Bonus Army & Occupy Presentation

Our in class presentation can be found here.

Apologies for the delay!

Best,

Nathalie & Kelly

NewsJacking the Wellesley Website

A few weeks ago in my Networked Social Movements: Media & Mobilization class, we learned about tactical media. Our lab work that day was to “NewsJack” a website and “critique,” like tactical media artists do, to raise consciousness of an issue through art and activism. I decided to NewsJack my college’s homepage. Wellesley College is famous for a lot of things, mostly for being a single sex institution. We are also extremely proud of our famous alumnae. To be specific, we make sure everyone and their mothers know that Hillary Clinton graduated from Wellesley College. With the recent surge in Hillary’s popularity and the constant chatter of our Secretary of State at Wellesley, I decided to newsjack Wellesley’s website to be more about Hillary’s life.

I tweeted and updated my facebook status to include the link – http://poof.hksr.us/lfgzvlro . The Wellesley Wire, a subset of Wellesley’s Communication & Public Affairs office, saw my link and emailed me asking if they could post it on facebook.

I took a screen shot of the post but you can check out their status update at their facebook account – http://www.facebook.com/WellesleyCollege . They also tweeted at me and included the link to the site.

Needless to say, I have never garnered so many likes for something in my life.

*Just found this gem online. I’m thinking about newsjacking the Wellesley website again and including this amazing meme. 

The Miami Model

After watching the documentary in class about the 2003 FTAA protests in Miami, I called my parents to learn more about the protests. I barely remember what I had for breakfast so no surprise that I don’t remember the FTAA protests that mobilized when I was 12.

The conversation with my mom was brief. She remembered the protests but did not have a lot to say. We live close to my high school in the suburbs of Miami, which is located in the south, and the protests happened downtown. My dad’s reaction was unexpected but albeit not totally surprising. My dad worked in a bank in downtown Miami at that time meaning he had to cross the protest traffic and was affected by the protests more than my mother. He started off by saying that there were riots happening around the Intercontinental between the people and the police. He mentioned he had to go through two or three lines of police to get through the office. The Miami Model of police protection affected everyone. The major crowd control tactics used by the police were implemented on all Miami citizens.

My dad, not a big fan of riots, said something very interesting. “I think there was a series of riots around the world and people in Miami were copying. It was a bloody nuisance because of extra tight police security. Innocent hard working people suffered as a result with some people not being able to go to work or go home. This kind of thing goes untold and it’s always the rioters that people feel sorry for and not the ordinary person that suffered the results.”

A couple of things that are important to know about my dad: he lived in Brazil for a good portion of his life where he met and married my mother in Sao Paulo. He worked at a bank. He is originally from Scotland (which explains the “bloody.”) We subscribe to the Miami Herald, which according to the documentary framed the protests as biased against the protestors. He believes the Miami Herald is not the most reputable newspaper yet continues to read it.

I think its odd that my father who would know most about the FTAA due to his job and his loyalty to South America would not pay attention to the cause of the riots occurring in his own backyard. Almost all of South America was opposed to the FTAA because it only really benefited the United States. What is most interesting to me is that my dad was clearly affected by the media framing disenfranchising the protest but because of his first hand experience with police contact, he acknowledged the absurdity of the police’s “Miami Model.”

At the same time, my dad acknowledged the other protests around the world. Those were legitimate but according to him, Miami was “copying.” I wonder if the Miami Herald discredited the Miami protests because the protestors were fighting for their native country in South America and against the United States, the country they were currently residing in. Why would a US based publication support protests against trade negotiations that would benefit the United States?  For objectivity, sure, but the reality is that most newspapers are not objective.

My father’s comments against the protest can’t be taken too seriously because he is biased against Miami citizens but that is a completely different issue. What’s most important to me is how he believes the media should have framed police interactions. From his perspective, the media framed the “Miami model” as being harmful to the protestors. According to him, some newspaper publications did not completely discredit the protestors against FTAA. He complained mostly about the lack of media attention on the working citizens of Miami. If the entirety of downtown Miami was shut down for a couple of days, that means a lot of workers lost a considerable amount of payment. It’s interesting to me that the documentary and the media did not seem to mention the effect of the police and protestors on the uninvolved worker.

