Civic Engagement - What Does It Look Like for You?
Civic Engagement - What Does It Look Like for You?
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Guiding Idea of Collective Action SLO
"You as an individual are a pebble in a vast sea. We can personally make ripples but it takes collective action to make waves”(Kaba & Hayes, 2021).
Methods of Civic Engagement
On this page we list methods of civic action that are often studied less by academics but have the power to create immense and transformative change.
Commonly studied methods of civic action include: voting, campaigning, volunteering, and service-oriented activities. These activities have been studied and indicate that involvement does positively impact mental health. With much scholarship being focused on these activities, we are taking the time to share about other forms of civic engagement that can be more accessible for diverse needs.
Below, we share how you can find your preferred issue focuses and methods of involvement, the importance of solidarity and movement building, and emphasize radical imagination as a practice to inform our action.
Community Action Starts at the Individual Level
The chart depicts how you can understand where to begin your community action.
This chart exists as a form of "Asset-Mapping" that can help individuals understand how they're unique traits can be leveraged to make change(Suarez-Balcazar, 2021).
You can replace "Your Climate Action" with just "Your Action" to be more inclusive of other forms of civic action.
Think about what you care about, these will guide where and how you can get involved in our local community.
^ Graphic by Nicole Kelner https://nicolekelner.com/
Collective Action Involves Radical Imagination
"Collective action is not the only ingredient to transformative chage. We also need sound strategy and resources. And we need radical imagination. Radical imagination is essential to organizing as the horizon that I am working toward is a world I have never seen”(Hayes & Kaba 2023).
^ Quote from Kaba's "Moving from Overhwhlem to Action" concluding chapter of Let This Radicalize You.
Kafai writes in Crip Kinship(2021) that,
"Perhaps the most compelling survival tool that disabled, queer, gender nonconforming, and transgender communities of color have is their dreamwork. Dreaming is not passive. In dreaming, our communities materialize a world where, through fury and love, transformation in all its rebelliousness thrives".
Types of Movement Building
Solidarity & Movement Building -
Seeking justice in one area leads to justice in others
Most issues we care about involve interweaving values of justice.
Audre Lorde, a Black feminist scholar, explains in her collection of essays published in 1984 that, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives” (p. 138).
When we get civically engaged in one area and fight for justice, we are aiding other movements in their own work for a better world.
Example:
Land Back is essential for Indigenous sovereignty.
Land Back emphasizes active decolonial action, returning lands stolen from Indigenous communities during colonization.
Land Back also is important for environmental stewardship.
When we support Land Back, we support a future that provides accessibility for cultural practices, freedom from extractive practices, freedom from excessive policing by state entities over Indigenous practices.
These results benefit environmental movements who fight for land stewardship as well as racial justice movements that emphasize alternatives of state-sanctioned policing to de-escalate violence.
You can choose an issue, an organization, a location, a meeting type, or activity that works best for you. Your method of civic action is important and necessary- and most importantly your action will contribute to joining with others to make collective change.
Solidarity, Movement Building, & Civic Engagement -
Disability Justice
The disability justice movement center the voices and perspectives of those most excluded, reflecting the intersectional experiences of disability communities fighting to eliminate oppression. Disability justice political movement and many interlocking communities where disability is not defined in white terms, or male terms, or straight terms. Disability justice centers sick and disabled people of color, Queer, and trans disabled folks of color and everyone who is marginalized in mainstream disability organizing. Disability justice movement is known as being led by activists with varying social identities, including those who were disabled, Queer, racialized, and working-class.
Vilissa is a Black disabled activist, social worker, and founder of the website Ramp Your Voice! She writes, “[Disabled activists of color] have ALWAYS been here since the beginning of the movement, but if you were to go by the history books that discusses disability rights, you will not see our faces, voices, or stories shared freely"(Kafai, 2021).
Support for Disability Justice can look like:
Learning and sharing the work of Disabled artists, writers, creators, poets, and activists.
Supporting communal acknowledgement and recognition of disabled voices and inclusion in our society and democracy. (see Vilissa's Ramp Your Voice! website here. This isn't a local resource but is informative of broader disability justice action.)
Solidarity, Movement Building, & Civic Engagement -
Indigenous Communities
Research has been conducted to understand how to encourage civic engagement for Indigenous communities who often feel marginalized from mainstream society.
