Civil Disobedience, Sabotage, and Violence in US Environmental Activism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Legal Activism ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
Comparative Advantages ◽  
Rule Changes ◽  
Climate Crisis

This chapter explores the logic of illegal or “radical” tactics in the United States environmentalist movement, generating broader theoretical insights to guide research in other national settings. Two theoretical concepts help to explain environmentalists’ escalation from legal activism (lobbying, litigation, marches, etc.) to more confrontational tactics such as civil disobedience, sabotage, and violence. The first concept is the stepwise escalation of intensity: from legal activism to civil disobedience, to sabotage, to interpersonal violence. Activists escalate from one level of tactical intensity to the next when government and business interests prove unresponsive to activism at the lower level. The degree of escalation is proportional to the degree of government and business resistance. The second concept is the diversity of tactics. Even in highly contested campaigns, only a minority of activists escalates to illegal tactics, while the majority continues to employ legal means of struggle. Tactical diversity is a source of strength: civil disobedience and sabotage may temporarily block environmentally destructive projects until legal challenges and legislative rule changes end them for good. Tactical diversity also creates opportunities for solidarity, with different organizations contributing to the same campaign according to their tactical comparative advantages. The chapter lays out directions for further research and speculates about the future—whether the worsening climate crisis portends an increase in the most radical tactics, sabotage and violence.

More than victims: Resiliency of undocumented Latinas near Chicago, United States, and the strategic use of psychological suffering in obtaining legal status

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-368
Author(s):  
Stephanie Jean Kohl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
Application Process ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Psychological Suffering ◽  
Visa Application ◽  
Biological Citizenship

Caught between abusive partners and restrictive immigration law, many undocumented Latina women are vulnerable to domestic violence in the United States. This article analyzes the U-Visa application process experienced by undocumented immigrant victims of domestic violence and their legal advisors in a suburb of Chicago, United States. Drawing on theoretical concepts of structural violence and biological citizenship, the article highlights the strategic use of psychological suffering related to domestic violence by applicants for such visas. It also investigates the complex intersection between immigration law and a humanitarian clause that creates a path towards legal status and eventual citizenship.

“Doing Hope”: Ecofeminist Spirituality Provides Emotional Sustenance to Confront the Climate Crisis

Affilia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 088610992098724
Author(s):  
Finn McLafferty Bell ◽  
Mary Kate Dennis ◽  
Glory Brar
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Environmental Stewardship ◽  
Catholic Sisters ◽  
The World ◽  
Right Relationship ◽  
Environmental Work ◽  
Climate Crisis

Environmental crises caused by our changing global environment evoke intense and difficult emotions, particularly the paralysis that often results from despair. Understanding how people who are deeply engaged in environmental activism deal with their emotions can help in emotionally equipping people to address the climate crisis. Ecofeminist spirituality directly addresses these issues through an environmental stewardship that offers hope and healing for the world. This study includes 14 interviews with workers at an ecojustice center founded by an order of Catholic sisters in the United States. We used thematic analysis to identify three main themes that collectively describe the participants’ perspectives on (a) experiences of difficult feelings, (b) strategies for coping with those feelings, and (c) perspectives on cultivating hope. Participants shared how they were able to cope with difficult emotions and cultivate hope that the work they are doing matters, which was essential to sustaining their ecojustice work. As social workers respond to the changing environment, understanding how to sustain environmental work at the macro-level is essential to addressing largescale problems while also attending to difficult emotions at the microlevel. Further implications for social work practice include the importance of intergenerational organizing, living in “right relationship,” incorporating spirituality, and reinhabiting the profession.

Hate Crimes and Race-Based Trauma on Latinx Populations: A Critical Review of the Current Research

2020 ◽  
pp. 152483802097968
Author(s):  
Sarah Lockwood ◽  
Carlos A. Cuevas
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Hate Crime ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hate Crimes ◽  
Crime Victimization ◽  
Physical Health Outcomes ◽  
Trauma Responses ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Mental And Physical Health ◽  
Do So

Traditionally, the literature has sought to understand the impact of racial minority status and trauma as it relates to interpersonal violence, domestic violence, and sexual assault. What has not been as extensively reviewed and summarized is how racially or ethnically motivated hate crimes impact the mental health of minorities—particularly Latinx/Hispanic groups. This review aims to summarize the current body of literature on the intersection of race-motivated hate crime and trauma responses within Latinx community. To do so, the theoretical foundation for this inquiry will build from a race-based trauma perspective. Specifically, this review connects existing frameworks for race and trauma and integrates literature that examines Latinx or Hispanic populations that have experienced discrimination, bias, or hate crime as a result of their identity or perceived identity. The importance of situating bias or hate events within the trauma literature stems from a lack of overall formal evaluation of these events, and how these occurrences are historically overlooked as a traumatic stressor. The findings of this review suggest that (1) experiencing racially motivated victimization can cause adverse mental and physical health outcomes in Latinxs and (2) currently, there is only one study that has examined the impact of hate crime on Latinxs in the United States. This leaves the field with unanswered questions about the impact of hate crime victimization among Latinxs, which is an ever-growing area in need of attention.

scholarly journals Vigilantes and the State: Understanding Violence through a Security Assemblages Approach

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tapscott
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Comparative Advantages ◽  
Southern Border ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Lower Capacity