I think the take home message of the documentary and my father is how harmful the police interaction was. I’m not sure what the impact of the Miami protest actually was on the FTAA. The countries in the negotiation did not agree with the United States and did not sign the FTAA so I’m not sure what the protests actually accomplished. I do believe most people will remember how the police reacted and how the media framed that. To my father, the protest was unimportant. The police were the hassle. Peaceful protests were quick to turn into violence that affected all of the Miami citizens who worked or lived downtown.

COINTELPRO & the Letelier Case

Reading about COINTELPRO on Wikipedia reminded me of Pinochet’s government in Chile from 1973 to 1998. The similarities between the FBI’s illegal projects and Pinochet’s military projects are uncanny. This got me thinking about the specific Letelier Case in 1976. A car bomb killed former Chilean ambassador Letelier and the U.S. activist Moffit in Washington, D.C. in September 1976. Wikipedia claims cover operations under COINTELPRO took place between 1956 and 1971 but that the FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception. This statement made me believe that COINTELPRO had some sort of hand in the Letelier car bombing. Pinochet was a U.S backed dictator in Chile who used more extreme COINTELPRO-like measurements to produce fear and squash communist and socialists groups in Chile. According to the Letelier case Wikipedia article, documents released in 1999 and 2000 establish that the CIA had inside intelligence about the assassination alliance at least two months before Letelier was killed but failed to act to stop the plans. This allegation of U.S knowledge makes me wonder if COINTELPRO really did stop their international cover operations in 1971. There is no way for me to prove that COINTELPRO was involved with Pinochet’s order to assassinate Letelier but I am suspicious that there was some connection.

Pinochet’s Carvan of Death was a Chilean Army death squad that personally carried out the execution of detainees. The squad’s aims were to instill terror on opponents, similar to COINTELPRO’s efforts of psychological warfare and harrasement. The comparison is a little extreme considering Pinochet’s military government led to a total number of 40,000 disappearances and around 3,000 killed. COINTELPRO also resulted in the arrest and assassination of protesting individuals but nowhere did the Wikipedia article say torture was used to instill fear into the country. The extent of Chile’s torture was far wider and greater than the U.S.

 Why was Chile’s torture more widespread than the U.S when both programs are similar in wanting to “expose, disrupt, misdirect or otherwise neutralize” groups that they saw to be “subversive” or “opposing”? The red scare was just as great in the U.S as it was in Chile. Chile was an economically and intelligent country before Pinochet’s regime and of course, the U.S was/is considered the most powerful country. The U.S could never establish this centralized power as Pinochet did in Chile because the military and police force is not nationalized. Pinochet gained his power from being a military government and using the military to his advantage.

McPhail, Schweingruber, and McCarthy’s chapter “Policing Protest in the United States: 1960-1995” states in the Political and Legal environment section – “In the United States, there is a very sharp distinction enforced by the possee comitatus act, which prevents the military from policing civilian public order unless or until civilian authorities determine that they are no longer capable of maintaining order and formally request from the president of the United States the authorization of military assistance to their community.” Chile’s nation state has nationalized and centralized police forces but police agencies in the United States are decentralized and responsible to municipal civilian authorities. The police have demobilized movements and negotiated with protestors but because of our decentralized system and our government’s system of checks and balances, the government can never fully oppress a system. COINTELPRO is the Government’s attempt to instill fear like many North American backed South American dictators did.

Week 11 Megablog: Outcomes

This megablog compiles some of the highlights of blog responses to the readings on Outcomes for the week of April 17^th, 2012

 The Businessification of Social Movements – Gabi

• With his experience in business and working in the corporate marketing and advertising world, Gabi did not agree with Pastor, Ito, and Resner’s piece.
• The effort to “businessify” the social movements takes away emotions and nuance – two important elements of participation.
• Asks about motives and also asks about the motive behind giving money to causes.

