UC Berkeley And Tiananmen Square: Video Analysis

As mentioned in video twelve, “Politics, Power & Violence,” the examples of the occurrences at UC Berkeley and in Tiananmen Square can serve as examples of how states not only create social stratification, but maintain the systems as well. Referring back to chapter six, stratification systems, “contain social groups such as families, classes, or ethnic groups that have unequal access to important advantages” (Ember 138). In a sense, the students at UC Berkeley and the protestors in Tiananmen Square can both be examples of stratified groups of individuals—the students of UC Berkeley were deprived of the advantage of the freedom of speech and the protestors in Tiananmen Square lacked the advantage of political freedom. However, both of these

As stated by Dr. Laura Nader in the video, the students at UC Berkeley were denied the right to debate important issues such as, “Civil Rights…the Vietnam War, [and] the military industrial complex” (“Politics, Power & Violence”), by the college itself. Fed up with having no voice while (presumably) the faculty and staff could argue whatever they wished, the students of UC Berkeley created the Free Speech Movement on the campus in the early 1960s, attempting to fight back against their stratification created by the university itself in regard to the freedom of speech. However, the peaceful demonstrations on campus quickly escalated, for, “all of a sudden the police were on campus” (“Politics, Power & Violence”), and students were arrested. As argued by Dr. Nader, this is due to the fact that the university was, “a very hierarchical

As mentioned earlier, Chinese protestors, specifically students, took to the streets of Tiananmen Square in the 1980s in order to fight against the system of stratification placed on them by their state. Specifically, the protestors had a rallying cry for their own, “greater political freedom” (“Politics, Power & Violence”), deprived from them by the rather authoritarian government of China. Furthermore, the students were also calling for political reform within the country, feeling that the current state system was ineffective and needed to change. However, this aim to begin to dismantle the stratification system implemented against them by the state had dire consequences. Instead of just arresting individuals or eventually compromising with the protestors like UC Berkeley, the Chinese government turned to violence. Once they realized that their system of power and authority was being compromised, the Chinese state system, “used soldiers, machine guns, tanks, running over demonstrators' bodies to convey a ultimate message of authoritarian regime that we rule this country by violence” (“Politics, Power & Violence”). Much like the UC Berkeley, the Chinese government felt threatened by the student protesters and reacted in a way that they felt would ensure the continuance of their social stratification and thus make