Charles Tilly Seminar Essay

Charles Tilly Seminar Essay
Doug Richert
Tilly starts out discussing the beginning of social movements. What I found interesting was the description on page forty about the Lyon silk weavers.
Yesterday evening a band of about two hundred people came down from the Croix-Rousse into my quarter, led by an improvised master of ceremonies who carried a stave and who preceded four torch-bearers with sixteen-year-old carrying a red flag…Of these individuals, who seemed to range from fourteen to twenty five years of age, two-thirds were carrying staves. They sang the Marseillaise, the song of the Girondins, and then to the melody of the Lampions "Down with the Emperor! Long live the Republic!" On each side of the sidewalk, the band was followed by about thirty individuals thirty to forty-five years old who appeared to be workers and who seemed to be serving as protection.
This demonstration takes place on April 29th 1870. If we were to change a few words such as band, stave, and Emperor, it could pass for a demonstration taking place in Olympia today.
Tilly argues that the social movements have changed over the years, have they really? Or, as people have been given more rights, has it gotten easier to hold protests? The above such protest was held after an (approximately) fifteen year interruption due to the repression of the government. Today in the United States we are give the right to protest and as long as it stays peaceful, the protesters are not bothered. It would be interesting to find out how many protests are held on any given day here in the U.S.
Other countries do not have the same right to protest as we have. Often they are risking their lives when they join a social movement representing something as simple as basic human rights. Many times have we seen violent protests on TV from other countries. These people have no other alternative to get their government’s attention. The sad thing is the protesters lives may not be worth much and the protest turns deadly.
Technology has also changed the way social movements are mobilized. In class the term phone tree was used, Tilly used the same analogy, but instead of calling someone, they used text messages to get the information out. The internet has also changed the way social movements have grown. I did a Google search of "Green Movement" and there were 850,000 hits. The internet has made it much easier to get information out to the public. It has made it much easier for we the people to search out and obtain the information we are looking for. I don’t think the act of social movements have changed much over the last 150 years. It has just become much easier to make one happen.