On Outcomes – Rogelio

• Found Guigni’s article to be directly related to his work on the Farm Workers Movement of the 1960s and how they re-framed labor disputes into civil rights disputes. Guigni mentions taking advantage of public opinion and UFW did the same during the Civil Rights Movement in the south.
• Discusses thinking about social movements as cultural impacts. To understand outcomes of social movements we may have to step away from linear thinking and instead welcome more organic and cylical alternatives.
• Guigni’s comments related to the Occupy “spillover” is romanticized. There could be negative backlash from the Occupy movement.
• Compares Guigni’s notion of “biographical impact” to Paulo Freire’s concept of “conscientizacion,” or the development of consciousness through action.
• Finds the approach of new generation of young protestors that the Occupy Movement is creating Lessons learned from movements. Fears that because the Occupy movement is overwhelmingly white, highly educated, and relatively affluent, that inequality and inequity will be replicated within the movement.

Lessons learned from movements – Pamela

• Discusses Giugni’s piece, specifically social movements and identities.
• Brings up going to the Occupy MBTA demonstration and their identity of greater Boston-area citizens.
• OWS brought together people who wanted to make a change and don’t believe in needing a leader to gather the crowd. This is a result of the “spillover” effect. This crowd effect is also helping with winning over the public.
• Occupy is not making an impression of a movement that will make one big dent. Although, the fact that you can no longer say “occupy” without some connotation is an impact on the nation. Occupy is making small dents in the system which is still important.

Culture, Media, and Women – Kelly

• Believes Giugni’s points on cultural impacts and long term indirect impacts are valuable. References the book “Power in Movement” in which the author writes movement outcomes are rarely as radical as they were intended to be. If a movement wants policy change, the mainstream often dilutes the movement and the desired change is also changed. Politics is important.
• Initally thought Giugni piece and the Pastor, Ito, and Rosner piece conflicted but realized they complemented one another. Similar to Amy, Kelly questions what audience the piece is trying to affect with the document.
• References an article by Jael Silliman about NGOs. The article talks about the importance of receiving funding and accountability drives NGO actions and behaviors more than their initial mission. The effect of government on NGOs.
• Connects measuring movements and measuring NGOs.
• Ends by asking “What is a women’s movement” and asking questions about the difference of a man’s movement versus a woman’s movement.

The Awakening Voice – David

• Social movements have always flourished before the Internet. The differences between movements that now can use the Internet are due to nature of personal intensity and commitment. Movements such as the civil rights and women’s movement did not have the Internet and were motivated by the “true believer.” Giugni comments on the personal consequences of social movement activism.
• Discusses his time in DC and the women’s movement being comprised of “true believers.”
• The effectiveness of the Internet in the Middle East was due to its rapid development & deployment. As authoritarian regimes learn how to control this form of public speech, its might become less attractive.
• Discusses Pastor’s article & the importance of group affiliation. Developing alliances is key to organizational success. Organizing metrics and evaluation is important.
• David brings up his personal experience in union organization with the Communication Workers of America. Uses his experience to make the point that we can look to union organizing to better understand a long-term organization that uses same methods for focused populations.

17 Questions for Livers and Kidneys – Amy

• Much like the title says, Amy presented 17 short descriptions of questions that she had while reading the Pastor, Ito, and Rosner 2011 article. Most of the questions Amy asked were regarding the corporate feel of the article and why the article adopted a market style approach. The questions ask what the article’s purpose is in writing with a corporate touch and what the overall purpose/goal of this article is.
• Some examples of the questions:
  • Social movements, like corporations, advertise—that is, offer persuasive argumentation in hopes of attracting members; but does the product (social goals) make this an inherently different kind of project?
  • Why do we use the words “movement” and “mobilization” in these contexts? What is being moved? What’s the cultural resonance of this metaphor?
  • Why does everyone always use “hearts and minds”? Yes, it has historical resonance, but is this the resonance you want? Hasn’t it, like most clichés, become just shorthand that obviates the need for actual thought? Why not livers and kidneys?

