everyone’s minds.

Philippines: Innovative Legal Strategies and International Solidarity

When Super Typhoon Haiyan hit in 2013, killing over 6,000 people, survivors didn’t just mourn, they organized. The disaster exposed deep failures: aid arrived slowly, reconstruction stalled amid corruption, and billions in promised assistance never materialized. Protests erupted demanding accountability.

In 2015, Haiyan survivors partnered with Greenpeace Philippines to petition the Commission on Human Rights to investigate 47 fossil fuel companies for human rights violations related to climate change. This launched the world’s first investigation into corporate responsibility for climate impacts. In 2022, the commission found that fossil fuel companies could be held morally and legally responsible.

A few years later, following severe flooding in Manila, Greenpeace highlighted government failures and pointed to up to $19 billion lost to corruption since 2023. Public anger intensified, culminating in powerful protests that forced corruption and climate accountability to the top of the agenda. This surge of public pressure gave the CLIMA Bill — establishing frameworks for climate loss and damage, corporate accountability and reparations — the momentum it needed.

The decade of activism and organizing is now entering a new phase. In October 2025, 67 survivors of Super Typhoon Odette filed the first civil lawsuit directly linking a fossil fuel company to deaths in the Global South. The survivors are suing Shell in U.K. courts using attribution science showing climate change more than doubled the likelihood of the extreme event.

Survivors and NGOs need public momentum to give them the political power for legal strategies to have teeth. Crucially, over decades organizers had built the infrastructure to act when the next disaster hit.

Spain: From Floods to a National Climate Emergency Pact

The Valencia floods of October 2024 killed 237 people and displaced thousands. Images of cars floating down European streets better known for their cafes shocked people worldwide. The local reaction was mass mobilization: More than 130,000 marched in Valencia, demanding accountability from officials who had delayed emergency warnings.

Organizers didn’t stop at demanding resignations; they wanted systemic change. In August 2025, following the floods and devastating summer wildfires, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced a Climate Emergency Pact, which includes concrete measures such as a new State Agency for Civil Protection and Emergencies, year-round firefighting staff, and mandatory corporate carbon reporting. Billions in funding for climate adaptation infrastructure, probably the key element of any future resilience, are still “potential” and will require more grassroots pressure. 

As with Vermont, organizers used the disaster to build a coalition transcending political divisions, bringing together administrations, civil society, science, business and trade unions.

What Organizers can Learn

1. Act fast
When extreme weather strikes, both the media and climate skeptics move swiftly to influence the narrative. It’s crucial to be prepared. Offer direct assistance and help local community campaigns broadcast their demands.

2. Center affected communities
The most powerful voices in these stories were those of farmers who lost crops, business owners whose storefronts flooded, parents who lost children — not climate activists. These voices cut across political lines.

Climate activists must step back to let authentic local voices lead.

3. Use attribution science strategically
Climate attribution research has become sophisticated enough to quantify corporate responsibility and it’s getting better and faster every year. Vermont used it to calculate damages. The Philippines case relies on it to prove Shell’s contribution. This transforms abstract climate change into concrete accountability. 

4. Use real stories as well as facts
Stories of real people, particularly first responders, cut through most effectively. When firefighters say extreme weather events are growing more frequent, people believe them.

5. Build unusual coalitions
Vermont united environmentalists with Republican farmers. Spain brought together unions and businesses. The Philippines connected survivors across multiple disasters. Diverse partnerships are stronger.

6. Make concrete demands
These campaigns identified specific villains — fossil fuel companies — and specific responses: climate superfund laws, corporate liability, emergency infrastructure. People rally around clear targets.

The Path Forward

Extreme weather events will keep happening, affecting more people and causing more damage and heartbreak. They’re moments of crisis and clarity when the world’s ears are more open. But they’re not without risk — in Valencia, the far-right Vox party was first on the scene, attempting to deflect the narrative away from climate. The climate movement must step in to seize the narrative.

Many in the media know these are key moments. One news editor reportedly said, “The major climate story of the year isn’t COP, it’s summer.” Extreme weather gets coverage U.N. negotiations do not. They reach much wider — to everyone whose insurance rates spiked or whose neighborhood was recently evacuated.

The climate movement doesn’t need to abandon other tactics, but it does need new ideas and approaches. For extreme weather, that means having organizers ready to support affected communities, legal strategies prepared, and relationships built with farmers’ associations, business coalitions and local leaders who will be natural allies if disaster strikes.

The most powerful climate organizing might not look like climate organizing at all. It might look like flood survivors demanding accountability, farmers seeking compensation, or parents fighting for their children’s future after their town burned. These people aren’t peripheral to the climate fight. They are the climate fight.

Explore Further

• The Lived Experience Guide to Climate Campaigning
• Media Tips from Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action
• Climate Impacts: 350 Organising Lessons from Australia, US, Pacific Islands, and UK
• How to Organise about Climate Related Workplace Health and Safety Issues
• Creative Community-led Action: The Busted Bus Stops Campaign
• Climate Activism: Start Here
• More from Social Change Lab (UK)

The post How to Turn Extreme Weather Tragedies into Climate Victories  appeared first on The Commons.

Here is a great example of a research and communications strategy related to narrative about a particular issue, in this case poverty and wealth. This example is from the United States and is called the BROKE Project. The project is by The Center for Public Interest Communications; Milli; and The Radical Communicators Network.

What is BROKE?

BROKE is an opportunity for each of us to examine the stories we tell about poverty and wealth, and to work together to build new narratives rooted in the wisdom of lived experience, narrative power, organizing for economic justice, and social science.

BROKE, combines the science of storytelling–applying what research tells us makes stories more memorable, inspiring, and actionable, narrative power– a framework for social movements to take advantage of political opportunities, construct narrative interventions, disrupt hegemonic thinking, and intervene to expand the collective perception of what is socially, economically, and politically possible– crafting resources for activists and communicators that are easy to use and incorporate into their work. – Source

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. – Ursula Le Guin

Watch Video

Research

In this report, Broke: How the nonprofit and Philanthropic sectors are Talking about poverty— And how we can do better, insights were collected from research to identify the harmful narratives perpetuated by well-meaning organizations. They focused on the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors to explore how to tell stories about poverty and wealth.

