Could modern social movements exist without the internet? Gal Beckerman, editor at The Atlantic, thinks so.
When writing his book, The Quiet Before, he noticed that spaces with old-fashioned human-to-human connection can be just as effective, if not more, than spaces like Twitter.
Beckerman tells Molly Jong-Fast in this bonus episode of The New Abnormal how the Black Lives Matter movement is a prime example. In 2016, activists leading the “Abolish the Police” drive decided to take their organizing efforts off the internet altogether for a period of time in what became known as a “blackout.” In the process, they discovered something they weren’t expecting.