Molly

• Wonders what the relationship is between biographical impact of a movement and those aspects of the movement that might increase its impact.
• Giugni argues that the narrower the goal, the more likely they are to get a response.
• Molly argues that higher levels of organization and an establishment like structure would aide in the impact.
• Questions the impact of establishment like organizations on the non elite.
• OWS horizontal associations impacts at the local, biographical level. Biographical impact and cultural impact are more closely related than to impact on the establishment.
• Links to great writing on the value of slacktivism and identity oriented activism.

The Outcomes of the Movements: The Diffusion Network – Huan

• Interested in the “spillover” effect
• Discusses how Giugni does not provide enough analysis about why OM could be seen as the product of the global justice movement. “Spillover” effect is convincing only when established mechanisms are found, the same group of people striking or protesting in different episodes.
• Ties the political vs. cultural outcome framework into her own adversarial vs supportive media strategy perspective. Disucsses her work with the non-adversarial case, Wukan Incident, and the Ai Weiwei’s human rights movement.
• In authoritarian countries, the non-adversarial strategy might include the control to limit the “spillover” effect, and in contrast, the adversarial movement is the lessened possibility of a long-term democratic discourse.

Book Review: The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Todd Gitlin)

The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left

 

Todd Gitlin

 

I will be summarizing Gitlin’s main points and structuring the summary with the help of his table of contents. His table of contents did an excellent job in organizing his main points and I will be utilizing his table of contents to provide a structure to my own summary.

 

Introduction:

• At its most broad description, Gitlin’s book is simply summarized as such: the book is about “mass media, the New Left, and their complex relations in the historical time.” He begins the book by explaining the shift of media’s purpose for a community. Americans in the 1960’s relied on media to shape their ideology.  They allowed the media to certify leaders and create celebrities through reporting news that fit within their media frame. I appreciated Gitlin’s definition of a media frame – “Media frames are persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion, by which symbol-handlers routinely organized discourse, whether verbal or visual.” He places a lot of influence on the journalists, the “symbol-handlers.”  The journalists in the 1960’s kept within this hegemonic culture by keeping news stories within harness and serving the interest of the elite by publishing what is “relative” and publishing news that does not violate core hegemonic values.

Part 1. Images of a Movement

1. Preliminaries

• Gitlin moves on to explaining more about the book, which is divided into two big sections. The first section tracks a year of SDS – Students for a Democratic Society – during the year of 1965.  The preliminaries summarize the early history of SDS. SDS did not actively seek out media coverage and was not media oriented. They were students who joined together to protest and discuss issues they believed in. The media attention on SDS began with their march in Washington on April 17^th, 1965. Gitlin lists the earliest framing devices “trivialization, polarization, emphasis on internal dissension, marginalization disparagement by numbers, disparagement of the movement’s effectiveness, reliance on statements by government officials and other authorities, emphasis on the presence of Communists, emphasis on the carrying of “Viet Cong” flags, emphasis on violence in demonstrations, delegitimizing use of quotation marks, considerable attention to right wing opposition to the movement,” and goes on to explaining each one in more detail.

 

2. Versions of SDS, Spring 1965

• This section of the book is devoted to specific analyses of every extant CBS and NYTimes treatment of SDS in the spring of that year, especially in concerning the sit-in against Chase Manhattan bank loans to South Africa in March and the first substantial national demonstration against the Vietnam war in April. Gitlin places his analytical focus on a narrow archive of news articles and films from CBS and The New York Times but he supplements this material with his own experience in SDS.. He summarizes the progression nicely when he says “Progression in times images of SDS from (a) serious movement (Powledge in March), to (b) marginal, ineffectual, contested oddity (April), to (c) a mixture of absurdity and menace (Jaffe in June), and subsequently to (d) undoubted menace (October), was partly the professional, informal, unreflective, “free” response of Times reporters to their editors’ responses in turn, to the Johnson administration’s escalation of the Vietnam war, and partly their political response to the unsettling emergence of a radical movement. The most interesting segment of this chapter was when Gitlin asked what influence may the Johnson administration have had on the framing of SDS? The Johnson administration would understand that coverage of the war that stretched outside his frame of pro-war would damage the war effort through its weak link: American public opinion. The McCarthyism ripple was still being felt through Americans so journalists used a pro-Communism frame for most of their publishing’s about SDS. Gitlin showed no evidence of Johnson’s meddling but discusses how due to this ripple effect of McCarthyism, journalists did not want to get charged for sympathizing with communists so their frame work was more right rather than objective.