Lessons Learnt

“3 Challenges

1. Organizations share stories of individuals who were able to become contributing members of a capitalist society by joining the middle class or starting businesses.
2. Organizations share partial stories about poor people, only sharing aspects of their lives related to being poor or getting out of poverty.
3. The stories told promote individual-level change over system-level change, even when the organization acknowledges systemic changes are needed.

9 Principles for Communicating More Justly About Poverty and Wealth

1. Tell compelling stories by applying the Science Of Story Building
2. Tell stories about individuals navigating systems and engaging in collective action to disrupt power
3. Create space for people to come together and talk about systems
4. Problematize current narratives
5. Use justice frames in storytelling
6. Build the capacity of communities to share stories
7. Use visual images and language to engage communities
8. Be intentional with the language you use
9. Amplify stories–ethically”

Worksheets

Access Broke’s collection of worksheets.

• Finding Meaningful Calls to Action
  Stories make people want to act. This worksheet will help you identify and test calls to action that can actually make a difference.
• Building a Narrative Strategy for Economic Justice
  This worksheet will help people develop a theory of change, identify stories and sources that advance that theory of change, and consider messengers and actors.
• Identifying Harmful Pervasive Narratives
  This worksheet will offer step-by-step advice for identifying harmful pervasive narratives that may be influencing how people think about the subject of your story, so that you can be mindful of addressing them with the facts, details, and context of your story.
• Self-Care for Storytellers (or, Your Story Is Yours)
  This short guide will remind story owners of their rights and offer guidance about retaining control of their stories.
• A Rubric for Telling Better Stories: Should You Tell That Story?
  This checklist will help storytellers ensure that they are sharing constructive stories that unmake harmful pervasive narratives and respect the lived experience of the story owner.
• How to Tell Transformative Stories
  This worksheet will help storytellers share stories that show a path forward, challenge harmful and pervasive narratives and help us connect and care about the people whom the stories are about.
• How to Put Systems in Your Stories
  This worksheet will help storytellers identify the systems that their stories work within and offer ideas for incorporating system elements and history within their stories.
• Story Building
  Telling and sharing stories that drive change means starting with what science tells us makes stories memorable, compelling, and inspiring. This worksheet will walk you through the elements of the narrative arc, the basic plot structures, and the elements of narrative transportation. You’ll also reflect on whose mindset you want to shift through your story.

Access Resource

Broke Website

Explore Further

• Framing Issues for Social Justice Impact: Directory of Messaging Guides
• Talking About Poverty: Narratives, Counter-Narratives, and Telling Effective Stories
• Talking about Poverty and Welfare Reform: A Guide to Strategies that Work in Aotearoa New Zealand
• How to Talk About Economics: A Guide to Changing the Story
• How to Change the Narrative / Story: Guides, Worksheets and Templates
• Narrative Change Hub

The post Broke: Narrative Project about Poverty appeared first on The Commons.

Like traditional organizing, digital organizing is the practice of building a group or community of people who support a particular goal or change who then work together to achieve that goal. For any party or organization, these people can be referred to as your supporters and they are incredibly important to build your power in the world!

How you interact with your supporters online is no different from offline: relationships need to be nurtured, developed, and sustained. However, online communication happens at a much larger scale, so supporter engagement must be designed for mass participation—from thousands to millions of people.

To grow a strong and active supporter base, it’s essential to communicate consistently, in ways that serve not only your goals but also the interests and needs of your supporters.

To build an online community: 

1. The goal is to engage as many people as possible and encourage them to be involved in something bigger than themselves alone. 
2. The task is to create and organize meaningful opportunities to channel people’s energy into social change.

​This resource covers where to find new supporters, how to engage them, approaches to deepening and maintaining those relationships, and a list of practical supporter-focused tactics.

Where and How to Engage Potential Supporters

People spend on average 4-6 hours a day on their phones or laptops so we know where to find people. Meet them where they already are: 

• Social media platforms
• Instant messaging platforms
• Online forums
• Websites
• Watching TV/streaming services/podcasts

What is the goal when reaching potential supporters?

After engaging with these supporters for the first time, the most important thing is to ensure you can continue to engage with them directly either via email, phone, or through an instant messaging platform. This is sometimes referred to as ‘list-building’.

Email is the most effective platform for direct digital engagement because everyone has an email address, messages can be highly personalized, and well-designed tools allow you to automate sequences and build targeted email ladders.

Why is direct connection important?

• No mediators: you will not depend on mass media corporations or algorithms.
• No noise: you can directly communicate your message without competing with other voices.

The Engagement Ladder

Engagement is more than just a single activity (signing a petition or showing up to a demonstration), it is the basis of the sustained relationship between your campaign and those who contribute to it. 

Think of it as a collective effort. When we provide clear opportunities and pathways for involvement, we harness the power of community. This creates a ripple effect whereby each person’s dedication and passion can lead to real, impactful change.

​​Not everyone will be a leader or even an owner and that’s okay. What is important is that supporters move up and down this ladder and are given opportunities to be active at multiple levels. 

Example: Engagement ladder  for a political party 

How can people move up and down the ladder?      

This means offering a range of actions, from low-bar options such as signing an online petition to more intensive, high-bar opportunities like volunteering to host an event or help coordinate offline activities. We refer to this as a “low-floor, high-ceiling” approach: by providing both accessible entry points and deeper forms of engagement, campaigns can achieve higher participation rates and greater overall impact.

It’s the job of an organizer to offer people meaningful opportunities up and down the ladder. This enables people to tailor their involvement based on their preference, situation, and available capacity.

Offering only low-bar actions to supporters will lead to less impact in the long term. Likewise, offering only high-bar actions will lead to less supporter engagement and lower impact.

Digital Tactics that Engage your Supporters

Low-bar Tactics to Build your List    

• Petitions/Open letters
  Invite people to take a simple action by adding their name to a public demand.
  Example: Signing a petition calling on the city council to protect green spaces.
• Pledges
  Ask supporters to make a low-commitment promise connected to your cause.
  Example: Pledging to vote in the upcoming local election.
• One question survey
  Invite supporters to answer a single, highly focused question that captures their priority or opinion with minimal effort.
  Example: Do you think everyone should have a home?

