Targets, Grievances, and Social Movement Trajectories

Despite a growing literature on social movement leadership, few studies consider how assassination shapes movement trajectories. Using event structure analysis, this study examines whether and how the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. propelled the struggling Sanitation Workers’ Campaign to success. It finds that King’s assassination can be understood as a “turning point” in the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike and distills four mechanisms connecting King’s assassination to the strike’s ultimate outcome: the assassination precipitated some repressive local policies while diminishing others; evoked moral outrage, further mobilizing sympathetic third parties and enhancing external resources; intensified economic and reputational concerns, provoking pressure from the local business community on local political authorities; and provided access to federal resources, enabling local political actors to “save face.” These findings extend previous research on assassinations’ outcomes, finding that external factors are, indeed, salient, significantly shaping movement trajectories in the aftermath of political assassinations of charismatic leaders.

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Anti-Carceral Feminism: The Contradictions of Progress and the Possibilities of Counter-Hegemonic Struggle

Affilia ◽

10.1177/0886109919878276 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 35 (3) ◽

pp. 309-326 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Mimi E. Kim

Keyword(s):

Social Movement ◽

Mass Incarceration ◽

Transformative Justice ◽

Movement Trajectories ◽

Reform Strategies ◽

Communities Of Color ◽

White Middle Class ◽

New Directions ◽

Carceral Feminism ◽

The Right

History reveals that the pathway toward carceral feminism was fraught with contradictions. Feminist reform strategies that appeared progressive devolved into mandates contributing to the policies of mass incarceration; frameworks meant to disavow racist myths of violence inherent to communities of color fueled color-blind narratives that cloaked white, middle-class-defined social movement priorities; safety strategies protecting survivors of violence entrapped them into set options violating the right to self-determination. Today’s account of carceral feminism reveals well-intentioned choices leading to often ill-fated outcomes. As the critique of carceral feminism seeps into the discourse of the feminist anti-violence movement, a shift toward new values, policies, and practices holds the possibility of radical new directions. However, there is no reason to assume that this new pathway will be so straightforward. This article centers the dynamic of contradiction to synthesize insights of post-Marxist thought in application to contemporary anti-carceral feminist trends represented by transformative justice options. It also reflects on the recent ascendance of restorative justice and a renewed potential for carceral co-optation. The aim is to illuminate troubled areas of revision and radical alternatives and better navigate inevitable ethical and pragmatic tensions that may define future social movement trajectories.

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Mental Health Commission of Canada hires Public Inc. to accelerate national social movement in mental health

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e505532013-001 ◽

2011 ◽

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Social Movement

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Presidential address: The marathon encounter: Requiem for a social movement

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e589912009-002 ◽

1975 ◽

Author(s):

Richard G. Weigel

Keyword(s):

Social Movement ◽

Presidential Address

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Die Bewegung für Klimagerechtigkeit und Energiedemokratie in Deutschland.

PROKLA Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft ◽

10.32387/prokla.v46i184.122 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 46 (184) ◽

pp. 403-421 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Henrik Sander

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Social Movement ◽

Movement Analysis ◽

Climate Justice ◽

Climate Politics ◽

Historical Materialist

This article argues that social movement research must be renewed by a historical-materialist perspective to be able to understand the emergence and effects of the relatively new climate justice movement in Germany. The previous research on NGOs and social movements in climate politics is presented and the recent development of the climate justice movement in Germany is illustrated. In a final step two cases of climate movement campaigns are explained by means of the historical-materialist movement analysis proposed by the author.

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The origins of the Catholic Social Guild in Scotland: ‘We have not attacked the Socialists professedly’

The Innes Review ◽

10.3366/inr.2018.0172 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 69 (2) ◽

pp. 131-146 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Piotr Potocki

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

Social Movement ◽

Catholic Church ◽

Social Reform ◽

Socialist Society ◽

The West ◽

Main Activity ◽

Social Message ◽

Scholarly Attention ◽

The Catholic Church

The activities of John Wheatley's Catholic Socialist Society have been analysed in terms of liberating Catholics from clerical dictation in political matters. Yet, beyond the much-discussed clerical backlash against Wheatley, there has been little scholarly attention paid to a more constructive response offered by progressive elements within the Catholic Church. The discussion that follows explores the development of the Catholic social movement from 1906, when the Catholic Socialist Society was formed, up until 1918 when the Catholic Social Guild, an organisation founded by the English Jesuit Charles Plater, had firmly established its local presence in the west of Scotland. This organisation played an important role in the realignment of Catholic politics in this period, and its main activity was the dissemination of the Church's social message among the working-class laity. The Scottish Catholic Church, meanwhile, thanks in large part to Archbishop John Aloysius Maguire of Glasgow, became more amenable to social reform and democracy.

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Risk, Desire and Adaptation: The Paradox of Queer Solidarity and the Political Possibility of Death Under Neoliberalism and Homonationalism

Somatechnics ◽

10.3366/soma.2017.0217 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 185-200

Author(s):

Natalie Kouri-Towe

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Social Movement ◽

Political Activism ◽

State Violence ◽

The Political ◽

Sexual Rights ◽

Political Strategy ◽

Rights Discourse ◽

The Relationship ◽

Strategy I

In 2015, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto (QuAIA Toronto) announced that it was retiring. This article examines the challenges of queer solidarity through a reflection on the dynamics between desire, attachment and adaptation in political activism. Tracing the origins and sites of contestation over QuAIA Toronto's participation in the Toronto Pride parade, I ask: what does it mean for a group to fashion its own end? Throughout, I interrogate how gestures of solidarity risk reinforcing the very systems that activists desire to resist. I begin by situating contemporary queer activism in the ideological and temporal frameworks of neoliberalism and homonationalism. Next, I turn to the attempts to ban QuAIA Toronto and the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ from the Pride parade to examine the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship. Lastly, I examine how the terms of sexual rights discourse require visible sexual subjects to make individual rights claims, and weighing this risk against political strategy, I highlight how queer solidarities are caught in a paradox symptomatic of our times: neoliberalism has commodified human rights discourses and instrumentalised sexualities to serve the interests of hegemonic power and obfuscate state violence. Thinking through the strategies that worked and failed in QuAIA Toronto's seven years of organising, I frame the paper though a proposal to consider political death as a productive possibility for social movement survival in the 21stcentury.

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