blog post 9

       Chapter 14 discusses tactics used by institutions to stop social movements from achieving their goals. These include evasion, counter-persuasion, coercive persuasion, and adjustment.

      Coercive persuasion is “ designed to convince target audiences that force will follow non-compliance because the persuader has both the capability and intent of using it for legitimate and desirable ends.” Institutions use six tactics in order for coercive persuasion to be effective. The first is expulsion. This is consists of threats by institutions to fire workers, close factories, suspend/expel students, deport the foreign born, deny people religious rights, and many other things along the same lines. This basically means that institutions will threaten to disrupt some aspect of people’s lives such as work, religion, or school. The second tactic is restrictive legislation and policies. This is fairly self-explanatory, but means that institutions will put into place legislation or policies that will suppress social movements, and their members. The third tactic is harassment. This is when institutions will either verbally or physically harass protestors in order to establish their dominance and illustrate their power over the members of the movement. These may be public acts or covert acts done by agencies like the FBI or CIA. The fourth tactic is the use of surrogates, which refers to when institutions will support opposing or competing movements or organizations. This will suppress the target movement by making their opposition grow and become more prominent in society, therefore making their target fade into the background. The fifth tactic is infiltration. This occurs when government agents or sympathizers will become members of their target movement solely for the purpose of gathering information about their progress and activities so the institution can prevent them from occurring successfully. The last tactic is arrests and the use of courts. Being one of the most common coercive tactic, this involves arresting protestors and leaders of a social movement to hinder their development.

The civil rights movement displays examples of all of these tactics brought about by the government to stop equal rights in America. Expulsion was used in the civil rights movement when students of color were threatened to be expelled/kicked out if they tried to attend an all white school. Restrictive legislation and policies were evident all throughout the country through segregation (Plessy v. Ferguson and “Separate but equal”), which hindered the ability for African Americans to gain equality with all other Americans. Harassment was also very evident throughout the country when police officers, other authority figures, as well as white citizens would harass African Americans in order to establish white “dominance” over African Americans at the time. The use of surrogates, like the KKK, can be seen as an opposing movement that had some support by institutions in order to suppress the civil rights movement. Arrests and the use of courts was a common tactic used by institutions to suppress the civil rights movement. Protestors and leaders, like Martin Luther King Jr., were arrested and thrown in jail when they participated in marches or peaceful protests in order to try and hinder the movement’s success. Overall, the civil rights movement exemplifies the use of coercive persuasion by institutions in order to try and suppress a social movement.