 

3. SDS in the Spotlight, Fall 1965

• In the fall, the issue is no longer simply the media version of SDS, but SDS’s struggle to repossess its image. That fall, the media helped amplify right wing and Johnson administration attacks on SDS. Vulnerable, SDS tried to go into the offensive. The two main focuses for the fall were the first nationally coordinated actions of the International Days of Protest, October 15^th and 16^th, and then the moderate March on Washington organized by SANE for November 27^th.  Gitlin begins by discussing the tendency of the media to rely on statements of official figures such as the government and university officials in regard to coverage of student action. Gitlin says this creates the idea that students produce actions while authorities have thoughts, undermining the agency of students’ actions.
• After the big march in October, the media framed SDS creating a “draft evasion” program. SDS took the public attention as an opportunity to voice their opinions but journalists often strategically ignored them and reported on issues that might interest or affect the largest number of readers. The new media coverage and the draft evasion framework produced another problem for SDS – overeager members. The issue with these new members after being exposed to this produced media frame was an issue that Gitlin delves into later.
• The New York Times and CBS News distinguished between legitimate and illegitimate forms of protest, and then discredited the SDS protests. The New York Times especially was considered to be an objective news source and their media framing of SDS was especially harmful and divisive to the organization.  

 

Part 2. Media in the making and unmaking of the movement

 

4. Organizational Crisis, 1965

• There was a membership surge after the April march and especially after the draft crisis of October. Many of these new members were new recruits from the South and the Great Plains. These members were “natively radical. Their radicalism came from almost a nihilism, a root and branch rejection of the society.” The term for these new members is Prairie Power. The Old Guard generation was the original SDS based in the North East. The original SDS group was trying hard to not be just an antiwar group but because the media framed them as so, the new members perceived their goals as primarily anti-war. The Prairie Power pressure and the fights between SDS deepened the decomposition of their organization.

5. Certifying Leaders and Converting Leadership to Celebrity

• Gitlin is critical of the inability of SDS’s leaders to handle the spotlight and not become celebrities. Since the structure of SDS was so casual and lacked organization, it was difficult to define leaders. Many leaders were involved in SDS and some were placed in the spotlight over others, which created tension within the movement. Leaders who became celebrities lost their accountability. Many movement leaders could not find the middle ground. “The movement’s leaders, ambivalent from the first about leading, had trouble keeping track of the sources of their authority and the obligations it entailed. The rank and file wanted their leaders to lead, but were uneasy with them at the same time; the mixed message they sent made the leaders’ situation as untenable as it was tempting. The cultural apparatus’s structured need for celebrity harmonized with, and selected for, the ambitions of movement leaders.”
• Since Gitlin was SDS president from 1964-65, hard to say if he is being too critical because he was a leader.

6. Inflating Rhetoric and Militancy

• This section analyzed the media’s role in exacerbating the militant tendencies of the movement. His main argument, like the title suggests, is that the media inflated rhetoric and militancy within the movement to create more media coverage. The focus was always placed on the marches and not the reasons. Media only covers issues they believe will be violent.  “Where a picket line might have been news in 1965, it took tear gas and bloodied heads to make headlines in 1968. If the last demonstration was counted at 100,000, the next would have to number 200,000; otherwise it would be downplayed or framed as a sign of the movement’s waning.” The need for attention by SDS and these organizations meant that they had to play into the media’s hands, which meant a growing need for militancy and violence.

 

7. Elevating Moderate Alternatives: The Moment of Reform

• As the war progressed and as sympathy for the antiwar movement grew, the media had to change its framing. A new consensus was being formed. The war lost legitimacy and popularity and antiwar activity became respectable. There was also the development of the “responsible” moderate, which led to the Moratorium. They held briefing sessions for sympathetic reporters whom they knew from the McCarthy campaign and because of their involvement with McCarthy, they were considered “credible.” At this time of the war, Democrats and Republicans were flocking to the antiwar standard and supporting things like the Moratorium (around 1968-69). By 1970, most of the correspondents and news executives opposed the war. The media shift polarized the New Left between moderates and the militants.