Medium-bar Tactics to Engage your Existing Supporters   

• Surveys
  Gather information from supporters while giving them an easy way to engage.
  Example: Completing a two-minute survey about top election issue areas or evaluating the organization’s election campaign.
• Online events
  Encourage supporters to participate in a virtual gathering that requires some time investment.
  Example: Attending a 45-minute webinar with a issue expert
• Sharing content or petitions with friends and family
  Ask supporters to amplify your message through their personal networks.
  Example: Forwarding a petition link to three close contacts.
• Pledging to take an offline action
  Invite supporters to commit to a real-world activity tied to your campaign.
  Example: Pledging to join a demonstration or hand out flyers on election day.
• Posting a picture from an event on social media
  Request that supporters share visual proof of participation to build momentum and visibility.
  Example: Uploading a photo from a climate march with a campaign hashtag.
• Letter campaigns (emailing a decision maker)
  Mobilize supporters to contact the decision-maker directly to express their position.
  Example: Emailing the health minister urging increased funding for hospitals.
• Testimonials
  Ask supporters—especially those affected by an issue to tell their personal story.
  Example: Nurses submitting a short account of working in underfunded hospital wards.
• One-off donations
  Encourage supporters to contribute a single financial gift to advance your work.
  Example: Chip in €10 to help us buy a billboard ad outside the decision makers office.
• Crowdsourcing creative tactic ideas
  Engage supporters by inviting them to co-design actions that can energize the campaign.
  Example: Ask supporters to submit ideas for an attention-grabbing stunt.
• Stickers
  Design & deliver creative stickers that supporters can either buy or get for free via an online form. 
  Example: Stickers with slogans or artworks ‘I support women’s rights’

High-ceiling Tactics to Move your Supporters up the Ladder   

• Becoming a recurring donor
  Invite supporters to commit financially on an ongoing basis or raise funds from their networks.
  Example: Setting up a €15 monthly donation
• Volunteering for an event or organization
  Encourage supporters to give their time and skills for campaign activities.
  Example: Painting a banner, marshalls for a protest, or helping run a barnstorm event, specific skills (graphic design).
• Joining a phone bank or canvassing event
  Organize supporters to talk directly with voters or community members.
  Example: Spending an evening calling undecided voters before an election.
• Recruiting three friends
  Ask supporters to expand your activist base by bringing in new participants.
  Example: Each supporter commits to recruiting three people for your next action.
• Calling a politician
  Encourage supporters to directly call decision makers to influence their stance.
  Example: Phoning an MP’s office and asking what they are doing about an upcoming piece of legislation.

Tip

You should always set up your own ladder with low-bar and high-bar actions according to the specific context. In some countries, participating in a demonstration would be a low-bar action. In other countries or contexts, it is a high-bar action. It depends on the political situation and the culture.

Explore Further

• Engagement Pyramid: Visualise the different ways a person might get involved 
• Levels of Commitment from Community to Core
• Building Leadership Capacity: The Ladder of Engagement
• Circles of Commitment: A Model of Engagement
• Green Islam: Shifting Hearts and Minds on Climate in Indonesia
• How to Recruit more People: Lessons from Rukiya in 350 Kenya

The post Supporter Engagement appeared first on The Commons.

Leaderless uprisings cascaded across 11 countries and shook governments in 2025. Now, Gen Z protesters must find the road to lasting political power. This article was originally published on Waging Nonviolence. The Commons have made a few minor formatting changes e.g. added headings and quote blocks.

Youth Uprisings

Indonesia. Madagascar. The Philippines. Morocco. Nepal. Tanzania. Peru. Paraguay. Timor-leste. Maldives. Kenya.

Countries with little shared history or political context, yet all were engulfed at different moments this year by the same force: street protests led overwhelmingly by Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012. 

Youth uprisings are not new, but the speed and spread of this year’s movements — ricocheting across the Global South with almost no warning — mark a distinct shift. 

From water and power shortages in Madagascar to pension reforms in Peru and nepotism and corruption in Nepal, the root causes of the protests differed, but the essence was shared — Gen Z is protesting poor governance that does not speak for them. Despite vastly different contexts, each of these countries has a majority population of young people aged 19 to 30 who are increasingly impatient for change and are taking their anger to the streets. 

“When you’re talking about people who are 16 or 26, there’s a sense of possibility, urgency and potential that is hard to recreate outside of that,” said David S. Meyer, a professor of sociology and political science at the University of California, Irvine. “Young people are more willing to take risks and are potentially more able to see injustice as something that can be remedied.” 

The 2025 protests dominoed across borders, as demonstrations in one country sparked fresh mobilization in another. According to Meyer, there is always “the possibility of contagion” in social movements, even when the underlying conditions differ sharply. The widespread use of social media may be specific to this generation, but in major protest movements of the past 15 years, language, imagery and momentum have spread around the globe. 

For instance, activists who launched Occupy Wall Street were inspired by Egypt’s Tahrir Square (the epicenter of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising), despite facing a fundamentally different political reality, Meyer said.

The powerful visuals of mass mobilization fueled a sense of possibility among young people.

A similar dynamic emerged after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, when protests surged rapidly across the United States and echoed internationally, propelled by shared imagery and the belief that collective action could be replicated anywhere.

While Indonesia saw the first major Gen Z-led protests last year — fueled by soaring living costs, welfare cuts and political corruption — in 2024 Asia had already witnessed a consequential youth uprising in Bangladesh. “The July Revolution,” as it came to be called, began with high school and college students upset that many civil service jobs were reserved for descendants of the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence, instead of a more merit-based system.

As online dissent moved to the streets, the protests broadened into a nationwide movement against then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian rule. Even as people of all ages joined in, student leaders remained the central organizers and negotiators. Hasina was forced to resign and fled to India in August 2024. 

Almost simultaneously in Kenya, online frustrations over a tax hike proposal called the Finance Bill 2024 boiled over to protests on the streets of Nairobi in June 2024. They gained further momentum after government officials made comments discrediting the movement, according to Nelson Amenya.

A Kenyan who lives in Paris, Amenya advocated for the protests online and organized Kenyan students in Paris against the bill. He said Kenyan youth met on X Spaces — the platform’s tool for live audio conversations — to take inspiration from other movements.

From the youth-led protests in Bangladesh, they learned the approach of sustained protesting without breaks, and from the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests, they learned the philosophy of adaptability. They also studied other historic movements like the French and American Revolutions. “It was like being in a lecture room,” he said. 

