What is the reason why social movements appear? The term “social movement” implies the creation of large groups of people that share common views on various social and political issues and act to defend their views and to cause a social change. The worldwide peak of social movements was seen in the 1960s, but even after its passing, the idea of social movements continued to be challenging for society. Della Porta writes, “The excitement and optimism of the roaring 1960s may be long gone, but social and political events . . . have hardly rendered the investigation of grassroots activism any less relevant or urgent” (Della Porta and Diani, 2006, 12). Indeed, the appearance of social movements is closely related to unstable government policies and political inattention to the needs of specific social groups or minorities. The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast two American social movements, #BlackLivesMatter and Occupy Wall Street, and to explain the similarities and differences in their attempts to stimulate political change.
Black Lives Matter is an international movement that originated from the African-American community. It appeared in 2013 after the trial of George Zimmerman who shot a young African American boy named Trayvon Martin. Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, remembers that when Zimmerman was declared not guilty, she felt completely exposed and enraged. As well as other African Americans, she understood that the modern world was not safe for black people. Quoting Garza, Day writes that Black Lives Matter was founded as “a call to action . . . to make sure we are creating a world where black lives actually do matter” (Day, 2015). Black Lives Matter organized their first protest, a “Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride,” in August 2014 when white policeman Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown, a young unarmed black. The further development and spreading of the movement happened due to the Internet and mass media and the conflicts that continued to take place between white and black people across the country and ended with deaths. The website of the organization states, “Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes” (“About the Black Lives Matter Network,” n. d.).
The Occupy Wall Street movement first appeared on September 17, 2011, in Zuccotti Park in New York. It was initiated by Micah White and Kalle Lasn from the Canadian magazine Adbusters against economic and social inequalities in the world, corruption, and the excessive influence of corporations on the government. As distinct from Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street members are united more by the economic than social issues. Being officially peaceful, the Occupy Wall Street movement supports aggressive ideas. Its website states, “the only solution is World Revolution” (“Occupy Wall Street,” n. d.). Over the course of time, the organization became influential not only within the United States but also abroad. According to Apps, Occupy Wall Street had an impact on the appearing of such social unrests as the Arab Spring protests, the 2010 United Kingdom student protests, and the other riots in Europe and Asia (Apps, 2011).
The central concepts of sociological movements are brokerage and diffusion. Both social movements appeared against the background of unstable politics of the American government that is not able to defend the interests of its citizens in full. As it was mentioned above, Black Lives Matter claims for social justice and advocacy of the rights of black people and their social protection both in individual cases and for the whole culture. The movement spreads its ideas across the Internet using hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #ICan’tBreathe. The major aim of Occupy Wall Street refers to the issues of economic injustice, unequal income, and imperfections of American economic system. Having the slogan “We are the 99%,” Occupy Wall Street livestreams its protests attracting the attention of the American population to global mainstream problems. The movements pursue different goals but follow the same ways to unite the downtrodden and to catch the attention of the public.
A social movement is the result of collective action, and each collective and coordinated action consists of several points. The first point is the identity shift. In the case of Black Lives Matter, the identity shift comes from a change from a mostly invisible (to the majority) culture to one that stands up and demands its proper respect as part of society. Occupy Wall Street, on the contrary, determines the identity by economic circumstances. The shift occurs when the previously unnoticed poor demand notice by their acts of civil disobedience.
The next point is the method of establishing separation from mainstream society. Generally, Black Lives Matter promulgates the reformative way of political changes. However, the spreading of the movement and the enlargement of the organization led to the appearing of local leaders, and some of them supported the revolutionary way of the goal achievements. As Rickford writes, leftists that appeared inside Black Lives Matter caused the ideological contradictions of the organization “disavowing any trace of collaboration with the ruling class and identifying capitalism itself . . . as the enemy” (Rickford, 2015). In the case of Occupy Wall Street, the methods for separation consist of the growth of sub-movements that the organization has in various American cities and the conflicts that appear between them from time to time. However, Wolfe mentions that the movement has more internal tensions, and they refer to the differences in suggestions of the Demands working group and The Drummers’ working group (Wolfe, 2011).
One more point is the upward scale shift. Black Lives Matter appeared because of the unjust killing of unarmed blacks by the armed police officers and vigilantes. The further growth of the movement happened against the background of media coverage of young blacks’ killings. With the course of time, Black Lives Matter started to concentrate not just on killings and youth but also on the problems of the whole African American community. For instance, in 2015 that became “a hugely significant year for black America,” the organization achieved progress in the issues regarding police violence against black women, the manifestations of racism in one of the American universities, the removal of the Confederate flag, etc. (Workneh, 2015). The same shift happened with Occupy Wall Street. This organization has achieved several goals including the attraction of the spotlight to the problem of economic inequality, leveling up the labor movement, affecting the beginnings of social movements all over the world, etc. On the contrary with Black Lives Matter, one could say that actions of the Occupy Wall Street organization reached the international level.
