The Commons Social Change Library is an online education library that offers resources about activism, campaigning and organising. [1] [2] The library is based in Australia. The founder and director of the library is Holly Hammond, an activist educator. [3] [4] The aim of the library is to make the work of social change and social movements more effective and efficient. [5] It supports activists with training and resource development,through what Hammond describes as "gathering, curating, and distributing collective wisdom for social change. [6] [7] The library contains collections from Australia and around the world [8] such as the Australian Conservation Foundation, Australian Progress, Leading Change Network, Tectonica, Waging Nonviolence[ citation needed ] and Mobilisation Lab. [9]
In 2023 and 2024 the library produced two series of podcasts entitled Commons Conversations in which campaigners shared their experiences and insights into activism, learning in movements, and radical history. First aired on Community Radio 3CR, guests have included novelist and ACT-UP historian Sarah Schulman, co-founder of Women's Environmental Leadership Australia Judy Lambert, activist and researcher Laurence Cox, Australian Youth Climate Coalition Climate & Racial Justice Director Mille Telford, poet Laniyuk, and disability campaigners El Gibbs and Elly Desmarchelier. [10] [11]
It has resources on different topics [12] such as on arts and creativity [13] [14] campaign strategy, community organising, digital campaigning, communications and media, working effectively in groups, fundraising, diversity and inclusion, activist history and well-being. [15] [16] [17] Resource formats include articles, book reviews, case studies, Easy Read guides, manuals, podcasts, guides, reports, videos and webinars.
The library works on projects [18] with organisations in Australia and around the world. [19] [20]
It is a registered charity and has tax Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status. [21]
The environmental movement is a social movement that aims to protect the natural world from harmful environmental practices in order to create sustainable living. Environmentalists advocate the just and sustainable management of resources and stewardship of the environment through changes in public policy and individual behavior. In its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology, health, as well as human rights.
Tree sitting is a form of environmentalist civil disobedience in which a protester sits in a tree, usually on a small platform built for the purpose, to protect it from being cut down. Supporters usually provide the tree sitters with food and other supplies.
Bill Moyer was a United States social change activist who was a principal organizer in the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement. He was an author, and a founding member of the Movement for a New Society.
Internet activism involves the use of electronic-communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences, as well as coordination. Internet technologies are used by activists for cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying, and organizing. A digital-activism campaign is "an organized public effort, making collective claims on a target authority, in which civic initiators or supporters use digital media." Research has started to address specifically how activist/advocacy groups in the U.S. and in Canada use social media to achieve digital-activism objectives.
Iain McIntyre is an Australian writer, musician and community radio broadcaster, currently based in Melbourne. From the 1980s onwards he has published books and zines, including the How to Make Trouble and Influence People series.
3CR is a community radio station that broadcasts on the AM band and on the digital spectrum as 3CR Digital in Melbourne, Australia. It features mainly talk-based programs with political and environmental themes, as well as some music and community language-based programs. Today the station hosts over 130 programs presented by over 400 volunteers.
Sarah Miriam Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She holds an endowed chair in nonfiction at Northwestern University and is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She is a recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award and the Lambda Literary Award.
Rimmel is a British multinational cosmetics brand, now owned by parent company Coty. The House of Rimmel was founded by French-born British cosmetics entrepreneur Eugène Rimmel in 1834, in Bond Street, London.
As an act of protest, occupation is a strategy often used by social movements and other forms of collective social action in order to squat and hold public and symbolic spaces, buildings, critical infrastructure such as entrances to train stations, shopping centers, university buildings, squares, and parks. Opposed to a military occupation which attempts to subdue a conquered country, a protest occupation is a means to resist the status quo and advocate a change in public policy. Occupation attempts to use space as an instrument in order to achieve political and economic change, and to construct counter-spaces in which protesters express their desire to participate in the production and re-imagination of urban space. Often, this is connected to the right to the city, which is the right to inhabit and be in the city as well as to redefine the city in ways that challenge the demands of capitalist accumulation. That is to make public spaces more valuable to the citizens in contrast to favoring the interests of corporate and financial capital.
The West Australian Forest Alliance is an organization made up of a number of Western Australian environmental activist groups concerned with the destruction of old-growth forests in the South West region. It has published a range of posters and documents. It is a successor to and includes membership of the earlier groups the Campaign to Save Native Forests, South West Forests Defence Foundation, Great Walk Networking, and other member groups of the Conservation Council of Western Australia. Advocacy and campaigning by WAFA and its members played a major role in the Western Australian government deciding to end the commercial logging of native forests from 2024 onwards.
Woodchipping is the act and industry of chipping wood for pulp. Timber is converted to woodchips and sold, primarily, for paper manufacture. In Australia, woodchips are produced by clearcutting or thinning of native forests or plantations. In other parts of the world, forestry practices such as short rotation coppice are the usual methods adopted.
Nonviolent resistance, or nonviolent action, sometimes called civil resistance, is the practice of achieving goals such as social change through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, satyagraha, constructive program, or other methods, while refraining from violence and the threat of violence. This type of action highlights the desires of an individual or group that feels that something needs to change to improve the current condition of the resisting person or group.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) Australia is a federation of independent local groups working for a socially equitable and environmentally sustainable future. It believes that pursuing environmental protection is inseparable from broader social concerns, and as a result uses an environmental justice perspective in its campaigning. It was founded in 1974 and is the Australian member of Friends of the Earth International.
The Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) was an Australian trade union that existed from 1911 until 1972, and from 1976 until 1986, when it was permanently deregistered in various Australian states by the federal Hawke Labor government and some state governments of the time. This occurred in the wake of a Royal Commission into corruption by the union. About the same time, BLF federal secretary Norm Gallagher was jailed for corrupt dealings after receiving bribes from building companies that he used to build a beach house.
The climate movement is a global social movement focused on pressuring governments and industry to take action addressing the causes and impacts of climate change. Environmental non-profit organizations have engaged in significant climate activism since the late 1980s and early 1990s, as they sought to influence the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Climate activism has become increasingly prominent over time, gaining significant momentum during the 2009 Copenhagen Summit and particularly following the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016.
Extinction Rebellion is a UK-founded global environmental movement, with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse. Extinction Rebellion was established in Stroud in May 2018 by Gail Bradbrook, Simon Bramwell, Roger Hallam, Stuart Basden, along with six other co-founders from the campaign group Rising Up!
Warming stripes are data visualization graphics that use a series of coloured stripes chronologically ordered to visually portray long-term temperature trends. Warming stripes reflect a "minimalist" style, conceived to use colour alone to avoid technical distractions to intuitively convey global warming trends to non-scientists.
Holly Cairns, also known as Holly McKeever Cairns, is an Irish politician who has been Leader of the Social Democrats since March 2023. She has been a Teachta Dála (TD) for Cork South-West since the 2020 general election. She was a member of Cork County Council for the Bantry local electoral area from 2019 to 2020.
Te Raukura O'Connell Rapira is a Māori and Irish campaigner, organiser and facilitator.They advocate for Indigenous land rights, Mana Motuhake, police and prison abolition, fully funded mental and sexual health services, LGBTQIA+ equality, the political power of young people and environmental justice.
Robert Thorpe is an Aboriginal Australian activist and presenter of Fire First, a program on community radio station 3CR in Melbourne.
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