I was at the No Kings protest last week in Chandler, Arizona. People showed up with their kids, their water bottles, their handmade signs. No one was screaming. No one needed to. The message was steady, deliberate: we are here, we see you, and we don’t like what you’re up to.

If you make art—and if you write, you do—then you’re already part of the conversation whether you like it or not. You should already know the violence of silence. You already know the systems that swallow voices whole. I want to remind you of something—your art is an act of resistance. Not just because it gives people hope. But because it breaks things. Disrupts. Exposes. Makes people see.

Let’s get into something useful: two techniques that matter in art activism, specifically for writers.

1. Tactical Narrative​
Activist movements—real movements—tell stories that make people choose a side. You’re not writing stories, you’re building frameworks that shape the way people see the world. Want to shift policy? Then you’d better shift perspective. Not with facts—those are easy to ignore—but through narrative logic. Force someone to live inside a different truth.

2. Disruption by Form​
Forget what your writing “should” look like. Screw three acts. Dismantle structure if structure’s the problem. Put the climax in the first paragraph. Name names. Do it all wrong—on purpose. That’s how protest works: it makes the comfortable uncomfortable. Activists write to shake the ground.

Art doesn’t make change. People do. But art moves people. That’s the job. That’s the burden. That’s the fire in your spine every time you stare at the blank page and decide to tell the truth instead of something pretty or common.

Off we go; we’ve got stories to weaponize.

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