This Week in Global Activism
THREE EMERGING TACTICS
Turning Security Law Against Itself
The Palestine Action Group challenged NSW’s use of “major event” powers, arguing police had listed themselves as the “promoter” and protesters as “spectators.” This is more than a march. It is an attempt to redefine the legal architecture of protest by forcing courts to clarify whether anti terror frameworks can be repurposed to suppress dissent. If successful, it would claw back civic space as a form of sovereignty over public assembly.
Preemptive Slogan Criminalization
Queensland’s move to outlaw phrases like “from the river to the sea” shifts the battleground from bodies in streets to words in mouths. The innovation here is not by activists but by the state. By criminalizing language itself, authorities attempt to collapse protest into prosecutable speech. Movements now face a strategic choice: comply, escalate into mass civil disobedience around speech, or migrate to new symbolic codes that outpace enforcement. Silence, chosen collectively, can sometimes dethrone a regime as surely as noise.
Internationalizing Domestic Repression
The ACLU’s urgent submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reframes ICE crackdowns in Minnesota as treaty violations. This tactic externalizes the conflict, seeking leverage through international oversight rather than domestic courts alone. It does not seize sovereignty yet, but it multiplies arenas of accountability. The gamble is that reputational cost and diplomatic pressure can constrain executive force where street protest cannot. Notice what is missing. The thousands in Sydney and Melbourne marched, but the police deployed 500 officers with long arm rifles and sweeping search powers. When power already anticipates the script, repetition becomes ritual, not rupture. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ONE QUESTION
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When governments can reclassify a presidential visit as a “major event” and turn police into the official “promoter,” are we still protesting within their script, or are we ready to build forms of assembly they cannot administratively erase?