What is a Futures Activist? Honouring History, Reimagining Practice
Image by Geraldine Wharry
Thought this week
“What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.”
Introduction
As the concept of “futures activism” gains momentum in futures thinking, it invites us to thoughtfully consider how we can honour the legacy of activist traditions and bring strategic foresight expertise to urgent social challenges. While the concept represents a noble aspiration to use forecasting for positive change, it demands closer examination.
Words don't just build worlds; they are deliberate choices with histories and meanings. Since the soft science of foresight prides itself on precision and exact definitions, we must apply the same rigour when adopting the term activism, associated with a deep history of social change work and profound sacrifices.
The Weight Behind the Word "Activist"
When we use the terms "futures activist" we're standing on the shoulders of the civil rights movement, indigenous people's struggles, women's rights campaigns, Extinction Rebellion, ACT UP, the Standing Rock movement (NoDAPL), Black Lives Matter, Greenpeace, and countless other who have defined what activism truly means.
These movements share the common elements that define being an activist:
Challenging powerful interests
Working outside established power structures
Taking actions that may jeopardize one's professional standing or security
Organising collective resistance, direct action and protest
Building grassroots power rather than exercising institutional authority
Creating direct confrontation
We cannot work in futures if we don’t understand history. “Memory is for the Future” to quote Thomas Suddendorf and Janie Busby.
My own experience with Extinction Rebellion and as a founding member of Fashion Act Now taught me the meaning of organising an action. While I wasn't prepared to be arrested, I supported those who were, witnessing firsthand the extensive organisation, risk-taking, and collective effort involved.
Resources:
History Teaches us to resist by Mary Frances Berry, American historian, civil rights activist and professor – A book about the power of resistance featuring many diverse historical examples of how protest and progressive movements flourish, even in perilous times.
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by political activist Angela Davis - Essays connecting movements across time and space, emphasising the long-term nature of activist work and solidarity.
Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit - Explores the unpredictable nature of activism and social change tracing a history of activism over the past five decades - from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the worldwide marches against the war in Iraq.”
Freedom Riders – The film shows the strategic courage of civil rights activists and the personal sacrifices they made, based in part on the book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice by historian Raymond Arsenault.
Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism by L.A. Kauffman - The introduction provides an excellent framework for understanding why direct action and disruption became central to modern activism.
How to Survive a Plague : The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS - Chronicles AIDS activism and direct-action strategies.
Examining Futures Activism: Promise and Tensions
Futurist Sarah DaVanzo and cultural theorist, strategist Matt Klein have been thoughtful advocates for this concept to be introduced within the field of futures thinking. Klein wrote the piece Foresight as Activism in 2023, highlighting the need to work with marginalised communities. Their vision of using foresight to help usher social transformation reflects a genuine desire for positive change. While their intentions are admirable, it's worth carefully examining this framing against the backdrop of activism's history and practice.
Looking at Sarah DaVanzo's definition of futures activist, which positions it as using "creative tactics to bring about social change as it relates to the future" , I've identified some disconnects, looking at this through the critical lens of activism:
1. Direct Action vs. Creative Interventions
While the definition mentions "guerrilla social experiments," it's unclear if these involve actual confrontation with power structures or personal risk. There's a crucial difference between art and experiences that make people think and inspire about better futures, with actions that actively disrupt harmful systems and challenge their power. The "guerrilla" element suggests some edge of disruption, but if powers are not directly challenged, with collective capacity built, it's difficult to determine whether this meets the criteria of activist work.
2. Corporate Positioning vs. Activist Stance
Corporate foresight inherently serves institutional interests and leadership, while true activism typically positions itself in opposition to or outside dominant power structures. For anyone working within corporations or for them as a consultant, and I count myself included, to claim the activist mantle creates cognitive dissonance. The very structures we're embedded in may be what activists would challenge because we:
Serve corporate interests
Work within established power systems
Exercise individual expert authority rather than build grassroots power
Seek to maintain professional standing and security
Alternatively, these very tensions could be why activists might invite us as partners because as people serving corporations, we are structurally positioned to target systemic power issues from within.
