Welcome to Dispatch #45! This week we’re starting a two part series where we will share Bill Moyer’s work to help people understand the lifecycle of a social movement. That starts with understanding the four roles that activists have inside a movement, and then later we’ll share Moyer’s “Stages of a Social Movement” that are shared in his book Doing Democracy.
We’ve always believed that there are many roles in a movement - you don’t have to be on the frontlines to be making an impact - and Moyer does a great job of breaking that down. One could potentially argue that there are even more roles than what Moyer listed, but this is a good starting point especially when we are trying to understand movements as a greater social phenomenon. In addition, we’re also highlighting an inspiring indigenous artist, stories of Gen Z movements in India, the evolving shape of revolutions, and more!
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Easy Actions to Take
Why: In recent years school systems have been quietly introducing unethical experiments with facial recognition software, using it to scan, analyze, and collect sensitive biometric information on tens of thousands of students, parents, teachers, and staff. No matter the form, whether it’s creepily watching students in class, tracking attendance, or monitoring hallways, facial recognition is invasive, biased, and puts people’s most sensitive data at risk of being abused or stolen. It simply does not belong anywhere near school campuses.
Why: Reports reveal that Apple’s iPhone 17e uses custom-designed chips developed by Apple’s silicon R&D teams in Israel. We shouldn’t be carrying Israeli-developed phones in our pockets, while Israel faces zero accountability for its continued occupation and genocidal assaults in Palestine and Lebanon. Organized by MPower for Change
⏱~3min | (US Only) Tell The Senate: Reject The SAVE America Act, Protect Our Right To Vote
Why: Donald Trump will stop at nothing to make it harder for millions—especially those in Black communities—to vote in the midterms. This week he demanded that Senate Republicans cancel their August recess unless they pass the SAVE America Act — a sweeping voting restrictions bill that would require proof of a U.S. passport or a birth certificate matching a person’s legal name to register to vote. As Trump doubles down on his threats, the Senate is under enormous pressure to pass the bill in the days ahead, and we need to make sure lawmakers hear from us before they cave. Organized by Color of Change
Little (Movement) Wins
Flashback: 4 Concepts to Stay Hopeful in Times of Crisis by Ray
The root of resistance is hope. When we lack hope, we lack the will to fight or show up for others. Things become “just the way they are” that can never be changed (which is far from the truth). In order to be in the fight for the long term, having hope is essential. Things have been feeling dark, but often keeping hope alive is a matter of perspective. Last Dispatch we shared four concepts that we have tried to center in our lives to help us stay hopeful even when the world feels bleak.
Click below to learn about Radical Hope, the Cycles of History, Cathedral Mindset, and Hobbitmaxxing.
Featured Piece
Bill Moyer is an American social change activist who was a principal organizer in the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement. He created the Movement Action Plan to help social change activists understand the dynamics behind movement success. In particular, the need to openly address the contradiction that activists often perceive the normal signs of campaign progress as signs of failure. We want to cover the key concepts in Moyer’s MAP, and this is part 1 about the different roles activists must fill to be successful. In the following issues, we’ll be sharing a study guide for the full Movement Action Plan and the different stages in a social movement.
Content Worth Consuming
- The strategic satire of India’s Gen Z ‘Cockroach’ movement by Aparajita Ghosh
- India’s Cockroach Janta Party started as a meme, but it has transformed into a real youth movement challenging institutions that have failed their generation.
- A New Kind of Activist: The Imagination Activist by Phoebe Tickell
- Introducing the imagination activist, new kind of activist who harnesses the power of imagination and vision to build new systems rather than fighting the old.
- Why Gen Z is nostalgic for a world it never knew by Clay Routledge
- A nostalgia-fueled real-world renaissance is underway, led by young adults striving to counter the cultural pessimism and division that pervades much of online life.
- What Does Revolution Mean in the 21st Century? An interview with Mark Beissinger
- We live in an era of major mass protest in nearly every single region in the world. Yet social revolutions as we knew them in the twentieth century are nowhere to be found. Why? This interview with Mark Beissinger dives into how revolutions are evolving in 21st century condition.
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“This is the 21st century and we need to redefine r/evolution. This planet needs a people’s r/evolution. A humanist r/evolution. R/evolution is not about bloodshed or about going to the mountains and fighting. We will fight if we are forced to but the fundamental goal of r/evolution must be peace. We need a r/evolution of the mind. We need a r/evolution of the heart. We need a r/evolution of the spirit. The power of the people is stronger than any weapon. A people’s r/evolution can’t be stopped. We need to be weapons of mass construction. Weapons of mass love. It’s not enough just to change the system. We need to change ourselves.”
-Assata Shakur, Revolutionary & Black Panther Party member
Conscious Creatives: Nayana LaFond
Nayana LaFond is a Massachusetts-based Indigenous painter, sculptor, curator, and activist of Anishinaabe, Abenaki, Mi'kmaq, and Métis descent whose work explores themes of grief, trauma, and memory. As a domestic abuse and leukemia survivor she learned quickly what it means to nearly become a statistic. That experience is what drove her to create her most well-known project, Portraits in RED, which she began to raise awareness for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis. In the United States and Canada, Indigenous women and girls face assault, murder, and abductions at a rate up to 10x higher than average, and LaFond wanted to address this issue head on and highlight the generations of systemic inequities that have created the conditions for this crisis.
After her first painting of a woman from an online Indigenous community group, the project went viral overnight and nearly 5 years later she has completed over 110 black and white acrylic portraits, each marked with a red handprint over the subject’s mouth because in many Indigenous cultures red is the only color spirits can see. Adopting the portraiture style commonly used with kings, dukes, and other royalty, she paints her subjects in a way that feels dignified, honorable, and worthy, and her artwork has brought closure and solace to many families. One portrait became a family’s only memorial for a lost loved one while another led to a woman being found alive. Through her life and work, Nayana LaFond reminds us that to be truly seen can be an act of resistance, and that one artist with a canvas and a commitment to showing up can give back something no one should ever have had to lose: the right to be remembered.
Resources & Tools
Here are some recent adds to the directory. Please share these links with anyone that might find them helpful:
- 🏥 Euki | A great free, non-profit, privacy-first period and pregnancy tracker app that doesn't track or sell your data.
- 🤖 The AI Resist List | This list documents dozens of grassroots movements around the world – from data poisoning tools for artists to worker coalitions and community-controlled language models – organized around 9 pillars that aim to keep the AI industry’s power in check.
- ✊ How to Kick Out Flock and Organize to Stop Mass Surveillance | A detailed step-by-step guide written by Aaron Fernando for Shareable to help you get Flock out of your city. Aaron is an organizer with the group FlockOff!
➡️ Explore More on our Directory!
Know any resources that you think would be a great add to our directory? Share it with us! (We only see so much from our corner of the world)
If you're new here, don't forget to sign up to get full access to our directory and free newsletters sent to your inbox every other Sunday. Till next time, do your best and take it one day at a time. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up. And remember, you're not alone. We always have each other.
With Love & Light,
Elisa & Ray
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