Nonviolent Movements Achieve Social Change Essay

But, even though Pullman didn’t make any changes, the strike influenced that way the public viewed worker’s rights and the role of management and mediation of labor unions. Before government intervention, the public’s opinion about supporting the strike was split. The western and southern part of America generally supported the strike while the east generally opposed it (H.W.). But people began to question the amount of control of the government after President Cleveland sent in troops to shut down the strikes. 30 died and 57 were injured (Lawrence). Using military forces to union bust was a milestone in American history. Besides the Homestead strike two years earlier, the Pullman strike was first to be shut down violently by the military (Levitt). After these event, public opinion changed. The majority did not support the government and Pullman, and when Pullman died in 1897, people were said to have desecrated his body

All through history governments and empires have been overthrown or defeated primarily by the violence of those who oppose them. This violence was usually successful however, there have been several situations, when violence failed, that protesters have had to turn to other methods. Non-violent protesting never seemed to be the right course of action until the ideology of Mohandas Gandhi spread and influenced successful protests across the world. Non-violent methods were successfully used, most notably, by Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela.

Non-violence is a peaceful strategy people used in the 1900’s to revolt against the government. Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mohandas Gandhi had the most success in changing the way we live today. How did they get nonviolence to work? Well they were very disobedient, disciplined, and determined to make a change in society.

Pullman Strike was a nationwide railroad strike in the United States. George Pullman cut his railroad workers wages in regards of economic depression. The workers organized a strike, but soon enough they realized they needed additional help. Famed labor union Eugene V. Debs helped to establish an organization to create a national movement. After the railroad workers resorted to destructiveness it gained favor, which, it was brought to the attention of the attorney general. The Pullman Strike is widely seen to have reached the maximums because of George Pullman’s uncompromising and unsympathetic attitude towards his employee’.

Andrew Carnegie was away hunting and left Henry Frick in charge. Henry Frick was replacing the workers with machinery. Frick wanted to treat the workers as individuals, so he locked out the workers. He locked out the workers by building a fence and hiring Pinkerton detectives to mend the fence. The workers were expecting the detectives and a huge battle broke out. This battle lasted fourteen hours and left a total of ten people, laborers and Pinkerton detectives, dead. The state militia would soon be called to calm the workers down (Tindall 814). Another rebellion I stated was the Pullman Strike. Employees of Pullman were forced to live and rent in a community town called Pullman. These workers were given company money and could only get groceries from the company store. Eugene Debs wanted to come up with mediation between Pullman, but Pullman refused Eugene Debs’s plea (Farless). “In June 1894, after George Pullman refused Debs’s plea for arbitration, the union workers stopped handling Pullman railcars. By the end of July they had tied up most of the railroads in the Midwest” (Tindall 516). The railroad executives hired Canadian strikebreakers and requested that they connect the Pullman cars to mail cars (Farless). By doing this they were making the strike a federal strike. The Attorney General argued that the interference of the mail was a direct violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act

Craft unions had been representing small groups of skilled workers since before the Civil War, but most unions never hoped to have a compelling authority over the economy. Also, during the unstable times of the years of recession in the 1870’s unions encountered superfluous public opposition. “The “Molly Maguires” in the anthracite coal region of Western Pennsylvania” were the most predominantly frightening to middle class Americans. (Brinkley 412) The Molly Maguires were a radical employment establishment that occasionally benefited from using brutality and seldom used murder as a tactic in their disputes with coal operators. Enthusiasm toward the group diminished alongside the panic that engrossed the United States for the duration of the railroad strike of 1877, which commenced when the eastern railroads declared a ten percent income cutback and escalated into something close to a class feud. Strikers argued rail service from Baltimore to St. Louis, demolished equipment, and rampaged in the streets of Pittsburgh and other metropolises. State armed forces were requested, and in July President Hayes demanded federal troops to overpower the complaints. Eleven campaigners died and forty were injured in a divergence involving workers and militiamen in Baltimore. In Philadelphia, twenty people were also killed when troops had to open fire upon “thousands of workers and their families who were attempting to block the railroad crossings” (Brinkley 412). Over one hundred people died in total before the strike came to an end numerous sorrowful weeks after it began. Conclusively America’s first major labor conflict was the great railroad

In the article This day in Labor history: June 26, 1894 by Erik Loomis talks about the American railway union that Eugene Debs led, which was known as a nationwide boycott in solidarity with their member from Pullman, Illinois The actions led a minor strike turn into one of the major labor actions within the nation, this finished when President Grover called the united states military as a private army for the railroads which ended the strike

When strikes would occur, the government took an anti-labor stance in response to the public outcry against the labor-based extremism and violence. The Pullman strike of 1894 was a strike where blood was shed forcing a government reaction. Eugene Debs, the leader of the American Railway Union, led 40,000 Pullman workers in a strike that caused rail traffic to cease in the west. This affected the flow of mail, which is a federal offense. When federal government used special deputies to deliver the mail, violence of previously unseen proportions broke loose. The New York World in 1894 reported that the strike was like a "war against the government and society." The strike only caused controversy and did not help any employee.

