It seems every day there is a never-ending chorus of what we need to do, what is wrong with the world, and what is good for us. I was thinking about this the other week when I was stuck in a grid-lock traffic jam outside a university due to a student protest. They were determined to cause the most disruption to the traffic as they possibly could. As the traffic banked-up you could see them smiling and congratulating themselves at the inconvenience and mayhem they were causing. Their impact was frustration and anger to those caught in the traffic. It had no impact on advancing the cause they were protesting about. In fact, it probably caused the opposite, alienating their cause, and fostering a negative attitude to the students by their actions.

There is a fine line between effective activism and just being a nuisance. The differentiator is leadership. What was missing in the students’ attempt to raise the importance of their issue was leadership. What were they trying to achieve? And what was the outcome they were hoping for? Disruption or change?

Awareness without action is useless! The easiest thing in the world is to highlight a problem without doing anything tangible to resolve it. Any effective community change requires leadership and unity.

An activist is someone who campaigns for social reform or change. They are motivated by a desire to correct an issue they believe is unjust or harmful. Effective activism is much more than protests. It requires lobbying, educating the masses, and uniting the community to effect change. This is a leadership dynamic.

A nuisance is a term to describe someone who is annoying, disruptive or bothersome. It can be highly subjective. In the context of activism, those with an opposing view might deem protestors as a nuisance due to their disruptive methods. Without selling the context, convincing the masses, and engaging a coalition of supporters, those with opposite views will always regard protestors as a nuisance.

An activist leader is someone who engages and guides a group of people around a common goal. They achieve this through their wisdom, vision, storytelling, ability to motivate and inspire others, and their willingness to listen to and engage others.

Complex social issues can only be resolved by a community working together. Always has and always will be the case. In isolation, disruption rarely works. Effective activism requires several leadership elements over and above just causing inconvenience and traffic jams. These include:

Clear goals:

Effective activism has a clear set of sustainable long-term goals and range of solutions addressing a specific issue or injustice.

Community disruption seeks to draw attention to an issue and create short-term chaos without a plan for how any lasting change may occur.

Methodology:

Effective activism has a sustained and systematic methodology employing a range of strategics and tactics to raise awareness through peaceful protests, lobbying, petitions, fund and friend raising initiatives, and ongoing communications.

Community disruption often results in turning the community against them through the use of violent protests, mass community inconvenience, vandalism to public and private property, and the demonising of people with opposing views.

Clear planning:

Effective activism has well laid out plans that have been co-designed with a cross section of the community to ensure collective wisdom and support is developed from the outset. The plans have clear milestones, strategies, measures of success, communications, responsibilities, and well thought through potential scenarios.

Community disruption plans are focused on the short term and the immediate need to disrupt. They are often ad hoc, made on the run with little or no strategic outcomes or next step scenarios.

Community engagement:

Effective activism will engage and onboard the community to their cause or issue and unite the masses around a common vision for the future. Key is creating a one message, many voices, locally-deployed campaign.

Community disruption alienates the community, turns them off a cause or issue, and most importantly generates an “attitude of indifference” to the disruptors and their cause, which just makes it harder for the disruptors to meaningfully engage the community.

Alliances and partnerships:

Effective activism onboards an increasingly growing number of alliances and partnerships, who share in the common vision of the cause, and can add value to helping resolve the problem. Alliances help magnify the issue and onboard more supporters and advocates.

Community disruption has the opposite effect on potential alliances and partnerships. Community groups with a poor public perception are shunned by community members as there is a reputational risk of being associated with disruptors.

Outcomes – measures:

Effective activism has clear milestones, measures and outcomes. These are carefully sequenced to ensure momentum builds, and sustainable changes take place including the attitudes, behaviours, and commitments of influencers, funders, advocates, and ambassadors. Key is measuring the sentiment of the community, and the knock-on change that is taking place.

Community disruption measures the impact their disruption has. This typically engenders a negative impact by the community thus creating an adversarial relationship with the community and media, which in turn reduces overall support.

Legitimacy by the Media:

Effective activism is seen positively by the media, thus encouraging positive support from different media channels, which has added advocacy benefits. The media will help amplify the messages, milestone wins, successes, and core messages. This helps maintain momentum and community awareness.

Community disruption will always be viewed sceptically and negatively by the community. The media will always focus on the emotional impact the disruption had on law abiding citizens.

In summary:

The difference between effective activism and community disruption is leadership. Effective leadership in successful community activism requires the leader to:

• Have a well thought out and constructed plan and message
• Garner public support
• Onboard a wide range of alliances and partnerships
• Meaningfully connect with a broad cross section of the community
• Credibly engage with the authorities, funders, politicians, and alliances
• Adapt and persist over a period. A one-off quick protest will never succeed
• Align with and leverage like-minded organisations and their initiatives
• Maintain a consistency of messaging from a broad church of supporters and coalitions.

As my late great friend Stefan Romaniw would say you need to capture the hearts and minds of the community and bring them along for the ride to effect change. He is perhaps one of the most effective activist leaders in recent times, where he galvanised the global community to support Ukraine in their hour of need, from his home base here in Australia. Look him up. An amazing man. Maybe potential community activists should take a lesson in effective activist leadership before they begin?

Leadership Lesson

The path you lead is your personal leadership quest.
But the tracks you leave is your leadership legacy.
To make a difference in life, it is not how loud you scream, but the lasting impact you make on others!

Stefan Romaniw OAM (Activist – Leader – 1955-2024)

Facta Non-Verba – Deeds Not Words