Stephen Valocchi - Social Movements and Activism in the USA

What can we learn when we listen closely to and engage in dialogue with social movement activists?

Social Movements and Activism in the USA addresses this question for a group of progressive activists in Hartford, Connecticut, who do community, labor, feminist, gay and lesbian, peace, and anti-racist organizing. Situated within the twenty-first-century landscape of post-industrialism and neo-liberalism and drawing on oral histories, the book argues for a dialogic and integrative approach to social movement activism. The dialogue between scholar and activist captures the interpretive nature of activists identity, the variable ways activists decide on strategies and goals, the external constraints on activism, and the creative ways activists manoeuvre around these constraints. This dialogic approach makes the book accessible and useful to students, scholars, and activists alike. The integrative nature of the text refers to its theoretical approach. Rather than advancing a new theory of social movements, it uses existing approaches as a tool kit to examine the what, how, who, and why of social movement activism.

Stephen Valocchi is Professor of Sociology at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of Queer Studies: An Interdisciplinary Reader (with Robert C. Corber), and has also written numerous essays on progressive social movements in the United States, which have appeared in Mobilization, Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, and Social Problems.

First published 2010
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

2010 Stephen Valocchi

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Valocchi, Stephen M., 1956
Social movements and activism in the USA / Stephen Valocchi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-415-46158-0 (hbk.)ISBN 978-0-415-46159-7 (pbk.)ISBN 978-0-203-87398-4 (e book) 1. Community activistsUnited States. 2. Social reformersUnited States. 3. Social movementsUnited States. I. Title.
HN59.2.V35 2009
303.484dc22
2009002840

ISBN 0-203-87398-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-46158-8 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-415-46159-6 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0-415-87398-X (ebk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-46158-0 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-46159-7 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-87398-4 (ebk)

It should go without saying that this book is dedicated to the many activists in Hartford, Connecticut who shared their time with me. I am honored that these men and women gave so freely of themselves to help me sort out the many questions that have long perplexed me about working for progressive social change in Hartford and by extension throughout the United States. This project was a labor of love, since there is nothing that I love more than a good story of struggle! My only regret is that I had to stop listening to and collecting these stories and to start making sense of them. The sense that I made of them in the pages below is provisional and open to debate. Indeed, if there is one thing I learned from talking with progressive activists, it is that all knowledge is political and therefore subject to dialogue and contestation. It is in this spirit that I present my account of Social Movements and Activism in the USA.

These stories of activists and activism touched other people as well. There were several students who transcribed the interviews and retrieved statistical and historical materials for the book. Like me, they were also moved and educated by these conversations: Chase Anderson, Ben Johnson, Marc Shafer, and Judene Small. Veronica Zuniga also provided technical and word processing assistance. To all of them, I extend my heartfelt thanks!

Three people deserve special acknowledgement. My colleague, Stephanie Gilmore (now at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania), encouraged this project from the outset. She offered her always smart insights and allayed my seemingly constant anxieties. Peter Costella, my long time friend, cooked many meals for me which we both enjoyed while watching reruns of old sitcoms.

Finally, more than anyone else, Lazaros Papanikolaou lived this process with me. I am deeply grateful for his unyielding confidence in me.

There is a certain irony to scholarly work on social movements. On the one hand, this work relies on the lived experiences of individuals as they encounter injustice and devise ways to fight it. These activists struggle on many fronts to make sense of the world around them, convince others of the justness of their cause, and confront numerous obstacles to achieving their goals. Their actions and campaigns are the raw material for scholarly books and essays on social movements. On the other hand, the questions and debates that inform the scholarship on social movements, while grounded in this raw material, are rarely formulated and resolved in dialogue with the individuals who supply this raw material. Many times scholars and activists talk past one another: scholars want the big picture and develop a conceptual vocabulary to bring that picture into focus while activists address immediate concerns and rely on experiential knowledge to make decisions about issues and strategies. Subsequently, we miss opportunities to benefit from each others stock of knowledge. Each purpose is important but there may be ways to reorient the knowledge produced by each for mutual benefit.

I have been reminded of this irony and these missed opportunities many times. My limited participation in various forms of collective action frequently leaves me frustrated with both the slow pace of change and the rapidity with which decisions need to be made. In these episodes, I struggle to find insights from the scholarship that can be useful for these decisions and, not surprisingly, come up empty-handed. Do we storm the presidents office because the administration has not been sufficiently responsive and risk losing supporters or do we continue the less dramatic path of more meetings and risk death by committee? Do we accept managements last and final offer even though it is not all we wanted and risk alienating the more radical workers or do we accept the offer, define it as success, and risk cooptation? These are snap decisions, and the relevant research on these decisions either does not exist or is locked away in theoretical language and specialized methodology. These episodes of contention, moreover, do not lend themselves to the careful deliberation of scholarship by activists in areas where the research is indeed relevant. For example, social movement scholars know a great deal about the costs and liabilities of certain organizational forms for longevity, democracy, creativity, and cooptation (Breines 1989; Freeman 1973; Piven and Cloward 1979; Polletta 2002; Staggenborg 1986; 1989). Activists rarely have the luxury of learning from and then applying this scholarship.