At a certain point, every movement reaches points of internal dissent, and rather often they appear in a random way. As it was mentioned above, the organization experiences internal conflicts between the local leaders of some chapters and the major ideology. Thus, the dissent within the Black Lives Matter movement involved some radical chapters that the central leaders tried to control. The points of dissent of Occupy Wall Street, on the contrary, are essential for the growth of the movement, so the leadership did not interfere. As White and Lasn write, “Every night that #OCCUPYWALLSTREET continues will escalate the possibility of a full-fledged global uprising against business as usual” (White and Lasn, 2011). It has already been said that Occupy Wall Street promotes the idea of the world revolution. This movement is highly radicalized and supports public demonstrations in all of their aspects.
Of course, every protest faces repression from both inside and outside the government. The repression is the last point of the social movement. Both Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street experience high levels of repression. However, in the case of the latter, repressions are almost extreme, as the Occupy Wall Street movement is based on aggressive protests and radicalism. The organizations face both the police repressions and the repressions from the American government. For instance, Black Lives Matter has little support from the Democratic Party. According to Wolf, the major reason for the lack of support and misunderstandings that exist between the movement and the Democrats is that the Democrats “are too invested in a system that drains revenue from individuals any way it can” (Wolf, 2015). In the case of Occupy Wall Street, lots of its public demonstrations were brutally crushed and scattered, and, according to Naomi Wolf, these violent crackdowns are often supported not only by the government, police, and FBI but also by the major American banks (Wolf, 2012). While repression itself might not bring change as a direct consequence, the responses to that repression can indeed cause massive transformation.
The major goal of the social movement is contentious politics, the turning point that aims to solve the issue the social movement fights for. Contentious politics refers to the expression of disagreement in political points and movement toward changes in government policies. The social movement is a collective action, and, thus, it constitutes a part of contentious politics. However, riots and wars are also the manifestations of collective actions, and this became particularly controversial in the case of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
One of the major questions of social movements is the way they try to create political changes, in other words, their tactics. The tactics of Black Lives Matter involves the vast use of the Internet and social media for rapid reaching of people. Black Lives Matter uses direct action tactics to attract attention to one or another issue and to make people who address this issue feel uncomfortable. It also achieves power through public protests, marches, rallies, and die-ins. Political slogans that the participants of the movement use during the demonstrations include “Black Lives Matter,” “I can’t breathe,” “Hands up, don’t shoot,” etc. Black Lives Matter also uses music as a part of their repertoire of contention. Locher writes that music forms are helpful in augmenting the appearance of a social movement according to value added theory (Locher, 2002, 39-54). One more way to attract the attention from the public is the use of memes that spread through social networks including Twitter and Facebook.
Occupy Wall Street also uses a broad range of tactics. However, Schneider criticizes its application by occupants saying about its inefficient arrangement (Schneider, 2011). From the sociological point of view, the diversity of tactics implies to the idea that some protesters can commit violence while others can follow the non-violent path. In the case of Occupy Wall Street, the non-violent path is almost missing. Supporting the idea of the world revolution, the movement mostly concentrates on violence and riots against the government policies. Of course, non-violence of occupants manifests itself when they do not attack police during the crackdowns. But for the Occupy Wall Street movement, the idea of violence becomes “a whole philosophy of direct action that comes out of anarchist thought” (Schneider, 2011). As the result, its “diversity of tactics” turns to be unbalanced and one-sided.
For the years of their existence, both Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street have reached several achievements. It is difficult to compare these achievements, as the movements pursue different goals on the different social levels. While the issue of Blacks is a completely American problem, the economic inequality is the problem challenging for the most world countries and, thus, the one of the more global nature. However, one can say that Black Lives Matter succeeded much more and will be right. Both Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street follow the “diversity of tactics,” the classical behavior pattern of the social movements. As distinct from Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter used this pattern in its traditional understanding combining violence with the ideology of reformations. Occupy Wall Street that supports the idea of the world revolution completely ignored the idea of non-violence and turned to be close to a riot. Riots can achieve its goals being short and powerful, but this does not suit the longstanding social movements. As the result, Occupy Wall Street started to be received either with anger or with indifference. The wrong tactics led to wrong results and affected the movement’s social progress.
References
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