Social movements have influenced American life and politics since the start of the 20th century, including radical movements, civil rights movements, labor movements, women’s movements, and more. Many social movement activists came from middle- or working-class backgrounds and 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 their efforts to push their fellow citizens toward more enlightened positions in line with the country’s stated values.
It is also interesting to know that at the start of the 20th century, mainstream political parties often ignored social movement activists who engaged in public education and took to the streets to demand justice, racial equality, and political equality. Through direct action campaigns and political organizing, they asked other Americans to join their cause as a matter of conscience and duty to their fellow human beings. In today’s society new social movements are being created to inform people on racial equality, women’s rights and other important issues that should be on everyone’s mind. In this paper, I will briefly explain movements that combat such issues.
According to the UN on their seventy-second session, 79th meeting on 20th March 2018, there is increased racism, intolerance, and xenophobia. They highlighted the above issue during their International Day for the elimination of Racial Discrimination (United Nations, 2018). The issue of racism cuts across the globe as all countries in the world faces the same problem mainly due to the diverse culture in their countries. The US especially has experienced an increased rate of protests done by a large number of its citizens who suppose one million people. Most of their objections are due to the Presidents Trump’s strict regime to immigrants seeking asylum and his utterances against the Muslim community. Technology is making it easier especially through social media to collect such a vast number of people in a short time (Dockray, 2018).
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The women’s march in January 2018 in Detroit was an event that called upon women all over to come around and help in coordinating activism and political action from the year and beyond. The movement uses the #MeToo, acronym and its fight is against workplace harassment and sexual assault for women at work who are always discriminated and racially abused. The events held so far using the acronym includes the protests against Harvey Weinstein as well as other influential people in Hollywood who harass and abuse women (eko, 2018). #TimesUp movement like the #MeToo has been active in the year where they seek to give voices to the abuse survivors. #BlackLivesMatter is the most trending movement that seeks to protect the lives of black people. The recent event done through this movement was protesting against the banning of black players against taking the knee during national games, the knee symbolizing the support to the movement. The movements protest against the police brutality and racial injustices (Eko, 2018).
It’s quite interesting to see how such movements relate to the issues that we discuss in class. For instance, when looking into the Black Lives Matter movements, No Ban No Wall, DACA, MeToo, etc, politicians have not much to say about racism and other important issues. In class we discussed how in Brazil, specifically you don’t see black men or women in political positions. Although there is a high level of African Americans living in Brazil, majority of the African Americans live in poor areas in which the government there does very little if not nothing to help them in such poor conditions. Children in Brazil are not receiving much education and the opportunities that they need in order to succeed are very limited (Gates, 2011).
This issue is not uncommon in fact you see it occurring to other racial groups. In addition to what is happening in Brazil I want to discuss a movement that occurred in SUNY Plattsburgh, a movement so powerful that it enlightened what it is to have a voice when fighting for racial equality. A few months back there was an incident on campus where a White female student posted a picture on social media along the lines of “lynching all n*** tonight”. This of course brought attention to the rest of the students on this campus and a movement was formed demanding that this individual face the consequences of committing such a hate crime. This movement was so powerful that every student of color including myself marched and did not attend class until the administration team listened to what we had to say.
Another key point in regards to the effects of this movement majority of the student of color did not feel safe attending classes and even took trips to see their families. Situations like these occur all of the time and in many different forms. Social movements, however is the best way to address these issues especially racial equality. The people’s voice is the strongest weapon that we have, I just feel as though majority lack the courage to stand up and speak for what is right and that is honestly what is hindering our chance on creating racial equality.