8. Contracting Time and Eclipsing Context

• SDS and movements like it were dependent on the spotlight of the media. The media’s low tolerance for “staleness” helped rev up the movement pace. Movement leaders began seeing success based on news headlines. The developing broadcasting system made possible sped-up social reactions to events, and thus sped up spirals of activity and counter activity.
• Interesting because Gitlin says “A radical student movement’s volatility follows directly from the conflict between the enormous scope of its ambition – to transform the whole society, root and branch – and the narrowness of its social and cultural base.” I tend to associate the Occupy movement with the same idea of having an enormous scope of ambition but is Occupy’s social and cultural base narrow? Does Occupy resemble a radical student movement?
• The contraction of time in a media-saturated society fueled the wishful thinking of a student-based movement – the students were thrown into media and did not get a grip on the reality. They were in a hurry to slash through old knots. The movement “got burned, and burned out.”

9. Broadcasting and Containment

• The movement got broadcast. Often ideas got diffused in an oversimplified and often distorted and debased form but they got diffused. Publicity helped antiwar feeling become a normal fact of American political life. Media coverage acknowledges the movement’s goals and that what they are doing does matter in the world. The media in a way validates them. The inexperience with media in a movement is harmful. Audiences with less direct experience of the situations at issue were more vulnerable to the framings of the mass media. For Gitlin, this suggests that the media helped contain the movement. The less attentive and less informed bulk was more vulnerable to the crude elements of framing.
• Gitlin ends Part 2 by saying that the State used the magnifying class to help point and justify its heavy hand of repression. The inexperienced caught fire under the glass – quite an image.

 

Part 3.

 

10. Media Routines and Political Crises

• Theories of the News. First, Gitlin talks about journalist-centered theories, which explains the news as a product of professional news judgments. He proceeds to talk about the inertia, the sheer habit of news organizations. This is an informal rule, which journalists adopt to enable them to process vast amounts of information that people will accept as news. The third approach is event-centered which argues that the news reflects the actual nature of the world. 
• The next part of this section focuses mostly of ideological hegemony focusing on Antonio Gramsci’s prison writings.  This can be defined as “hegemony is a ruling class’s domination of subordinated classes and groups through the elaboration and penetration of ideology (ideas and assumptions) into their common sense and everyday practice; it is the systematic (but not necessarily or even usually deliberate) engineering of mass consent to the established order. In any given society, hegemony and coercion are interwoven. Hegemony exists when a ruling class is able not only to coerce a subordinate class to conform to its interests, but exerts a total social authority. Hegemonic ideology in capitalism is more complex because it is integrated into the economic system. The capitalist society is conflicted because there is the affirmation of patriarchal authority but also the affirmation of individual worth and self-determination. The contradictory values of liberty versus equality, democracy versus hierarchy, public rights versus property rights.
• Gitlin continues to talk about the workings of hegemony in journalism. News selection has three stages – editor decides a certain scene should be investigated, a reporter decides what is worthy, and editors decide how to treat and place the story. The owners and managers of the media are committed to the maintenance of the system. The hegemonic frames can shift but it relies on the point of view of the elite who are unreliable.

11. Seventies Going on Eighties

• This chapter is the books conclusion. Gitlin begins with saying that the more closely the concerns and values of social movements coincide with the concerns and values of elites in politics and in media, the more likely they are to become incorporated in the prevailing news framed. He ends by discussing some recent frames – the treatment of movements against nuclear power and nuclear weapons – clearly this book was written in 1980. Uses the same ideas of media shaping movements and how mass media has suffused social life. Mass media defines social meaning within the hegemonic ideology.

 

I read Gitlin’s preface last because I was curious to read the 1980 portion first to get an idea of what his views were before. He wrote the preface in 2003. What I found most interesting is that he said he thought media had their most important impact on ideology but now he believes that most thought, for most people, is superficial. People attach to media for their emotional texture. He is less interested in his Part III section now because he believes that hegemony is a cumbersome and misleading name for an intricate process and that the name is insufficient.

