Call for a Mass Movement

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, says we need a mass movement for economic justice. on CSPAN as a result of the $700 billion bailout package before congress.

Booking Rosa

Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up a seat to a white passenger. It may not be well known that she was sitting in the black section. There is a rule though that if you are in the black section and the whites do not have a seat the driver can get you to move back or stand. The idea is not only to get a white man a seat but to get a white passenger all of the row. Three other passengers in that row moved back but Rosa refused. I am sure there was a seat available to the white passenger but they wanted all the rows cleared and she was arrested not for giving up her seat but for not clearing out her row. The same driver had evicted her from a bus 12 year earlier after she paid her fare, she had to leave the bus to enter from the back door and he drove off leaving her in the rain. This too was the custom.

Mongomery Bus Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott officially started on December 1, 1955. In South Africa, the first Alexandra bus boycott took place in 1940 paving the way for bus boycotts as a strategy of protest.

Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress later called "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement".
On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Her action was not the first of its kind: Irene Morgan, in 1946, and Sarah Louise Keys, in 1955, had won rulings before the Supreme Court and the Interstate Commerce Commission respectively in the area of interstate bus travel. But unlike these previous individual actions of civil disobedience, Parks' action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. (Wikipedia, 2008)

Moments in Mass Movements

There are many moments that are memories ingrained in the fabric of mass movements.

Civil Rights Movement:
Rosa Parks
Bus Boycott
Marches
Civil Rights Act

Anti-Apartheid Struggle
Gandhi Protests
Treason Trial
Sharpeville
Steve Biko
UDF
Funerals
Mandela

Examples of Mass Movements

The two already mentioned are the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle.
Other candidates for mass movements are:
The Slavery Abolitionist Movement
The Womens Liberation Movement
The French Revolution
The GLBT Movement

General movements include
Political Movements
Religious Movements
Art Movements
Cultural Movements

Mass Movement Stages

When mass movements are formed, they often go through a number of stages. These stages were described by Donovan and Bowers:
Petition
People who believe in a cause petition the sources of power (government, industry, etc.) to meet demands that are, rather annoyingly, just a bit too far for the holders of power to concede. This gives the petitioner reason to continue the game, getting angry at the powerful and finding a personal power through their own helplessness.
Promulgation
Fired up by the non-cooperation of those in power, the agitators now seek allies and like-minded individual (or, perhaps, those who are easily led). They hand out leaflets, they hold rallies, they feed stories to the press and generally propagate the idea that those in power are unreasonable and dangerous.
Solidification
With the success of promulgation, the group solidifies into a coherent organization that revolves around its leader. Social grouping starts to appear and a hierarchy is created to provide a system of control. The leader will, of course, seek to maintain the group and stamp his or her identity onto the group.
Polarization
One way the leader maintains control is to retain focus on the enemy, who is increasingly cast as bad and evil, which naturally leads to the conclusion that the members of the movement are good and righteous. Key 'flag' issues are identified and receive intense focus. Individuals in the opposition are singled out and vilified as embodying all that is bad about them.
Non-violent resistance
Initially, resistance is likely to be non-violent and passive, with actions such as 'work to rule', strikes, sit-ins, blocking access and cold-shouldering the opposition. A common subversive goal is to goad the opposition into violence or at least to force them to call the police. The group will then manipulate the media to make themselves appear harmless and helpless whilst the opposition is spiteful and immoral.
Escalation
This may then lead to public confrontation, where confrontation may be aggressive, at least in language. Threats may be made. Property may be damaged. It is less and less possible to converse and even mediators may be rejected.
'Gandhi vs. guerrilla'
The non-violent elements within the movement may now go to the opposition and plead with them to concede, lest those who are more violent give in to their basic drives and take even more radical and dangerous action. In effect, this is a variant on the hurt and rescue theme.
Revolution
Finally, when the opposition refuse to concede, the movement will take to the streets, publicly breaking the law and using violence with anyone who stands in their way. They act as a mob, and people who would normally be peaceful get drawn into the violence and commit acts of which they may later bitterly regret. Yet whilst the leaders of the group can sustain the maelstrom, primitive drives are whipped into the fore and revolution has its day.

Bowers, J. and Donovan, O. (1971). The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control, Reading, MA: Addison Wesley

Precipitating Event

Every Movement requries a precipitating event. The event has a number of requirements. One is that it is follows a pattern so there are a number of people who suffer the event. Another aspect is that it is ordinary in the face of a broad community experience. Of course the movement may be defined by an actual event and the other aspects may not be as apparent.
For instance the precipitating event of the Civil Right Movement is recognized as Rosa Parks refusal to give up her seat, and her arrest. There were manyothers before her who had a similiar expereince and hers was not an isolated event.

Mass Topics

The topics for mass organizations are the simple injustices that can be easily identified by a large population. The issues cannot be complicated or have multiple interpretations or even multiple reasonable points of views. The injustices will in fact have many justifications but the ordinary experience must be straightforward enough to nullify all the justifications.