Cpol Politics of Social Movement

CPOL601

Thursday, Day 1

Movie; What democracy looks like

• Hold hands, individually we are only a tiny piece but togeather we are unified and we can togeather stop
• OC tear gas, 100 fatalities
• WTO determined every environment, safety and labour barrier is illegal
• War cry; difference is strengths, dont want to live in homogenous culture

• Wellco factory paid $1.6 an hour
• Fined for talking at work
• Prisoned if pregnant

• Questions;

• What was the focus of the first big demonstration?

• Focus on systemic change, use of media on how to ommunicate

• What tactics did they use?
• What was new about it?
• What ended up being the focus?

• Militarization of the police
• United states imprisoned more of their people than anyone
• US has private prisons
• 3 days of tear gas, no arrests
• G20; used mass arrests (1100)

Friday, Day 2

Awakening; Civil Rights Movement

• Montgomery
• Roso parks
• Segregation; schools, bus
• Dec 1 1955, rosa parks stood up

• Bus boycott
• Cant sha’
• me segregqtion
• 4%
• non violent persistence, kept waking month after month

• 7-8  mle

• some people would top for the
• obey tlsed

• mass orotest
• boycott hurt the bus companies

• KKK held a rally
• Bus segregation unconstitutionally

• That day KKK rode the walks

• Wouldn’t have without a women
• Role of religion. Strong from solidation
• Promote fear, so people are scared to out and fight india
• Killing of emmet,the ralliesatarted fter tht
• Themes; overpoerin =g fear, coming tofeteje
• Came down to slavery

• How it mainatains affects of slavery

• Social movement; type of group action/ they are large, informal,  grouping of people and or organization focussed on specific politics or socials issues. Carrying out, resisting or undoing social change.

• Sustained series of interactions between power holders and persons successfully claiming to speak on behalf of a constituency lacking formal representation. Based on 60s

• Anti-war movement
• Children of working class can go to university

• Women of privilege

• Characteristics;

• Organized around a broad common issue
• Sometimes expressed differently civil rights, black power, womens liberation, womens
• Diverse
• Not poltical party

• Key movements

• Rosa parks refuses to give up her seat 1955

• Freedom rides 1961

• Registering black people to vote
• The civil rights part, black becoming apart of our system
• March on Washington 1963
• Finally civil rights bill in 1968

• New Tactics

• Direct action; civil disobedience

• Break the law to change an unjust law

• Tradition defined by Henry Thoreua and perfected by Gandhi as an effective collective-action tactic for disempowered people.
• The harsher and more excessive the reaction from police and authorities, the better the advertisement of injustice

• Ex; opening an abortion clinic when it was illegal
• Sitting down when your ordered to disperse by the police

• Black power movement

• We hear less about the more radical parts of the civil rights movement like Malcolm X and the black panthers.
• Armed self defense, black power

• Dealing with black self worth
• Not internalizing the oppression

• Elements of the New Left

• Port Huron Declaration 1962

• Privilege people, don’t like the world they inherited
• Maintained student movement, in france did not remain student movement

• Paris 1968
• Anti-war Movement

• Was youth movement for a while

• Anti-colonial Struggles

• Started form a model for the more radical people on the new left
• Were violent

• Draft dodges

• Resist going to Vietnam
• Got health reasons to not go, or fled to Canada and trudeau let them stay

• Kent State 1970
• New left falls apart and weatherman form revolutionary violence becomes fashional weather, black panthers

• Became radical
• The weathermen were aggressive violence, trying not to kill people
• Black panthers, revolutionary self-defence. Armed themselves against police

• In Canada most important element was the Front Liberation due Quebec, FLQ

• Organized in underground cells
• Did violence like weathermen, blew up mailboxes (symbols of civil power)
• Didn’t agree with their tactics but agreed with mission
• Quebec; quite revolution

• But Maoists groups were huge in Quebec and there were important far left groups in English Canada as well

• Peace and Love

• Hippies believed we can change the world by how we perceive the world
• First environmentalist
• Wanted to go back to the farm

• Hippies

• Youth movement spread not just on campus but also about living life the way we want to live it. Diggers in Yorkville

• Riverboat, folk club
• Hang out in the streets, smoke weed, sleep there

• Hippies, alternate culture
• Sex, drugs and rock and roll
• Most famously Woodstock in 1968

• Women’s Liberation

• Role of women were prone
• There for sex, make coffee

• Tackling Racism

• The left tended to focus on the class struggle and migrant labour as the ‘reserve army of labour’ which served to postpone tackling the problem of racism
• Racism is economic, social and cultural
• The left tended to focus on the class struggle and migrant labour as the reserve army of labour, which served to postpone tackling the problem of racism

• Racism under capitalism

• Radicalized under class
• Racialized groups have lower wages and higher levels of unemployment than white worker
• The wage gap is about 25 percent
• In 2001, the unemployment rate for people boom

• Overt and systemic

• Overt racism is easy to identify and educate against. Systemic racism has proven to be much more difficult
• An important difference between the liberal and radical perspectives on race and racism lies in the insight that the ideologies of racism are not just matters of individual prejudice but can permeate structures eg; Ryerson task force on racism

• Islamaphobia

• In response to the terrorism of the few, we have created a fear of anyone who is from the Middle East or practices the Muslim religion, going as far as calling the so-called war against terrorism a war of civilization

• War against Judaism-Christian and Muslim

• The more extreme language of the war against terrorism recalls the language of the early days of colonialism

• Racism in US

• While the civil rights movement created legal equality for African Americans in the United States, in reality they are still far from equality.