 

The book does not highlight the frame for the sixties but a frame. Overall, the book was interesting and I enjoyed reading about SDS. I wish the book was not so narrow in its sources but I if Gitlin can write a 300 page book mostly based on CBS News and The New York Times, I can not imagine how long a book with his amount of detail analyzing other articles would take. Also, reading his preface and learning that he was president of SDS makes me curious about much he left his bias affect his analyzing.

 

Historical Framing and Solidarity

The words that resonated with me most during yesterdays conference at Harvard/Berkman was from the second session about why social mobilization happens in so many countries at once. The third presenter simply said that global waves always happen and have happened since the 18^th century. Unfortunately I couldn’t quite catch every single case he had to prove that global waves happened but I appreciated the simplicity of his case.  He mentioned imperialism and how in most of history the waves have started from European/North American regions. There is a historical precedent for global waves but what does that mean for future movements? What can movements learn from history? What are the most important lessons to learn?

With that being said, the article “Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and Historical Frames: 2011, 1989, 1968” by Michael Kennedy fit in nicely with what the presenter was saying about global waves and history.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/2853/arab-spring-occupy-wall-street-and-historical-fram

It is helpful to compare movements by thinking historically. According to Kennedy, it can help us reframe our expectations for global transformations too. The first portion of his article focuses on making the distinction that the global wave in 2011 is not the same global wave as in 1989. There are important parallels between the two. In both movements, the Western elites were unprepared and did not expect protest mobilizations to spread with such speed or to endure for very long. The dynamics of the relationships between politicians and people changed.  Kennedy argues that there are three big differences between 1989 and 2011 and therefore, if we are seeking historical parallels, we should look to 1968 as a better comparison to Occupy.

His main argument is that 1968 is better to look at when comparing Occupy historical movements because during 1968 the normal was defined by imperialism struggling to hold on to the world defined to elites alienated from mass public. The Occupy movement has no clear road map but like 1968, public demonstrations for dignity and justice are expanding across the world,  “the normal has become insufferable.” Without a clear map, some say that Occupy movement is doomed to fail and for his end point, Kennedy looks back to 1980 for his final historical frame.  Poland’s Solidarity movement of 1980-81 is what Kennedy believes should inspire the future movements. Solidarity is especially important in 2011.

After reading Kennedy’s article and listening to the conference at Harvard/Berkman I thought about my final project with Kelly about comparing the historical frameworks of the Bonus Army during the Great Depression and Occupy movement.  Global waves occurred during both movements but what is the impact of the global wave on the movements itself? Is solidarity gained through knowing that the rest of the nation is facing a depression or “occupying”? Can these global waves give the world a solidarity that Kennedy believes is the greatest good to be realized in 2011? While solidarity might not have been reached after the Great Depression it will be interested to see if this solidarity can be reached in the future.

Link

Mobilization through History: A Closer Look at the Bonus Army and Occupy Wall Street movement

Kelly and I will be working on this project together. Please click the link to access our project proposal. 

Floating Ideas: The Great Depression and the Occupy Movement

For my final project I am thinking about comparing and contrasting the Great Depression and the Occupy Movement. I’m fascinated by history and do believe we need to know our history to fix our present. It will be interesting to see how both movements developed/are developing especially since they are both related to the economy and based in the United States.  

 I would focus on comparing and contrasting:

• Location of movements
• How mobilization occurred
• Why mobilization occurred
• If possible – to see the effect of social media and how it has facilitated mobilization compared to methods of mobilization during the Great Depression
• Structure of mobilization

 

I googled “Great Depression Occupy Movement” and the first three articles included relatively short comparisons between the two movements but did not include much information… Google had a lot of articles but for this I would hope to academic journals on the history of the Great Depression and some literature on the Occupy Movement.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2011-10-13/occupy-wall-street-history/50752688/1

• Focuses more on the movement in 1890s but briefly mentions the Great Depression and The Bonus Army

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/19/historical-precedent-bonus-occupy

• Goes into more details and compares 1932 army raid on The Bonus Army camping outside the White House to the clearing of Zuccotti Park encampment of Occupy Wall Street
• Clearing of camps has not diminished the influence of either movement  

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/12/07/the-occupiers-–-and-their-great-depression-relatives/

• “Back in 1932, as the early stages of the Great Depression gathered steam, industrial production fell dramatically while joblessness soared.   A group of jobless, hungry World War I veterans calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force (shortened to the Bonus Army) organized themselves and their families, and developed a demand that the government accelerate a bonus payment they had been promised, but not to be paid until 1945.”
• My question is how did they organize/mobilize themselves?