The tools and tactics on display in Bangladesh and Kenya in 2024 — online agitation, decentralized organizing and rapid turnout — became the hallmarks of Gen Z protests across the world in 2025. 

A Fire that Spread over Social Media

Gen Z is known to be chronically online. They put that expertise to use to organize and rally people to these protests, all of which started with dissent on social media platforms like X, TikTok, Instagram and Discord (a communication platform popular with gamers). 

Conversations on social media networks in Indonesia in August about rising living costs, glaring inequality and controversial parliamentary housing allowances helped spread calls for protest. The demonstrations turned violent after a 21-year-old delivery driver, Affan Kurniawan, was killed by the police. President Prabowo Subianto cut lawmakers’ perks — including the controversial housing allowance — and ordered an investigation into the officers linked to the murder.  

In the Philippines, anger had been piling up online about allegations of corruption and government mismanagement, particularly tied to graft in flood control programs in a country inundated by tropical cyclones every year. In a Reddit community of Filipino activists called lifestylecheckPH, people posted about the glamorous lives of the rich and powerful. In September, the outrage sent thousands to the streets. 

On Nepali TikTok, that “lifestyle check” trend inspired the “nepo baby” trend, in which Nepali youth posted about the lavish lifestyles of politicians’ children. Soon after Filipino Gen Z took its frustrations to the streets, so did Nepali Gen Z. Protesters organized over Instagram and TikTok to launch the protests against corruption that would topple a government, then held a vote on Discord servers to elect the country’s first female prime minister, Sushila Karki, to lead the interim government. 

That same month, when Gen Z organizers in Antananarivo, Madagascar, were planning their protest online — which started as opposition to water and power cuts and expanded into demands for systemic political change — they learned from Nepal’s strategies for organizing on social media. “We were quite inspired by Nepal,” said Elliot Randriamandrato, the spokesperson for the organizing group, Gen Z Madagascar. 

Gen Z Madagascar also borrowed from Nepal what has become a symbol of these protests worldwide — a pirate flag from the Japanese anime “One Piece” — and modified it with a pink-and-green Malagasy hat called the satroka. The flag — whose name alludes to the mysterious treasure sought by the show’s protagonists, the Straw Hat Pirates, while they battle rivals and the authoritarian World Government — was first seen in the protests in Indonesia and then widely in Nepal last year. 

Later that month, Gen Z protesters in Peru marched in the capital, Lima, over a reform measure that requires young people to pay into a private pension fund. They were joined by bus and taxi drivers angry about the government’s lack of action against gang extortions.

Widespread frustrations over corruption and economic insecurity helped widen the movement beyond Gen Z. But it all started with TikToks, memes and Instagram Reels.

“It was this same massive trend on social media of saying, ‘Enough is enough, we can’t take it anymore,’” Leandro Ronak Mikail Pacheco Taipe said in Spanish. Taipe, an 18-year-old, is one of the early organizers of the Gen Z protests in Peru and a founding member of Generation Z Collective, a coalition of youth organizations and collectives, many of which formed during the protests. “Videos, trends and news circulated all over TikTok, Instagram and other platforms,” he said. “It was almost impossible to imagine that nothing would happen. [It] prompted young people who wouldn’t have entered the world of activism or social protests without some encouragement to start participating.”

‘There’s nothing that you can do to stop us’

Organizers and protesters shared more than symbols and social media tactics; they also braced for a harsh state response, having watched crackdowns unfold in other countries.

In each of these movements, most of which were initially nonviolent in nature, demonstrators were met with violence by security forces, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries, and, in some cases, forced disappearances.

The 2024 uprising in Bangladesh saw brutal repression from Hasina’s government, which disappeared hundreds and left as many as 1,400 dead. Last month, Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia by the International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh for ordering and inciting the use of lethal force against protesters.

Repression was a topic of great discussion in the Kenyan “lecture rooms” on X Spaces this summer when protests reignited on the one-year anniversary of the 2024 actions, Amenya said. Police had used live ammunition against demonstrators — especially during the storming of Parliament in June 2024 — resulting in deaths and hundreds of injuries. Amnesty International documented over 100 deaths, 83 enforced disappearances, and 3,000 arrests between June 2024 and July 2025.

Many protesters were charged with serious crimes such as terrorism and arson. Police intimidation and online surveillance were also used to stifle protests. 

“We did anticipate this, because it’s not a new thing — it’s something that the government has done many, many times,” Amenya said. Some Kenyan Gen Z protesters even wrote their eulogies and last wishes on social media. “The message that it was sending was, ‘We are ready. There’s nothing that you can do to stop us.’”

In Nepal, the government’s initial response to the protests was marked by violent confrontation: Police and armed units deployed tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition against demonstrators, which killed over 70 people and injured hundreds, many of them students. 

The protests had started with youth gathering peacefully and singing songs, but on the second day, government buildings were vandalized and set on fire across the capital, Kathmandu. 

Organizer Aakriti Ghimire, like many Nepali Gen Z protesters, believes that the protest was hijacked by infiltrators visibly older than Gen Z and with vested political motives. Ghimire said the violence and destruction they witnessed were against the peaceful, creative and digitized spirit of Gen Z. 

“This is not how we wanted all of this to unfold,” said Ghimire, an admin of the Instagram page @howtodeshbikas, which makes sociopolitical content for the youth of Nepal and which disseminated information and rallying calls during the protests. “We never wanted the destruction of our public properties. We never wanted this way of toppling the government. In fact, we were planning three months of very creative ways of protesting. We were thinking of how we could take this ahead in a more organized [way] because, of course, we understood this as a long fight.”

In Morocco, authorities met this September’s GenZ 212 protests (named after the country’s dialing code) with water cannons, tear gas and other crowd control measures. Protesters had risen up to oppose government spending on the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations and 2030 World Cup while public services like health care and education suffered. Many protesters who were detained have faced prosecution and lengthy sentences amid due process concerns, and credible allegations of beatings, torture, harassment and denial of legal representation have emerged from detention centers. 

Siman, an LGBT rights and political activist who requested to use a pseudonym name for concerns of safety, said protesters were “not shocked” at the Moroccan government’s crackdown. “We did not stop, not even for five minutes, from the first day to the days that young Moroccans were being tried in Moroccan courts,” Siman said in Arabic. 

