Public protest is direct action that uses many of the tactics in this toolkit and applies them to a specific target, for a specific goal.
To be willful is to refuse “to give way, to give up, to give up your way…. We might need to get in the way if we are to get anywhere,” writes feminist and queer theorist, Sara Ahmed.
It takes courage to be willful, to refuse to give way. But courage comes from the support of those who share your cause. When Leshia Evans stood her ground at a Black Lives Matter rally in Baton Rouge, Louisiana she found courage in her faith and in the Movement.
After a shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people on February 14, 2018, young people across the country organized for gun control. A group of Parkland survivors began the group Never Again MSD to campaign for comprehensive gun legislation reform.
Never Again MSD organized the March for Our Lives, a movement that hosted 800+ marches worldwide with over 1 million participants. The group offers tools to plan local actions against gun violence.
Simultaneously, the Women’s March Youth EMPOWER group helped to organize more than 2,500 school walkouts across the US to demand gun reform. The group provides a toolkit for planning a walkout, which can be tailored to any cause!
“On January 21, 2017, people of all backgrounds–women and men and gender nonconforming people, young and old, of diverse faiths, differently abled, immigrants and indigenous–came together, 5 million strong, on all seven continents of the world. We were answering a call to show up and be counted as those who believe in a world that is equitable, tolerant, just and safe for all, one in which the human rights and dignity of each person is protected and our planet is safe from destruction. Grounded in the nonviolent ideology of the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s March was the largest coordinated protest in U.S. history and one of the largest in world history.”
In 2012, as part of SPARK’s campaign to try to convince Teen Vogue to promise to never Photoshop girls and to commit to diversity in their magazine, staged a “mock runway” in front of the Conde Nast building in Times Square, NYC where Teen Vogue is published to raise awareness about the need to show girls as they really look, without digital altering.
Here are some more powerful examples of direct action:
@wegiveconsent was a Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr campaign led by two Year 8 students from Toronto, Canada to get the topic of consent in the Ontario Health Education Curriculum.
Girlguiding UK have organised campaigns for a ‘better sex education’. Find out how you can get involved to take action.
OBJECT campaigns for better representation of women and girls in the media.
Read about dozens of feminist change-making projects around the world, supported by the Frida Young Feminist Fund.