Minds of the Movement
An ICNC blog on the people and power of civil resistance
Mama C. leads a morning session at an activist-creative gathering in Arusha in 2024. Credit: Merab Ingabire.
In a post last fall, I argue that current NGO storytelling practices are rooted in a Western international development frame. Whether this is harmful or not in theory or based on some ideal/ideology is not the subject of this follow-up post. In any case, our work as movement supporters doesn't happen in a vacuum; it happens in the real world.
An activist-writer speaking at a 2024 gathering of activist-creatives and communicators. Credit: Merab Ingabire.
What I do know, however, is that many movement supporters lack the civil resistance frame in their work. "Doing storytelling" without the civil resistance frame—without understanding how ordinary people use nonviolent action to struggle for and achieve rights, justice and freedom—hampers our ability to fully harness the power of activist writing as a form of human agency. (Indeed, I prefer the term activist writing, not storytelling, and you can read why here and below.)
If the international development frame limits our current vision of the power of writing for nonviolent movements, then what can we do about it? How can our "storytelling" programs go beyond only scratching the surface? Besides amplifying activist voices and stories, what else can activist writing do for us, but far more importantly—and therein lies the very heart of my argument—for our activist-writer constituencies? How does the civil resistance frame change the way we see and do "storytelling"? What does that shift look like concretely in terms of designing and administering our movement support programs?
A world of activist writing: A utopic vision?
South African feminist and activist-creative Rosie Motene co-leads a workshop on writing as power for our movements, Arusha, 2024. Credit: Author.
But before we jump in: Last month, I attended a gathering of east African activists who were all leveraging writing in some creative or expository way: as podcasters, TV and film producers, independent journalists, filmmakers, poets, singers, social media influencers, as well as classic "writers." They wrote scripts. They created videos and wrote posts for their Instagram followers. They read to us their poems from published anthologies. They wrote song lyrics. They managed parody news sites and wrote political satire. They managed local NGO communication strategies. Yet what they all had in common was that their writing was normative: it was to nonviolently struggle for human rights and social justice (and this takes many forms beyond simple advocacy—also at the very heart of my arguments in this post). I had long pondered the utopic question of, what would the world look like if flooded with activist writing?
And there I was, living my social-justice-editor dream of living in such a world, for four straight days!
As I listened to these activist-creatives and activist-communicators speak about their writing activities, I began scribbling down messy notes. Then, during the session I co-led with Rosie Motene, we led a discussion on the purposes of writing for movements, as a way to broaden our view of the inherent power and agency of this tool.
A role-play game about the power dynamics of activist writing, Arusha, 2024. Credit: Author.
What resulted from these scribbles and discussions was the following list, "38 ways that writing is power". I'm sharing them in this post to help NGOs and funders understand the value of adopting a civil resistance frame in their movement support programs that focus on storytelling. And the first step is actually scrapping the word storytelling all together, in favor the term "activist writing" (or at the very least, adding a qualifier like "activist-led storytelling"). Activist writing better captures the human agency and power that this tools inherently carries. It demands more from this tool than simply appealing to the hearts and minds of our readers. An emphasis on writing acknowledges the benefits of those who engage in it—in our context, the activist-creatives—, not just those who are reading it. And that's the whole point. If we want our movement support to be authentic and impactful, it cannot be primarily self-serving. It has to give back.
So, without further ado, and virtually unedited from the group discussions so as to preserve participants' own words, and in no particular order:
Writing is…
- ...a vehicle for advocacy, raising awareness, movement communications
- ...a vehicle for sense-making, personal reflection as an activist
- ...a vehicle for sense-making, collective reflection as a movement
- ...a source of revenue for activists
- ...a source of revenue for movements
- ...a way to officialize information and events (related to truth-telling)
- ...a way for inter-movement and intra-movement activist learning, education, training and edification to happen
- ...documentary resistance, a way to set the record straight, truth-telling
- ...a way to share information (journalism)
- ...a way to let information get out safely (smoke-writing)
- ...a way to take a step back and see your activism more clearly, to find your way back to your unique, original “why”, to know ourselves better, to know the truth about ourselves in a world where lies our told about us
- ...used to influence or control the narrative about your struggle, to not leave silence about ourselves for others to fill (it’s less about what you say, it’s more about who you are)
- ...a way to generate external support (funding for trainings, international solidarity, unarmed accompaniment for nonviolent movements in conflict zones, etc.)
- ...a way to build trust with external supporters
- ...a way to humanize ourselves, in the face of vociferous dehumanization campaigns led by our oppressors
- ...a way to own up to our activism
- ...a way to resist against suffering and let joy reign (humor, satire, parody…)
- ...a way to dramatize injustice (humor, satire, parody…)
- ...a way to keep searching for answers
- ...a way to find connections and common ground with others, to build community
- ...a way to build self-confidence and find your voice
- ...a teambuilding exercise for movements
- ...a way to learn about how others see you (when you write for international outlets and work with editors)
- ...a way to give a voice to the less vocal participants of a movement
- ...a relatively low-risk, low-threshold nonviolent action for those activists who do not wish to be on the frontlines (scrupulous digital security measures must be taken if that writing is to be released publicly, but there are other writing formats and methods that do not require this, like gathering written activist testimonies)
- ...something that can be leveraged to improve gender inclusion in a movement
- ...leaving a trace and thus is noncooperation, because our oppressors want to erase our traces
- ...a way to contribute to the democratization of knowledge
- ...a human right
- ...our duty as activists. By sharing our voices, our insights, our experiences, our successes and failures, we are accountable to all other activists in the world fighting for human rights, freedom, peace and social justice
- ...a way to appropriate power (access to editorial production and publishing)
- ...something that less-trusted movement participants can be entrusted with (you don’t have to do anything with what they write, and you didn’t raise suspicion by trying to exclude them from your movement which could cause panic and make a movement implode)
- ...a way to quickly seize trigger events and shed light on injustice that is happening right now
- ...a tool or strategy, not an action; it promises more when approached with the long term in mind (proactively like building an archive of written activist testimonies) and not as delivering some quick solution (reactively, like launching a hashtag campaign on Twitter)
- ...does not happen in a vacuum. It is normative, it is politically charged, it gives rise to action.
- ...not just performance, it is also performative. It connects words with action. It consummates our activism or makes our activism whole. And it makes us whole as activists.
- ...a way to embrace our humanity
- ...a way to demystify.
What I really like about this list is that it is about how writing IS power, not how writing CAN be power. It's already happening; activists are already leveraging writing in these ways—they are already deriving power from this tool. When will we movement supporters catch up to them? How about... right now!
Take some time to digest this list. Reading a few of our REACT activist-written posts will help. Come back to the list in a few days. Print it out and show it to your colleagues. Lead a brainstorming session and solicit some reactions: In our work, have we observed activists using writing for these purposes? If not, why not? What are we missing, what can we do better? And then check back soon for my next post, which will provide some concrete examples of how the "activist writing" mindset, or civil resistance frame, can be applied in our movement support work.