In Madagascar, security forces’ clashes with protesters killed over 20 and injured several more. “Everything was designed to have a peaceful protest,” said Randriamandrato of Gen Z Madagascar. “And then the response was directly violent. We didn’t anticipate it to have that much depth, that many injuries, that many people who were disappeared.”

A repressive response “doesn’t mean that change is impossible,” said Meyer, the UC-Irvine professor. “It means that the process is complicated and takes longer.” 

‘Where everybody’s responsible, nobody’s responsible’

In none of these Gen Z movements was there a single person leading the rallying cry. 

Widespread anger on social media gradually coalesced into calls for action, shaped by conversations, informal networks and organizing, both online and off. By the time organizers circulated posters with a date, time and location, frustration had already reached a boiling point, and little else was needed to bring young people into the streets.

“The situation and conditions are so dire, the call for protest didn’t need a lot of persuasion,” Siman said. The protests in Morocco sparked by international sporting events were fueled by social inequality, weak public services such as education and health, and overarching political neglect. “People went out with legitimate reasons to demonstrate against policies of the Moroccan state, which do not serve the interests of the Moroccan people,” they said. “It was really representative of a generation that is not satisfied with everything traditional or classical in organizational forms.”

While protests in some countries developed central figures — like Sudan Gurung in Nepal, who acted as a key organizer and a lead negotiator during the transition to an interim government —  the protests were largely leaderless, either by design or by circumstance. Abdullah Al Soykot, a 24-year-old engineering student in Khulna, Bangladesh, who regularly participated in the protests, said that one of the movement’s strengths was that its organizing body had no political ties or political representatives. “People participated how they wanted to, without following any political norms,” he said in Bengali. 

Amenya said that in Kenya, too, the movement was leaderless “because we all knew leaders are always co-opted. … If you strike the head of the snake, you kill the snake. But if there are many heads, which head will you strike first to finish the movement?” 

Ghimire saw the leaderless nature of the protests in Nepal as both a strength and a vulnerability. “I truly think that is so beautiful about this generation, which is very, very contradictory to the previous generation, where everybody just wanted a [government] position,” Ghimire said. “The problem for us is that we were unable to show a united front,” allowing the movement to be hijacked by non-Gen Z actors. 

Meyer says that leaderless movements can be a double-edged sword: Even though the fears of people selling out are well-founded, leaderlessness also means nobody is in a position to strategize longer term.

“It sounds great to have a leaderless movement where everybody’s responsible, but where everybody’s responsible, nobody’s responsible,” he said. 

Challenges and the Way Ahead

While the outcomes of these protests have differed — some achieving key demands and others falling short — they collectively pushed issues that might have been overlooked into the global spotlight. 

Despite experiencing repression in Morocco and not winning concrete government action, Siman still places hope in protest and activism. “We have hope in … women, the youth and the repressed. As long as there’s injustice, there’s going to be activism, and activism brings more activism.” 

The question now is how Gen Z intends to turn the visibility and momentum it has generated into lasting political and social influence. 

Where protests did see some degree of success, protesters’ ongoing relationship with governance is still emerging. In Bangladesh, Gen Z protesters joined a transitional government and formed a political party that is contesting for power; in Nepal, protesters elected a new leader and have been in conversation with her to chart a future for the country. In other countries, governments that remained in place have felt pressured and are considering concessions.

Soykot, in Bangladesh, said that even though the protests helped put a people’s government in place, they can’t just replace the old bureaucracy with a “people’s bureaucracy.”

Randriamandrato, of Gen Z Madagascar, thinks that the answer lies in the youth and the future government coming together to discuss the future of a country. “How will they address the young people’s issues if they don’t talk to them?” he said, adding that for the youth, “the energy has to be now focused on the table and not on the streets anymore.”

Organizers said Gen Z isn’t, for the most part, interested in roles in the government but wants accountability and structures of accountability that work long after protests have died down.

“You need governments to do that. The sort of mundanity of making an institution work is part of the story of promoting social change. And that’s not what a 20-year-old who’s turning out at a protest should be worried about,” Meyer said. 

Soykot agrees. “People can’t protest every day; the government and the bureaucracy need to do their work,” he said. 

Explore Further

• How memes and humor are fueling Gen Z’s global uprisings
• Youth Movements as a Unique form of Resistance
• Insights from the Frontlines of Kenya
• Tomorrow Movement: The Momentum Organising Framework in Australia
• From the Berlin Wall to Today — Lessons for Harnessing the Moment of the Whirlwind
• Occupy Reflects: A Collection of Reflections on Occupy Melbourne
• Authoritarianism to Democracy: The Story of Mongolia
• How do we Encourage Activists to Celebrate Wins and come back from Losses?

The post How Gen Z Movements Around the Globe shared Tactics and Challenges appeared first on The Commons.

This article looks at the importance of connecting local and larger struggles to unleash the transformative potential of community organizing. It includes a case study of a community organization in Hungary, Europe, called Living Gyál. It is an excerpt by Bernadett Sebály from the book, Handbuch Community Organizing Geschichte, Theorie und Praxis (in German).

The Transformative Potential of Community Organizing

Organizing affects politics. It involves marginalized constituencies in shaping the political decisions that affect their lives. But organizers do not start with coordinating big rallies or marches. They begin with people.

Organizers help directly impacted people regain political agency and build organizations in which they can develop skills to take collective action and represent their shared interests in the public arena. With the focus on people and their immediate interests, however, organizers may easily lock themselves into isolated localized fights and lose sight of larger struggles.

The aim of this article is to encourage organizers to see their fights as part of broader injustices and connect them to the vision of economic, environmental and social justice.

Historically, community organizing has not lacked radical social critique. It was exactly the opposite: organizing has often been a prominent strategy in ideological struggles from labor rights movements in Europe to organizing for Black liberation in the United States.

These larger struggles always have localized fronts, such as workplaces, churches, or neighborhoods.

Organizers fused local organizing struggles together to create a larger social critique and vision and the scale of power necessary to achieve the desired change. Over the last decades, from being a revolutionary strategy, organizing became a profession and the followers of the practice built a sector with – more or less – established funding streams (Beckwith et al. 2019).

Even though building progressive grassroots and worker power as part of larger social movements has a long indigenous history in Europe dating back to the pre–World War I period, the scope of community organizing has overall shrank and drifted away from radical social critique.

