…*as in, ‘Gives A F*ck’ – and in 2019, our generation really does. From marching against sexism and Brexit to starting social-media movements, we’re all now putting our money – and even our careers – where our morals are. But what’s turned us into next-gen activists?
Look around you. Turn on your TV. You’re either watching The Handmaid’s Tale, or seeing state-sanctioned female oppression unfurl in real life. Your news cycle is littered with celebrities calling out high-profile sexual assaulters or getting arrested at political protests. That, or the latest reaction to Trump. Meanwhile, the influencers and celebs you follow are posting on Instagram about trans rights, mental-health awareness or the #PeoplesVoteMarch against Brexit. Woke badges of honour, from re-grammed slogans to trending hashtags, are replacing the selfie on your feed, and all your mates are, yep, #Activists, too.
Psychologist Kirsten Godfrey attributes this to the growing “collective voice and power” garnered from our increased social-media and digital connectivity. “There’s a huge power in numbers. And millennials and Gen Z also have a stronger sense of identity than other generations,” she explains. “There’s a certain sense of how people want to be perceived. They want their identity to be associated with a particular cause.”
Woke or broke
And we’re certainly making our voices heard. The Youth Futures 2018 report, published by The Future Laboratory, sees our generation as: “intent on a new activism-inspired agenda”– with particular emphasis on mental health and LGBTQ+ issues. Yep, we’re rebels with a cause. But, we’re also rebels with a wallet: if we don’t agree with something, we’re not just protesting – we’re not buying either. Statistics from Weber Shandwick and KRC Research show that 83% of millennials would boycott a brand for ethical reasons, research backed up by GLAMOUR’s 2019 Activism Survey, which found that 82% of readers would never wear fur. As our generation’s spending power is approximately £110billion, this social shift is having huge ramifications for businesses.
So, is it any surprise that it seems like everything we consume today is loaded with political awareness? Brands from Burberry to Bare Minerals are in on the game: going fur, plastic or cruelty free, donating to charities or creating ad campaigns that align with activist causes. “Consumers are speaking out and saying that they don’t want to buy these products,” says Sascha Camilli, 35, from PETA, on the move away from fur and leather. And cynical as it might sound, as her colleague, Lydia Smyth, 24, explains of the mounting pressure on brands: “If you’re not woke, you’ll get left behind.”
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Recent years have been populated by the downfall of ‘cancelled’ celebs and brands – from #MeToo allegations to controversial campaigns or comments, such as Pepsi’s advert with Kendall Jenner and Dolce & Gabbana’s monumental China gaffe. Then in January, Gillette’s viral ad taking down toxic masculinity was lauded, yet also created huge divisions. But while this collective voice empowers us, what happens if you haven’t, or don’t want to, speak up? Do you have activism #FOMO? Everywhere you step, shop or scroll is calling you out: are you woke? How woke? And that billion-dollar question: are you an activist? Before you answer, let’s take a step back and ask when did activism become, well, cool?
Moments make movements
Let’s get one thing straight: activism is by no means an exclusively millennial or Gen-Z ‘thing’. After all, the 2017 #MeToo movement – in which women shared stories of sexual harassment online – originated from a 2006 Myspace campaign by Gen X-er Tarana Burke. Activism may have fallen out of fashion in the ’90s and early noughties, when lad culture and raving replaced marching, but it was loud and proud before then – from ‘right on’ feminism to the civil-rights movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s.
What draws a person to activism can be deeply personal. Lydia attributes her switch to veganism – and later PETA activism – with growing up next to a dairy farm: “The crying of the calves when they are separated from their mothers. It’s unbearable. I couldn’t ignore that.” For Sandy Abdelrahman, a 28-year-old activist based in east London, it was her childhood in Egypt that directly informed the causes she campaigns for today: “I witnessed a lot of human rights violations and injustices, such as female genital mutilation, which some women I know have gone through.”
Radical resistance But what makes an entire generation care more? Dr Rosalind Miles, author of the ground-breaking The Women’s History Of The World and this summer’s book Rebel Women, believes activism comes in waves, like “the pendulum of history”. So, what has swung the pendulum our way this time?
“Trump is the best recruiting sergeant for feminism ever,” she says, adding that pivotal moments in history shift our conception of activism from fringe activity to mainstream. This happened just last year in Ireland, when its historic referendum on abortion laws was announced after mounting pressure on the government from various activist groups.
“So many of the women who flocked to this cause had never been political before,” says Cathie Shiels, 34, the Dublin-based organiser of the successful Abortion Rights Campaign that led the #RepealThe8th movement. She is now running for election as a local councillor in Dublin as a direct result of the campaign: “It was so inspiring. I want to keep fighting to make a change.”