The notion that states pursue a monopoly over the use of force rings increasingly hollow. From vigilantes that patrol the United States’ southern border, to thugs for hire in China, states are characterized by non-state violent actors. These trends are more pronounced in comparatively lower-capacity states. Employing the concept of “security assemblages,” I propose that it is crucial to consider historically embedded relations among violent actors and institutions in order to understand their socio-political role and implications for state authority. This approach offers three insights: first, in low-capacity states, violence is not zero-sum. Rather, it is assembled among diverse actors, which each have historically embedded comparative advantages. Second, therefore, state efforts to monopolize violence should be taken as an empirical question rather than an assumption grounding analysis. Third, relationships between violent actors occur in thick institutional environments, meaning that violent actors, including state actors and institutions, often must act under significant constraints. To illustrate these points, I conduct a mixed-methods nested study of vigilantes in Uganda, finding that vigilantes are more common where other authorities are present, and are more helpful when other authorities are also more helpful. Focusing on dynamics between vigilantes and police, I pinpoint their historically distinct roles: the police were established as a colonial-era institution to suppress political dissent, while vigilantes have long been socially embedded actors tasked with everyday security provision. Thus, in this case, police and vigilantes are not substitutes; instead they play distinct and complementary roles.

A Call for Healing: Transphobia, Homophobia, and Historical Trauma in Filipina/o/x American Activist Organizations

Hypatia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 696-714 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen B. Hanna
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Intergenerational Conflict ◽  
The United States ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
Economic Survival ◽  
Geographical Space ◽  
Personal Trauma ◽  
Activist Organizations

I argue that for those who migrate to other countries for economic survival and political asylum, historical trauma wounds across geographical space. Using the work of David Eng and Nadine Naber on queer and feminist diasporas, I contend that homogeneous discourses of Filipino nationalism simplify and erase transphobia, homophobia, and heterosexism, giving rise to intergenerational conflict and the passing‐on of trauma among activists in the United States. Focusing on Filipina/o/x American activist organizations, I center intergenerational conflict among leaders, highlighting transphobic and homophobic struggles that commonly arise in cisgender women majority spaces. I contextualize these struggles, linking them to traumas inherited through legacies of colonialism, feudalism, imperialism, hetero‐patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy. I inquire: how does historical and personal trauma merge and shape activist relationships and conflict, and what are activists doing to disrupt and work through historical trauma? I advocate for a decolonizing approach for “acting out” and “working through” trauma and healing collectively. By exploring conflict in organizations shaped by dominant Filipino nationalist ideologies, I resist romantic notions of the diaspora. Revealing the ways that dominant Filipino nationalism perpetuates a simultaneous erasure of nonnormative histories and bodies and epistemological and interpersonal violence among activists, I reject homogeneous conceptions of nationalism and open up possibilities for decolonial organizing praxis.

Anti-Sterilization Abuse Organizing: A Retrospective Examination

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Marian McDonald
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Minority Women ◽  
Federally Funded ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Retrospective Examination ◽  
The U.S

November 1988 marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Government's adoption of guidelines for federally-funded sterilizations. This action was the result of years of organizing by the anti-sterilization abuse movement which grew in the early 1970s in response to the alarming increase in numbers of coercive sterilizations, particularly among poor and minority women. This retrospective examination looks at the strengths and weaknesses of anti-sterilization abuse organizing in the United States, and draws out lessons for other areas of work. It begins by exploring the problem of sterilization abuse and the history of the movement against it. The movement is analyzed using key theoretical concepts of community organizing. An evaluation indicates that the anti-abuse efforts were successful and rich with lessons for reproductive rights and other popular health struggles today.

scholarly journals U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Presidential Proclamation Restricting Entry of Individuals from Covered Countries

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-745 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
Security Interest ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
Preliminary Injunction

On June 26, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump's most recent iteration of restrictions on entry to the United States by nationals from certain foreign countries. Following several rewrites of this travel ban, ensuing legal challenges, and lower court injunctions, the Court, in a five-to-four decision authored by Chief Justice Roberts, reversed the latest ruling of a lower court that had granted a partial preliminary injunction against the ban. Although acknowledging that there was considerable evidence tying the travel ban to bias against Muslims, the Supreme Court found that the plaintiffs were nonetheless unlikely to succeed either in their statutory claim that Trump lacked the authority to impose this ban or in their constitutional claim that the ban violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Court accordingly reversed the lower court's injunction and remanded the case for further proceedings. The ruling, based on the Trump administration's asserted national security interest, leaves in place travel restrictions imposed on nationals of seven countries—Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen—only two of which are not Muslim-majority countries.

scholarly journals Social Movements Facing Authoritarian-Style Neoliberal Governments: Comparative Positioning Towards Violence in Indonesia and France

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 226
Author(s):  
Gabriel Facal ◽  
Gloria Truly Estrelita
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Political Strategies ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
Neoliberal Policies ◽  
Anthropological Approach ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Systemic Crises

Faced with global and systemic crises, neoliberal oriented governments are taking on more authoritarian forms of governance. By using the power of the media, justice, the police, and a set of government technologies, this authoritarian style manifests itself in alternating phases of low-key brutality and crises of ostentatious repression designed to frighten and demoralize opposition social movements. Confronted with these modes of government, the social movements adopt different tactics of mobilization, ranging from direct confrontation to forms of compromise and civil disobedience. With the climate crisis as well as the globalization of social struggles, these movements adopt new political strategies, which question the dichotomy between violence and non-violence. Using a historical and anthropological approach, this paper studies two cases in contemporary Indonesia and France. It shows that the objectives of the groups involved and the national socio-political and cultural background shape the local specificities of these strategies. The comparison, however, reveals similarities at both levels. It shows the persistence and even strengthening of class and oligarchy networks in the implementation of authoritarian-style neoliberal policies. It also points to the respective effectiveness of violent and non-violent tactics in the implementation of militant strategies.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document