AIM Toolbox and Social Movement Theory

Karshner/Egyptian Rhetoric

1. “Ancient Egyptian concept of rhetorical magic as a practical wisdom that allows an individual to function fully within the boundaries established by a perceived cosmic order.
1. Rhetorical Magic that allows the individual to act within the boundaries established by a perceived cosmic power.
2. AI’s do this through dedication to their spirituality and use of it to guide their acts in AIM. “The movement is a spiritual movement foremost therefore all of AIM’s acts are done for spiritual (cosmic order)  good and reason.”
2. Ancient Egyptians applied rhetorical magic to ease the dissonance felt between intellectual engagement and the semiotically saturated cosmology in which they dwelt.
1. Karshner is claiming that Ancient Egyptians used rhetorical magic to cope with the conflict between their cosmic beliefs and intellectuality.
2. AIM uses their spiritual motivation to heal their dissonance with political agenda moves. Intellectually they want to address political dissonance and they will do that whatever way they need to and they ethically deal with this by putting their spirituality first. This relates to magical rhetoric as the AIM spirituality is the boundary in which they must act.
3. These same ancient rhetorical practices hold promise in assisting our own attempts to navigate a world inundated with information.
1. Ancient rhetorical practice still relate to our world today. AE rhetoric helps navigate a world inundated with information.
2. AIM could be considered a group that has seen many different generations of this world inundated with information and could be accused of navigating this through their magical spirituality rhetoric. Like leaning on their faith in hard times.  
4. What is more, these early philosophers saw that this world (individual and social) and the other (cosmological) operated according to the same principles.
1. Cosmological world operates the same as this individual and social world.
2. AIM’s cosmological world operates the same as the individual and collectivist world.
5. Through perception, the heart/mind would design an idea,the mouth would speak it and, as if by magic, the task would be accomplished.
1. Magically the task thought of in heart and mind would be done by the mouth.
2. This seems like simple cause and effect. You think and idea then take action. Which is what AIM does yes. Conceptually if this perception is saying that any minute detail of the movement will be achieved as if by magic and was just thought of in mind or heart its as if it is effortless and there is no resistance so then why be so passionate about the movement
6. Thoughtful, reasoned speech was the mechanism for re establishing the order that was manifested in the reasoned creation of the universe. Power and magic were a part of an individual’s very existence.
1. Reasoned speech is responsible for the established order of the universe.. Reestablished to what order was originally manifested. People are inherently made out of power and magic.
7. The rhetoric of Egyptian magic was based on the idea that deeper foundational truths were expressed in a highly figurative, mythical language as a means to avoid an anti foundational emphasis on language only.

8. Truth and the expression of truth were not seen as mutually exclusive. Maps to truth not truth itself. Magic, operating as an epistemic rhetoric, sought to reconnect the practitioner, through reasoned speech, to the ethical truth of the universal mind.
9. In short, it was intense individual effort directed toward the apprehension and expression of the seemingly inaccessible realm of the mystical that elevated the profane word to sacred truth in the end.

This is the perfect tool box to apply. Karshner is claiming that Ancient Egyptians used rhetorical magic to cope with the conflict between their cosmic beliefs and intellectuality. The AE’s did this through

Social Movement Analysis Commentary

AIM Pearlman and Fallacies

Mostly pearl man and commentary.

American Indian Movement AIM Final Post

The American Indian Movement limits the context of the movements political agenda by constant comparison to spirituality. Spirituality being the base of the movement as defined in the AIM websites profile, this movement is proclaimed as a “spiritual movement, a religious rebirth, and rebirth of dignity and pride in people” which should be on an individualistic level yet, throughout the movements time we see a shift from individualism to collectivism. The movements timeline that claims to be for the past 500 years yet a comparison of the 60’s-70’s decade and the post 2000’s will show that the movement has completely ignored the individualistic spiritual agenda of their movement. The movement shifts to a collectivist political agenda that addresses the non-american indian audiences adoption of the american indian culture and over all social injustices through peaceful protest and demand for policy change yet no religious rebirth is occuring in the spiritual based movement.

Soulforce

Soulforce was established to achieve equality for all marginalized populations by challenging the Religious conservatives. This social movement is a nonofficial, non-violent movement that uses fasting and peaceful protests to get their message across. The main focus of Soulforce was originally to fight for LGBTQI equality, specifically equality in the eyes of the Christian right, but now has taken on much larger future goals. Since their founding more and more Christians have come to accept LGBTQI members and preachers so now Soulforce has begun to focus on all social justice issues, such as race. The movement began as a specific move for LGBTQI equality and has now grown to fight for other forms of equality as well. This movement uses words associated with revolution and violence in much of their literature in order to increase the power of their nonviolent actions. By only preaching nonviolence but using words that evoke a sense of revolution their nonviolent actions carry a more powerful message and meaning.

