What could we ... do to help pro-democracy ... activists ... do things that have not been done in the past.

Stop teaching them that they can somehow break free from whatever shithole government they're under now by claiming democracy is some magical font of freedom worth aspiring to. It's not, at all. It's just another form of same slavery, force, murder, trickery, theft, war, false authority... Spread out, infused, diluted, harder to see and kill than their average dictator, by design... a ruse, a ploy, a trap for confusing the sheeple. And it worked. "B-ah-ah-ah" they all said, "oh please give us that" they begged, while scrambling over each other in queues hundreds deep to cast discard their own fates down some worthless memehole in a box... a final act of spiritual suicide transformed into one of joy by the programming of the wolves that still rule over all of them. Regarding "government", there is only one thing that hasn't been done in the past.