Browsing by Subject "Radicalism"
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Item The foundations of Red Power : The National Indian Youth Council 1968-1973(2013-12) Jenkins, James Fitzhugh; Bsumek, Erika MarieThe period from 1969 until 1973 represented the height of “Red Power” for American Indians. Pan-tribal activists participated in hundreds of demonstrations and dozens of militant takeovers demanding tribal sovereignty. The National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) was at the forefront of this period of direct action even though it continued to receive funding for educational programs and advocated reform through legal means. Operating under an entirely new leadership, the NIYC of the early 1970s resembled the Youth Council of the mid-1960s by continuing to balance indirect action and legal reform with direct action and militant language. But by the end of 1973, the Youth Council ceased supporting direct action as a legitimate tactic for pressuring social change. By 1973 it became clear that pan-tribal protests could quickly upset the gains that American Indians were making in federal reform. Wealthy benefactors funded the NIYC throughout the period, but they never overtly pushed the Youth Council into a more moderate direction. Instead, outside funding increased the NIYC’s operational space and allowed it to gain a modicum of power within the federal agency responsible for Indians, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The NIYC found itself able to pressure the BIA into negotiating on a range of issues, and the NIYC developed allies that shared its goals and ideology within the agency. However, the NIYC’s continued ability to negotiate with the federal government was vulnerable to controversy, and the highly confrontational episodes led by the American Indian Movement (AIM) tended to upset the pace of reform within the federal government. AIM’s 1972 takeover of the BIA national headquarters and AIM’s 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee created setbacks for the NIYC even as the events garnered national attention and support. Moreover, the political climate became receptive to supporting the self-determination of tribal governments, and pan-tribal organizations like the NIYC had to shift their focus in the context of newly empowered tribes. Foundation support allowed the NIYC to help open the way for tribes to negotiate with the U.S. state directly, and this very success made pan-tribal demonstrations increasingly obsolete by the mid-1970s.Item Radical dismissal : Stokely Carmichael and the problem of inclusion in public deliberation(2020-08-13) Hatch, Justin Dean; Roberts-Miller, Patricia, 1959-; Longaker, Mark G.; Sackey, Donnie; Gilyard, Keith; Joseph, Peniel“Radical Dismissal: Stokely Carmichael and the Problem of Inclusion in Public Deliberation” has two interrelated goals—first, to lay bare the rhetorical mechanisms by which those in power silence dissent, and, second, to view with greater clarity Stokely Carmichael’s rhetorical strategies and legacies. Toward those goals, I examine Carmichael’s words in the year following SNCC’s release of the slogan “Black Power,” and I look closely at the almost universally negative responses to them during the same period. While the terms—angry, hateful, demagogue, racist, etc.—that Carmichael’s critics use to dismiss him vary, they all direct attention away from his institutional critique toward his relationship to subjective norms of discourse. I open the dissertation by introducing Carmichael and relevant context and by developing the dissertation’s overarching theoretical framework. I borrow from scholars writing on “civility” to develop “civility policing” as rhetorical action that preserves unjust harmonies (Roberts-Miller, Deliberate Conflict 154), displaces blame from oppressor to oppressed (Welch 110), and silences dissent (Lozano-Reich and Cloud 223). Chapter One finds that Carmichael’s critics shaped his image and longer legacy by amplifying a distorted version of his message. An exploration of Carmichael’s words especially within a set of letters to Lorna Smith offers a corrective. Chapter Two explores the utility of two definitions of the term “demagogue” for distinguishing anti-racist rhetoric. While critics accuse Carmichael of being a “demagogue,” his words in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America not only contradict the claim, but also return the charge. Chapter Three builds on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s “dissociation of concepts” and Janice Fernheimer’s “dissociative disruption” to better understand the adaptive rhetorical strategies Carmichael used in his most famous speech given at Berkeley. I offer the term “subversive dissociation” as a charge to discover the dissociative foundations of dominant racial narratives.Item The rhetorical dimensions of radical flank effects: investigations into the influence of emerging radical voices on the rhetoric of long-standing moderate organizations in two social movements(2002) Dillard, Courtney Lanston; Cloud, Dana L.Guided by an interest in the origins of social change, this dissertation investigates how long-standing social movement organizations adopt and promote more progressive ideologies over time. While some scholars have argued that wellestablished social movement organizations tend to occupy positions more in line with the status quo as they age, there are provocative cases in the field that challenge this perspective. In this dissertation, I examine two social movement organizations, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the Sierra Club, both of which continue to introduce new arguments and new messages into the public sphere and therefore encourage the public to embrace a larger degree of social change. In attempting to explain how these organizations have developed their discourse in the last thirty years, I focus on the impact of key emerging radical groups within the larger movement. I ask: Does the rhetoric introduced into the animal protection and environmental advocacy movements by more radical groups affect the rhetoric of more moderate organizations in those same movements? I endeavor to answer this question by tracking and analyzing the rhetoric produced by HSUS and the Sierra Club from 1970 to 2000. In conducting my investigations, I explore whether attempts on the part of radicals to expand the realm of identification (Burke, 1950) by challenging taken for granted notions concerning the value of animals/the earth and offering counter-arguments can be found in the discourse of later campaign materials produced by the moderates. In order to do this, I track shifts in the arguments presented by the moderate organizations both prior to and following the emergence of the more radical groups - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and EarthFirst!. Specifically, I explore whether following the introduction of a more radical ideology into the movement, moderates begin to challenge accepted norms concerning human relations with animals/the earth, ultimately setting the stage for a reinterpretation of that relation and a broadening of the existing sphere of identification.