3. Individual Practice vs. Collective Movement
Traditional activism is fundamentally collective - building movements, training organisers, creating sustainable and impactful structures for resistance. Whilst our abilities to cultivate deep networks, advocate for key issues and engage with people all over the world are key, they remain different than someone radically disrupting, creating infrastructure for protest, organising capacity in others to lead change. This is activism's fundamentally collective nature.
Resources:
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic by Saul Alinsky – A reference tactical guide for community organising and creating effective pressure on "the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one."
Beautiful Trouble beautifultrouble.org - A web toolbox of activist tactics, principles, and case studies.
People Power Change by Marshall Ganz, Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organising, and Civil Society at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University - Explains how ordinary people can work together to turn the resources they have into the power they need to achieve real change in their lives.
The Problem with semantic co-optation
New words are probably needed at this time. The recently published Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig is “a compendium of new words for emotions”. A language has words for some things and not others. And that is one of the benefits of speaking several languages: it gives us a larger lexicon to describe the myriad of human emotions and situations.
To co-opt is “To take or assume for one's own use; appropriate”. I do believe in some cases we need redefinitions and to create new expressions isn’t co-opting, it’s creating a home for new meaning. But in the case of “futures activist”, I’d question if there’s confusion between activism and advocacy, or partnership. The adoption and assumption of activist language without engagement with its full implications presents the following risks:
Diluting what activism means and appropriating its moral authority
Creating a false sense of radical action while avoiding real risk
Undermining the legacy of those who faced violence, imprisonment, or death
Confusing professional services with genuine grassroots resistance
Consider the 9 to 5 movement started in the 1970s as an instructive example of the meaning of activism. This grassroots organisation of clerical workers was created at a time when few protections existed for women at work. Women organised and joined together to demand better working conditions from their bosses, their companies and policymakers. This was an organised response against the inequities, unfairness, and outright harassment and discrimination they were experiencing in the workplace. They staged highly visible actions designed to confront the system. Their work helped usher in concrete policy changes including the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, the Equal Pay Act, improved federal workplace protections, and recognition of workplace sexual harassment. This required sustained organising, direct confrontation with power, and building genuine collective capacity for change.
Resources:
9 to 5 - the movie inspired by true events starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton helped popularize the movement's concerns about workplace inequality and harassment, bringing these issues to a wider audience.
She's Beautiful When She's Angry by Marye Dore – The film documents feminist organising in the late 1960s, showing coalition building.
Crip Camp – The Netflix documentary follows disability rights activists from a summer camp to the halls of power.
Bridging Worlds: How Foresight Can Authentically Embrace Activist Principles
With all of this in mind, and the fact language evolves, our roles evolve, our ideologies evolve over the course of time and history, we could propose an integral path towards embedding accurate activist principles that honour the present and past.
1. Take Meaningful Risks
Challenge clients when their actions harm future generations, including one's own employer when relevant
Speak uncomfortable truths even at the cost of contracts. Challenge power structures and harmful corporate practices, even when uncomfortable
Support whistleblowers and internal dissidents
Potentially sacrifice professional advancement for ethical stands
2. Organise and Build Genuine Movements Infrastructure
Train community members in foresight tools for their own advocacy
Build structures for collective action around future issues
Develop networks of support for those challenging harmful futures.
Support and amplify existing activist movements rather than creating parallel efforts
Shift focus from individual practice to collective capacity.
See your work as part of a Collective resistance work rallying people
Work directly with communities most affected by corporate decisions.
Centre marginalized voices in futures conversations
3. Connect to Existing Movements
Learn from and support established activist legacy
Acknowledge the shoulders of previous movements we stand on
Apply tactical wisdom from past movements to futures work
Build intergenerational connections between experienced activists and futures thinkers
This evolution would require a willingness to confront real tensions between corporate interests and public good, personal advancement and collective welfare, and professional security and principled risk-taking. Without addressing these tensions directly, "futures activism" risks remaining a professional brand rather than a genuine extension of activist work.
Resources:
This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark and Paul Engler who are community organisers – The book shows how people with few resources and little conventional influence engineer upheavals and how Nonviolence is can instead be deployed as a method of political conflict, disruption, and escalation.
The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart by Alicia Garza, Black Lives Matter co-founder – The book shares Garza’s woman’s lessons from years of bringing people together to create change and chronicles a new generation of changemakers.