The “realist” organizing canon that has had a huge influence on how people in Europe teach and practice organizing has locked organizers into isolated localized fights.

Realist vs. Transformative Approach to Organizing

The “realist” or “pragmatic” approach, often associated with the iconic organizer Saul Alinsky, aims to confront unequal power structures, reinvigorate politicalness, and contribute to general welfare (Coles 2006, Inouye 2022). As part of this tradition, organizing has often been taught as a process, a set of steps which, if followed, will contribute to public goods and revitalize democracy.

Organizers apply a generic formula to forge relationships among people, agitate them into action based on their shared interest, develop leaders, and build organizational structures through which directly impacted people can act collectively and represent themselves in the public arena.

Anyone who organized has experienced the power of this process. However, unless organizing is inherently connected to a radical critique of social and economic arrangements, this process may end up boxing organizers into localized fights and decoupling organizing from significant larger struggles (DeFilippis, Fisher and Shragge 2010).

For example, organizers may work around the lack of trash containers to eliminate garbage piles without problematizing the ineffective allocation of funds to elevate low-income or segregated communities.

They may fight against the closing of one kindergarten without addressing the lack of access to quality education nationwide. Organizers may focus on local (or small) fights with the hope that they boost people’s confidence to take on larger, more significant issues, but the gap often proves to be unbridgeable.

The transformative approach to organizing is a critique of this flaw – it fine tunes the formula by what it is missing. By bringing values and politics back in, transformative organizing emphasizes radical analysis and advances an ambitious agenda in opposition to oppressive social and economic structures.

It illuminates the deep-seated power imbalance between ordinary people and the political and business elites, and aims at the radical restructuring of power relations along the axes of exclusion such as class, race, gender or disability (Mann 2010, Maruschke 2014).

Certainly, communities, whether they form at workplaces, schools, neighborhoods or churches, are the basic building blocks of the organizing process. However, social problems experienced by locally rooted communities are always the manifestation of a broader injustice.

When organizers help leaders see their personal or communal suffering as a localized version of a larger political problem, they build bridges and reinforce the interconnectedness horizontally – between various communities, issues and even constituencies – and vertically – between local and national (or even global) social-political struggles.

To move forward the field of community organizing, this interconnectedness should be made explicit. Unless organizers build this bridge between local and larger struggles, organizing will remain marginal.

In the next section, I will provide an example of how to make a localized fight part of a larger struggle. Then, based on the lessons learned from the case, I will offer a framework that marks the three levels of organizing that connects local work to the vision of long-term structural changes.

How to Connect Missing Street Lights to National Politics

Andrea Homoki grew up in Gyál, a town in Hungary. Gyál has a population of over 22,000 and is in the metro area of the capital, Budapest. In 2016, Andrea decided to build a community organization in her town. She applied for the organizing grant of the Hungarian Environmental Foundation, an intermediary of the donor Porticus. Mentorship to organizers came through the Civil College Foundation. The author of this article was Andrea’s mentor during the first two years of her organizing, 2016-2018.

Andrea was well aware of Hungary’s democratic crisis under Viktor Orbán’s illiberal government. She had been active in memory politics struggles for two years before she started organizing in Gyál. She was a leader in a voluntary group, Living Memorial, which protested against the installation of a statue of the German occupation in 1944, which according to many denied the responsibility of the Hungarian state in the Holocaust.

Living Memorial occupied the public space around the statue in Budapest to prevent the inauguration of the memorial and made the occupation permanent by erecting a counter-memorial of the personal relics of fellow-Hungarians and holding several hundreds of discussion circles to protect the counter-memorial in the next few years.

Andrea had to realize quickly that in Gyál most people were not interested in Hungary’s acute political issues in a way she was. When Andrea conducted a listening process, the lack of appropriate street lighting was flagged as the primary issue by about 300 residents. Even though the town did a significant overhaul of public lights in 2015, street lighting became worse than it had been before. The new, energy saving lights replaced the old ones but the company did not install enough of them and the streets got darker.

A new community organization, named Living Gyál (in Hungarian: Eleven Gyál), emerged during the listening process and started a research action to find out who installed the lights. Members, together with Andrea, soon found that the contractor was a company called Elios, belonging to the son-in-law of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Elios, which carried out the overhaul of street lighting in 35 Hungarian towns and cities, including the Fidesz-led Gyál, was in the middle of a vast corruption scandal under investigation by the Hungarian police and the EU’s anti-corruption agency (Vorák 2015).

Living Gyál members decided to work on both the quality of street lighting and the corruption dimension, connecting their local struggle to a national issue. While the group’s primary goal was to achieve that the city council replaces the missing public lights, they also contributed to exposing the corruption scandal.

Over two years of campaigning, Living Gyál created a database that identified all the missing street lights by their location and handed it to the mayor. They conducted a survey among residents, collected 1,600 signatures for a petition, and reported accidents resulting from the darkness in the streets. They requested a professional opinion from a street lighting expert to underscore their statements.

They did street performances and hung banners. They turned their photos of dark streets into postcards and organized an exhibit in front of the city hall. They spoke at public hearings and organized candidate forums in the run-up to the elections.

They took the mayor, a member of the governing Fidesz-KDNP party, on a walking tour to show him the scale of the problem. They also made it to the national media and built alliances with other movement actors.

On the corruption front, they requested that the city council publish the contract between Elios and the municipality. They sued the municipality to provide access to the project expenses in the agreement. In 2018, when the Hungarian authorities terminated the legal process against Elios, a Living Gyál member spoke at a demonstration in Budapest. They were also active in the national pro-democracy, anti-government protests in 2017.

On both campaign fronts, they achieved significant initial victories. In 2020, one year after the municipal elections and after much pressure, the still Fidesz-led city council unanimously voted for installing the 650 missing street lights and published a timetable of the installation. The legal process against the city council was also successful, and the organization could publicize the expenses of the compromised project.

Thus, Living Gyál was able to connect a local issue, lousy street lighting, to a national issue, a dysfunctional, corrupt economy.

However, winning is usually a long-term process with many challenges along the way that are sometimes bigger than us. In this case, it was a worldwide catastrophe that provided the initial loophole for the Gyál administration to evade its commitment – and Living Gyál to lose focus. In 2020, a new coronavirus swept the world and took its toll on many areas of our lives.