 There are a lot of articles online that briefly compare the Great Depression movement to the Occupy Movement but I would want to analyze the method of mobilization in both movements. Occupy has become a global sensation because of the media and I wonder what effects The Bonus Army had globally, if any. 

I think it would be interesting to track the use of media through history and while our use of media has drastically changed, we still use “old school” methods such as the newspaper and flyers to distribute news..

 Besides media resources, I’m curious to learn more about more tangible resources such as tents, medical supplies, etc.. Both movements seem to be similar in the sense that they rely occupying public spaces to get their voices out there. It will be interesting to learn more about the similarities between the two movements. 

I’m assuming a lot of people connect the Great Depression to the Occupy Movement but I’m not sure to what extent they make the comparison.. I’m looking forward to learning more about both movements. 

Media Mobilization in History: Argentina and Peron

Reading Victor Sampedro Blanco’s “The Media Politics of Social Protest” and his case study on the anti-military draft campaigns in Spain got me thinking about my current history class and how governments use media to mobilize the people. I’m currently in a Latin American history class focusing on Juan Peron and Evita Peron’s governance between the years of 1946 to 1952. The book we read in my class “Manana es San Peron: A Cultural History of Peron’s Argentina” by Mariano Ben Plotkin analyzes the “peronization” of the 17^th of October, May Day, and how Peron mobilized the people in his support.

The institutional elitism model fits best with the “peronization” of media. The media are institutionally dependent on politics to provide them with newsworthy articles. What I find most interesting about the Peron movement is that it was not elitist in the sense that Peron’s supporters were the elite. Peron’s relied on the “descamisados” for political support. The activists of the day, the union workers, worked within the existing institution and worked with government to change official politics. They did this through the protests on May Day.  May Day was essentially a Socialist celebration filled with public demonstrations by workers. Through the “peronization” of May Day, the day became a date in which the “special” relationship between the working class and the government would be made manifest. Peron manipulated the media and radio to mobilize workers to attend his events. With promises of better wages and working hours, the workers mobbed together in support of Peron.

The peronization continued on October 17^th, 1945, workers mobilized to rescue Peron form his arrest (the original date of October 17^th meant different things to different people at the time in Argentina.) In a few years, the Peronist state imposed a single meaning on it. The date became a political ritual.  Through this institutional elitism and working within the existing institution, conflict was delayed and privatized. The peronization of Argentina led to a cult like following of Juan Peron and Evita Peron. Textbooks and children’s books were changed to include positive imagery of the Peron’s, magazines and newspapers were used to highlight the constructive changes of the government and the radio stations were used to spread Peron’s speeches throughout the country.

The activism of the workers for better wages was turned into a political play by the Peronist government. Le Bon’s “General Characteristics of Crowds” also reminded me of the Peronist movements (mobs during May Day parade and the parade of October 17^th.) The crows were used in Peron’s favor to gain support. The crowd mentality helps the government gain support. While each individual might have a very specific opinion, the conscious personality vanishes. Like Le Bon says “a collective mind is formed doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics,” in this case, support for a politician.

Through Sampedro’s case study of Spain, I began thinking about history and media in general.  Government has been using media for years to manipulate people. The use of media to manipulate could lead to the mobs after the French Revolution like Sampedro described. I’m amazed by how much more can be done through the activist side now that the Internet is a free resource to mobilize towards a good cause. Money is power and in history, the elites ruled. Social media could change everything! Political change no longer has to be a power play used by the usual main actors but because of growing political pressure. I’m continually amazed by the power of media and its potential influence.