Making Change: What Works?
What key ingredients enable movements to realise significant change? Learn from four movements and this report’s insights and findings.
Format
Case Studies
Five Lessons from Fair Agenda’s Campaigns for Access to Abortion Care in Australia
Lessons learned from Fair Agenda’s campaigns on winning safe and legal access to abortion care in Australia.
Social movements and the (mis)use of research: Extinction Rebellion and the 3.5% ruleÂ
Extinction Rebellion member Kyle R Matthews explores how scholarship regarding civil resistance campaigns seeking regime change has been used by environmental activists.
Toward an Anti-Fracking Mobilization Toolkit: Ten practices from Western Newfoundland’s Campaign
Case study of anti fracking campaign in Canada. Interviews with mobilization leaders presents ten practices deemed as particularly effective.
Creative activism: Hologram protest
The practicalities and possibilities of using holograms to challenge and subvert anti-protest laws are explored in this case study from Spain.
Humorous Political Stunts: Nonviolent Public Challenges to Power
An exploration of how creative activists combine humour with seriousness via stunts to create change, including case study – John Howard Ladies’ Auxiliary Fan Club.
Civil Resistance against Climate Change: What, when, who and how effective?
New research considers what Australian climate activism – specifically climate change civil resistance – looks like, how it is changing, and what it is achieving.
Tasmanian Wilderness Society blocks dam construction (Franklin River Campaign) 1981-83
Tasmanian Wilderness Society activists blockaded the Tasmanian Franklin below Gordon Dam site, proposed by the Hydro Electric Commission.
Australian Rainforest Action Groups boycott Malaysian rainforest timber, 1988-1994
Australian Rainforest Action Groups blockaded ships bringing rainforest timbers logged in Sarawak, Malaysia.
International groups boycott Nestle products to end indiscriminate advertising, 1977-1984
Nestle artificial baby milks infant formula marketing Third World International Baby Food Action Network.
Hazara asylum seekers hunger strike on Nauru, 2003-2004
Hazara refugee asylum seekers engaged in hunger strikes to protest their continuing detention by Australia on Nauru.
Australian women protest conscription during Vietnam War [Save Our Sons (SOS)], 1965-1972
Save Our Sons opposed military conscription for Australia’s role in the United States invasion and occupation of Vietnam.
Australians general strike for right to unionize, Brisbane, Australia, 1912
Brisbane unionists organised a general strike in 1912 to protect and enhance the rights of tramways workers to organise.
Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions (BUGA UP) campaigns against tobacco advertising, Australia, 1978-1994
Civil disobedience actions reversed tobacco advertising messages to show the negative health effects of cigarettes.
Australians campaign against nuclear power and uranium mining, 1974-1988
Street marches and trade union action typified Australian resistance to the building of nuclear reactors and uranium mining and export.
Dilemma Actions: the power of putting your opponent in a bind
A study of 44 dilemma actions over the last 90 years examines the many benefits of creative protests for social movements.
Australians block cricket and impede rugby tour of apartheid South Africa, 1971
Anti-apartheid protesters impeded the South African Springboks rugby tour, and stopped the cricket tour, to protest racial inequality.
Thanks But No Tanks: Learnings from Disrupt Land Forces [Brisbane: 2021]
Actions and learnings from Australia’s Disrupt Land Forces Campaign at the Brisbane’s 2021 Land Forces weapons expo.
Greenpeace and Sea Shepherds force Japanese seafood company Nissui to sell stakes in whale hunting ships 2005-2006
Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd initiated a consumer boycott against Sealord Tuna to end whaling by its parent company, Nissui.
Australian Aboriginal workers strike for fair wages and equality, 1946-1949
Indigenous pastoral workers in the Kimberley region of Western Australia struck for equal wages and full civil rights in the late 1940s.