It was determined that,
"An equitable future requires not only recognition and acknowledgment of the unjust systems that perpetuate Native omission and discrimination in society but also efforts from all people, especially non-Native people, to dismantle those systems"(Doris et al., 2023).
Support for Indigenous communities can look like:
Learning and sharing the work of Indigenous artists, writers, creators, poets, and activists.
Supporting local Indigenous communities in their efforts to gain sovereignty and access to land for cultural practices and environmental stewardship. (see YTT website here)
Even if we do not have Indigenous heritage, we all can make an impact by uplifting the history of Indigenous communities and supporting their work.
Solidarity, Movement Building, and Civic Engagement - Mutual Aid
Dean Spade writes that: “Mutual aid projects let us practice meeting our own and each other’s needs, based on a shared commitment to dignity, care, and justice. They let us practice coordinating our actions together with the belief that all of us matter and that we all get to participate in the solutions to our problems”(40).
Disability communities have been surviving and providing care through non-hierarchal and non-capitalistic webs of care and support for centuries.
Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) highlights the history of mutual aid, with many precolonial examples of brown, Black, and Indigenous communities providing exchanges of care long before social work and charity models were in place. Mutual aid does not presume a hierarchy of giver/receiver and inferior/superior. Instead, it assumes an interdependence based on care and collaboration(Goulden, 2023).
Dean Spade shares examples of physical mutual aid practices that we can engage in to support our local community members and collectively work towards just systems of care: “As we deliver groceries, participate in meetings, sew masks, write letters to prisoners, apply bandages, facilitate relationship skills classes, learn ho wto protect our work from surveillance, plant gardens, change diapers, we are strengthenings our ability to outnumber the police and military, protect our communities, and build systems where everyone can have food, housing medicine, dignity, connection, belonging and creativity in their lives…that is the world we can win”(148)
Solidarity, Movement Building, and Civic Engagement - Digital Mutual Aid
Digital mutual aid, such as sharing hastags and QR codes linking to verified mutual aid donations operate as de-centralized coordination and action that is swift, adaptable, and community-oriented(Lei, 2025).
(#HeleneReliefSHFB, #HelenMutualAid) are examples discussed in Lei's 2025 article: From Hashtags to Humanitarianism: Civic Engagement and Digital Mutual Aid During Natural Disasters
"Social media enables low-barrier civic co-creation, forming Boyd’s "networked publics" as distributed groups connected via digital tools (e.g., hashtags, shared docs) and driven by mutual aid"(Lei, 2025).
Dean Spade notes that, “The false separation of politics and injustice from our ordinary life- and the idea that activism is a kind of lifestyle accessory- is demobilizing to our movements, hides the root causes of injustice, and keeps us passive and complicit...Activism and mutual aid shouldn’t feel like volunteering or like a hobby- it should feel like living in alignment with the hopes for the world and with our passions. It should enliven us”(Spade, 2021).
While there is some debate over "performative" action with digital mutual aid sharing online, we can reference research conducted that notes the critical importance of digital mutual aid during disasters when community action is an essential form of survival when government assistance is delayed or inadequate for community needs.
Digital mutual aid allows for ease of bringing civic engagement into our daily lives as a transformative practice of resource sharing.
Solidarity, Movement Building, and Civic Engagement - Artivism
"Artivism is not a movement. It's more an attitude, a practice on the fertile edges between art and activism. It comes into being when creativity and resistance collapse into each other. It's what happens when our political actions become as beautiful as poems and as practical as a perfectly designed tool ... It is not about showing new perceptions of the world but about changing it. Refusing representation, artivism chooses direct action"(SoCal for Palestine, 2024).
Protest art is a form of non-violent action that allows expressions of dissent and inspires change. Unique forms of arti activism ("Artivism") can be displayed in public spaces as murals, like #Here to Stay murals created by artist, teacher, and immigrant rights activist Yehimi Cambrón.
Cambrón's work and political impact can be found here: (www.unitedwedream.org).
While art is local and personal and should be understood in the artists’ historical and cultural context, it is also a mode of communication that resonates with people in other cultural and conflict settings, further elevating the potential for solidarity and inclusive change across cultures and countries(Rodriguez, 2021).
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