The Great Railroad Strike was the country’s first major strike. The strike and the violence it created paused the country's commerce and led governors in ten states to activate 60,000 militia members to reopen rail traffic. The strike would be broken within a few weeks, but it helped spark a movement for later violence in the 1880s and 1890s, including the Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago in 1886, the Homestead Steel Strike near Pittsburgh in 1892, and the Pullman Strike in 1894.

Many decisions had to be made when approaching discrimination and segregation; many wanted this to end. The debate on what was best to approach the dangers of fighting for what you believed was weighed down to two options; violent protests or nonviolent protests. In the graphic novel titled “March” written and experienced by John Lewis himself with designs by Nate Powell, depicts the struggles of civil rights and the fight to earn it. The novel goes off to show mostly nonviolent protests, but outside of the novel during the 1960’s depicts and describes a different approach; Violent and free Protests. Two of the most impactful civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael despised the clean and peaceful protests as they thought it was

Throughout history, hundreds of protests have caused great attention and a rise in the media. In an otherwise overlooked flaw or exaggerated prejudice against a certain situation. The Important influencers include that of Dr. Martin Luther King's non-violent protests, and their efforts for an equal and safe America, the Civil-Rights movements of the 1960s or Gandhi and Malcolm X's peaceful protest way. All Four found a peaceful way to have a common genuine effort for change in a situation that the leaders of our country fail to deem as an extremely poor guidance for our country. Without the efforts of such leaders as Martin Luther King or the Anti-war movement including Benjamin Letterman, the SHANE committee, and SOPU organization, a

Civil Disobedience Civil disobedience: “Refusal to obey civil laws in an effort to induce change in governmental policy or legislation, characterized by the use of passive resistance or other non-violent means” (Houghton, 2000). Although this definition seems broad enough to cover any aspect of a discussion, there is still much to be said about the subject. Martin Luther King wrote a fifty paragraph letter about the timeliness and wisdom in such an action, while Hannah Arendt managed to squeeze her definition into six (extra long) paragraphs regarding Denmark and the Jews. But, regardless of the fact that people relate this topic in

Nonviolence doesn't deny the existence of conflict - conflict of one kind or another will probably always be present in human society - but it does show that no conflict has to be dealt with using violence. Throughout the history of the U.S., civil disobedience has played a significant role in many of the social reforms that we all take for granted today. The Women's Suffrage Movement lasted from 1848 until 1920, when thousands of courageous women marched in the streets, endured hunger strikes, and submitted to arrest and jail in order to gain the right to vote. The Civil Rights Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and others, included sit-ins and illegal marches which weakened segregation in the south. The abolition of slavery, including Harriet Tubman's underground railway, giving sanctuary, and other actions which helped to end

Can a social movement be fundamentally flawed? Most people would answer “yes,” pointing to National Socialism or the Ku Klux Klan. However, few would consider the German New Left to epitomize a flawed social movement. According to history professor Dagmar Herzog, they should. Throughout her publication Sex After Fascism, Herzog disputes this central argument of the New Left: “Numerous New Leftists argued directly that sexuality and politics were causally linked; convinced that sexual repression produced racism and fascism, they proposed that sexual emancipation would further social and justice” (2). Although the baby boomers equated sex with anti-fascism, presuming that the Nazis had created the sexually repressive environment, Herzog argues that the repressive environment was actually established in reaction to National Socialism. The most homicidal regime in history was more sexually liberal than the New Left conceived (3). What Herzog overlooks, however, is that not all baby boomers succumbed to this fundamental misconception, as evidenced by the 1974 feature film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. Written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the film depicts a romance between Emmy—who’s an elderly German widow—and the title character—who’s a Moroccan guest worker. Throughout Ali, Emmy faces prejudice for being in an interracial relationship, but as film theorist Thomas Wartenberg argues, the film is far from sympathetic to the elderly widow. In fact, Fassbinder’s film

A phenomenon which has remained constant throughout history is the evolution of society. This persistent phenomenon helps to constantly reshape society. Helping mold it into a suitable form that caters to the needs of those who inhabit it. The evolution of society may take years, if not decades, to occur. However, during certain moments in history, society has undergone rapid change in short periods of time. These rapid periods of change are often caused by undesirable events that influence the general population to revolt and act against those in control of society. Often motivating the mobilization of the public in great numbers to protest . Frequently, the main objectives of these protests are to improve upon aspects of society or to revise the state of society entirely. Generally, in hopes of promoting society’s development to the benefit of the masses. These large-scale gatherings of the population to alter society for the better are known as Social Movements. These movements help to gather vast numbers of like-minded individuals who wish to change the methods used to operate society. Often these movements target those in positions of power, in hopes of influencing them to act upon the state of society. Social movements themselves have occurred frequently throughout the history of society. Some movements succeed, influencing power holders into action in regards to the condition of society, achieving their main purpose. Other movements; however, seldom procure enough