The Indigenous Policy, Politics and Activism Reading List 2021 by Kristen Talbert Indigenous Leadership Academy Program Coordinator Of Arizona State University available here – The list offers an extensive selection of key readings with the hope to ‘reintegrate movement memory into helping our generation navigate these changing times.’
Movement Memos with Kelly Hayes – The podcast hosts interviews with organisers as an ongoing call to action for movement work and mutual aid efforts from different movements available here.
Partnership: Reframing the Foresight x Activism Relationship
Perhaps a more accurate descriptor for forecasters and futurists seeking to honour activist work might be "partners" rather than "activists." This reframing acknowledges that most foresight practitioners are in a supporting role to actual activist movements rather than claiming to be activists themselves.
A partner acknowledges their different position while still contributing meaningfully to change. This distinction is particularly important for corporate futurists or consulting forecasters and strategists who:
Have institutional access and privilege that activists often lack
Are not personally taking the same risks as frontline activists
Operate within systems that activists may be directly challenging
As partners, futurists, forecasters and strategists can:
Use their foresight skills to identify emerging threats that activists should be aware of
Leverage their professional position to amplify activist concerns
Provide data and analysis that strengthen activist arguments
Create platforms where activist voices can reach decision-makers
Translate activist concerns into institutional language to ensure greater adoption
Advocate for the long-term impacts on communities and the planet within their organisations
If futurists, forecasters, and strategists want to jump more fully into the activist role, then remember the core traits and commitments to:
Challenging powerful interests
Working outside established power structures
Taking actions that may jeopardize one's professional standing or security
Organising collective resistance
Building grassroots power rather than exercising institutional authority
Creating direct confrontation
This framing respects the nuances between the distinct roles each plays while recognizing their complementarity. It also acknowledges the reality that someone with a senior corporate position isn't typically positioned to be an activist but can meaningfully contribute to positive future change. Our role working in futures is powerful.
The notion and word Partner also emphasizes the importance of taking direction from and being accountable to the communities and movements most affected by the issues at hand, rather than appointing oneself as a leader of organising change, without embodying all of its challenging work, lived experience and sacrifice.
Resources
Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown, co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit - Connects social justice organising with natural systems as a guidebook for “getting in right relationship with change, using our own nature and that of creatures beyond human as our teachers.”
Platform - Brings workers and communities together to create new, liberatory systems that tackle injustice and climate breakdown using Platform’s 40-year history, its team of campaigners, researchers and artists working across the UK to “transform the political, cultural and social conditions in which polluting industries operate.” More info here
Trend Atelier’s September 2021 theme framed activism around the idea of Positive Disruption - The video available to watch here gives a taste of what was on our mind as a community. The theme was proposed by the community who then contributed their insights as we spent a month unpacking this with a connected panel and reading club.
The Global Nonviolent Action Database - Documents thousands of campaign case studies with analysis of what worked and why. Available here.
The Centre for Global Indigenous Futures - Demonstrates effective partnership by connecting indigenous researchers with organisations, government bodies, NGOs and industry on research, development, training, curriculum development and evaluation projects. The centre “explores the complexities of Indigenous life, ingenuity and identity in order to imagine futures in which Indigenous people are thriving.” More info here.
The Democratization of Futures Movement as described by Jake Dunagan of the Institute for the Future - Represents another important dimension of partnership. As noted in a World Economic Forum publication, this effort works to expand access to foresight tools beyond elite spaces, enabling diverse communities to develop their own future visions rather than having futures imposed upon them. Full article here.
A Shared Path Forward
The concept of futures activism holds genuine promise. We desperately need people willing to fight for better futures using all available tools, including foresight. But this means being clear about our roles, capabilities, and limitations.
If we claim the term "activist" we must be willing to do what activists have always done: organise, disrupt, take risks, make sacrifices, build movements, and challenge power. If we're not in positions to authentically embrace these commitments, the "partner" framework offers a meaningful alternative that respects both the power of futures work and the charged legacy and present of activist work.
The future, our futures, deserve integral choices in how we position ourselves in relation to the vital work of social change, all the way to the words we use. By being clear, we can build more effective partnerships and different roles that collectively work toward shared visions of better futures.
By Geraldine Wharry
