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"Black Women and the Black Freedom Struggle" is a review of two books, "Jim Crow Capital" by Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy and "Strategic Sisterhood" by Rebecca Tuuri. The reviewer praises both books for their well-written and well-researched content, which highlights the roles of Black women in social justice movements in the United States. The books challenge previous histories that marginalized Black women's contributions and focus on the work of working- and middle-class women in the Black Freedom Struggles. The review emphasizes the importance of recognizing and celebrating the stories and people of earlier protest movements, especially in the context of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations happening across the country. [Extracted from the article]

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To examine whether and how social movements that target private firms are influenced by larger protest cycles, we theorize about osmotic mobilization--social movement spillover that crosses the boundary of the firm--and how it should vary with the ideological overlap of the relevant actors and the opportunity structure that potential activists face inside the firm. We test our hypotheses by examining the relationship between levels of protest in U.S. cities around issues like Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, and the women's movement and subsequent support for labor-union organizing in those cities. Combining nationally representative data on more than 20,000 protest events from 1960 to 1995 with data on more than 150,000 union organizing drives held from 1965 to 1999, we find that greater levels of protest activity are associated with greater union support, that spillover accrued disproportionately to unions with more progressive track records on issues like Civil Rights, and that these effects were disproportionately large in the wake of mobilization around employment-related causes and shrank in the wake of conservative political reaction that limited room for maneuver among the external protesters, the labor movement, or both. Our research helps to specify the channels through which external pressures affect firm outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benjamin Case (2021) argues that the framework of strategic nonviolence is limited by its assumption that violent protest necessarily demobilises movements, and that rioting can be empowering for participants. However, Case's statistical analysis of US riots and peaceful demonstrations may not be a comparison of rioting and nonviolent action because it is questionable whether, in the US, peaceful demonstrations should be classified as methods of nonviolent action. Rioting can be empowering, but there is also considerable evidence that participation in nonviolent action can be empowering. Much research remains to be done to determine whether rioting can be a leading or major part of strategic action for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black women, LGBTQ folx, and artists in Louisville, Kentucky, played key roles in bringing attention to the police killing of Breonna Taylor and ensuring that Breonna became a focus of the Black Lives Matter movement. In this oral history interview, one of the organizers of protest actions in Louisville, Talesha Wilson, remembers how she became involved again in Black Lives Matter in 2020. She discusses the need to address sexism, homophobia, and transphobia while seeking racial justice and describes an action that she organized in an area of the city called NuLu. The action highlighted how the organization of urban space and gentrification have disempowered Black people and forced them to live in areas where they are more likely to be the victims of police violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protest paradigm, which describes the unequitable reciprocity of the media-social movement relationship, creates a double-bind for social movements. Mainstream news media in the United States emphasize emotion, drama, and irrationality while excluding the grievances, agendas, and substance behind a protest, contributing to negative narratives that can hinder public support for a movement. This analysis of Facebook news posts of protests by mainstream U.S. news organizations contributes to our understanding of how social media's engagement affordances work in cohort with journalists' use of emotional appeals to legitimize some protests and delegitimize others. Results show posts encourage the mobilization of some protests more than others, and media frames and emotional linguistic devices might contribute to a spectrum of delegitimizing framing effects. Legitimizing features significantly decrease emotional reactions from audiences, leading to more neutral but potentially less engaging audience reception and response. Findings advance our understanding protest paradigm framing outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 21st century, teachers' union mobilization was widespread throughout the United States. Decrying low salaries, restrictions on labor rights, and more, teachers' unions engaged in large‐scale tactics such as massive strikes, public protests, and successful ballot campaigns. In this article, I demonstrate that by sharing characteristics of both social movement organizations and interest groups, teachers' unions are well suited to respond to political threats. Teachers' unions are large, longstanding organizations with the resources necessary to use a wide variety of tactics. Teachers' relationships with parents and the local community provide strong potential for alliances, and teachers can leverage their professional identity and expertise to help establish legitimacy in educational policy conversations. Ultimately, however, the future of teachers' unions depends upon sustained worker and ally activism beyond the current wave of mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing the increasing ubiquity of protest in the United States, this article considers why protest has become so central to American politics. It argues that three factors contribute substantially to this situation: institutional illegitimacy, political polarization, and decentralization of communications media. Institutional illegitimacy means that