• Ta-Neshi Coates
• Migrant workers

• Migrant workers who are forced to leave their home and work in richer countries to provide for their families are almost all people of colour and face terrible discrimination with few rights
• Sex trade is epidemic and almost all those enslaved are women of color

• Movements against racism

Day 3, Saturday Oct 24

Colonialism

Post war reconstruction

• create international governments to make the world a better place for the people
• institutions they created shifted gear
• in Bretton woods, 1944
• then 1948 GAT

Holy trinity

• out of Bretton woods came the world bank and the international montery fund and later GATT that gave rise t WTO

Early resistance

• because Lend tons of money to the global south
• first resistance was the structure list
• poor countries would stay poor, only way for poor countries to develop was to deal from international develops
• now protection is a bad word
• in global south, nationalists practiced protectionism
• because the coniditons put on mean they remain poor
• vibrant period of national development, stong welfare state

• during 60s,70s
• Canada had bigger resistance to neo-liberalism than other countries
• Washington consensus or neo-liberalism; first form of capitalism, liberal in the way of americans as in left, lack of regulation, free market, trickle down economics

• Free the corporation to make money and it will trickle down

Resistance in the 1970s

• Aid doing more harm than good
• Loans, often to dictators, increased debt

• Loans had conditions, and high interest rates

• Pushed free-market development expanding either primary resuorces or low-value, labour intensive exports
• Critique developed in North

• Beginning of anti-globalization

• Resistance in south by local activists (chico dam project in phlipine)

Washington consensus

• Washington consensus or free trade is ideology of US since anti-commnism ceased to be useful
• Single sustainable model for national success

• Get rid of all barriers to maximum profits for coportations

• The only true freedom is economic freedom to buy and sell

• china capitalist, picked up capitalism everywhere but not democracy
• democracy and capitalism not linked
• Cant stop cultural democracy
• With capitalism (china) hard to stop cultural change

Neo-liberalism

• Neo-liberalism is the brainchild of economist Milton Friedman. In early 1970s, he argued lasses-faire capitalism could be revived by tax cuts, reducing public spending, deregulations, and privatization of government-owned enterprises. Based on this theory, under such conditions the free market can perfectly function on its own to manage the economy. That is known the underpinning ideology of economic liberalization or neoliberalism strategy

• Privatizing education, privatizing prisons and healthcare
• Ex; reducing money sent to public schools will increase the amount of private schools, and the public will diminish

• Taken up by thatcher and Reagan

Resistance in 1980s

• Went from local resistance to transnational resistance
• Environmental groups in north noticed indigenous resistance in global south

• Reached out to them

• Anti-free trade Eg. In Canada and Mexico

• A lot of resistance (during Mulroney time), road to industrialization, n undermining of our social programs
• Free trade had undermined but created more wealth in china and India, but in Canada don’t have unemployment insurance.

• The pressure is be similar to American system
• Welfare today is the same as it was in the 1960s, no increase even if increase in amount of poor people
• No national housing program anymore
• Canada used to have progressive tax program

• Current leaders of anti-globalization movements like

Before Seattle

• Struggle against structural adjustment policies 1980s
• Most protests arose in Latin America
• Indigenous and peasant movements arose to fight threats against mining and oil drilling, privatization
• Eg. Ogoni people alliance with Northern NGOs

Anti-corporate activism

• Anti-sweatshop activism
• Anti-free trade in Canada/US/Mexico
• Defeat of MAI lead by Council of Canadians in 1996

• Global agreement on investment

• Zapatistas

• Indigenous group in Northern Mexico, fight for their rights
• Organized an armed resistance
• A lot of characteristics like occupy wall street
• Big influence
• People took ideas from them

APEC protest in Vancouver in 1977

• Militarized police presence
• Police riot

Key movement Issues

• Against privatization of everything
• Creating new commons

• Commons; common land everyone can use, under neo-liberalism we are loosing the common
• Privatizing everything so we have no common
• Right to clean environment should be a basic right

• Focused on multi-national corporations
• Networks not traditional politics

Comparison with 60s Movement

60s movement

• Focuses on the state
• Local and national
• Hierarchal
• Also focused mostly on issues of global equality in the North

• Fought to let refugees in
• Primary focus on equality

• Sectarian

• Ideologically formed and ideologically motivated

Anti-Globalization

• Global
• Networks

• Not hierarchal
• Each affinity group does their own and then they come together
• Easier to organize and flexible
• Groups that wanted to break windows, so those groups bring all the other groups

• Horizontal

Online organizing

• Very easy to set-up
• A lot of people think they help just because they like or share the page
• Not an answer to talking to people

Day 4- Thursday

Speaker-Aboriginal

Indian Act, 1876

• 1867, the government control over aboriginal peoples lives
• assimilate first nations into gaining control over all aspects of their life
• this legislation has devasting impacts
• developed to legislate aboriginal peoples disappearance
• 1 in 4 native children live in poverty
• high suicide rates, high youth suicide rates
• diabetes, 3x higher than national average
• over 1200 women murdered
• indian act during John A. Mcdonald’s time although say assimilate, meant as extermination
• movie; we were children (aboriginal school experience)

Day 5- Friday

Climate Change- Guest Speaker