Learning from Chile: Activism during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Over the past several months, Democracy Moves Scholar-in-residence Felicia Jing has worked on several case studies studying youth-led protest movements around the world and the best lessons to learn from them. Most recently, her work has featured a study of the tactics of the Chilean student protest and social movements from the 2010s to the present day. You can find the case study here, and below.
In this case study, activists describe their experiences adapting familiar organizing strategies to the new political and social terrains afforded by the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on interviews conducted with former student activists of the 2006 and 2011 education movement, current representatives of student federations, and leaders of the Revolución Democrática party (which arose directly out of the student education movement) to analyze various barriers to effective political activism. It describes the challenges of slacktivism, the disappearance of public audiences, as well as the closing of physical spaces.
The study proposes a number of best practices for establishing resilient forms of post-pandemic activism. In particular, it focuses on successful forms of virtual political spectacle—digital murals and socially distanced protest—and discusses how, with these tools, activists adapted their tactics to redirect energy towards social urgencies, leverage the advantages of online organizing, and establish continuity with the 2006 and 2011 education movements and their logics of dissent.
Summary of Best Practices:
During social crises, re-invest resources from long-term objectives into messaging that reflects immediate social urgency.
Join activists together in fostering community spaces organized around social services and mutual aid.
Build resilience to volatile political and social conditions by developing forms of protest that do not exclusively rely on freedom of movement, access to physical spaces, or face-to-face contact.
Direct calls for digital solidarity towards actionable and material results and away from the superficial.
In the face of uncertain access to conventional political venues, adapt existing forms of political demonstration for digital audiences by establishing continuity with pre-existing movements, their tactics, logics of demonstration, and their messaging.