Americans are less likely to trust the prevailing system of government, such as selecting the president through the Electoral College, making them more likely to believe that protest is necessary to have their voices heard. Political polarization coincides with having elected officials on the extremes of the political spectrum, rather than toward the moderate center. Citizens are thus more likely to be dissatisfied with elected officials and to turn out to protest them. Decentralization of communications media, especially social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram), allows activists to communicate with one another more readily and, therefore, to organize protests quickly and with few financial resources. These conditions are unlikely to change in the near future outside of a major partisan realignment. Recent protests organized by Black Lives Matter and related groups, in response to the deaths of George Floyd and many other African Americans, illustrate the contemporary nature of activism, social movements, and protest in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how threatening economic conditions and preexisting community resources facilitated the spread of Occupy Wall Street protest groups to more than 600 counties in the continental United States in 2011. Using a generalized linear mixed model, we find that economic threats and accessible resources are complementary facilitators of movement mobilization. But contrary to the expectations based on earlier media and scholarly accounts, the "disruptive threats" caused by the Great Recession failed to predict the formation of Occupy groups. Instead, groups were more likely to mobilize in counties that had the "positional threats" of relatively higher income inequality and relatively lower median incomes in comparison to state norms. However, the effect of positional economic threats was nuanced as counties with lower than average unemployment more likely had groups mobilized. In addition, resources continue to demonstrate empirical importance in explanations of social movement mobilization, as Occupy groups were more likely to form in counties with greater access to social-organizational and human resources. Combined, these findings suggest that scholars can strengthen their analyses by considering threats and resources as complementary facilitators of local protest mobilization and by focusing greater attention on how differing types of threats may influence the mobilization of social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does religion promote or deter political activism? Most arguments and evidence on this question do not account for variation by social position. We argue that for the 2006 spring immigrant rights marches understanding the influence of religion on participation requires a careful assessment of the relationship between various dimensions of religion and the risks, barriers, and motivations that are rooted in citizenship status of potential participants. Dimensions that enhance efficacy are important for overcoming the participation obstacles that noncitizens faced. In contrast, dimensions that contributed to solidarity, opportunities, and framing fostered citizens' mobilization. Our findings from the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life national survey of Latinos are consistent with the view that Charismatic identity and a salient personal religious faith were sources of empowerment that inspired noncitizen participation. Conversely, the emphasis on "law and order" of the biblical literalist as well as the pietistic orientation of a faith marked by personal prayer hindered marching among Latino noncitizens. Catholic and mainline Protestant traditions and a close association between faith and politics influenced citizen protest but not noncitizen involvement. Integration into congregations activated for immigrant rights and involvement in congregation-based volunteerism encouraged participation for both citizens and noncitizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the relationship between sexual orientations and the protest actions of adults in the United States. Drawing from General Social Survey data from 1996 to 2004, we found that lesbians, gays, and bisexuals were more than twice as likely to protest as heterosexuals. To account for this sexuality gap, we used Patrick Egan's (2008) political distinctiveness theories to identify possible underlying causes of these protesting differences. After running several regressions, we found that sexuality and protesting relationships were moderated by issues of educational attainment, marital statuses, metropolitan residencies, political partisanships, governmental grievances, and gender role expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although US Uncut and Occupy were two similar social movement organizations highlighting the rising levels of economic inequality in the United States after the Great Recession, Occupy received more media coverage than US Uncut. Through a qualitative comparison utilizing a variety of sources, this study found four possible reasons that can explain why Occupy received more media attention: (1) Occupy had more dramatic protest events; (2) Occupy was active during a time when people were more frustrated with the economy and Wall Street; (3) Occupy faced less competition from other protest events; and (4) Occupy held larger protest events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major challenge for social movement and political campaign studies is generating large, representative samples of political activists. This paper outlines a strategy of surveying those who participate in a common, baseline form of political action: signing petitions. Similar to protest surveys, signing a petition constitutes a more baseline low cost/low risk form of political activism. In 26 states in the U.S. petition lists are public record and, with modest effort, can be used to study a wide variety of issues, groups and campaigns. We outline the steps and costs involved in such a petition survey and how to improve response rate. To assess response bias, we compare demographic and political affiliation measures acquired from a marketing analytics company (Experian) for respondents and non-respondents to our survey of petition signers for two state-level initiative elections, finding only modest and interpretable response bias. The methods presented here have broader implications for survey research in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses insider ethnographic and interview data to examine one of the largest sustained collective actions in the history of the United States--the Wisconsin Uprising of 2011. It finds that this event took a highly unusual form due to a social relation that I term escalating moral obligation, a sense of solidaristic duty that grows increasingly fervent as others struggle on behalf of a shared cause. Each of three active groups within the movement engaged in arduous and unconventional resistance to controversial legislation, and did so in a manner that induced moral debt among the other groups. Fervency of commitment to the cause increased as a result of allies taking risky or self-sacrificial actions. Each group felt obligated to continue difficult mobilization as long as others continued theirs. Escalating moral obligation develops a simultaneously emergent, endogenous, and cognitive dimension of social movements. It is a relational mechanism linking political opportunity with actual mobilization. The political opportunity in this case was a combination of several conditions: an elite cleavage over the desirability of public unions, a more local balance of power allowing dissident legislators to obstruct but not defeat legislation, and an immediate severe popular reaction. This mechanism is potentially generalizable to other risky or arduous protests. When activists are motivated by the sacrifice or risk-taking of allied activists, escalating moral obligation is present. The concept links group-level imperatives with individual-level motivations. Escalating moral obligation shows one way that individual subjectivities can change through group interrelations and emotionally intense interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protests struggle to gain traction in societies that are either too open (undermining the need for protest) or too closed (suppressing the possibility of protest). In the United States, there has been a sharp counter-movement responding to the election of President Donald Trump and conservative shift in ideology toward nativism. Given this shift and movement, an inquiry into the possibility of protest is both timely and critical. This ethnographic study of Camden, New Jersey, examines the ways local activists respond to oppression, finding that they use Alinsky-style community organizing that focuses on discrete, local actions and avoid direct confrontation with oppressive forces. These strategies differ from activists in adjacent communities joining in wide-scale, partisan resistance to nativism and President Donald Trump. The Camden strategy appears to be a learned response to failures in opposing wide-scale oppression and fear of loss of access and opportunity. In the face of such continued oppression, Camden activists target pragmatic urban issues to protest in the hopes of gaining small victories. Such a finding indicates that oppression may reify by making systemic changes seem unlikely or even impossible, causing activists in oppressed communities to make the strategic decision to avoid challenging oppression directly by focusing on pragmatic protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her recent piece, MacKendrick (2017) asks whether we are experiencing a “new wave of science activism” and outlines various visible and vocal forms of political action taken by scientists in recent months. Coming from a slightly different perspective, this piece looks at scientists as part of the broader Resistance—people working individually and in collectivities to challenge the Trump agenda. Building on analysis of data collected from a random sample of participants from the Washington, DC, March for Science, which took place in April 2017, I explore how participants at the March for Science compare to a broader sample of participants in the Resistance. Although they have some unique characteristics, my findings show that there are few statistically significant differences between participants in the March for Science and others participating in the Resistance. I conclude this piece by discussing the implications of these findings on scientists in the Resistance and science activism more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay raises several issues triggered by Norah Mackendrick's (2017) piece “Out of the Labs and into the Streets,” which appeared in “The Forum.” Using that essay as a springboard, I reflect on the complicated relationship between science and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a quasi-natural experiment in the Latino National Survey (2006), I examine the effect of the 2006 immigrant rights marches on attitudes about assimilation among Mexican immigrants residing in the United States. I test the hypothesis, dominant in the existing literature, that major sociopolitical events raise ethnic consciousness and lead to reactive or retentionist attitudes that privilege maintenance of ethnic culture over "blending in." Contrary to established findings, I show that the marches did not increase retentionist attitudes nor strengthen ethnic nationalism. Instead, in the period during and after the marches, Mexican immigrants were more likely to hold incorporationist attitudes that place value on both assimilation and ethnic cultural maintenance, as well as assimilationist attitudes which privilege "blending in" to American society. These findings suggest that attitudes were influenced by the incorporationist and assimilationist messages promulgated by protest organizers and the Spanish-language media. The specific discourse used by media and activists can shape both individual attitudes and conceptions of how minority groups relate to wider society, evincing a more expansive approach to American identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the National Organization for Women (NOW) has endured over time, it has faced significant internal factionalism. In this article, I ask why some of these factions resulted in schisms, while other factions persisted in NOW over time. This is a critical question for understanding how organizational location and factional collective identities combine to produce different outcomes when internal conflict breaks