MIdterm

Evelyn Espinoza

April 1, 2014

Midterm

The article titled Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth examined the memorable Stonewall riots among the gay community. The Authors of the article wanted to identify what made Stonewall so memorable by comparing the riot to other events that were not as successful. They proposed that the Stonewall riots were memorable because they met conditions that appealed to a target audience and was the beginning of gay liberation to many because of the other events prior that have been forgotten.

An annual gay pride commemorates Stonewall and such events are deemed worthy to commemorate because it may have been overtly dramatic and captured the attention of so many. The authors of the article explain that just because an event is commemorative it needs to be institutionalized in order to survive. Clearly Stonewall was able to achieve this with the designation of a yearly parade in remembrance. The authors used a comparative-historical method in attempting to explain how Stonewall was able to achieve its memorable status.

Stonewall was compared to other movements in similar communities, cities, and times. Focusing on events resulting from police confrontation narrowed the search. During this period police were raiding such places where homosexuals frequented and often times led to arrests and greater repercussions. Through the analysis and comparison the evidence suggested that the significance and ability to institutionalize are two important factors in successful commemoration. Several events analyzed leading up to Stonewall feel short of commemoration for a variety of reasons.

The exploitation the raid from Stonewall Inn was in part because of the location of the bar and the time located in a friendly neighborhood in New York. A vast array of homosexuals lived there and enjoyed their social life going out in the area. As a result activists joined while the riot was in progress and received media coverage through those activists involved that had contacts. This grew to other media outlets, which spread the word across the country, and activists were quick to communicate with other activists from densely populated areas to get them involved and attempt a commemoration and the success established what is now an annual gay pride parade. This is a great example and many activists strive to achieve such success to their cause and this is definitely worth studying.

            Recruiting Strangers and Friends: Moral Shocks and Social Networks in Animal Rights and Anti Nuclear Protests was an article studying how members are recruited for particular social movements. There are several recruitment theories that exist for example networking is a way to have someone join a movement through previous contact and they are more likely to if they have previously participated in other activism activities. The existence of direct personal contacts allow for increased participation because they can more than likely agree upon a common social problem by defining and attempting a resolution similarly, known as frame alignment. Moral shocks is another form of recruitment particularly targeting strangers capturing their attention through outrages images, demonstrations, or through other outlets that raise outrage and motivate political action.

            For this research data was collected from three protests by surveys conducted during protests and mailed in. Several interviews were also conducted as part of collecting data. A content analysis of symbols used in the movements, participant observations were done in meetings that animal rights groups held, and focus groups. The patterns of recruitment were seen to be very important when it came to other in comparison to family, previous activism, and media to name the other factors. One of the findings that seemed common among animal rights activist was that the shock value of the truth in animal torture led them to become a part of the group.

            The social characteristics of the animal rights activists were mainly college graduates, in business and professional occupations and lacked religious beliefs by the majority of the respondents describing themselves as either agnostic or atheist. Analysis of both the anti-nuclear and animal rights protest shared cultural themes in opposing technological advancement because of the underlying oppression of humans and nature through such progression. Finally the research described a variety of methods to recruit strangers through moral shock, cultural meanings, and networks. The animals rights and anti nuclear movements were both analyzed for their stranger recruitment and the results showed different patterns for each group.

            The article I read that dealt with the removal of Mexican American Studies (MAS) program had an interesting turn out as students protested the districts action. This took place in Arizona under the Tucson Unified School District after being out of compliance for having such a program because of it’s design and target group which would result in less funding. The decision of the district was to continue receiving funding and remain in compliance with the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction.

            Immediately following the districts decision a youth movement took place, United Non-Discriminatory Individuals in Demanding Our Studies, protesting the elimination of MAS classes. Students walked out of classes and held protests but all was disregarded and the program was still eliminated. This article moved me because the students fought for something they deeply believed; it was a right to have such ethnic studies. Adults were clearly entitled when it came to youth educational programs and the students wanted their voices to be heard and considered for their own education.

            The local media and school district ignored the voice of the Tucson students. Elimination of the program reinforced the entitlement officials have over the youth in the district. A huge controversy arose over after professors in the department of Mexican American Studies of the University of Arizona were being targeted because of their support of ethnic studies. This was all taking place when Arizona’s racist law SB1070 had just been realized and in the focus of media outlets. Mexicans were being targeted from all sorts of angles in Arizona. The movement united and pulled resources from were every to began the movement and protect themselves and let their voices be heard in the fight.

            Arizona was everywhere in media specifically because of the controversy over SB1070, one of the many anti-immigrant oppressions against Mexicans. The removal of ethnic studies was another racial oppression that was going on in Arizona. The students immediately spoke up and protested the denial of their education and their heritage. The youth of this district definitely proved themselves worthy of being heard and getting their education through their own means of the institution was not willing to offer it. The youth is often times ignored because they are young and they have proven to empower a movement to create alternative education when the school system fails them.

            The following article I read researched the evaluation of responses of law enforcement to protests during the past decade in different locations and jurisdictions. The research was conducted across 400 campus community gatherings between 1985 and 2002. The several gatherings included the analyses in the variability of police interference and dismissal of crowds in comparing confrontational protests and riots. College campuses are perfect for analyzing large crowd gatherings because they tend to have large populations, less time constraints, and few have family responsibilities.

            The authors theorized that police behaviors in public gatherings would depend upon the threat certain gatherings pose. The research found that size and use of confrontational tactics had higher probabilities of law enforcement showing up. Individual interaction with the officer will have an effect on the officer’s decision. The research also concluded that disrespectful behavior towards an officer had two dimensions that would result in an arrest. This also seemed to be in stronger correlation when other officers witnessed the disrespectful behavior.

            Citizens have the right to freely assemble, free press, and free speech. These constitutional protections allowed for public gatherings with legal protections for protests and police had to change their approach to such movements. In the data collection only a small amount of disorderly gatherings recorded had any physical violence. When comparing protest and convivial civilian and police behaviors there was a noted difference between the two types of gatherings. Police are significantly more likely to be involved by dispersing, using force to control, and arrest in convivial gatherings versus protests.

            In conclusion of this article law enforcement in campuses are more experienced with procedures in handling gatherings but with events that erupt from convivial gatherings usually result in personal and property damage. The police are more likely to use aggressive tactics on these gatherings because of how these gatherings play out. The finding of the research was consistent with the theory that the policing of events depended on the size and the threat posed by the gatherings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference:

Armstrong, E. , & Crage, S. (2006). Movements and memory: The making of the stonewall myth. American Sociological Review, 71(5), 724-751.

 

 How Social Movements Do Culture Roy, William G. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society23.2-3 (Sep 2010): 85-98.

 

Jasper, J. , & Poulsen, J. (1995). Recruiting strangers and friends: Moral shocks and social networks in animal rights and anti-nuclear protests. Social Problems, 42(4), 493-512.

 

McCarthy, J. , Martin, A. , & McPhail, C. (2007). Policing disorderly campus protests and convivial gatherings: The interaction of threat, social organization, and first amendment guarantees. Social Problems, 54(3), 274-296.

 

Cabrera, N. , Meza, E. , Romero, A. , & Cintli Rodríguez, R. (2013). “if there is no struggle, there is no progress”: Transformative youth activism and the school of ethnic studies. The Urban Review, 45(1), 7-22.