Fairbanks's activism began with Greenpeace environmentalism, followed by animal rights protests at SeaWorld and circuses. In 2013, she took part in the hacktivist collective Anonymous and helped run a popular Anonymous Twitter account. By then living in Pittsburgh, she traveled to Ohio and helped organize the outcry over the Steubenville High School rape case. In 2015, Fairbanks spent several months with Black Lives Matter in Ferguson, Missouri, amid civil unrest stemming from the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer.