How can our movement effectively balance the urgency of addressing ecological crises with the deep, often disruptive social transformations required to dismantle hierarchical systems, especially when confronting the risks of superficial activism that may reinforce existing power structures?
Treat urgency and depth as two phases of the same chemical reaction, not clashing priorities. Launch fast-acting “rupture actions” that expose the ecological crime scene—target the ports, boardrooms and data centers where extraction is coordinated—but immediately funnel the outrage into neighborhood assemblies that practice the alternative. Each blockade becomes a recruitment drive for a confederal council; every banner directs people to the next communal meeting where budgets, land use and food systems are decided by those who live there.
Refuse stand-alone symbolism. Pair tree sits with legal commoning of the surrounding watershed. Pair divestment campaigns with the creation of cooperative credit unions that finance solar microgrids. This synthesis denies elites the usual escape route: conceding green reforms while hoarding authority.
Tempo matters. Operate in lunar-length cycles: two weeks of disruptive visibility, two weeks of constructive governance. The alternation maintains momentum, grants breathing room for reflection and inoculates against burnout. Publicly measure success not in carbon offset charts but in hectares democratically managed and bylaws rewritten by assemblies.
Superficial activism survives on spectacle; confederal municipalism thrives on lived sovereignty. Which ritual can you drop this month so your community can pick up genuine power?
How might we design our local actions so they not only challenge existing hierarchies momentarily but also embed participatory decision-making that directly shifts power into community hands—ensuring that disruptions lead to lasting social transformation rather than superficial spectacle?
Fuse every disruptive gesture to an immediate act of collective governance. Imagine an “action-assembly covenant”: no highway blockade, port shutdown or rent strike is called unless the organisers can also name the hour and location of the follow-up people’s assembly that will decide, on the spot, how to redistribute the leverage created. The theory of change is simple chemistry: disruption generates political heat, the assembly channels that heat into a new institutional form before it dissipates.
Design the assemblies as decision games, not lectures. Randomly sort participants into small circles, give them the movement’s current dilemmas and a tight clock, then reconvene to synthesise proposals with hand-signal voting. Rotate facilitation; publish minutes instantly on local bulletin boards and analogue zines so digital exclusion cannot be weaponised. End each gathering by allocating tangible resources—a reclaimed lot, a solidarity fund, a community owned sensor grid—to working groups empowered to act without further permission. Power migrates from spectacle to stewardship.
Measure progress by the number of residents who treat the assembly, not city hall, as their first venue for problem-solving. Which upcoming action will you bind to your inaugural covenant, and what commons are you prepared to place under popular control that very night?