Brexit is having a similar galvanising effect: statistics from The Prince’s Trust Macquarie Youth Index report show that 58% of young people in the UK fear for their future due to the referendum result. We’re already a generation that has inherited a stagnant economy and a housing crisis; issues that disproportionately affect the young. It’s little wonder that we’re fighting back – with activism dominating the agenda.
Celebrity crusaders
For celebs – the age-old guardians of the zeitgeist – if you’re not woke, you’re (also) broke. Take Taylor Swift who, after being criticised for remaining apolitical during the 2016 US election, Instagrammed about the 2018 midterm elections, announcing she was voting Democrat. It caused such a stir, global headlines read: ‘Has Swift swung it for the Democrats?’ And that’s what we’re seeing in the age of the influencer. If Kylie Jenner can cause Snapchat shares to drop by £930million with a single tweet to her followers, imagine what happens when she writes about the issues she backs.
PETA understands this more than most – it was one of the original harnessers of celebrity power. Its ‘I’d rather go naked than wear fur’ campaign, which started in 1994, went viral before we even used that term; roping in fashion’s biggest stars – Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington – to make not wearing fur fashionable.
“We get a lot of our information to the public through celebrity work,” says Sascha, pointing out that celebrity activism is causing a domino effect among big fashion houses, with Gucci and Versace dropping fur in recent years. Lydia sees the same impact with veganism – citing the impact that vegan influencers (and former Made In Chelsea stars) Lucy and Tiffany Watson have had on publicising the cause – with 7% of the UK population now vegan. The sisters’ combined Instagram reach is nearly two million and their vegan cookbooks, companies and restaurants have raised the vegan profile, spotlighting the ethical reasons behind it.
Click and protest
Thanks to celebrity influence, activism has had a shiny new rebrand, but they’re not the only ones doing it. Millennial and Gen-Z activists are redefining not just what activism looks like – but what it means, too. The Pink Protest, an activism collective founded by Grace Campbell, 24, Scarlett Curtis, 23, and Alice Skinner, 24, embodies Gen-Z feminism with its online girl-gang approach. Their main message is that activism can take any form. “Simply talking to your grandparents about homosexuality, or recycling, or donating,” says Grace. “We want to put it out there that even little things matter.”
In 2017, they worked with Amika George, the 19-year-old founder of the #FreePeriods campaign, who started a movement from her laptop in her bedroom. They organised over 2,000 people to protest outside Downing Street, successfully pressuring the government to give £1.5million to address period poverty. “There is so much one person can do, even just through social media,” says Grace. It’s little wonder their slogan is ‘The revolution will be posted on Instagram.’
Campaign for change
For Jaz O’Hara, 28, founder of The Worldwide Tribe, it was a Facebook post that changed her life – and the lives of many others. She visited the Calais Jungle refugee camp in 2015, after her parents made the decision to foster a refugee child from Eritrea. “I was so emotional about the fact that these people were risking their lives to make the same journey to the UK that I could make easily,” she says. Jaz posted about her shocking findings in the camp – highlighting the vast differences between the media representation, which was often negative towards refugees, and the reality, which put a human face on the crisis. Within days her message had gone viral. “I was hit with this wave of people wanting to do something,” she says.
Jaz was so inspired by the response, she quit her job in fashion, moved back in with her parents and took on the task of raising awareness online full time, as well as organising collections and donations for the camp on the ground. Her organisation now supplies camps across Europe and the Middle East with food, water and wi-fi. “We have access to a community and network online – that’s what brings power back to a grassroots level,” she says, citing a recent example of The Worldwide Tribe community signing an online petition that freed up aid to Jordan. “Action doesn’t have to be going to a refugee camp, it can also be sharing a video on Facebook.”
Yet the impact of the digital age is perhaps more nuanced than raising our awareness and the ease with which we can get involved. It has democratised activism for many who see physical protests as exclusionary. Rebecca Bunce, 32, cofounder of the IC Change campaign – working on domestic-abuse legislation in the UK – sees digital campaigning as “essential for someone who can’t always leave the house”. As a disabled woman, she is passionate about the accessibility of activism. It’s why, in 2014, she attended Campaign Bootcamp, a UK-based organisation founded in 2013, which runs week-long training sessions just outside of London. There, she learnt how to campaign digitally, which led to IC Change and a coalition of women’s organisations successfully persuading the UK government to commit to create a domestic-abuse bill. Bootcamp graduates also include the founders of feminist organisation Level Up which has, among other things, successfully campaigned through online petitions to have plastic-surgery ads removed from last summer’s Love Island.
