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Lecture7-SocialJusticeSocialMovementsandStrategiesforDismantlingOppression.ppt
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Before we can understand what social justice is today, we need to understand its history…

Long History of Social Justice

For an interesting history of social justice beginning with the Greeks and Romans, please see:

“Social Justice: History, Purpose and Meaning”

by Allan C. Ornstein (2017)

Social Movements and Progressivism

Progressivism
“Social Movements and Progressivism”, Halpin & Cook, 2010)

  • Social justice and social movements are founded in Progressivism
  • Progressivism as a reform tradition has always focused its moral energy against societal injustice, corruption, and inequality.
  • Progressivism was built on a vibrant grassroots foundation, from the Social Gospel and labor movements to women’s suffrage and civil rights to environmentalism, antiwar activism, and gay rights.

Progressivism – con’t

  • Activists and leaders believed deeply in:
  • empowerment and equality of the less privileged in society
  • primacy of democracy in American life
  • the notion that government should safeguard the common good from unchecked individual and commercial greed.
  • Challenged government to eliminate its own legal injustices
  • Harnessed the force of government as a vital tool for advancing human freedom and establishing the “more perfect union” envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

Progressivism – Con’t

  • Central to all progressive social movements: people do not have to wait for change from the top down—that people themselves can be catalysts for change from the bottom up.
  • Activists came from middle- or working-class backgrounds
  • Possessed the courage and skill to organize others, risking great personal sacrifice and danger.
  • Nonviolent themselves, many of these activists faced ridicule, violence, and other hardships in efforts to push their citizens toward more enlightened positions in line with the country’s stated values.

Image: Courtesy of the White House

Martin Luther King, Jr. was an activist and fierce advocate for social justice during the Civil Rights Movement in the US in the 1950-60s.

Please read his biography here: https://www.biography.com/people/martin-luther-king-jr-9365086

Martin Luther King, Jr
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (1963)

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

Core values of progressivism

  • freedom in its fullest sense
  • a commitment to the common good
  • pragmatic reform
  • human equality
  • social justice
  • democracy
  • cooperation and interdependence

(Halpin & Cook, 2010)

Struggle

  • Social movements, by definition, arise from a committed minority of citizens working together to shape larger public consciousness about particular injustices in addition to working for concrete political change.
  • BUT…they have not always been harmonious and cooperative (i.e. feminist movements. LGBT+ movements)

Early movements:
Two main categories

Early movements developed in response to grave injustices in American life that directly or indirectly affected a significant segment of society:

Formal inequality of women, African Americans, immigrants, and gays and lesbians led to various movements for civil rights, equality and individual rights

Poor working conditions and poverty-level subsistence of wage earners led to the rise of the labor movement for economic justice

1. Social movements for equality

  • Draw heavily from religious teachings about human dignity and solidarity, Enlightenment thought about human autonomy, and formative political documents such as the Declaration of Independence.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Examples of early equality movements:

Abolitionism (to end slavery)

  • focused on restoring human rights of African Americans; full-blown assault on an American economic system that exploited an entire race of people for the financial benefit of a privileged few
  • Thomas Paine; John Adams; William Lloyd Garrison; David Walker; Frederick Douglass; Angelina Grimke; Abraham Lincoln
  • Earliest anti-slavery doc: German Quaker resolution against slavery signed in 1688.

Examples of early equality movements:

Suffrage and Women’s Rights

  • mid-19th to early 20th century marked first time when women’s rights became a revolutionary movement in American politics.
  • Catalyzed by the abolitionist movement
  • The Seneca Falls Convention (1848) - considered the genesis of worldwide women’s equality movements
  • Leading American feminists and some men - Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Frederick Douglass - came together to chart path for achieving equal political and economic rights for women.
  • Susan B Anthony and Lucy Stone –voting rights

Examples of early equality movements:

Civil Rights Movement

  • Formally begins 1909 – founding of NAACP
  • Fueled by Social Darwinism, pseudoscientific theories about racial intelligence and hereditary breeding, Jim Crow Laws, segregation, KKK
  • W.E.B. Du Bois’s groundbreaking book, The Souls of Black Folk
  • Niagara Movement (precursor to the NAACP) recommended a aggressive steps to secure political power and civil rights for blacks
  • called for freedom of speech, universal suffrage, the abolition of all racial distinctions based on race and color, the importance of work, the principal of human brotherhood
  • Later leaders: Thurgood Marshall, MLK, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks,

Examples of early equality movements:

Other Early Civil Rights Movements

  • Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers used nonviolent protests and labor strikes to fight for decent wages and living standards for Latino agricultural workers; National Council of La Raza were formed to extend the civil rights advances of the 1960s to Hispanic Americans.
  • Stonewall Uprising – 1969 – LGBT Rights (we’ll talk about this in depth later in the term)
  • King started the Poor People’s Campaign to secure adequate employment, housing, and guaranteed incomes for the least well-off Americans, black and white.

2. Movements for economic justice

  • At the turn of the 20th century, the nation began to experience unprecedented increases in prosperity with the advent of industrial capitalism, a rising class of wage earners, and shifts in agricultural production.
  • But the many people left out of this growth and opportunity experienced widespread hardship.

Examples of early economic justice efforts:

  • Grangers and Farmers’ Alliances sought easier access to credit and new markets.
  • Greenbackers and Silverites proposed monetary reforms to increase purchasing power and reduce debts for laborers and farmers.
  • Single Taxers like Henry George argued for progressive taxation on speculative land ownership.
  • Utopian writers like Edward Bellamy called for a “cooperative commonwealth” to replace competitive capitalism.
  • Social Gospel proponents argued for the application of Christian values throughout government and the economy.

Examples of early economic justice efforts:

  • Labor Movement: unions sought collective bargaining power, arbitration, and the selective use of strikes to get better wages and working conditions.
  • Populists of various stripes called for social protections, municipal ownership of utilities, and railroad reforms.
  • Settlement house founders like Jane Addams sought to uplift immigrants and the lower classes through education, art, and basic services.
  • Middle-class progressive reformers aimed to fight corruption in politics and promote greater democratic control over government

Questions to think about moving forward

  • Do we believe that government plays a vital role in promoting human freedom and opportunity or do we think people should be left alone without protections or support?
  • Should markets and corporations be free to do as they please or do they require effective management and regulation to maximize both private and public gain?
  • Are all of our people deserving of individual rights, life opportunities, and personal dignity or do we accept inequalities and differences as inevitable?
  • Do we have obligations to one another and to a shared purpose within our society or should we focus on our own well-being and let others do the same?

How do we begin to dismantle oppression?

Strategies for Dismantling the “Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist Cisgender Heteropatriarchy”

Examples of contemporary social justice movements

For the Discussion Board

  • Pick a contemporary social justice movement or group!
  • Research and present:

How/why/when the group/movement started

Issues/campaigns they are working on today

How to get involved

EXTRA CREDIT

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