Micah White - The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution

Micah White gives us a birds-eye view of the ever-shifting battle field of dynamic social change. New wars require new arts to be successful.

LUPE FIASCO , rapper and hip-hop artist

Micah is a systems genius and the moral voice of a thinking generation. His points are simple, true and astounding.

ROSEANNE BARR , actor

Within the context of his experience with the Occupy movement, Micah White bravely challenges the current protest-rut in which many social justice activists find themselves. His critique of modern social movements challenges activists to progress to the next level, while leaving us hopeful that the revolution for a better world is already upon us.

PAM PALMATER , Mikmaw lawyer, professor and Idle No More spokesperson & educator

The End of Protest is an engrossing historical document, call to arms, guide, and self-critical look at the Occupy movement from one of its co-founders. It traces the history of protest in the North and offers a new vision, tactics and strategy for a peaceful revolution through a horizontal, mundialist movement. An inspiring must-read for any activist.

CARMEN AGUIRRE , author of Mexican Hooker #1 and Something Fierce, winner of Canada Reads

Micah White issues an impassioned clarion call for activists to reinvent protesta format that that has been so utterly devitalized, it has lost its bite and power to impel change. White makes his case by drawing on decades of personal experience and the historical record, and what springs forth from these pages is an eminently readable playbook packed with wisdom and practical advice for resuscitating the power of dissent in the twenty-first century.

GABRIELLA COLEMAN , author of Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy

The End of Protest is an informative and inspiring book for activists of any and every stripe. Whites emphasis on mental environmentalism, as he puts it, is brilliant.

ALEX EBERT , lead singer of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Micah White is a strategist, a new breed of revolutionary. He knows that resistance isnt so much about what you do as who you are: it cuts right inside you, into your very Being, into your belief systems, into your democratic hopes, into your anti-corporate desires, into your whole mental environment. This is Rules for Radicals for the World Partythe one yet to be.

ANDY MERRIFIELD , author of The Wisdom of Donkeys and Magical Marxism

Micah White argues convincingly that established modes of protest are outdated and sketches the outlines for how activists can and must innovate. His book is a love letter to activists of the future.

MICHAEL HARDT , co-author of the Empire trilogy (Empire, Multitude, Commonwealth) as well as Declaration

Fearlessly lucid, radically open-minded, Micah White puts protest back where it belongsamong the greatest forces ever to shape history. Then he exposes a protest culture just as jaded as the structures it seeks to overthrow, and as desperately in need of ruthless innovation. Many books tell us why we should protest; this book tells us how.

J.B. M AC KINNON , author of The Once and Future World

President Kennedy said, Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. One of the most urgent existential questions of our time is how to respond to that supposition. In The End of Protest, Micah White guides the conversation by combining an expansive grasp of history and political philosophy with a thrilling sense of future possibility.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON , author of A Return to Love

Micah White offers us a deeply honest, courageous and ultimately optimistic view of how people can make a far better worldand why were not there yet. The book is so packed with insights and ideas that youre bound to agree with some and question others. But you will be challenged and you will get smarter. This book is much needed fuel for a peoples compassionate revolution.

JONAH SACHS , author of Winning the Story Wars

The End of Protest is nothing less than a new paradigm for resistance. It will be sure to initiate a heated and necessary debate about how to confront oppression, and what constitutes victory.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF , author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus and Present Shock

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Copyright 2016 Micah White

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2016 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Distributed by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

White, Micah, 1982, author

The end of protest : a new playbook for revolution / Micah White.

Includes bibliographical references.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-345-81004-5

eBook ISBN 978-0-345-81006-9

1. Social movements. 2. Social change. I. Title.

HM 881.W45 2016 303.484 C 2015-905784-1

Cover design by Terri Nimmo

Cover image: Ho Yeow Hui / Shutterstock.com (also used in interior)

v3.1

For Chiara: your light has transformed me.

And to those who never protest the same way twice, thank you.

Being a revolutionary is like being in love. The characteristic of people in love is that they do not believe that anybody else in their lifetime has also been in love. So they do not learn from other peoples mistakes and repeat all the same errors.

PAUL N. ROSENSTEIN RODAN, ECONOMIST , 1974