Activism@home

Technology | Online tools are reshaping the way young Americans go about trying to change the world | Alisa Harris

Handout

At the end of Call + Response, a celebrity-studded documentary about human trafficking, audience members see a screen inviting them to take out their cell phones and text "Call" to a five-digit number. Seconds later, a message pops back inviting them to text "Respond" to donate $5 to help build a clinic for human-trafficking victims. Text "Respond." Text "Yes" to confirm, and in seconds donors have a $5 donation tacked on to their phone bill and flying across the world. It's instant activism from a seat in a theater, and it's powered by technology.

Technology is creating what Call + Response director Justin Dillon, a
musician-turned-activist-turned-director, calls a sea change in social activism: "It's when everything starts to shift and the winds blow in a different way." This shift is not just a change in methods but in the way a generation views itself, the world, and that cliché-ed buzzword, "change." Global, instant, individualistic, and (says Dillon) sexy, online activism is the way this generation channels its passion for social good. The question, however, is whether technology's "sexiness" can sustain the arduous task of actual activism.