Millions Find New Ways to Say No | 10 Must-Reads This Weekend

All around the world, people are fighting for their rights. Find out how.

Grab your flag and your microphone. From Alex Jones to the Women’s March to Brexiteers, seemingly everyone in 2018 believes they’re part of some kind of resistance. A feeling of being the underdog can be a way to motivate followers … or a way to mobilize a movement against a true oppressor.

For our series on the Future of Resistance, OZY’s focused on the latter. We’ve gone around the globe finding people who are coming up with new ways to fight back against oppressions big and small — and perhaps inspire another generation to do the same. Some of them are technological, some legal, some artistic, but all are standing up and saying “No” to something they just can’t take anymore.

From design challenges to startups, the Dutch are developing a wave of gender-neutral public toilet solutions.

To highlight the lack of public facilities for women, Elisa Otañez set up a bright yellow mobile toilet with the words “Occupied by Women” printed on one side in a square in the Dutch market town of Eindhoven this June. The move quickly drew the attention of two police officers, who told Otañez, a graduate of Design Academy Eindhoven, that she needed a permit for the toilet she calls the Yellow Spot. But two other women stopped and joined the conversation, leaning in on Otañez’s behalf. Otañez wasn’t alone against the cops, and she isn’t alone in her protest.

The Netherlands, otherwise a bastion of freedom and feminism, finds itself in the middle of an unlikely battle over pee and toilets. Until recently, the country’s few free public toilets — Amsterdam has just 35 — were urinals designed only for men. But after a woman was fined for peeing in public during a night out in Amsterdam, protesters streamed into the streets.

From emails and peer-to-peer texting to voter data, these tools are proving vital to political organizers. And both sides are lapping it up.

Ilhan Omar stepped up to the podium wearing a gray pinstripe blazer and a black hijab. A cheering crowd welcomed her as she began her victory speech with “As-salaam alaikum” — “Peace be upon you” in Arabic. As the state representative from Minnesota, Omar will be the first Muslim woman to serve in the U.S. Congress — a particularly impressive feat in an election cycle filled with Islamophobic rhetoric. How did she pull it off?

Texting, for one. Omar and many other Democratic candidates used Hustle, a peer-to-peer (P2P) texting platform that helps candidates connect with voters, recruit volunteers and fundraise. But Omar went a step further: She also used it to reach out to delegates ahead of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s June convention in Minnesota and to encourage rally attendance. And she planned ahead in the hope she would win, using Hustle to find “apartment captains” — people who would host events and keep local residents engaged once she’s in office.

Hustle is just one of a number of startups — on both sides of the aisle — that have emerged in recent years and are leveraging technology beyond traditional social media platforms in grassroots and political organizing.