Activism for everyone
Level Up, founded in 2018, has tapped into more than just the power of online campaigning, but the shift in activism’s focus towards inclusivity, too. “We want a feminism that isn’t dominated by the white experience,” says their campaign director, Bryony Walker, 28. “Activism has often not paid attention to people of colour, trans people, queer people and the working class: everything we want to stand for.” This is another reason activism has become relevant for younger generations; tapping into the causes that matter to them most, including trans and non-binary awareness. Cynics may call it an off-shoot of a ‘me, me, me’ generation; fighting for causes that affect ‘us, us, us’ – but these individual motivations are clearly having a wider societal impact: they’re paying it forward.
“I didn’t see any positive information around trans issues when I was transitioning over five years ago,” says UK trans activist Charlie Craggs, 25. “I wanted to do something about that.” And she has, thanks to her organisation Nail Transphobia, which battles transphobia through everyday conversations over manicures. Her activism led to a book, To My Trans Sisters, in 2017: “It’s the book I wished I’d had when I was growing up. Hopefully it’s helping others.”
This activism resonates especially with Gen Z who, according to research, are the first generation less likely to define as solely heterosexual and to personally know someone who identifies as non-binary. Dias, 17, an LGBTQ+ activist, launched her StraightJackets campaign last year. “I experienced abuse on the street from a grown man that really affected me,” she says. “It made me want to do something, because I realised this isn’t just me being bullied by kids – it’s out there in the world.” The aim of StraightJackets is to make schools safe for LGBTQ+ and non-binary students, and to make sex education not just heterosexual. “I feel like power should be given to young people when it comes to certain issues.” But despite contacting the Department for Education, she’s had little success so far. “I want the education secretary to meet me, walk the school halls, speak to students and learn what it’s like for people like me. I’ll keep fighting until that happens.”
But some young people don’t always associate change with Westminster, where they feel issues they care about can be ignored, or mishandled. It’s why 19-year-old south Londoner Liv Francis-Cornibert took on a lack of representation on screen with Legally Black: the 2018 viral ad campaign that inserted black actors in iconic film posters. Whereas finding solutions for young people directly affected by violent crime in the UK is at the heart of 4Front Project, where Sara Chitseko, 25, volunteers. “Growing up, I witnessed friends suffering because of these issues and nothing is changing. The government is failing us,” she says.
“Young generations are far more likely to sign an online petition than join a political party,” says Vicky Spratt, 30, the political journalist who headed up the #MakeRentingFair campaign, which successfully lobbied for improved renting legislation. However, campaigns such as #NotTooYoungToRun are aiming to change this, with the message, ‘If you’re young enough to vote, you’re young enough to run for office.’ Georgie Laming, 26, was a Labour councillor by the age of 19 and is hopeful of the future of youth engagement. “There’s two million young people who can now vote, who had no say in Brexit,” she says. “They’re now dominating the debate.”
Fixing the future
On the ground or on Instagram, in Westminster or with your wallet – is there a correct way to be an activist? Amelia Viney, 31, the founder of Advocacy Academy, the UK’s first youth-organising group of its kind, believes you need a bit of everything – but ultimately, it’s about giving the voiceless a voice. “We pick young people who sit on the intersections of multiple oppressions,” she says. “They’re angry – but they can’t channel that anger anywhere because they have no access to spaces or people to make the changes they want.”
Activism gives them that space, which is why Amelia is cautious of brands getting in on the action, co-opting it while missing the point. Last autumn’s Topshop fiasco – when a pop-up stand promoting Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (And Other Lies), the book curated by Scarlett Curtis in partnership with UN charity Girl Up, was unceremoniously torn down by the store – is a prime example. Although the retailer later apologised and made a donation to charity, it didn’t go far enough, according to Scarlett’s Pink Protest cofounder Grace. “They put feminist on a T-shirt,” she says. “But when it was actual, actioned feminism, it was too much for them.”
Maybe our generation has what brands lack, and what 22-year-old Nonhlanhla Makuyana, an Advocacy Academy coach, calls “the fearlessness of identifying broken things”. So maybe we are over-saturated with activism, maybe brands are guilty of jumping on the bandwagon. But if it’s having a moment again, then it’s providing a safety net and a sense of empowerment for countless individuals who have previously felt voiceless and alone. It’s an opportunity for broken things to be fixed. And surely, whether you’re an activist or not, that’s something we can all get on board with.
