SOCIAL MOVEMENT CREATION

Picture from the Women Suffrage Movement advocating the right to vote for women

SOCIAL MOVEMENT CREATION  

• Factors that encourage the creation of social movements
  • Real or perceived distress
    • Safe, content people have no need for social movements
    • Social distress causes the conditions for social movements
      • Populist movement started because of farmer’s economic disasters
      • This can even cause counter-distress (a situation where the success of the social movement can actively create the conditions needed for a different one, or a social movement that is against the first social movement)
        • Gay and Lesbian movement as a reaction to Christian conservative movement
      • Availability of resources for mobilization
        • Need resources to supplement the Social Distress (simply having a social distress is not enough)
          • You may need potential leaders, infrastructure, and even money
            • Civil rights needed MLK and News Media
            • Women’s Suffrage Movement needed educated, well-off women

SOCIAL MOVEMENT CREATION

• Supportive Environment
  • The times must be right, must be appropriate
    • Support and tolerance for the movement must exist
      • g. Declining racism before civil rights
    • Acceptance by political elites
      • Recognition of the cause
    • Efficacy among participants
      • The ability to produce an effect
      • A sense that an individual can affect the government
      • Without this, you don’t get the long term effort required
        • Resort to short term, more violent solutions rise, like riots
      • Decentralization and fragmented political structure adds to this (Federalism; Federalism adds to this idea of efficacy because what this means is because we have a federal system where power is divided in a number of ways, both vertically between states, local towns and the federal government but also amongst the individual level – the federal government is broken up in to three branches which are broken up even farther.)
        • Can make local progress and don’t have to focus exclusively on national progress
        • Community identity (You can continue to make individuals involved in your social movement; E.g. Civil Rights Movement)

SOCIAL MOVEMENT CREATION

• A Spark to set off the flames
  • You need all of the other things, but you also need something to set it off
    • 14^th Amendment is the spark for the Women’s Suffrage Movement
      • Because the 14^th amendment protects citizenship and voting rights for men, but not women
    • Rosa Parks (Montgomery Bus Boycott)

TACTICS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

• Need to use unconventional tactics
  • Draw attention to the issue (Once people are drawn to an issue, they will make ways to change it )
    • E.g. Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream Speech / March On Washington (Mass Demonstrations)
    • E.g. Labor Strikes
    • E.g. Sit Down Strikes (workers do not leave the factory floor in order not to be replaced by the employers)
    • E.g. Hunger Strike like those of Gandhi
    • E.g. Civil Disobedience
    • E.g. Sit Ins (African-Americans are banned from some restaurants; A Sit In is done to break this segregation law with the goal of protesting their injustice)
      • These events get reported to several news media outlets

WHY SOME SOCIAL MOVEMENTS SUCCEED AND SOME DON’T

• Proximity of goals to American Values
  • When initiating social movements, one needs to ask for things that Americans would consider right or correct or things that are close to American Values
• Capacity to win attention and support
  • Need attention from media and support
• Ability to affect the political fortunes of leaders
  • If the movement will help leaders get re-elected or replaced, they will pay attention

WHY SOME SOCIAL MOVEMENTS SUCCEED AND SOME DON’T

• There were also low-impact social movements
  • Poor People’s Movement in the 1960s (comes out of Pres. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society Push)
    • Goal: To end poverty
    • Little support
    • They are in favour of radical income redistribution (one directly takes money from rich people and give it to the poor; Americans are not happy with this)
  • Failure of the women’s movement to pass ERA (Equal Rights Amendment)
    • Goal: Ban discrimination based on gender (they passed to congress but not ratified by the states)
    • There is a lack of strong constitutional amendment
  • There were also Repressed Social Movements (movements that were actively put down by the government)
    • Early Labor Movements
      • Court injunctions forbidding strikes
      • National Guard breaking strikes

WHY SOME SOCIAL MOVEMENTS SUCCEED AND SOME DON’T

• There were also some partially successful social movements
  • Social Security as a result of Anti-Poverty movement
  • Anti-abortion movements in the government
• There were also successful social movements
  • Civil Rights Movement
  • Women’s Suffrage Movement