Jan Leighley, American University School of Public Affairs and Jennifer Oser, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Citizen activists can influence the policy positions of their elected representatives. Their activism might well counter the advantages of the wealthy in America.
At a time when our political future is uncertain, the only way to guarantee change is to do it yourself.
Audible Australia’s Listen to Love podcast is an explicit attempt to shape the debate around marriage equality currently raging in Australia.
AAP Image/David Crosling
Podcasts like The Messenger, about refugees, and Listen To Love, about same-sex marriage, are bringing new voices to major issues. But as podcasts get political, it’s unclear whether they’ll be able to cut through complex debates.
Decriminalisation allowed sex workers to step out of the shadows and into active participation in public life.
Scarlett Alliance/Author provided
Full decriminalisation of sex work is advocated by many health and human rights organisations around the world. Sex workers in New South Wales kick-started the process 40 years ago.
Activist art makes clear that the border dynamic is a lot more complex than Trumps’s ‘them/us’ rhetoric.
Members of Patriotic Millionaires, whose privileged members advocate for higher taxes on the rich, met with lawmakers in this 2015 photo to discuss legislation to close the carried interest loophole.
Senate Democrats
When the wealthy become unlikely allies in the fight against inequality, they often take similar steps. It all starts with acknowledging their own privileges.
Solarpunk imagines a sustainable future, and what it might be like to live in it.
Image from www.shutterstock.com
Punks aren’t known for their positivity, but ‘solarpunks’ are all about optimism. A new movement of speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism, it imagines a sustainable future that requires radical social change.
A young woman protests at a “Not My President” demonstration against Donald Trump in New York in December 2016.
(Shutterstock)
According to famed anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, the central question of our times is whether we’re witnessing the worldwide rejection of liberal democracy and its replacement by some sort of populist…
Environmentalists are not fans of EPA chief Scott Pruitt.
Reuters/Mike Theiler
Green groups fighting Trump’s anti-environmental agenda should heed precedents from the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. They can also learn from the Australian experience.
German infantrymen aim machine guns from a trench near the Vistula River in 1916.
AP-Photo
In the winter of 1915, a German soldier died in a field hospital in Russia. We don’t know his name, but he helped revolutionize the way gay people have advocated for equality.
High school and college students protested Trump’s inauguration at Seattle Central College in January.
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson
When it comes to politics these days, it feels like everything is ‘my way or the highway.’ What can colleges do to end this moral fundamentalism and get students listening to each other?
Students for a Democratic Society was the largest – and arguably most successful – student activist organization in U.S. history.
S.Sgt. Albert R. Simpson, Department of Defense / via Wikimedia
Student protest has been in the political spotlight since Trump’s election. Todd Gitlin, former president of Students for a Democratic Society, shares his perspective on protest in the 60s and now.
Most U.S. environmental organizations are less diverse than this group of Californian environmental justice leaders.
Brooke Anderson/CEJA
How could green groups attract more diverse volunteers? Maybe they could put more time and energy into outreach toward the people most affected by environmental injustices.
Incidents that may have been mere hiccups a few years ago today can go viral in an instant, causing a massive backlash and leaving some of the biggest companies wrong-footed.
Health centre in Sainte Dominique, Dakar, Senegal.
Jean-Jacques Lemasson/IRD
Bill Celis, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
From the treatment of black World War II veterans to Emmett Till’s murder, the black press helped lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement. What role can it play today?