Social Movements: The Women's Rights Movement

Societal change occurs when one person or a group of people decide it's time to stand up against a norm, to engage in deviant behavior in order to change the pace of time. These deviances become known as social movements. Some of the biggest social movements include The Civil Rights Movement, The Women's Rights Movement, and The Environmental Movement. All of these have had a significant impact on society as a whole, after all, neither black persons nor females would have near the rights they do now had these movements not taken place. But, how and why do social movements become so big? In “This is an Uprising” Engler and Engler constantly bring up the difference between a movement and an organization. But which one is more successful? The

These three major components are what make a movement so acknowledged and are framed in Engler and Engler’s book. Disruption is described as the factor that employs outbreaks and momentums (145). The nine black students definitely did this and, although unintentional, it was a crucial part of their reformation. The moment the black students stepped onto the high school’s campus was when the riots broke out resisting this change, hence the disruption. Although the nine students did not themselves disrupt, they caused a disruption of the higher class, which is more influential than the other way around. Secondly, the minority students sacrificed their safety, their families safety, and their education by being some of the first African Americans to integrate in school. They went to a school where everyday was a threat to their safety; they risked getting punched, tripped, shamed, or even killed by the overwhelming amount of white students. Their families were taunted and threatened by other white parents on top of being beaten in the mobs. Their education was jeopardized because they were constantly distracted by the dangers and whites around them, this could have caused mental health issues and a lowered grade average. Also interesting is that in doing this act, the students consequently put other blacks in the reign of

Hybrid movements use strategic methods to create a movement that has both mass force and structure. One example of a successful hybrid revolution is Optor. Engler and Engler suggested “Optor developed a type of momentum driven organizing” and further explains it as having disruptive power while maintaining mass mobilization (65). The mass protests, which often times included pranks and disruption, were carefully planned to the brink. Their slogans, pranks, and locations suggested the movement planned for everything. Having a hybrid, allows the revolt to be free yet structured in a sense that the members feel connected to what the movement is trying to pursue. The hybrid nature grants the possibility to have multiple objectives and hence, many supporters join because of this. All in all, the change made through structures mass mobilization can create many more possibilities than simply relying on organization or disruptive protests. Optor was successful in the overthrow of Milosevic because of their structured strategies and clever pranks that recruited and kept many