Click on the following links. Please note these will open in a new window.

Video Links

• Iowa Citizens
  Bill Moyers reports on the populist movement in the United States. People involved in this movement are standing together to oppose what they see as injustices in the economic system, particularly the division between “corporate” and “main street” America. This movement is located primarily in the Midwest. 

 

• Occupy Wall Street: The History and the Survival
  This documentary examines the history of the Occupy Wall Street movement from its early days to the brutal crackdown by state authorities. Even in the face of police repression and media ridicule, the movement mobilized thousands of people fed up with the economic divide in the United States.

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• Teens and Smartphones: A Summer Camp Experiment
  A sleep-away camp in Pennsylvania has decided to allow campers to keep their screens, with the hope of teaching them how to use them in more mindful ways. In this WNYC video, the head of the camp and the campers reflect on the experience.

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• Amanda Todd’s Story
  This is a video made by a teen from British Columbia who committed suicide in late 2012 after being bullied online. In this video, she tells her story in her own words. 

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Audio Links

• This American Life 336: Who Can You Save?
  Act One focuses on the hypothetical scenario that there's a group of five people standing on a train track, and you're on a train coming toward them. You can save the whole group by pulling a lever and switching to another track, but the catch is that you'll kill another person who's standing on that other track. Do you pull the lever? According to a Harvard scientist who posed this question to hundreds of thousands of people on the Internet, nine out of 10 people say yes, they would pull the lever. But then, the questions get harder—and the answers much more confusing. It turns out that different parts of our brains make different moral decisions. Act Two is about the moment when the U.S. government sent out a call for volunteers—regular, nonmilitary people—to go to Iraq and help rebuild the country. Randy Frescoln signed up. He believed in the cause of the war and in the promise of its mission. He had experience setting up agriculture projects overseas so was sent to the Sunni Triangle to try to reconstruct the broken economy there. But 3 months into his year-long assignment, he comes to a horrible realization: The people he's trying to help hate him. In Act Three, Brady Udall tells the story of the time he helped a stranger get his car out of a ditch. In exchange, the man promises to help him any time, for any reason—legal or not. Brady carries the man's card in his wallet; he's reassured that he has such a powerful guy in his corner. Many years later, Brady finally looks him up.

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• This American Life 372: The Inauguration Show
  The election of Barack Obama was evidence of significant social change in the United States. On the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration, reporters were sent out all over the country to talk to people about how they're feeling about this new president. Do they believe things will change? Do they think there'll be changes in their own lives? From dozens of hours of interviews at a Marine Corps base and a button factory, at a New Orleans bar and a Florida town that used to be a stronghold for the Ku Klux Klan, we hear opinions about what's going to happen in America after the ceremony on January 20, 2009.

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• Owner of Asian Market in Columbia, Missouri, Sees Future in New Immigrants
  This segment profiles Chong’s Oriental Market, a small store owned and operated by a Korean immigrant. It is located in downtown Columbia, Missouri, home to a large and diverse ethnic population, many from the continent of Africa. The store is reinventing itself to serve those from Congo, Indonesia, Ghana, etc.

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• Fixing Your Online Reputation: There’s an Industry For That 
  Changes in the ways we interact and share information can present problems for managing our identities. This segment considers companies that have stepped in to help people manage their online reputations and control the personal information about them that is available online. 

       

• Phyllis Schlafly Still Championing the Anti-Feminist Fight
  Michel Martin talks with conservative political activist Phyllis Schlafly, whose grassroots efforts are credited with helping to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment. 

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Web Resources

Professional Resources

• Mobilization
  Mobilization is a new international journal of research and theory specializing in social movements, protests, and collective behavior.

Data Resources

• The Social Movement Outcomes Database
  The Youth Activism Project is part of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Youth & Participatory Politics. This project has published a social movement outcomes database which lists the various social movements that have taken place throughout the world. The database lists the type of social movement by type, date, location, and specific outcome.
   
• The Sentencing Project
  “The Sentencing Project is a national organization working for a fair and effective criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing law and practice and alternatives to incarceration.” Statistics can be found by state. Publications, news, and advocacy information about issues including sentencing policy, racial disparity, felony disenfranchisement, drug policy, and women in the justice system are all available. 

Other Resources

• Flash Mob Movements
  This article from Contexts, published by the American Sociological Association, examines the components of flash mobs such as the lack of a clear or preexisting hierarchy and efforts to elicit strong feelings and active expressions of those feelings.
   
• The Next Abortion Fight
  This article from Pacific Standard magazine examines what may take place now that the Supreme Court has overturned Texas legislation requiring admitting privileges for abortion doctors at local hospitals. The author of the article states that the Unites States may begin to see 20-week, or earlier, fertilization bans in states seeking to limit abortion access as the movement experiments with other strategies of regulating abortion to replace those just removed by the court.
  The following websites are run by social movements and other organizations to advance their social change efforts and should not be taken as objective sources of information on the topics in question.

​Abortion:

• The National Abortion Federation (NAF)
  The NAF is the professional association of abortion providers in the United States and Canada (self-characterization). 
   
• The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL)
  The goal at NARAL is to help find sane, workable answers that will ultimately reduce the need for abortions. . . . Until we achieve our goal, it is critical that those who value the freedom and independence we enjoy in this country work hard now to protect a woman’ s right to choose (self-characterization). 
   
• The National Right-to-Life
  The National Right-to-Life is the largest and most influential organization dedicated to fighting “the culture of death” through public policy. 
   
• The Pro-Life Action League
  The Pro-Life Action League is dedicated to saving the lives of the unborn through the use of nonviolent direct action (self-characterization). 

​Civil and Human Rights:

• Amnesty International 
  Amnesty International is a worldwide campaigning movement that works to promote all the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international standards.
   
• Civilrights.org
  Civilrights.org is a joint project of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Leadership Conference Education Fund. The goal of civilrights.org is to recruit, educate, and mobilize individuals of good conscience in the ongoing struggle for equal opportunity. 
   
• NETWORK
  NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby, educates, lobbies, and organizes to influence the formation of federal legislation to promote economic and social justice. 
   
• SojoNet
  SojoNet is the online presence of Sojourners, a Christian ministry whose mission is to proclaim and practice the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice.
   
• People for the American Way
  People for the American Way is dedicated to making the promise of America real for every American: Equality. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. The right to seek justice in a court of law. The right to cast a vote that counts. The American Way. Our vision is a vibrantly diverse democratic society in which everyone is treated equally under the law, given the freedom and opportunity to pursue their dreams, and encouraged to participate in our nation’s civic and political life. Our America respects diversity, nurtures creativity and combats hatred and bigotry (self-characterization).
   
• The Society for the Study of Social Problems in Pursuit of Social Justice
  The Society for the Study of Social Problems in Pursuit of Social Justice is an organization located at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. According to the website, the purpose of the organization is “to promote and protect sociological research and teaching on significant problems of social life and, particularly, to encourage the work of young sociologists; to stimulate the application of scientific method and theory to the study of vital social problems; to encourage problem-centered social research; to foster cooperative relations among persons and organizations engaged in the application of scientific sociological findings to the formulation of social policies; to foster higher quality of life, social welfare, and positive social relations in society and the global community and to undertake any activity related thereto or necessary or desirable for the accomplishment of the foregoing purposes.”