Final Data Blogpost on the Arab Sprimg

Final Data Blogpost on the Arab Sprimg

The Arab Spring Movement was a series of protest, demonstrations, and riots that took place throughout North Africa and the Middle East. These protest were in response to the numerous oppressive dictatorships present in the these countries. The Arab Spring was inspired by the Tunisian revolution in early 2010 and died out in late 2012. Only Tunisia has successfully transitioned to a functioning democracy. The revolution was greatly facilitated by social media which allowed the protesters to circumvent the government controlled media and authorities in order to organize demonstrations.

Visual:	The colors of the flags are high contrast to draw the attention of the viewer and create a sense of urgency. They also happen to be the same colors as a caution sign.
Genre: Icons	Protesters use the Rabia hand symbol on protest flags. This gesture is supposed symbolize the all those who had been beaten, imprisoned or killed by the egyptian army.

Visual:	The font is bold to create a sense of urgency. The words of emphasis “Assad” and “Up” are the largest, in bold, and in bright red to indicate importance.
Symbolism:	The sign contains the green cedar symbol which is the symbol of the lebanese flag, The sign also contains all the colors of the lebanese flag which indicates a populist/democratic message.

The ever-changing relationship between technology and humanity, and where the two become indistinguishable is what defines  the nature of  Donna J. Haraway's cyborg theory. A contemporary application of cyborg theory can be no clearer than in the Arab Spring protest movement. The Arab Spring movement was at the intersection of technological and classic protest.  Haraway writes "cyborg politics is the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism." the Arab Spring movement subverted the classical forms of communication through centralized media and public meeting places and used technology as the vehicle of communication. Haraway also saw cyborg theory as a way to transcend categories from class to gender through the medium of technology. This was demonstrated by the Arab Spring movement by giving a voice to individuals regardless of class. It also showed how insignificant  distinctions of class and gender can be by allotting an anonymous identity online, whereby an individual only identifiable by a twitter egg and a username of their choosing can have power in politics.

Social Movement Theory

The Arab Spring movement is hard to map out as a movement as a whole when it comes to applying social movement theory. This is because there were many "Arab Springs" in many different countries. These different section of the movement had varying degree of success and engaged in some different tactics. The oppression of the people of of many middle-eastern and North African countries by their leaders has been an unexpressed public issue for a long time, but could not be discussed and retaliation organized successfully until the Arab Spring. The Arab spring brought political oppression to be a trending issue, but not quite to the level of a campaign in most countries. Solutions rarely came about, and only Tunisia became an actual democracy. The full spectrum of radicality was expressed in the Arab spring movement, though it was often praised as peaceful resistance, it often turned violent when protesters confronted the police. Often sectarian violence and terrorism erupted during the protest including many Shiite attacks. The movement existed in the chaotic phase of organization, with no central leader, protest were organized on social media and protest were not precisely executed. The demands made by the Arab Spring protesters while very purposeful and remained very unclear and mostly settled on general dissatisfaction with the government. This may be a major reason the movement was a failure as a whole.

Big Pharma Final Post

Social Movement Theory

Where the Big Pharma Movement Fits In:

In the layers of the Social Movement rainbow that Dr. Vrooman showed us that we have the first layer of the how social movements progress. It starts with a public issue, which in my case are the high prices of medications that people need to live. The issue then turned into a trend, which I saw on twitter. The hash tags associated with the movement are #BigPharma, #DrugPrices, #health, and #PharmaGreed. Those are only a few of the hashtags of the movement but were the ones I saw the most on Twitter. Now it is in the stage as a campaign. They are having a conference on lowering the price of drugs to make them more affordable and to try and tell lawmakers to resist the temptation of supporting Big Pharma. People are also sharing their stories of how big pharma has affected them negatively in not being able to get medicines or the medications being pushed onto them because of big pharma pushing meds like opioids onto people and they overdose and die from it. As a result of these stories there are humanitarian organizations like, “A Fair Shot” and “Affordable Medicines Now.” People are also protesting it, which is peaceful protest. They have displays of signs and works of art that protest the high prices of medicines.

            In the organization area it is pretty organized with conferences on it and organized protests on the hill. Their demands are pretty clear and they have achieved some of those demands in some of the humanitarian organizations. Also the demands are purposeful. The stage of the movement is just trying to get more people involved and sharing there stories. It is a continuous fight with big pharma to get the prices of drugs down.

