Social Movements

Social Movements, 1768-2004 written by Charles Tilly is a fact filled historical account chronicling the creation and rise of modern social movements. The book primarily focuses on social movements in the context of the democratic political arena, from the intentions of America’s founding fathers to the global deployment of the World Wide Web. At times I found it frustrating to read because Tillly does not seem to account for a lot for a lot of the historical precedent that lead to 1768. Although it is beyond the scope of Tilly’s work here, more crucial to understanding social movements are the studies of linguistics, the written word and print press and ultimately the incredibly swift rise of human communication.

Page 49 contains a chart of 19th century challenging groups and their claims. The 2nd from last listing is 1893-1932, American Proportional representation league, PR against urban political machines. I found the double meaning of PR in this context incredible ironic. Modern public relations PR does the very opposite of “proportional representation.”

On Page 87, Tilly writes about a colleague of his, Todd Gitlin who was one of the original presidents for the national organization of Students for a Democratic Society in the mid 1960’s. The book describes how Gitlin grew disconnected from SDS in the late 1960’s in large part due to interactions SDS openly had with the news media. He felt that the potrail of SDS in the mainstream media was chipping away at the effectiveness of the organization. I found this interesting for a number of reasons. The concept of not talking to the media for fear of misrepresentation is something often found in modern anarchist literature, which seems to have grown out of this sort of thought process and historical action. The equation between SDS and anarchy is quite relevant in the context of SDS’s current role in Olympia and at Evergreen, and the recent actions taken by and against them. I understand the fear historically held by SDS as well as other organizations and movements of misrepresentation in the media, but to me that just shows that they don’t understand how to effectively deal with and talk to the media.