SOCIAL UPRISING IN THE U.S.: ANTI-RACISM AND NONVIOLENT CIVIL RESISTANCE (original) (raw)

On the Role of Violence and Non-Violence in the Development of the American Civil Rights Movement

This paper seeks to address and challenge a commonly held narrative about the period of American history known as the civil rights movement. It demonstrates that characterisation of this movement as one which met with success in its early years when non-violent strategies were pursued, but which degenerated into violence and failure in later years is inaccurate. Although it is easier to quantify the successes in the civil rights movement in the earlier half of the 1960s, legislative change did not always mean material change in people’s lives; and the aims and goals which became prominent later on in this period necessitated more wholesale structural change which was counter-posed to the capitalist system in America. Violence in the form of self-defence was therefore commonly pursued in the early civil rights era, albeit by sections of the black working class operating outside of formal organisations. Furthermore, it is argued that generally understood definitions of violence – used often to condemn elements of the civil rights movement – do not adequately capture dynamics of structural violence existing through the state and class structure of American society in the 1960s. The paper therefore concludes that it is necessary to challenge this typical narrative of the civil rights movement due to its presentation of both the legitimacy and success of non-violent and violent protest more generally which has negative implications for contemporary protest movements.

Nonviolent Resistance and Culture

Peace & Change, 2012

This article investigates what culture means for nonviolent resistance. While literature on nonviolence has had a tendency to look instrumentally at culture, this article suggests an intertwined relationship. Activists are themselves embedded in their own cultures, and there is no ''outside culture.'' The authors suggest an innovative model of three strategies for analyzing the cultural aspects of a nonviolent struggle: (1) occasionally borrowing existing powerful symbols and cultural elements, such as flags or religious symbols, which is then applied; (2) partially remodeling ''old'' culture in the spirit of nonviolence. This strategy is illustrated through the Khudai Khidmatgar of the North-West Frontier Province in the 1930s and shows how the nonviolent struggle there, was ''negotiated'' with Islam and a traditional code of honor; and finally, (3) systematically creating a nonviolent movement culture, which is a much more complex process, is illustrated through the movement for landless workers in Brazil, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra.

Conflicting Logics of Social Change: Community Organizing vs/and Civil Resistance

2022

Throughout history, groups have sought to “empower” themselves collectively to resist oppression (or what they experience as oppressive) in myriad ways. They have grounded their different approaches in a wide range of different conceptions of power and empowerment. In this chapter I focus on two especially prominent traditions of collective action in the United States, community organizing and civil resistance (the latter also called social movements), that embody different bundles of concepts and practices that fit together in a coherent vision about how different visions of how people can come together in solidarity contest injustice. These two traditions are helpful to compare and contrast because although both use collective action and conflict to produce social change, each frames what they are doing in very different ways, looking to their own foundational texts and experiences. While proponents of each tradition have critiqued the other, both sides have a lot to learn from each other. Understanding these divergent conceptions of power, action, and social change can foster creativity and unsettle simple convictions, allowing scholars and actors to view their own practices and commitments from an alien and yet complementary perspective.

Riots as Civil Resistance: Rethinking the Dynamics of 'Nonviolent' Struggle

Journal of Resistance Studies, 2018

How do we understand violent actions in social movements? Civil resistance research has made strides in demonstrating the comparative efficacy of 'nonviolent' campaigns, and has become a major force in shaping social movement strategy today, calling for nonviolent discipline. But dominant arguments narrowly interpret the data and uphold a violence/nonviolence dichotomy that does not reflect the tactical repertoires of social movements on the ground. This paper argues that unarmed collective violence is common in civilian-based social movements and can be analyzed in the same terms that civil resistance scholars use to analyze nonviolent actions. The paper makes use of prominent datasets on contentious political actions and on nonviolent struggle to demonstrate the common occurrence of riots alongside nonviolent civil resistance campaigns, and advances a theoretical argument using the example of the anti-Mubarak Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Ultimately, this paper argues that civil resistance studies must move beyond the violence/nonviolence paradigm so that standard analyses of unarmed movements include a broader range of collective actions that more accurately reflect existing movement repertoires.

Violence and Nonviolence in the Rhetoric of Social Protest

Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 2022

The nonviolence so heralded in studies of protest has lost its strategic effectiveness; nonviolence has become, not a strategy in the pursuit of justice, but an end in itself, a telos. In order to better conceptualize violence and nonviolence in the contemporary rhetoric of social protest, this essay provides a review and critique of prominent rhetorical studies of protest violence that have placed violent tactics solely in the service of nonviolence. Rhetorical scholars are in a unique position to reconsider and reframe understandings of violence and nonviolence in social protest that persist both in rhetorical studies and in the popular imagination about how social change can and should happen. Violence and nonviolence have too often been divorced from the white supremacist history and context in which they operate, particularly in the United States—creating meaning structures that makes the violent protest tactics deployed by non-dominant groups culturally illegible. This essay works to reframe the violent tactics most commonly deployed in the current moment by arguing that the looting, property destruction, and even the direct physical violence that is most often associated with various Leftist and anti-racist activists can work strategically to challenge the police-State’s monopoly on violence. Drawing out the implications of these interconnected points, the essay provides a more nuanced understanding of violent tactics that can both help restore the disruptive function of protest rhetoric and better challenge white supremacy in the service of justice.

Nonviolence before King: The Politics of Being and the Black Freedom Struggle

Nonviolence before King: The Politics of Being and the Black Freedom Struggle, 2021

In the early 1960s, thousands of Black activists used nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation at lunch counters, movie theaters, skating rinks, public pools, and churches across the United States, battling for, and winning, social change. Organizers against segregation had used litigation and protests for decades but not until the advent of nonviolence did they succeed in transforming ingrained patterns of white supremacy on a massive scale. In this book, Anthony C. Siracusa unearths the deeper lineage of anti-war pacifist activists and thinkers from the early twentieth century who developed nonviolence into a revolutionary force for Black liberation. Telling the story of how this powerful political philosophy came to occupy a central place in the Black freedom movement by 1960, Siracusa challenges the idea that nonviolent freedom practices faded with the rise of the Black Power movement. He asserts nonviolence's staying power, insisting that the indwelling commitment to struggle for freedom collectively in a spirit of nonviolence became, for many, a lifelong commitment. In the end, what was revolutionary about the nonviolent method was its ability to assert the basic humanity of Black Americans, to undermine racism's dehumanization, and to insist on the right to be.

Selma to Montgomery: The theory, causation, significance, and legacy of a Nonviolent Social Movement in 1960s America

Selma to Montgomery: Nonviolent movement analysis and discussion, 2019

From 21st March to 25th March 1965, thousands of civil-rights protestors marched down Highway 80 from Selma to Montgomery. Highway 80 acted as a gateway for many Black Americans to vent their frustration with voter rights, especially within southern states. Dr Martin Luther King initiated the marches and chose the Selma to Montgomery March as a testing ground for his black voter registration campaign. These marches ultimately led to vast changes in the way many viewed voter registration and it prompted Congress to pass one of the most important civil rights laws in history. This assignment focuses on how non-violent civil-rights movements can achieve long-lasting change in society and how they have shaped future civil-rights movements. This assignment utilises a variety of different sources including; eyewitness accounts from the bright light of ours: Stories from the voting rights fight, journal articles that include picturing equality: Exploring Civil Rights’ Marches through Photographs, and a selection of books written about the events that transpired. In terms of theoretical approaches, this assignment encompasses a multiplicity of social movement theories including, deprivation theory, political process theory (PPT) and structural strain theory. These theories confirm how non-violent movements engender long-lasting change in society.