Marching to the beat of a different drum

Activism used to be all about what was wrong. Now, from executive suites to department stores, "new activists" are showing us how to get things right.

Marco Visscher and James Geary | May 2008 issue

Some 50 young women—decked out in green army fatigues, pink pumps and pink berets, with pink shopping baskets tucked under their arms—march through the streets of Amsterdam. Just before reaching a large department store, their leader yells, “Halt! Bold women… disperse!” The women of the Buyer’s Army storm into the store, hunting for organic food, fair-trade products and animal-friendly cosmetics.

At first, their fellow shoppers recoil in fright, but they quickly begin to smile as they realize this is a publicity stunt to raise awareness about ethical consumption. And members of the store’s staff? They just wish the women would stop asking critical questions, like “How can you be sure this cushion wasn’t made by children?” and “What percentage of the sales price of this chocolate bar goes to the cocoa farmer?”

In the offices of Stonyfield Farm in Londonderry, New Hampshire, co-founder and president Gary Hirshberg reflects on his journey from “long-haired, cash-strapped environmental activist” to head of America’s top-selling brand of organic yogurt. “I had no intention of becoming a businessman,” he says. “Although I directed several environmental NGOs, I knew very little about running a business. But I realized I needed to move into capitalism if I wanted to have a bigger influence. Business is the only source powerful enough to manifest the change we need. There is infinitely more that I’ve achieved in this role than I could have otherwise.”

A few years ago Hirshberg sold 80 percent of his firm to Groupe Danone, the $20 billion French maker of dairy products and bottled water (known as Dannon in the U.S.). You’d think Stonyfield’s sustainability ethic would be lost in the profit margins of this multinational, right? Wrong. Since moving to Danone, Hirshberg and co. have revamped their logistics and distribution system to cut CO2 emissions, installed videoconferencing technology to reduce air travel, introduced new lightweight packaging and recycling programs and launched a couple more lines of organic yogurt. All this was achieved while the company cranked out annual growth rates of some 24 percent and devoted 10 percent of its profits to environmental causes. Franck Riboud, CEO of Groupe Danone, recently told The Wall Street Journal: “Stonyfield represents an ethic and it’s an ethic that we at Groupe Danone have to adopt if we’re going to be successful in the 21st century.”

What could organizations as diverse as the Buyer’s Army and Stonyfield Farm possibly have in common? They’re both exponents of the “new activism,” a method of promoting positive change that mixes social critique with humour, artistic panache and business savvy. Forget the boycotts, the sit-ins, the protesters handcuffed to chain-link fences and the banners draped across corporate headquarters. The new activists—like Hirshberg and the members of the Dutch Buyer’s Army—take a fresh approach to getting people’s attention and getting issues on the political and social agenda. Instead of wagging a finger, they tickle our funny bones or pry open our pocketbooks, with the hope of pricking our consciences in the process.

The angry, confrontational activists are still around of course. And we still need them. In March, for example, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society pursued a Japanese whaling ship through the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean to highlight opposition to that country’s whale-hunting practises. But the new activists are far more likely to deliver their messages in army fatigues or pinstripe suits than inflatable dinghies. By appealing to our sense of humour and our consumer interests, these campaigners activate our instinct for environmental responsibility and social justice too. The result: change for the better.

Some new activists are pranksters. Think of the Yes Men, a team of Americans that last year delivered a keynote speech at Canada’s largest annual oil conference by posing as representatives of ExxonMobil and the National Petroleum Council. Hundreds of oil execs listened with rising alarm as the Yes Men assured the audience that, in the face of a global climate catastrophe, the oil industry would “keep fuel flowing” by transforming the billions of people who would die into oil. Others are stand-up comedians, like Reverend Billy (real name: Bill Talen), who prays for the souls of sinners worshipping the idols of consumerism in American shopping malls.

Some new activists can be found in corporate boardrooms, like Google dudes Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who’ve donated more than a billion dollars through the firm’s philanthropic arm to combat climate change and poverty. Others stride the corridors of political power. Former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore is a dramatic case in point. With his film An Inconvenient Truth, he took the issue of global warming, once the sole province of environmentalists, and made it mainstream.

Like all novel movements, the new activism (its lighter side, at least) has a long and distinguished history. “The use of humour as a special weapon against privilege, wealth, war, injustice—a more effective weapon often than serious verbal argument—is not new,” says cultural historian, political scientist and author of A People’s History of the United States Howard Zinn. “The drawings of [French 19th-century caricaturist] Honoré Daumier, poking fun at priests, legislators and the rich, were also part of a long tradition of cartoonists conjuring up wild, funny images to make serious points. The cartoonists of our time are cousins to the Yes Men and the others.”

Even though the message may be old, the medium is surely new. “TV and the Internet offer the possibility of visual images to be seen by millions of people,” says Zinn. “That has prompted the kinds of guerrilla actions we have been seeing more of since the Sixties. These new forms of communication can broadcast to the world what these madcaps do.”

Many of today’s new fun activists can trace their roots back to the 1960s and the antics of hippie activists like Abbie Hoffman. In the summer of 1967, Hoffman and a couple of other Yippies—members of the Youth International Party Hoffman founded—joined a tour of the New York Stock Exchange and tossed hundreds of dollar bills (mostly fake) from a gallery onto the trading floor below. Some traders tripped over each other trying to suck up the cash. The press was swiftly on the scene and the story hit the television news later that day. In his book Revolution for the Hell of It, Hoffman wrote: “We didn’t call the press. At that time we really had no notion of anything called a media event.”

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