Gay Rights Movement Final Post

I apologize about the glare on the photo - there is no good lighting in my house!

Basically this covers the Social Movement Theory in relation to the Gay Rights Movement. The hardest part about understanding the Gay Rights Movement is trying to understand it as one movement. It is very similar to that of the Feminist Movement where there are several waves and this is where the chart from above comes into play (I have highlighted where it stands on the spectrum).

Ideas
Almost simultaneously, the GRM (Gay Rights Movement) is in the end of its campaign movement and moving into the next wave of itself with identifying another set of public issues that it wants to tackle. The GRM has successfully obtained the right to legally marry at the federal level. While they still fight in the small communal settings of marriage, they are now protected under the law to be guaranteed the right to marry in all states. However, now that the movement has achieved their big goal, they are having to restructure to allow for the movement to stay alive. This comes with the aligning of themselves in support of other major "Human Rights Movements." One of the biggest movements that they have starting aligning themselves with is the Black Lives Matter Movement. This is obvious with signage that reads "BLACK - QUEER - LGBT LIVES MATTER." This restructuring and merging comes with the implementation of LGBTQ politicians into different political positions at various different levels of government.

Radicality
The GRM began with peaceful protesting, but has become more radical over time. As of now, they stand somewhere between peaceful protest and almost to civil disobedience. The most "disobedient" protest have only barely crossed the line into being considered civil disobedience. The worst thing that a protest has done was fill the streets in Washington D.C. to block traffic to and from the Supreme Court building [Fun fact: I was actually in D.C. when this happened]. A lot of the success of this movement needs to be attributed to the fact that the protests have been non-violent and non-terror based. Since this movement is based on the idea of "equality in love," the movements need to be based in love and showing love to all people - not hatred.

Organization
Overall, there is no obvious controlling person or entity over the movement as a whole. There are a few different people and websites that control certain sections and/or regions of the movement throughout the country. In general, most of the organizational force behind the movements seems to be social media, especially twitter. This bring up the newest wave of the GRM with the new hashtag #20GayTeen. Upon further research, I found that this hashtag began with an old Disney Channel star. Apparently, this hashtag is in reaction to the political uproar of LGBTQ representation in various different levels of the government. This hashtag is to also promote the upcoming run of elections for lower levels of government because of the fact that the lower government can have such a great impact in moving "up the flagpole."

Demands
The relates heavily back the the "Ideas" section. Since the GRM is literally at the beginning of its next wave, the demands are still quite unclear, but the movement does seem like it has a purpose. The next wave of the movement seems to want to promote human rights as a whole and also change not just politics, but the politicians themselves. At one point, the demands were very clear: the right to marry across all 50 states. But this is where we find ourselves having to study this movement just a little bit harder. It is in the middle of rebranding itself and finding something to support withing the Human Rights Movement spectrum.

Thesis
The GRM is at the end of one wave and at the beginning of another all while trying to hold on to its picturesque support of human rights as a whole.

Black Power Final Blog Data

Introduction

The Black Power movement was certainly the radical movement of the civil rights era, defining the ideals of civil disobedience and vast organization with groups such as the Black Panthers and the Muslim Brotherhood. Leaders such as Malcolm X promoted these radical ideals in order to achieve their goals, while also connecting back to a sense of African nationalism. Where the idea of violence seems to come into play is that the Black Power movement was particularly interested in Western African culture, mostly due it being the most heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade. Due to this association with wanting to connect to African roots and a sense of African nationalism with western culture, the Black Power movement deeply connected their movement with the Zulu culture of Africa. This culture was dominating and conquering and Zulu warriors were considered to be some of the better trained fighters in history. Connection to this Zulu culture is what led to much of the attitude and tactics of the Black Power Movement and their sense of radicalism.

Method

To look at this connection to African nationalism and Zulu culture, much of the Black Power protest and African connection was shown through the clothing, practice, posters, and artwork. The Black Power Movement, while promoting racial justice, was strongly for creating a sense of black identity. Due to racial injustice from America, the movement looked to the origin land of the black race and wanted to seperate themselves from Americanism. By connecting to Zulu culture, this separated themselves from america and a sense of claiming an identity that was stripped from them, mostly being prevalent in the Muslim Brotherhood, as they reclaimed African names in order to resist against the “slave names” given to their ancestors. The strong sense of reclaiming and creating a black identity was done through this African nationalism, so to look at black identity, in this sense, is to look at the black power movement method.

