New Ways Through the Woods
In an email last week to subscribers, Indivisible Co-Executive Director Leah Greenberg offered a compelling argument for the strategic necessity of protest in pro-democracy and rights movements. “Why another protest?” she began, “What is it going to accomplish?”
Greenberg went on to describe the danger of an “aura of inevitability,” how easy it is to become resigned to the notion that people in power who seem determined to use it for harm will always be in power. That can lead to believing “the only rational move is to go along, keep your head down, and protect your own interests. To fall in line and/or go silent.”
In the face of that danger of sliding into silence, the strategic power of protest, she says, is that people feel like they’re part of something. “They feel like they can win.” Protests foster community, Greenberg says, they spread courage.
As critical a tactic as it is, Greenberg writes that protest is not enough. Countering autocracy “requires a hundred different tactics and strategies.”
Advocacy. Organizing. Policy making. Direct Service. Grassroots mutual aid. Strengthening voting rights. Supporting organizations with a track record of success in the courts or halls of government. Holding lawmakers accountable. Providing sanctuary.
All of these activities have been, and continue to be, necessary in a movement that strives for democracy, civil rights, and justice. And Greenberg warns “with any tactic, there’s a danger of tactical freeze, of it getting stale, of deploying it without a real strategy in mind.”
Fortunately, human beings have a unique capacity to deal with the risk of tactical freeze, strategies that have outlived their usefulness or are no longer enough. Innovation.
A quick internet search reveals a dominant understanding of innovation in terms of commerce and organizational growth. The consulting company McKinsey and Company offers this definition: “the ability to conceive, develop, deliver, and scale new products, services, processes, and business models.” Harvard Business School faculty member Ben Little describes innovation as “a process that guides businesses through developing products or services that deliver value to customers in new and novel ways.”
“Most organizations today realize the key to growth (and even survival) is innovation,” the design firm Ideo suggests. “It’s about finding inspiration to expand your thinking, help you get beyond what you’ve always done, and transition from idea to implementation.”
Social change activists have always searched for ways to get beyond what’s always been done, not for the purpose of growth for growth’s sake, but to generate strategies that drive liberation.
Activist Bayard Rustin took Martin Luther King and his colleagues to India to learn the strategy of nonviolence; then they brought it back to the United States, mixed it with a theology of liberation, and created the movement for Black civil rights in the U.S.
Canadian Territorial Judge Barry Stuart and Tagish Tlingit leaders learned first nation peacekeeping circle practice and, with others, created restorative justice options in North American criminal justice systems.
Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunis and his colleagues came up with the innovative idea of microfinance to generate working capital for people without access to conventional sources of startup funds.
Innovation for liberatory change shares with commercial innovation the characteristics of inspiration, creativity, experimentation, and a desire for transformation. What systems transformation scholar and teacher Otto Scharmer describes as “open heart, open mind and open will.”
Activist innovation distinguishes itself by its desired outcome of social change, but change can move in directions both limiting and liberating, and activist innovation can seek to drive social change in either direction.
Liberatory innovation aligns with the change it seeks. So it’s earnestly curious, genuinely wanting to understand, not to confirm bias or preconceptions. It’s inclusive and collaborative, blending ideas from multiple experiences, wisdom traditions, and fields of study to make something new. Activist innovators for liberatory change risk questioning paradigms that have driven activism for decades, touching what has been untouchable in order to find new ways forward.
Innovation confronts the “tactical freeze” of which Leah Greenberg writes, reducing the risk of employing tactics because they worked in the past, without considering their unintended consequences and what the present might teach.
Every day I see activists leaning their lives into advocacy, organizing, education, political strategy, grassroots aid, and direct service. I find myself asking, what will I add to all of that? How will the ILI add to the effort of changing limiting systems and sidelining cruelty, bigotry, fear, and hate? How do we help turn the tide?
Innovation. That’s what’s in front of me to offer now, what the ILI is built to do.
With steely compassion and restorative discipline, with humility and persistence, the ILI will create and promote new ways through the thicket that lies between now and a future where all people can thrive.
Lucinda Garthwaite, ILI Founder and Executive Director
References and Resources
Organizations and companies mentioned above:
Harvard Professional and Executive Development Blog
Further Reading:
Bayard Rustin, The Martin Luther King Research and Education Institute at Stanford University
Barry Stuart, Living Justice Press.
The History of Microfinance, Opportunity International.
The Essentials of Theory U, Otto Scharmer, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2018.
Otto Scharmer. Changing Systems, Mind & Life Podcast, Wendy Hasenkamp, March 13, 2025.