Social Action and Its Role on Colleges

Introduction

Chapter 1 — Social Action: An Overview

Social Action and Its Role on Colleges

Benefits of Social Action

Chapter 2 — Developing a Social Action Class

Course vs Co-Curricular & Prerequisites 

Creating a Social Action Syllabus

Teaching Style & Classroom Norms

The Students

Building Allies

Role of Place & Each Semester v Every Year

Maintaining Momentum

Chapter 3 — Teaching Social Action (TSA) Model

On Your Mark

Students Choose Their Issue

Group Dynamics, part 1

Change Theory

Building Power

Campus Tour

Research

Group Dynamics, part 2

Strategy & Tactics

Campaign Kickoff

Campaign Plan & Timeline

Implementation & Execution

Campaign Evaluation

Binder & Presentation

Chapter 4 — Where Do We Go From Here?

Overcoming Challenges

Next Semester

Mainstreaming Social Action

Internships & Pipeline to Jobs

Status of Current Campaigns

Definition of Social Action

Social action occurs when everyday people band together to develop their power in order to change policy, and it has been a part of the American experiment in democracy throughout our history. Watch the below video to hear Scott discuss his definition of social action:

Below is a music video shown in SML’s course on the first day of class, which highlights "everyday people", a key component of social action. The song is “Everyday People” from Sly and the Family Stone (1968).

Social Action’s Role in U.S. Democracy

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the enslaved banded together and participated in both non-violent (e.g., work slow-downs) and violent actions (e.g., armed revolts). In the 1800s, Native Americans, such as Tecumseh, rallied thousands from various tribes to join together to resist the US policy of taking land, and Wovoka’s ghost dance inspired many Western Native American tribes to take public action by dancing so as to be reunited with the spirits of the dead, and together, they would repel the US from their homelands.

In the late 1800s, the settlement house workers—who were composed mostly of privileged white female college graduates—moved into poor and working-class communities with the goal of developing policy solutions alongside the poor themselves. In addition, Jacob Coxey helped organize in 1894 a “petition in boots” that marched 5,000 men across the country to Washington DC to request that the federal government create a public works program to deal with mass unemployment. The suffragettes also used social action and, over a 70-year period, successfully obtained the right to vote, while the working class used social action during this same period to win basic labor protections such as the 40-hour work week, decent pay, and the right to organize. In the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans used social action to end legal segregation and obtain the right to vote. Even the federal government got into the act, and for several years, sponsored social action programs as part of its War on Poverty, before liberal and conservative mayors saw it as a threat to their power and worked to end these programs.

In the late 20th century, social action was used by everyday people who were fighting against AIDS (e.g., ACT UP), nuclear weapons (e.g., at Rocky Flats Nuclear Processing Plant), income and wealth inequality (e.g., Occupy Wall Street), for the environment (e.g., Redwood Summer), and fair trade (e.g., the World Trade Organization [WTO] and the “Battle of Seattle”). More recently, both the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Parkland students have used social action, as well as Black Lives Matter. And while I am an advocate of non-violence, and I teach my students to hold that perspective as well, social action practitioners in the United States have used both non-violent and violent means, as can be seen from the above historical overview.

As teaching social action expands to countries around the world, TSA’s vision is to include recourses on the role of social action in other countries as well. If you are teaching in a country outside of the USA, and know of such an article, or you are willing to write it, please contact Scott at scott@teachingsocialaction.org, and we will include it in the Companion Guide.

Questions

Focusing on the definition of social action:

1. Who are everyday people?
2. What does it mean "to band together"?
3. How would you define power?
4. What is a policy?

U.S. College Social Action

The below reading focuses on the changes that college students have brought using social action.

Here Scott discusses the history of social action on college campuses:

We encourage you to find out the history of social action on your campus, as it is inspirational for your students to hear about what took place before them on campus, and to encourage them to add to that legacy. Here Scott discusses how Earth Day was founded by an SJSU alum, and how SJSU students celebrated the first Earth Day on campus by burying a brand new Ford in a Boston Tea Party inspired event, where students declared “the death to the gas automobile”. Interestingly, the students were part of a course course on campus in the Humanities Department. In addition, TSA’s vision is to include the history of social action on college campuses around the world; if you know of such an article, or are willing to write it, please contact Scott.

Questions

Here are some good questions to explore with your students?

1. What historical student campaign most interested you and why?
2. Did you notice any patterns with the types of student campaigns that were being chosen by them over the past 300 years?
3. Did you get any new ideas for your students about possible campaigns from reading this history of college student social action ?

Continue to Benefits of Social Action