Inhibitors of Crashing Protests by Force - Essay Example

INHIBITORS OF CRASHING PROTESTS BY FORCE By s Introduction Public protests have been experienced at a high rate worldwide. Some of the reasons that the public protests include poor leadership, inhuman practices in the country, economic crisis, unemployment, terrorism and deterioration on health conditions in the environment. There have protests conducted by students, civil servants and the ordinary people in the society. Some of these protests are violent and ruins the status of the economy and although the government takes the responsibility to stop these protests, it is cautious to avoid using force to crash the violent protests. We are therefore, going to discuss reasons that the government avoids using force to stop protests as below. The government will never use force to crash protest because this would mean to violate the human rights. For example, black southern student sit-in movement was conducted by Civil Rights activists between 1957 and 1960 and affected at least fifteen cities in Greensboro, North Carolina was a function of well-developed and integrated widespread internal organization of civil right participants. Many demonstrations were organized in black people churches that supported the activists with finance. Some of the leaders of the protests were priest, teachers and heads of local organizations. Therefore, use of force to stop their protest would never be possible because it would go to the worst of killing these leaders. This would make the society to lose important people as they played important role in the society.Instead, the government used interviews to dig deep to the reason of the protest a move viewed to be the right move by the Protestants. The interviewers were given freedom to speak out their grievances while the government listening to them.As a result, the participants were able to present their facts in such a way as to enhance their own status. The interviews were appropriate because the accounted for individuals who participated in and were eyewitnesses to the events that were occurring. The government was able to understand about the sit-in that they were connected rather than isolated, initiated through organizations and personal ties, rationally planned and lead by established leaders and supported by indigenous resources thus use of force could not help to end the sit-ins but would have led to more chaos between the sit-ins activists and the government. On the other hand , it was impossible for the government to use force to crash the protests because the cycle of the organization linked to even those involve in the governing body such as black ministers who were ready to organize and commit resources to the church to boost efforts of the protest. Use of black students to conduct demonstrations was a way to diverge the view of the government to see that black students were responsible for the protests but the protest was beyond the black students. Therefore, targeting at college black students could not be the solution to completely stop the protests (Morris 757). From the American Journal of Sociology by McCarthy and Zald, in their ‘Resource mobilization and social movement: a partial theory.’ The resource mobilization theory implies that social movement activities respond to unpleasing situation in the society.McCarthy and Zald implied that social movement is a cycle of events and continues to emerge generation after generation. Therefore, as government, the best solution is to try to completely solve the current situation of social movement by meeting realistic and logical demands of the Protestants instead of using force to stop them. McCarthy and Zald emphasizes that availability of resources for the Protestantsmobilizes the activists to continue with social movements. Therefore, government crashing the protests would just scare the activists for a while then with time they are able to reorganize themselves again with the support of adequate resources that they have and bring back the protests again.Therefore, the government uses the appropriate ways to stop the social movement in a democratic way that would not arouse national indignation. For example, government sometimes promises to fulfill the protestants goals something that naturally encourages the activists to cease with protests because nothing more to use as a complaint for the protests. On the other hand, the government can aim at the sources of the support of the protests to completely cease its mobilization. For example, focusing on those funding the Protestants to stop their support.When there is lack of financial support, there is decreased enthusiasm of the activist’s members that may end up reducing social movements. On the other hand, McCarthy and Zald implied that, the government cannot use force to crash protests because of the rallies behind activists involved in demonstrations, sit-ins and silent watches were always supported with the help of media coverage. The media often offer more attention to the problems and grievances of the Protestants and bring pressure to the government assistances, corporation or various objectives of the protests. Moreover, the government looks at the consequences of the social movement at a political view for example, how would use of force to stop the protest portray the image of the government to other nations? This ensures that the government safeguards its reputation to the other nations. Cultural view for example, how would use of force to stop the protest affect the way people live? Use of force to stop protests would ruin the everyday work of the people in the society that would implicate negative effect on the economy of the country. Biographical view for example, how would use of force to crash protests affect the lives of people involved in the social movements? This is because use of force to stop protests is more likely to involve violence between the government and the activists that would even involve killing in the process of trying to stop the activists to protest. Therefore, McCarthy and Zald conclude that, all these conditions put into consideration by the government, it becomes difficult to use force to crash protests. Journal of Political and Military Sociology by K.L Wilson and A.M Orum 1976 is another article that explains about the protests, which lead to civil wars those widespread incidences of domestic political conflicts that are usually characterized by high levels of violence and human sufferings. These civil wars do not only have economic and devastation but also poses challenges to neighboring states, and regional in terms of security and political stability. As a result, some citizens are dissatisfied or frustrated with this kind of existing political, economic or social conditions hence they build up organization to cause demonstrations to put pressure to the government so that they can demand their rights. Due to extreme uncertainty and risks involved in