Data and Analysis

So we have several pictures that are meant to depict the Black Power movements Zulu nationalism. We see that much of the photos and images have connections to the warrior based culture of the Zulu and the anti norm African wardrobe. Much of the protest, particularly by the black panthers, are organized into what looks like armies of soldiers. Although seen as violent, the desperate need to separate from injustice and wanting to find their own identity after continuously being rejected by white culture, black people were forced to find their own identity and looked to reclaim and integrate the culture of the “motherland.” This also shows a means in which to seek what has not rejected, as they are all Americans, yet yearn for a culture they have never experienced, but this particular culture had yet to wrong them. They were able to romanticize Zulu culture and apply this romanticism to their identity and movement as they tried to handle and attack injustice in white America.

Zulu Warrior

Black Panther “warriors”

Civil Rights leader in Western African clothing

Contemporary Data

We have seen a revitalization in the African nationalism movement with the recent release of Black Panther as many have looked to reclaim and appreciate black culture. Many of us walk around saying “Wakanda Forever” as a sense of acknowledging and appreciating heritage. We have seen this reclaim due to the recent new sparks of injustice with the killings of black people by cops. This is to show that when rejected by a culture, protesters will seek another to romanticize, in this case, the world of Wakanda, in order to promote their own identity and counter culture.

Conclusion

This form of counter culture is created not to integrate, but to form a separate culture. This is meant to show that the injustice creates a new culture. As a new culture is formed, it is meant to try to integrate into society, creating a even more radical movement with expectations of acceptance of this new culture. This is what is happening now and is strongly mimicking the method and tactics of the Black Power Movement.

Safe Ground Sacramento Plan

Main Driving Focal points for center of presentation: 

Social Movement Mission Focality:

• Motive of Safe Ground----> Exonerate homeless people from becoming incarcerated. Give the homeless a place to reside freely.
• Safe Ground wants to reveal to the public that homeless must be treated fairly and not be tampered with in everyday lifestyle.
• This is a basic concept that is put on several platforms and through several exposures that behold a prominent social worth standard to essentially help the homeless.
  
  
  Through which approaches are token to present discourse?
  - Peaceful justifications
  - Natural Connection of human morailty(Made into obligation/duty)
  - Deontological or left wing theory token to present material
  - Social media appealing
  
  

Religious Connectives: Driving To lead vast amounts involved through alternate platform

Abstract application of perelman. Something that should be justified within the worth of what is entailed of every human being. Whether individual is religious or not, there is a morbid intrinsic value that is appealed through to anyone that reveals an obligation to help people with just the aspect of evangelicalism pressed upon society.

• Lutheran
• Catholic
• Methodist
• United Church of Christ
• Presbyterian

Rally for random things like my sanity for help

When it comes to comparing the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or  Fear, it doesn't really follow the "model" of a social movement. The entire thing is a passive aggressive irony towards social movements. There isn't much rhyme or reason to how this rally came together. There isn't really a main idea to it except to be aggressively ironic towards social movements. There is suspicion that it was just a some sort of political ploy to confuse those "young" and new voters in the midst of midterms. It doesn't have much of a trend to it considering it was two satirically "movements" that turned into one because they thought it would be funny and cool and all that wild sh!t. If I had to categorize the organization of this rally, I would say chaotic. Although, there isn't much rhyme or reason to, they still had enough organization to plan for all of these famous people to come and make some sort of appearance. The purpose of this movement was to be aggressively ironic, so I guess there wasn't really much of a purpose, but to be satirically and strategic at the same time. Ayyoo

final project data blog post (piquetero movement)

Idea:
Public Issues- Argentina's government implemented neoliberal policies. Which consist of deindustrialization, deregulation, and the decentralization of educational and health service. This led to people losing their jobs and even effected those without one.

Radicality:
Peaceful Protest- The movement consists of blocking roads by walking along them or sitting down to stop cars from passing.

Demands:
Clear- The purpose of this movement is to get jobs back to the middle and lower class. Argentina's economy hit rock bottom and was at it's lowest. People were struggling to pay for things such as house and school and couldn't afford nearly anything meanwhile the government watched them struggle.

