Nina Turner's insight cuts to a crucial distinction in movement work: there's a difference between trying to win arguments and trying to build power. But I'd take it further—the deepest purpose of activism isn't even primarily about changing minds or mobilizing the already-convinced. It's about breaking the spell of powerlessness itself.
Yes, education has value. Countering misinformation matters. Providing people with better analytical frameworks to understand systems of oppression serves an important purpose. I've spent two decades doing exactly that kind of work—creating accessible content that bridges theory and practice, offering comprehensive reasoning for those who disagree, reinforcing supporters with stronger arguments. This work is necessary.
But it's not sufficient. And it's not the core of what transformative activism actually does.
The greatest obstacle we face isn't the committed opposition—those determined to maintain systems of exploitation and domination.
Those forces are real and powerful, but they're not our primary problem.
Our primary problem is the ocean of apathy surrounding us. The pervasive sense that nothing can really change. The bone-deep belief that we're powerless in the face of vast systems beyond our control. The quiet despair that manifests as acquiescence, as cynicism disguised as sophistication, as the retreat into private life while the world burns.
This is what actually stops movements from building the power they need: not the 30% who actively oppose justice, but the 40% who've given up believing change is possible.
Activism at its best doesn't try to convert the opposition through superior arguments. It doesn't waste precious energy on those committed to disagreement. Instead, it speaks to something deeper and more fundamental in human beings—the recognition that we have agency, that our choices matter, that we possess gifts the world desperately needs, and that sharing those gifts is both possible and necessary.
This is fundamentally spiritual work, though not in any narrow religious sense. It's about awakening people to their own power and responsibility. It's about helping people see that the story of inevitability—that corporate capitalism is the end of history, that concentrated power is natural and unchangeable, that we're too small to make a difference—is a lie designed to keep us passive.
When I think about Films For Action's purpose, it's not primarily to win debates with conservatives or convert MAGA supporters (though we welcome anyone genuinely questioning their support to join us in challenging both corporate parties).
It's to reach the exhausted, the overwhelmed, the people who care deeply but don't know what to do with that caring. It's to show them: here are people building alternatives. Here are movements achieving victories. Here are concrete possibilities for a different world. Here's what you could contribute.
The work is getting people off the sidelines and into the game—whatever form that takes for their particular gifts and circumstances.
For some, that means street protests. For others, it's cooperative economics, mutual aid networks, electoral organizing, creative expression, boosting independent media, or simply showing up consistently for their community. There's no single prescribed form of action, because we need all of it.
What we're really doing is helping people recognize that their participation matters. That they can put their thumb on the scale. That individual actions combine into collective force, and collective force can shift the trajectory of history. Not easily, not quickly, not without setbacks—but genuinely, materially, in this generation or the next.
This is why hope isn't naïve optimism about outcomes. Hope is the decision to act as if our actions matter, because the alternative—despair and withdrawal—guarantees the future we're trying to prevent.
Hope is recognizing that we don't need to convince everyone, we just need to mobilize enough people to tip the balance. And right now, millions of people are sitting on the fence not because they disagree with justice, but because they don't believe their involvement would make a difference.
Our job is showing them it would. And then inviting them to discover what form their contribution might take.
That's the activism worth doing—not converting enemies, but awakening allies who don't yet know they have power.
Tim Hjersted is the director and co-founder of Films For Action, a library dedicated to the people building a more free, regenerative and democratic society.
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