civil wars, government may find it difficult to use force to stop the protests because it may feel that it is its failure in taking the responsibility to protect its citizens from suffering from effects of civil war. Therefore, citizens in a collective action have the right to demand for their rights. Collective action by the citizen to demonstrate demanding for their rights, the government considers it as a serious issue and tries to understand the purpose of intervention of the third party. Wilson and Orum emphasizes that the purpose of collective political action is to express people’s discomfort due to injustice deprivation hence must act in response to changing political action. They also emphasized on the importance of collective political action because it shows cohesive group identity and shared grievances for political mobilization. The collective political action alerts the attention of other states. Therefore, the government may find it impossible to use force to stop the protests from the citizens because it will call upon the intervention of other states to condemn the act of using force towards Protestants trying to stop them. the use of violence to stop the protests is viewed as a form of frustrations, injustice and resentments practiced by the government towards its citizens hence will raise alarm to other states hence intervene and since the government do not want to ruin its reputation, it will always avoid using force to crash protests. On the other hand, collective political action is a mobilization of a group activity as a whole and not as an individual. Therefore, the government cannot call for mass action by using force to crash the protest because it would mean total violence involving everyone in the society and this would not bring the solution hence it has no other alternative rather than use a peaceful way to solve the problem. The results from the government examine on the nature and magnitude of consequences that would befall the state as an action of using force to stop the protest. However, the type of the protest influenced the course taken by the government to stop protests. This greatly assisted in monitoring any extraordinary behavior in the community. Therefore, from Wilson and Orum discussion on the issue of protest in the American cities, we can conclude that the government can avoid using force to crash protests by organizing its administration in a reformed way that will give opportunities the people in the society to place their problems and grievances they would like to be solved. Formingbranches of administration at lower level such as district level will ensure that the people reports to the authorities at the district level then the leaders present the complaints the head governors. Use of force to stop the protest if they happen will shows that authorities at the lower level of the administration contributed nothing to solve the problem or the problem was critical such that in need urgent solution. Instead, the government decides to use dialogue with the leaders of the protest in order to provide a permanent solution to the problem (Wilson187-202). Peter K. Eisinger on the journal of the condition of protest behavior in American cities explains about political environment and protest. He explains various political environments associated with political protest activities directed towards urban institutions, agencies and officials in American cities. He argues that political environment includes the aspect of formal political structure, the climate of government responsiveness, social structure and social stability. He stated that when the government is unable to provide its citizen with a conducive political environment, the citizens could achieve their needs from the political systems by means of collective action such as protest. This was done by forming diverse groups to exercise influence through representative’s bodies and the influence appears to provoke government action. Peter explains that formal government is able to deal with it citizen by forming other administrations in lower levels such as district to enable it to provide effective and efficient governing to its citizens. He emphasized that forming these branches of administration, it will provide access for more people to voice their grievances and also offer possibility of minority representation both of which serve to expand or open up the structure of opportunities to the society to communicate their needs and complaint to the government much more easily. Moreover, it is an easy way to detect any form of discontenting growing issue that can lead to protest. As a result, the government is able to restrict such issues to bring up protest by discussing it with the society at an early stage and finding a solution hence totally preventing a protest from happening (Eisinger 11-28). On the other hand, Thompson explains that among other causes of riots, food crisis can lead to protest in a state. He explains that if condition of food crisis becomes unendurable such that there is insufficient food, high rate of unemployment or even the food dealers are exploiting the consumers, there is a possibility of protest to emerge. He argues that in eighteenth century, it was able to detect a possibility of protest by the notion of legitimation where men and women would form a crowd with a motivation from their belief that the protest was to defend their traditional rights or customs and in general,the rest of the community would support them. The rare thing that happened to their riots is that they usually had to obtain a license from the authorities something that rarely happen with the modern society. Thompson explains to us that due to their formal food riots that this eighteenth community conducted, the authority without causing chaos in the society easily solved their grievances. Their behavior was modified by customs, culture and reason. Thompson tries to show the paternalism that existed in the eighteenth century where riots where conducted in a very friendly manner without causing chaos as compared to what the modern protests involve. On the other hand, he criticized the selfishness that lead to unnecessary protests. For example, he explains how farmers often boycotted the market in order to ensure the prices favored them and relate this to what is happening to the modern society where people are protesting with a motive of benefiting themselves. Thompson also gave the solution to avoid these riots was for the government to change the English economy that was restricted to benefit certain group of people to a free market. Thompson concludes by providing that the reason that made these eighteenth century people engage in forming riots was because of the English eighteenth century economy and the solutions was to provide the farmers with their needs by ensuring that there was a fair play in the market. Therefore, from Thompson’s view of the cause of protest we can conclude that critical issues