out. My analysis of interview, archival, and secondary data indicates that organizational location influences factions' independent collective identities, shaping what they want and their perceptions of opportunities to change their organization. Compared to national level factions, local factions also lack the ability to use NOW's hierarchical structure to their advantage in their effort to stay. This sheds lights on the distinct patterns of factionalism and schism in formalized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many social movement studies mention the idea of authenticity, few consider the authentication processes in movements. This article examines how authenticity challenges manifest in different arenas of movement/countermovement struggles. Through a qualitative analysis of minority organizations engaged in an abortion debate, I focus on how racial minorities demonstrate authenticity to legitimate their ability to represent their community's views on abortion. I argue that both sides engage in proximity practices that emphasize their movement's congruence while pointing to perceived incongruence of the opposition. After demonstrating how these practices are used in three arenas, I suggest areas for researchers to examine in future studies on minorities in movements and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze the ways in which the US anti-sweatshop movement - particularly United Students Against Sweatshops and the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) - has engaged in a process of strategic innovation in the face of new challenges. While scholars of social movements have studied the outcome of this process - strategy - there has been less attention to the process of how movements develop strategy - strategizing. This involves a dialectic between experience, consolidated in the form of strategic models, and ideology, that is the values, social theory, and norms of the movement. When the movement encountered new obstacles, they engaged in strategic innovation through a process of democratic deliberation where they reflected on their past experiences. During this phase, the anti-sweatshop movement drew on their ideology of worker empowerment to help them decide what goals they wanted to achieve and to make sense of how their social environment was creating obstacles for them. Their ideology served as an interpretive-analytic lens through which they reflected on and learned from their past experiences. In this paper, I focus on two periods of innovation in the anti-sweatshop movement: first, the development of the WRC as an independent monitor of apparel companies and second the development of the Designated Suppliers Program as a new means of disciplining them to respect workers' rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do police treat religious-based protest events differently than secular ones? Drawing on data from more than 15,000 protest events in the United States (1960 to 1995) and using quantitative methods, we find that law enforcement agents were less likely to show up at protests when general religious actors, actions, or organizations were present. Rather than reflecting privileged legitimacy, we find that this protective effect is explained by religious protesters’ use of less threatening tactics at events. When religion is disaggregated into different traditions, only mainline and black Protestant groups have lower rates of policing than secular groups. As with the general religion finding, the buffering effect these traditions have on policing is mediated by protester tactics. Moreover, we find that fundamentalist Christians are more likely to be policed than are secular activists when threatening tactics are included. Finally, when actors associated with non-Christian religions engage in extremely confrontational tactics, they are more likely to provoke a police response than are similarly behaving secular groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we study protest participants in the May 2006 immigration rights marches in Los Angeles. Analysis of original survey data of 876 march participants yields five main results. First, despite substantial dispute among organizers on how to frame the marches, we find protest participants were similar across march locations organized by different coalitions. Second, we find Spanish-English bilingual participants seemed to benefit from being in two media environments, as they reported more information sources about the protest events than monolingual participants. Third, women reported hearing about the protest events from more information sources, and Spanish-English bilingual women reported hearing from more information sources than any other group, suggesting they acted as social connectors behind the massive participation. Fourth, we confirm the importance of Spanish-language radio as an information source, but our data also point to the significance of television and English-language radio. Finally, analyzing data of first-time protesters, we estimate the immigrant rights marches newly politicized 125,000 people in Los Angeles who spoke Spanish and not English. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper debates the traditional notions of political transnationalism used in the United States by showing the formation and the activist process followed by the #YoSoy132 movement in New York City. The conclusion drawn is that immigrants organizations in the US have diversified their acting repertories, political perspective and their demands. Therefore, it is necessary to broaden the concept of political transnationalism to a social-political perspective. The latter will allow having a wider theoretical notion to analyze a larger number of immigrants organizations in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that a pro-democracy movement occurred in the U.S. at the turn of the 21st century, focusing on a discussion of the movement's origins and distinctive features. Topics include popular politics in the U.S. starting in the 1960s during the civil rights movement; corporate globalization and the impact of capitalism on democracy; and resistance to neoliberal trade policies such as the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The demonstrations against the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, Washington is also discussed.