How to rally people to your cause? Messaging is essential, including how you present yourself and your campaign.

In an interview conducted in June 2018, Tunisian activist Samar Tlili speaks about how the name of a group or activist initiative can play an important role in building popular support and legitimacy. As she explains, the decision to use the term “campaign” instead of “movement” in the case of Manich Msamah was a strategic one, designed to unify people around a single issue.  The campaign succeeded to reignite interest in political protest by finding a message that could speak to all.

This video is part of a series of short videos by MENA youth activists, telling the stories of how they have sought to challenge in innovative and persistent ways “politics as usual” in order to bring about meaningful change. Click here to access all videos.

These videos are part of a wider project by ARI on Arab Youth as Political Actor, that explored how youth as political actors have been practising new forms of politics since 2011. It looked at how young women and men activists do politics differently, how they build or create agency even in highly restrictive contexts, and the generational gap they perceive in their understanding of “politics” and their action and methods to achieve change on the ground.