As a longtime social activist, I was instrumental in co-creating Occupy Wall Street, a social movement that spread to 80+ countries and 1,000+ cities in 2011. My insights into the future of activism are captured in my book, The End of Protest, now available in English, German and Greek, and I also co-founded Activist School, an online platform for activist education.

In 2021, I expanded from focusing on activism to pursue my decade-long fascination with cryptocurrencies along with a more recent interest in AI.

You can keep up with my most recent work on my Substack or at ProtestGPT.com, the Activist AI.


 

Micah Bornfree né White is the lifelong activist who co-created Occupy Wall Street, a global social movement that spread to 82 countries and 1,000 cities in 2011, while he was an editor of Adbusters magazine.

He is the author of The End of Protest which has been translated into German and Greek. His essays have been published in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Globe and Mail and beyond. He has been profiled by the New Yorker, Esquire and more.

He is the co-founder of Activist School, an online school taught by, and for, activists. 

Micah Bornfree has delivered more than thirty lectures at prestigious universities (including Princeton and Yale), cultural festivals and private events in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Indonesia, the Netherlands, the United States and elsewhere. 

Widely recognized as a pioneer of social movement creation, Bornfree has been profiled by NPR's Morning EditionThe New Yorker and The Guardian. In recognition of his contributions, Esquire has named him one of the most influential young thinkers alive today.

He has been awarded the Roddenberry Fellowship, the Voqal Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at Bard College and the Activist-in-Residence Fellowship at UCLA’s Institute on Inequality and Democracy.

Micah White has a twenty year record of innovative activism, including co-creating Occupy Wall Street, conceiving the debt forgiveness tactic used by the Rolling Jubilee and RIP Medical Debt, popularizing the critique of clicktivism and identifying the emerging trend of "social movement warfare." 

White's first book, The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution, was published in 2016 by Knopf Canada. The End of Protest has been translated into German and Greek. White's essays and interviews on the future of protest have been published internationally in periodicals including The New York Times, The Guardian, Folha de São PauloThe Washington Post, Poder (Brazil) and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He has been a featured guest on major network television shows such as Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect, the BBC's Newsnight and The National, Canada’s flagship nightly current affairs broadcast.

As a teenage activist he was awarded Americans United's Religious Liberty Award, the ACLU of Michigan’s Wendy Joyrich Award, the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Ruth Jokinen Student Activist Memorial Award, and the ACLU of Greater Flint Michigan's Civil Libertarian of The Year Award. In college he sparked the nationwide Diebold Electronic Civil Disobedience

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White received his MA and PhD (summa cum laude) in Media and Communications from the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland where he studied with leading philosophers Alain Badiou, Michael Hardt, Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Žižek and Avital Ronell.  He holds a BA in Philosophy with a minor in Film and Media Studies and a minor in Interpretation Theory from Swarthmore College. 

Micah White lives with his spouse, Chi Rainer Bornfree, and two children in the Hudson Valley of New York.

In 2016, he ran for Mayor of Nehalem, a rural city on the Oregon coast, an effort that was covered by Fusion, The Guardian and NPR.

In 2017, Micah was a Fulani Fellow at the All Stars Project in New York City where he worked with Dr. Lenora Fulani, the first woman to run for president of the United States and get on the ballot in all 50 states. As a Fulani Fellow he studied the revolutionary potential of electoral social movements.

In 2018, Micah was awarded the Roddenberry Fellowship and Voqal Fellowship to create Activist Graduate School. He was also named the National Endowment for the Humanities / Hannah Arendt Center Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Bard College where he co-taught a seminar on social activism.

In 2019, Micah was appointed Activist-in-Residence at UCLA’s Institute on Inequality and Democracy where he co-taught a seminar on Housing Justice Activism and Protest.

Some of Micah’s Talks
  

World Economic Forum
Davos, Switzerland
January 2020

OECD Forum
Paris, France
May 2019

Ground Festival
The Hague, Netherlands
March 2018

Middlebury College
Middlebury, Vermont
November 2017

Melbourne Writer's Festival
Melbourne, Australia
August 2017

Q Ideas
Nashville, Tennesse
June 2017

"Why Protests Fail"
Swarthmore College
March 2017

"Power of the People"
University of Chicago
May 2017

Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH
Public Lecture
"The Beginning of Protest"
October 22-23, 2014

Miami University, Oxford, OH
Grayson Kirk Distinguished Lecture
"The End of Protest"
October 20-21, 2014

University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA
Guest of Religion and Library Science faculty
What is a protest?”    
April 8-10, 2014

Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, OH
Guest of the Philosophy department
“The Future of Protest is Slow”    
Feb. 15-18, 2014

5 Star Movement’s V3DAY Rally, Victory Square, Genoa, Italy
Guest of Beppe Grillo
Three Catastrophes and Three Solutions
40,000+ activists in attendance    
Dec. 1, 2013

OLA Super Conference
Toronto, Canada
January 2019

World Affairs Conference
Upper Canada College
February 2018

"Is Protest Political?"
Bard College's Hannah Arendt Center
October 2017

"What Creates Social Change?"
Health Sciences Association of Alberta Convention
June 2017

"Activism at a Crossroads"
Berkeley, California
June 2017

University of Colorado
Colorado Springs, CO
April 2017

 

Smoke Farm Symposium, Arlington, WA
The Role of Cascadia in the Leaderless Revolution
Gathering of scientists, visionaries and philosophers    
Aug. 3, 2013

Get Up! Stand Up!, Convocation Hall, Toronto, ON
The Future of Social Change
Other speakers included John Ralston Saul, Chris Hedges and Margaret Atwood. Micah’s lecture and on-stage interview was selected for national broadcast by CBC radio.    
May 4, 2013

St. Mary’s College of Maryland, St Mary’s, MD
Guest of the Political Science department
“Political Theory of Horizontalism”
Lecture and seminar on the political theory of Occupy Wall Street    
Nov. 3 – 6, 2012

Roskilde Festival
Roskilde, Denmark
July 2019

"Making Protest Work"
Princeton University
November 2017

Antidote Festival
Sydney, Australia
August 2017

"Will Democracy Win?"
Aarhus, Denmark
February 2017

EARCOS Global Issues Network
"How to Create Social Change"
Bali, Indonesia
March 2016

David Brower Center
"Is Climate Change Protest Broken?"
Berkeley, CA
April 2016

Culture and Political Subjectivities Conference, Columbia University, NY
Discussant
May 29, 2015

Ideas City Festival, New York City, NY
Panel Discussion
"Hope and Unrest in the Invisible City"
May 28, 2015

GUME, São Paulo, Brazil
On-stage Interview
May 26, 2015

 

Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, Denver, CO
Visiting Artist, Scholar and Designer
The Future of Protest is Fast/The Future of Protest is Slow” 
Lecture, classroom visit and student workshop on art and activism    
Nov. 5 - 7, 2013

Internazionale a Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy
Vices and Virtues of Online Activism and “Print and Finance in Times of Crisis”
Two panel discussions at Italy’s largest public literary event    
Oct. 5, 2013