How has writing changed my life? Sharing my passion for writing about activism. Arusha, December 2024. Credit: Amber French.I had a very unconventional upbringing. I was born in 1974 in South Africa during the Apartheid era. At the time my mother was a domestic worker for a white Jewish family. The dynamics of being brought up through a white lens while my mother lived in the back room as the maid created many internal crises. The country, law and society reinforced the insolence that white is right, and for many decades I believed and adopted that internal racism […]

“As an activist and writer who uses storytelling as a revolutionary tool, I’ve faced much criticism, even from activist circles. Some label us cowards, frauds, or too safe, claiming that real resistance happens only in the streets. But how can they ignore the countless comrades who have been arrested, tortured, or disappeared because of their writing? How can anyone call this form of resistance cowardly when so many have been forced into exile, torn away from their motherlands and loved ones for daring to speak truth to power? […]”

Last August, Nigerians across the nation took to the streets to protest poor governance. Police and other security forces cracked down on the demonstrations, resulting in some 20 deaths. Even prior to this acute repression, the Nigerian state and state-ordered actors had for weeks attempted to instill a climate of fear and control the public narrative about the campaign. Yet concerned Nigerians and the campaign organizers, who hailed from several movements and civil society groups, were prepared to counter these measures. […]

In a post last fall, I argue that current NGO storytelling practices are rooted in a Western international development frame. Whether this is harmful or not in theory or based on some ideal/ideology is not the subject of this follow-up post. In any case, our work as movement supporters doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it happens in the real world. What I do know, however, is that many movement supporters lack the civil resistance frame in their work […]

My journey to where I am now—an activist in exile, a wanted “extremist” and part of something greater, started in confusion and isolation but has led to a strong sense of belonging and responsibility. We still have a long way to go in laying the foundation for democracy in Russia, but at least we have started—and I am living proof of that. […]

“To the outside observer, some places may seem hopeless and completely lost. It looks like nothing good comes out of them and there should be no faith in their future. I come from such a place, and my organization fights for it. The Youth Democratic Movement Vesna (“Spring” in Russian) was created in 2013 in Saint Petersburg. For the first eight years of its existence, it was a relatively small (nevertheless, ambitious) youth organization with a focus on local and countrywide issues, and with the main goal of introducing youth to political action in the highly atomized and apolitical Russian society. […]”

NGO ‘storytelling’ typically focuses on the more personal aspects of activism, often from a Western frame of international development. This approach is of course valuable in many ways. Engaging in activism is a very intense personal experience, one that often includes dedication, strength, resilience, pain and loss. Storytelling helps humanize people—activists—who oppressors do everything in their power to dehumanize. Telling their own ‘stories’ to an international readership helps activists build bridges to reinforce conscientious external support. And in my experience, many human rights defenders want to tell their stories. Yet the predominant storytelling practices only harness part of what activist writing and activist-writers are capable of. […]

“La non-violence est naïve. Les humains sont violents par nature.” “La violence est nécessaire pour affronter des adversaires violents. “La résistance non violente sape les moyens institutionnels de changement.” De telles opinions sont compréhensibles à la lumière de la socialisation de la société et de l’augmentation continue de la violence dans les médias d’information, d’éducation et de divertissement. Il peut être frustrant de devoir répondre régulièrement à de tels points de vue. Mais si l’autre personne est de bonne foi, répondre peut aussi être l’occasion d’approfondir la conversation, d’apprendre à connaître son point de vue et de partager le nôtre. […]

I’ve often pondered what motivates someone to risk their freedom, safety and even their life, for the sake of rights and justice. Why do they persist when the fight seems endless? What sustains them when fear and exhaustion threaten to take over? The “Voices of Resilience” blog series attempts to explore these questions through the personal activism journeys of five remarkable women human rights defenders from Southeast Asia. These women are not just activists; they are daughters, sisters, mothers and friends who have faced personal tragedy, persecution and forced exile, but refused to give up. […]