In Gyál, it allowed the city council to gain time and protract the planning process of the installation of the missing lights for three years. Living Gyál acted in good faith – and spiraled into an endless set of negotiations. In the meantime, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, triggering a prolonged energy crisis. COVID-19 and the energy crisis created enough opportunities for the municipal administration to finally drop the installation ironically referencing the importance of energy saving.

The 3 Levels where Organizers (should) Operate

The story of Gyál beautifully makes the case for the fact that we do not live in a singular community. Our life takes place in “nested communities” – families, neighborhoods, cities, regions, countries etc. – that are all dependent on each other (Hunter 2018).

As a result, a local community can become the site and localized version of a larger campaign that demonstrates what is at stake in the city, in the country or sometimes, in the world. To take advantage of this potential – and prevent potential failures –, organizers should keep in mind the following three levels of organizing.

Micro Level

At the micro level, organizers create an organizational space where directly impacted people can acquire the skills to participate, overcome internalized disprivilege, and increase self-confidence and the capacity to construct collective political preferences (Cornwall and Coelho 2007).

In these organizations – just like in Living Gyál – people recognize their agency to mould their future and develop a more positive self-concept.

Organizers create this organizational space through intentional personal conversations (one-on-ones) and by uncovering people’s individual stories and examining them in light of others. Thus, at the micro level, organizers build basic units of representation, such as grassroots teams that meet regularly, and enhance people’s personal and collective ability to act

Meso Level

Local communities, however, are often weak on their own. Their collective power can amplify when they align their action with others. At this meso level, they can connect locally organized units across space, institutions, issues or constituencies and integrate them into a larger organizational unit or network.

In this “vertical dimension of communities,” a community is “still spatially and locally rooted but federated and fused through the social and political construction of ever larger communities of interest and identification” (Hunter 2018:13).

At this level, organizers also build relationships with other types of actors, such as advocacy organizations, digital mobilizers, service organizations, or even parties and funders; in the case of Living Gyál, these were the pro-democracy groups.

These interactions also shape how community organizations will be able to use strategic opportunities to achieve their goals.

At the meso level, therefore, organizers facilitate the coalescence of actors, both by connecting structures and resources and adopting a common frame of messaging.

Macro Level

The nuances and trajectory of these organizing processes depend heavily on the particular socio-cultural and economic conditions of the place where the organizing takes place. This macro level of power and opportunity structures determines the outcome of collective social struggles at the micro and meso level.

In other words, what happens in national (or global) politics will define the opportunities for social change – as we saw with COVID-19 in the case of Living Gyál. Living Gyál exemplifies that it is not easy to navigate this macro terrain.

But when organizing is grounded in analysis, organizers may be able to turn the – positive or negative – turn of events to their advantage.

In Gyál, the following could have been a possible approach. In Hungary, the pandemic exposed low healthcare capacity and corruption scandals related to the procurement of ventilators (Transparency 2023). If local elected officials in Gyál aim to sustain cohesion on their turf during a pandemic, the #1 step is to fix a project they messed up.

How can the people of Gyál expect that the municipal administration will handle a public health crisis faithfully if elected officials allowed their town to become complicit in corruption linked to a public safety issue, adequate street lighting? As a result, at the macro level, by using their resources strategically, organizers work for a grounded vision and provide meaning to evolving political opportunities at the time of an opening.

Final Thoughts

Organizers do not start with coordinating big rallies or marches. They begin with people.

They build an organizational space in which directly impacted people can increase their self-confidence, develop skills to take collective action and represent shared interests in the public arena.

With the focus on people and their experience and immediate interests, organizers may easily lock themselves into isolated localized fights and lose sight of larger struggles and the political economy of the country where they work. Therefore, this article has pointed out the importance of connecting local and larger struggles to unleash the transformative potential of organizing.

The figure above demonstrates how micro, meso and macro levels work for organizers. In sum, at the micro level, organizers create organizations where affected people can enhance personal and collective ability to act. At the meso level, organizers connect already organized units and integrate them into a larger organizational unit or network. At the macro level, organizers look into political and social structures to have a grounded vision and be able to give meaning to evolving political opportunities.

If organizers work and coordinate along these lines, their efforts may achieve that people from multiple communities feel part of a stronger, bigger and more diverse “we,” and are able to demonstrate what is at stake in their communities without losing sight of broader economic, environmental and social injustices that shape their lives.

References

This article is an excerpt from the book, Handbuch Community Organizing Geschichte, Theorie und Praxis (in German).

Beckwith, Dave, Deborah Doane, Steve Hughes, Bernadett Sebály, Anna Striethorst and Gordon Whitman (2019). Making a Way Forward: Community Organising and the Future of Democracy in Europe. Ariadne and the European Community Organizing Network, organizeeurope.org.

Coles, Romand (2006). Of Tensions and Tricksters: Grassroots Democracy between Theory and Practice. Review Essay. Perspectives on Politics, 4(3):547-561.

Cornwall, Andrea and Vera Schattan P. Coelho (2007). Spaces for Change? The Politics of Citizen Participation in New Democratic Arenas. London: Zed Books.

DeFilippis, James, Robert Fisher, and Eric Shragge (2010). Contesting Community: The Limits and Potential of Local Organizing. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Hunter, Albert (2018). Conceptualizing Community. In: Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations in the 21^st Century edited by Cnaan, Ram A. and C. Milofsky. 3-23. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. University of Wisconsin and Springer.

Inouye, Mie (2022). Starting with People Where They Are: Ella Baker’s Theory of Political Organizing. American Political Science Review, 116(2):533-546.

Mann, Eric (2010). The Seven Components of Transformative Organizing Theory. Charleston, SC: Frontline Press.

Maruschke, Robert (2014). Community Organizing. Zwischen Revolution und Herrschaftssicherung. Eine Kritische Einführung. Münster: edition assemblage.

Transparency International (2023). “Corruption in healthcare procurement for protection against the coronavirus pandemic,” transparency.hu, February 7. Retrieved from: https://transparency.hu/en/news/corruption-in-healthcare-procurement-for-protection-against-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

Vorák, Anita (2015). “Company of Hungarian PM’s Son-in-law Keeps Winning Public Projects Without Competition. Here Is What Made That Possible,” direkt36.hu, March 11. Retrieved from: https://www.direkt36.hu/en/tiborcz-istvan-es-az-elios-innovativ-zrt-sikerei-ledes-kozvilagitasi-kozbeszerzeseken/

About the Author

Bernadett Sebály is pursuing a PhD in Public Policy at the CEU’s Doctoral School of Political Science. Her field of research is the policy impact of social movements. Prior to CEU, Bernadett worked for ten years at the grassroots, national and international level to build powerful organizations. She is the co-editor of the book titled The Society of Power or the Power of Society? The Basics of Community Organizing.

