Blog Post #9

The final chapter of our book talks about several strategies that institutions use to keep social movements from achieving desired goals. This can be done in 4 very different strategies: Evasion, Counter-Persuasion, Coercive Persuasion and Adjustment. The strategy of evasion is typically an institutions go-to strategy when trying to derail the goals of social movements, seeing as though it is the easiest tactic. Evasion is basically just an institution acting as if a social movement does not exist. Evasion is used as a sort of method not only to denounce a social movement, but a way that the institutions can make sure that their own legitimacy is kept tight. This tactic is also easy because institutions don’t usually do ANYTHING when implementing the evasion strategy; they simply “hope” protest will go away. The media also plays a big part in evasion. Since mainstream media is owned by corporations, these institutions have control of what the new sources can and can’t report. The media rarely hurts from this inability to not report movements; the movements are usually the ones that are affected, seeing as though news coverage could greatly impact their legitimacy and visibility. This strategy is most effective mainly because it requires the least work but still produces major results. With just pretending like a social movement does not exist  and having corporate power can take a movement from having a chance to it being a silent whisper.

An example of a movement suffering from institutions tactics of evasion would be the movement that I am working on for my final project; the school to prison pipeline. The lack of visibility in the mainstream media makes it a lot harder for the movement to legitimize itself. Which is why most people are skeptical about the entire movement, in the first place. Especially with a movement that is so detrimental to the future of this country, having that visibility would change the way people perceive the movement.  Through my research with this movement, I have clearly seen sectors of the movement working to gain visibility through media and slogans, but have repeatedly been pushed back by larger institutionalized figureheads hell-bent on making sure these voices do not get heard.