Southern Textile Movement Analysis

The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1) to better understand the potential connection between the old and new movements and 2) determine if a certain theory, strategy, method or goal makes a social movement more or less successful compared to others as it takes more than feelings of frustration to persuade an individual to sacrifice time, money, relationships on these grievances. As will be indicated in the literature review, there are several arguments concerning the success of social movements.

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Protests, by a group of individuals that resist against government behavior of certain policies or practices influence human lives. Although critics think that the protests aren’t a relevant ideal to solve an issue, history has shaped our future and has influenced us on the objection against inequality in America. Even today, individuals are still affected from unfair policies and laws. For example, immigrants are being targeted by officials for deportation and are being blamed as a threat to the U.S. economy. This is the reason why politics have put restrains on funds, healthcare, and enhancement in resources. Fundamentally, protest is significant to have justice, and we must persuade others to understand our views and opinions to get their help to unite with us and resist against the immoral behavior of the government.

In the United States many social movements strive to bring change to the rules and regulations against the sovereign. One social Movement that stood out the most was The Student For The Democratic Society who wanted to change the way young people were being treated in the areas of: economics, race, and war. This movement lead over 100,000 young people to inspire change but alast these strong willed strong minded individuals never received their demands from the hostile and antagonistic government. Even though the student movement in 1968 had no effect on today's students society, it still pointed out how students nationally felt about how they want to be treated and how the government should serve the people.

Social movements come about as people of small groups which are loosely connected are united by a single purpose. Unlike interest groups who are often bureaucratic, social movements are loosely organized. Protests are often done to express people’s dissent or support on a certain issue or advocacy. However, not all social movements are able to thrive since their existence relies on the existence of a certain event or issue. Some social movements also decline since they succeeded, especially in movements with very specific goals. For others, movements are also at risk of repression and co-optation from the government, especially in non-democratic countries.

Chomsky described how, “One mill worker could now run 1,000 looms instead of just one, leaving 999 mill workers unemployed.” With communist party influence, and concern for the working class, the mill workers struck in 1933. This strike influenced all of Salem as almost half of all residents were employed by the Pequot mills. The mill workers met to discuss the strike at the Saltonstall school, and marched down Lafayette Street in protest of the unfair labor conditions and wages.

The nineteenth-century labor movements in Europe?and particularly mutual aid societies where governments deemed political activities illegal?helped provide both solidarity and commonality among workers. These movements eventually turned to protest and political resistance, and they found an ideological articulation of their ideals in socialism, including a defense of their rights, women?s equality and independence (in some cases), control over wages, and the right to work. Though many battles, ideological and physical, would be fought before the century?s end, the origins of social protest can be seen at the very beginning of working-class consciousness.

The Arab Spring is a social movement that took place in Egypt. The movement began with the self-immolation of a vender who was humiliated by police (Castells, 2012). The movement was primarily against President Murbank, and his associates running the government in Egypt (Castells, 2012). The movement started on social media with pages like the Khaled Said Facebook page, which unified the people to take to the streets. The Indignado movement took place in Spain, and was a protest against the failing economy and the Socialist Party’s inability to fix the issues (Castells, 2012). While several campaigns had started prior, the movement took off with Democracia Real Ya (DRY), which called to for the people to take action. The movement had a clear stance against capitalism (Castells, 2012). The Occupy movement was concerning the widening gap between the top 1% and the 99% of the population. The salary of a CEO was, on average, 350 times more than an average worker’s salary (Castells, 2012, p.157). The movement started to take off on July 13, 2011, when Adbusters posted a call to occupy Wall Street on September 17. These three movements all have specific similarities and differences that involve their culture, history, economy, and use of technology. By dissecting these movements we can see what worked, and what failed for

The solidarity amongst the unemployed is a key factor which cannot be ignored by historians and scholars, and that impetus could have propelled labor forward. For the first time, America had seen mass demonstrations across the country centering on a central issue, unemployment. Unemployment councils were prevalent within many of the major metropolitan centers across the country, and they became the proponent for the wize of the American worker. Numerous rallies and demonstrations were staged by those councils, and when it came to the issue of unemployment there were no perceived boundaries amongst citizens based on ethnicity, race or religion. The barriers which had stymied the growth of the labor movement had temporarily disappeared. However, as powerful as these councils could have been, there was no co-ordination amongst the various centers in relation to the public protest. Communities and individuals were becoming mobilized and they too began to learn the importance of being organized and working together collectively and disregarding any self imposed barriers along the lines

The politics of laborers have made them a vital and vibrant part of American history. One has only to study the underlying political causes of the first labor movements to understand why. Few will doubt that one of the most important parts of labor history occurred with the working-class experience in Chicago from the 1920s to the late 30s.

In part, a preference is set about making change within the individual’s social space and is generally structured to establish goals within the group (Lindsey and Williams, 2013; McCarthy and Zald, 1997). Notwithstanding, these social movements are in turn going against the societal structure of the state and therefore become problematic in that they are seen as deviant with a need to be irradiated (Lindsey and Williams, 2013). Marx (1979) refutes this observing that social movements occur when groups or individuals are oppressed by the state. He claims that how social movements are portrayed into the public sphere greatly contributes to the negative attitudes that are emanated from the society they are part of (Marx, 1979). As Marx (1979) iterates a paucity of information is conveyed into the media and public sphere which is often inapt and fallacious, professing that the social movements beliefs are illegitimate. Critically it could be ascertained that both non state actor groups and state actors are oppressed by each other in some form or another, as both are vying to occupy the spaces (Marx, 1979; McCarthy and Zald, 1997).

We may observe alternative organizing as a response to any one or more of the following societal trends: (1) responding to globalizing capitalism and growing inequalities (as is now discussed widely, even in the mainstream media), (2) promoting obvious and non-obvious forms of resistance

The May ’68 uprising in Paris is known as the beginning of 1960s student movements in the world. To answer the question “Why did the May ’68 uprising fail to spread and transform into a full-scale revolution, as many of the student organizers had hoped?”, it is important to clarify what was the goal that student organizers set. This movement started from students occupied the Sorbonne university, then developed student marches and demonstrations and workers’ movement. The main purpose of the May ’68 uprising was demanding for democracy. However, according to ‘The general strike and the student revolt in France’, “The government and media strive to portray the street battles in the Latin Quarter as the work of radical groups and troublemakers”

Similar questions on the acquiring of collective identities and interests have preoccupied social movement scholars for many years, culminating in growing body of work that is termed mobilization theory. This approach of linking industrial relations and social movement theory to understanding the nature of collectivism draws on the work of Kelly (1997; 1998). It was a shift from traditional institutional analysis of trade unions and towards the analysis of the nature and social processes of workers’ collectivization. The central issue of this approach is to understanding how individuals are transformed into collective actors, how collective identity and interest are constructed and sustained, and how they participate in collective action against their employer.

Social movements are known as a way of organizing social change (Staggenborg, 3). It is important to distinguish the difference between a social movement and a social movement organization (SMO), where the social movement is a general group of people who are focused on the same general issues, whereas a SMO is a specific group of people who intend to address their grievance with a specific plan (Staggenborg, 7). It is important to understand the different between the two because as Staggenborg (7) explains, “social movements