ABSTRACT
The road is winding, full of bumps, and mostly uphill. These nuts and bolts are not events in themselves, but put together by the engine of a powerful people’s machine fuelled by the energy of the collective action. And with a strong base in place, a community-driven process can begin organising the grassroots to power. This is activism. Activism is action that includes protests, political rhetoric, demonstrations, lobbying, debate, propaganda and the mobilisation of media resources. 1 Activism has its foundations in the everyday life of the people. In the midst of the mundane daily grind and the humdrum of policy execution, people are affected, reflecting perhaps deeper shifts in society. Activism covers the same complexity issues as social marketing but the approach is different. Policies from initiation to implementation involve politics, and in politics there are partisanships, enemies and friends (activism) while in the marketplace of exchange, there are products, buyers and sellers (social marketing).