that lead to protests by the people are very sensitive to deal with because use of force to stop the people from protesting would make these issues even worst. Therefore, it would be wise for the government to take an immediate step to provide a permanent solution because issues such as food crisis affect the whole community and it is an important input to help people obtain energy to work and support the economy of a state (Thompson 76-130). Moreover, Oliver p. explains on the rewards and punishments as the selective incentives for collective action. In his theoretical investigation, he explains some riots that need special approach to deal with. He explain that most of the collective action that took place in 1968 involved property or commodity riots that lead to vandalism, looting and destruction of properties. Oliver goes farther to explain that the riot involved two parties, the civilians who particularly destroyed property and the police who caused violence to the civilians by beating them up and firing guns to them. Moreover, in 1968 Oliver explains that there were communal riots that involved rioters from different ethnic groups, religious or people who spoke a certain language of their own. As a result, there was mass killing of people from different ethnic, mass vandalizing of properties, looting and destruction of religious centers. From these incidences, Oliver explains that some of the protests that people involve themselves in are dangerous not only to the other people but to ourselves. On the other hand, vandalizing, looting and destruction of properties does not bring the solution to our grievances, complaints or problems that we want to find solutions towards but instead they leads to further losses and problems. These actions are ailing the society and government intervention helps to prevent them. On the other hand, the procedure of the government to intervene to bring solution to the riots is a main factor that determinesthe consequence of what would happen during theprotests. Therefore, government will avoid using force to crash the rioters to prevent further destructions to the people’s properties because vandalism, looting and destruction of properties pulls back investors of the propertiesvandalized, looted and destroyed by dragging them behind financially. Moreover, during the riot, some people may lose their life and further violence by the intervention of the government by using force means there will be more bloodshed in the shoot-out between the rioters and the law enforcers deployed to stop the riot where some of innocent people are killed or injured (Oliver1356-1375). Turner explains another view of protest in his, “The public Perception of Protest.” He illustrates social movements as an attempt of events to try to perform claims towards those involved in the protest so that they can win attention of the other people including the government. Referring to the riots that happened in 1969, Turner explains that the reasons for the demonstrations that the rioters gave were unconvincing and they ended up developing critique towards the reasons that people give to protest. He further argues that the mentality created by a group of people contributes greatly to formations of riots since their interaction and exchange of ideas influences the decision they make. Therefore, from how Turner view formation of riots, we observe that, negative peer influence unconsciously involve innocent people to do actions that they would not do at their own risk but undertake the action of riots bearing the risk as a group. For example, teens at school are influenced to protest by their teachers in order to meet the teacher’s demands from the government. Therefore, when such protest occur and the government aims to intervene, the government cannot use force to crash the protests because the rioters are just teens who have no great danger to deal with without harming them instead, the government can decide to discipline them in order to impact fear on them never to participate in such anti-social behavior. On the other hand, use of force would make some of teens to lose their life will they are still young something that would be interpreted as a loss of future leaders who may play an important part in assisting in building their country in future (Turner 815-831). Suzanne Staggenborg explains resource mobilization theory further by arguing that some of the activists form social movements as their professional from the funds they receive in order to lead a protest. They make protesting as their career by being movement’s leaders. These activists formalize social movement organization where people with grievances or complaints towards something pay the activists who then carry out the protest. Professionalization and formalization of their organization forms a coalition work. On the other hand, these activist bears all the consequences that include being arrested by the government and being punished by thorough beating by the law enforcers while trying to ‘fight’ for the rights of those who have funded them to conduct a protest.Because of passing through such challenges, activists develop body resistance such that even if police often beat them, they cannot give up and instead they continue conducting the protests. Therefore, government find it impossible to clear all these social movement organizations because of the funding they receive from people and the activist are reluctant to stop protesting because protesting becomes their professional career. On the other hand, since protests happen in presence of young people, leaders of the social movement organization train youth to protest hence the Protestants group continues to expand and take roots such that government’s effort to end these organizations bears no fruits.The government find it inappropriate to use force to crash these protests because violence cannot completely swipe the members of the social movement organization since these activists have already formed careers out of movement work, leaders train youth to carry out social movements hence there learning and exchange of skills such as public relation skills. These skills caneasily transferred from one organization to another and from one course to another therefore, the government is limited to use force to crash these protests because of these reasons. Therefore, due to the above-discussed reasons, the government often finds it difficult to use force to crash protests (Staggenborg 585-606). List of References K.L. Wilson and A.M. Orum. 1976. Mobilizing people for collective political action, Journal of Political and Military Sociology. Morris.1981.Black Southern student sit-in movement: an analysis of internal organization’, American Sociological Review. R.H. Turner.1969The Public Perception of Protest, American Sociological Review. Staggenborg.1988.The consequences of professionalization and formalization in the pro-choice movement, American Sociological Review. Read More