Bernadett works for solidifying the theoretical and practical foundations of community organizing in Europe drawing on local traditions. She helped design and run a community organizing program in the Hungarian Civil College Foundation for four years. She is on the board of the European Community Organizing Network (ECON) and a member of the editorial team of the Community Organizing Journal. Contact: sebaly.bernadett@gmail.com

Explore Bernadett’s work

• I’m a Veteran Organizer From Hungary. Here Are My Lessons for the Trump Era
• Podcast: The Story of Our Struggles – A social movement database
• Stepping stones in larger struggles. How can we combine colliding struggles in the care crisis?
• Building Stronger Democracies Through Broader Participation: Can Community Organizing Meet the Challenge?
• “We all have to live somewhere!” The last three decades of the Hungarian housing movement – a bottom-up view –1989-2021
• Social Movements and Policy Change: Case Study on Caregiver Benefit Policies in Hungary

Explore Further

• The Power of Organizing: Stories of Community Organizing Campaigns from across Europe
  See stories from Hungary of activist movements adopting a community organizing approach in order to win – pgs 12 – 15. It also includes case studies and stories of community organizers working in Europe from climate work in Poland to Roma rights in Slovakia and more.
• Community Organising Program: Case Studies, Successes and Lessons Learned
  Case studies, analysis of the successes and lessons learned from the Civil College Foundation’s Community Organizing Program in Hungary.
• So, What is Community Organising?
• A Guide to Power Analysis in Community Organising
• High Trees Community Organising Self Assessment Toolkit
• Community Mapping Introduction and Worksheet
• Organising: Start Here

The post The Transformative Potential of Community Organizing and its Challenges: The Case of Living Gyál, Hungary appeared first on The Commons.

The Democracy Resource Hub offers curated tools and connections for democracy practitioners worldwide. Access resources on civic engagement, nonviolent action, peacebuilding, and strategic planning.  Join a global community fostering democratic innovation and resilience through interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge sharing.

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Drop in to find guidance, discover new connections across the movement, or just talk through what you’re working on. Come with curiosity—leave with clarity, contacts, or next steps.

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The Democracy Resource Hub offers a careful curation of resources for organizers, activists, peacebuilders, democracy practitioners, and trainers working to strengthen democracy. We foster interdisciplinary exchanges and innovation across diverse identities and skill sets.

The Democracy Resource Hub includes two sets of information:

1) a collection of curated tools and information and
2) a directory of organizations and networks that offer ways to get involved in and/or trained on the various skills needed to support the renewal of democracy.

This page is the hub that will help you get to the information you need. The collection is organized into 5 approaches. Below you will find guides to help you find the information you need.

Democracy Resource Hub Collection

A curated set of tools and information organized into five approaches and skill sets needed in the movement to renew democracy:

Democracy Strengthening

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Strategic Planning

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Democracy Resource Hub Directory

An interactive list of organizations focused on social change, democracy, organizing, and peacebuilding around the world. The directory is organized into three groups: 

• Directory of Global Networks (List | Gallery)
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How can we help you participate in the effort for democratic renewal today?

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I’d like to browse the hub → Explore All Resources (Table View | Gallery View | Commons Library)

The Movement for Democratic Renewal

To build a thriving democracy, we need a diverse movement using a strategic blend of interconnected approaches:

Democracy Strengthening
Creates more inclusive, responsive, and just democratic systems and institutions. This involves defending against backsliding, reforming existing structures, and building new ones that truly serve all citizens.

Power-Building & Nonviolent Action
Raises awareness, builds solidarity, and generates pressure for change. It shifts power dynamics, creating openings for ordinary people to push for truly inclusive and just reforms and policies, while guarding against extremism and authoritarianism.

Peacebuilding
Fosters understanding and builds trust across divides using approaches like dialogue, mediation, and negotiation. It enables collaborative problem-solving, fosters strong coalitions, and facilitates opportunities to find common ground, even with opponents.

Strategic Planning
Provides the roadmap for our efforts. It aligns our work, maximizes resources and opportunities, and ensures we’re using the right tools at the right time for optimal impact.

Narrative & Storytelling
Creates the connective tissue that unites the entire process. It shapes hearts and minds, inspires action, and weaves a shared vision of our democratic future.

These elements are deeply interdependent:

• Nonviolent action can surface hidden tensions to raise the urgency and build power by mobilizing people to address long-standing injustices that weaken democracy.
• Peacebuilding can foster the creation of broad-based coalitions within movements and consolidate gains into lasting improvements.
• Strategic planning can support the effective sequencing of these approaches.
• Narratives maintain public support and momentum throughout the process.

By embracing this ecosystem as an integrated whole, we can address complex challenges, build broad support, and create lasting democratic renewal. 

Together, we can build a democracy that’s more vibrant, just, and responsive to all.

Intermestic Learning Series

The Intermestic Learning Series aims to:

• Strengthen relationships among activists, organizers, peacebuilders, and democracy practitioners across the globe;
• Facilitate opportunities for cross-border learning around strategies and tactics for pushing back against authoritarianism and advancing diverse, just, and inclusive democracy; and
• Build solidarity and explore opportunities for connection within a broader global movement to counter authoritarianism and reimagine democracy.

 The series is hosted on the Democracy Resource Hub. You can find post-event resource pages here:  

• Mediation for Movements: Managing Intra-Movement Conflict – April 16, 2024
• Organizing in Increasingly Repressive Environments: Pushing Against Criminalization – June 20, 2024
• Defending Democracy with Humor and Dilemma Actions Tactics – October 28, 2024
• Resilience and Post-election Management: Sustaining Democracy Movements – December 3, 2024

About the Democracy Resource Hub

The Democracy Resource Hub is supported by the 22nd Century Initiative, United Vision for Idaho, the SHIFT Action Lab, and the Horizons Project. The hub sits within the Commons Social Change Library which has over 1000+ resources.

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