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Essays and Articles

The #Occupy Movement: Can it Be a Turning Point?

Op-ed by Doyle Canning
Written at the height of the Wall Street occupation, Doyle shares the story of how Boston residents are sitting in to save their homes—and providing a lesson in how to sustain the powerful spark of the #Occupy movement.

Tacking into the Winds of Change

Essay by Patrick Reinsborough & Doyle Canning
How social media technologies became a force multiplier for a unifying narrative strategy during the Arab Spring.

Call to Innovation! Facing the Slow Motion Apocalypse

Essay by Patrick Reinsborough & Doyle Canning
This essay is the Afterword to smartMeme's Re:Imagining Change manual and addresses the role of story-based strategy and other innovations in mobilizing collective response to the ecological crisis.

Story-Based Strategies for Action Design (PDF)

Article by Doyle Canning and Patrick Reinsborough 

SmartMeme's Story-Based Strategy framework is applied to organizing creative mass actions including useful concepts like meta-verbs and action logic.

Social Change 2020 Analysis

smartMeme in partnership with the Science & Environmental Health Network
The Future of Foresight: Long Term Strategic Considerations, this smartMeme experimental project surveys key trends that could affect social change movements through the lens of promoting the precautionary principle.

Social Change 2020 Scenarios

smartMeme in partnership with the Science & Environmental Health Network
10 Scenarios for the Unfolding Precautionary Movement, the accompanying document to the Future of Foresight provides ten different scenarios for how movements based on precautionary action could unfold by 2020.

Turn Your Back on Bush

2005 Article by Doyle Canning
This case study of the Turn Your Back on Bush mobilization at George Bush's second Innauguration explores how an innovative point of assumption action challenged the Bush media spectacle.

Prime Time for Change

By smartMeme and the SPIN Project
Grassroots Communications Strategies at the 2004 DNC/RNC
This joint report from smartMeme and the SPIN Project includes analysis and survey data from a wide range of groups who were mobilizing around the 2004 political conventions. Many of the strategies and recommendations are even more relevant today.

Winning the Battle of the Story

Article by Ilyse Hogue and Patrick Reinsborough 

This article explains how compelling stories and infectious memes can be used to amplify grassroots efforts to build a more democratic, just, and ecologically sane society.

De-Colonizing the Revolutionary Imagination

Essay by Patrick Reinsborough
This ten part essay explores a wide range of innovative social change strategies and ideas including post-issue activism, direct action at the point of assumption and the politics of reality.