Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change

INTRODUCTION

A Shift from Hierarchies to Networks

Power is easier to get and harder to use or keep.

—MOISÉS NAÍM

Nobody really knows exactly how or why everything erupted so suddenly. Most probably, it was a confluence of factors, events, and contexts. Clearly, though, when protestors began flooding into Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011, it was the start of something big. The activists obviously touched a nerve that ran deeply throughout the populace and, almost immediately, “Occupy Wall Street” became a household name.

The most proximate cause was a campaign initiated by Adbusters, a pro-environment, anti-consumerist magazine based in Vancouver, Canada. Asking, “Are you ready for a Tahrir moment?”¹ and distributing posters with a ballerina ...