WITCH Movement Toolbox & SM Analysis

Toolbox

Genevieve Stebbins Emotional Semiotics

In Jane Donaworth’s book, Conversational Rhetoric, an exceptional collection of critically analyzed woman’s rhetoric theories is discussed.  As woman’s voices became more socially outspoken in the late nineteenth century, elocution played a respectable part in broadening woman’s platform to communicate emotions by performance. Society frequently began accepting to see woman as public speakers. Restraints from traditional gender driven of expressing the physical body was often seen a provocative.  Specifically, Donaworth’s focus on Genevie Stebbins Emotional Semiotics, we see a parallel between Stebbins’s philosophy of semiotics and witches’ use of guerrilla theatre. This dramatic public performance known as guerilla theatre is demonstrated as socio-political activism derived from Marxism. It was developed in the 1960, structured as a form entertaining activism, highly based on satire. The unapologetic, dodgy acts drew in an audience and forced them to acknowledge issues that were being ignored or over looked. Just as woman professed in elocution to catch the public’s attention of their less-heard voices. WITCH dress against the social norm and purposely conveys a dark aura with intentions to shock the public into submission. Specific rituals and written hexes are created as a physical form of the inner passions. Stebbins found that ones’ outputs of communication are reflections of the soul and state of mind. Emotions are essentially translated from the inner form into the physical gestures in the performance of elocution. Withes tape into the inner source of power being the universe to extract the dark magic and use articulated rhetoric and gestures in synchronized hex rituals to reflectively communicate and implement change to the larger society. The power generated from a higher being merges with accumulated sentiments.

Egyptian Rhetoric

We see a connection in Edward Karshner’s book, Thought, Utterance, & Power: Towards a Rhetoric of Magic discussion on Ancient Egyptian Rhetoric and the WITCH magical rhetoric. Egyptian’s used articulated rhetoric to connect with hierarchical deities’ powers of the cosmological society through a two-fold dimension. A deep intellectual metacognition and rule on how to effectively communicate in these complex realms was established. Essentially, they would utilize articulated magical utterance in a onto-cosmological narrative to transcend mystic knowledge of truth to society. This discourse is particularly unique and apparent to witches use of magic and articulated rhetoric to ping into universal energies in seek of social order. WITCH is an exclusive society with specific practices and rituals put in place, with methods and rules to be understood to execute the desired spiritual transcendence in which will initiate societal justice. Witches praise the Goddess being the Universe and all surrounding energies for power. WITCH claims that “Magic has three parts: Intent, A Spoken Spell, and A Sympathetic Act” (WITCH.PTX). Indicating that an intentional goal must be established to cast a spell. Egyptians use a parallel process, their initial steps being, “Through perception, the heart/mind would design an idea”, in relation to the WITCH, this would be equivalent to having an intent (Karshner). This step requires a developed passion for a subject of change. Next the onto-cosmological narrative, much like spoken spells, create a bond between the divine power and humans using articulated rhetoric. Finally, through this established connection, the Egyptians utilized, “human desire to identify with and articulate, through symbolic expression, the innate knowledge of the cosmos”. With a sympathetic act, the power can be directed in a spell.

Displayed is a zine from WITCH-EARTH-DAY:

We see the use of magic explained in a context that is implementation. Magic is not a single step process just as Karshner acknowledges in magical utterance; as explained there are multiple extensions of connections required to activate this transcendence of energy. WITCH uses this approach to motivate the movement by relying on a superior presence in which establishes a sense of credibility to their odd behavior. The pubic gestures and guerrilla theater uses as a dramatized performance of keening into the powers of the universe through an unseen spiritual domain is practiced as a religion. Identifying as a religion associates a societal given respect that may not be given if say they didn’t implement magic into their practices or identify as a religion. For a decent human, this would create an ethical dilemma when avoiding arbitrating someone’s beliefs. With all skepticism aside, how is it any different than a Catholic creating a and praising God on two knees. These aspects of identifying as a religion and using magic is vital to the integrity and legitimacy of the movement.

In any social movement, gathering the public’s attention is vital to the Social Movement Plan. Analyzing the correlation of the WITCH movement to the social movement plan, we see a strong foundation for the witches’ intentions. The public issues are clear and known, mainly activating woman’s liberation and to dismantle the patriarchy. The first-wave and second-wave feminist were most responsible for the awareness trending and campaigning, not WITCH. After all, they did break off from the radical woman, so it is reasonable to take this approach of essentially winging off second-wave feminist’s campaigns and starting their social movement plan beginning at campaigns. It wasn’t until the hex on Wall Street that WITCH exposed their movement externally.

During this process an articulated magical and radical conspiracy rhetoric was used, mostly heard through their hexes. Although terrorist is in their name, they demonstrate more of peaceful protests and arranged civil disobedience during their hexes. Their demands are clear in fighting oppression and the patriarchy but allow for flexibility in how radical a witch prefers to be.