The Covid-19 pandemic is changing social movements worldwide. The current state of emergency, social isolation and the ban on meetings are only the beginning. The pandemic is causing large social, political and economic costs through rising unemployment, increasing poverty and a further widening of inequality, racism and marginalization of the already weak.
In this situation, social movements are desperately needed. At the moment many community activist, engaged citizens, and civil society volunteers make important contributions to contain the spread of the virus by calling off public demonstrations, supporting protective health standards, and providing solidarity work. Yet the current crisis is also putting significant constraints on social movements. Movements try to find new ways to compensate for the lack of collective actions in public spaces and lay the groundwork for future mobilization in order to shape a time post-Corona crisis.
One important element is the increasing amount of digital activities through which movements at the moment try to compensate for offline actions. Even though online petitions and digital activism have grown rapidly in recent decades, classic street protests, sit-ins or squatting and other collective actions in public space remain a central medium of influence for social movements. Fridays for Future, unteilbar, blockupy/occupy, the Alter Globalization Movement: we know them because of their size and regularity of their street protests. Protest events are important as they are reported in the media and the concerns and topics are discussed publicly. They are, however, also important in order to politicize andempower people and ‘win’ them for prefigurative actions.
