FROM THE ARCHIVE: “There is no single ‘correct’ strategy for leveraging digital media into movement power. There is, however, a set of practices that, when properly instituted, helps activist organizations adapt to the rhythms of the digital age,” writes David Karpf in this discussion of activism in today’s media landscape.
On the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, a statue that was gifted to the university by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1913 came down.
At a national gathering of hundreds of advocates for a more democratic economy, a call is made to link social movements to institutions that can provide the infrastructure to support a more democratic economic system.
Since November 2016, social movements have been on the rise in the US, with four times as many people participating in demonstrations in 2017 or 2018 than attended either Trump or Clinton rallies. The electoral impact of this shift, however, has yet to be determined.
In July 2013, a social media reaction to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin led to the birth of Black Lives Matter. Five years later, movement activists reflect on the state of the movement.
Next week, NPQ will run a cluster of four articles, taken from the Summer 2018 issue of Nonprofit Quarterly magazine, on how to build a more democratic economy. This is the start of a year-long campaign to more fully explore this ever more emergent field which will include a series of seven monthly webinars starting in the fall, buttressed with supporting materials. This series will work to boost understanding and foster conversation of how nonprofits and movements can most effectively respond to our nation’s rising inequality.
Red Hen’s ouster of Sarah Huckabee Sanders last week may signal a growing backlash against the Trump administration. It is also an example for the nonprofit sector of what it looks like to stand up for your values as the sector undergoes its own racial equity movement.
What have funders and movement organizers learned from four years of activity that followed the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the subsequent community uprising? In St. Louis, some key improvements are visible, but both locally and nationally, far more remains to be done.
This installment in NPQ’s “Behind the Philanthropic Curtain” series focuses on the NoVo Foundation’s Radical Hope Fund. Here, NPQ Senior Editor Cyndi Suarez interviews Pamela Shifman, the executive director of the foundation, about its principles of practice and why it elected to grant millions apiece to organizations driven by those most deeply affected by the issues being worked on.
Don’t trust anyone over 30? A millennial, who has now turned 30, shares what he has learned in a decade of activism with the post-millennial generation. Might be some good pointers for nonprofits supporting advocacy, too.
