1 Diaspora Activism and the Dynamics of Voice The fact that social movements reach across state borders to instigate change in places where their members do not reside is not a new phenomenon (Foner 1997; Maney 2000). As Karl Marx, a founder of sociology and an émigré himself, argued in The Communist Manifesto, international solidarity has always been necessary to combat authorities who abuse their populations behind a shield of state sovereignty (Marx 1978[1872]). Even so, the fruits of global capitalism have made cross-border connectivity faster and cheaper in recent years. During the Beijing student movement in 1989, democracy advocates had to fax missives, page by page, to their Chinese compatriots in California.1 Today, video footage of Black Americans being killed at the hands of police and attacks against democracy protesters in Hong Kong travel instantaneously through internet-based media to portable, super-computing smartphones. Likewise, activists disseminate movement names, slogans, and hashtags across these media, bringing recognition to movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo and inspiring others to follow suit. Equipped with these tools, even Luddites can become whistleblowers by spreading information on a global scale. This chapter draws on advances in the study of transnational movements and migration to illustrate how activists reach beyond their proximate contexts to advocate for change across borders. While diaspora activism is centuries old (Green and Waldinger 2016; Moya 2005), globalization has enabled dispersed populations to forge and sustain transnational communities, both real and imagined (Anderson 2006[1983]), and contest authoritarian regimes more easily than ever before (Bauböck 2008; Østergaard-Nielsen 2001; Vertovec 2005). 1 I thank Dr. Yang Su, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine, for pointing this out. 30 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press