Search

This article offers a theoretical and empirical exploration of a form of solidarity in which one group spontaneously mobilizes in support of another, unrelated group. It is a fleeting solidarity based not on shared identity but on temporarily aligned goals, one aimed less at persistence and more at short-term impact. We call this drive-by solidarity because of its spontaneous, unilateral, and unsolicited nature. We argue that it is a 'thinner' form of solidarity in comparison to 'thicker' forms usually conceptualized in the social movement literature. We examine the case of Anonymous's 'Operation KKK' (#OpKKK), an online hacktivist campaign to expose Ku Klux Klan members carried out in support of #BlackLivesMatter protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, in November 2014, and we use social media data to show that, while BLM and Anonymous networks temporarily coordinated during the protests, there is no subsequent evidence of long-term coordination. Keywords: Anonymous, Black Lives Matter, collective identity, hacktivism, Ku Klux Klan, social networks, solidarity, Twitter, Following the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in the summer of 2020, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement resurged as a wave of protests swept across the [...]

This article examines leadership and its role in the emergence of collective action with a comparison of resistance activities in two Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe. In the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews rose up in armed rebellion against the Nazis twice during 1943; in contrast, Jewish activists in the Vilna Ghetto planned for similar resistance, but a sustained uprising never took place. The author argues that these different outcomes can be attributed in part to the resistance fighters' 'authority work,' or efforts made to establish their credibility in the eyes of each community; activists in Warsaw performed this work successfully, whereas those in Vilna did not engage in this work at all. The lack of authority work in Vilna was especially damaging because of the actions of another authoritative ghetto leader, who persuaded the community to oppose resistance efforts. The findings suggest that authority work varies across different movement settings and is particularly important in the context of uncertainty. Keywords: social movements; leadership; authority; Jewish resistance; ghettos; Holocaust

This paper uses data from campus newspapers at two large Midwestern universities to examine local claimsmaking about the problem of sweatshops and anti-sweatshop activism on each campus. Although student activists at both schools sought to solve the same problem (i.e., the manufacture of university-licensed apparel by sweatshop labor) with the same solution (i.e., convincing their university administrations to join the Workers' Rights Consortium, a sweatshop monitoring organization), what was ostensibly the same issue was constructed in very different ways in the claims found in the two newspapers. Drawing on the concept of 'local culture,' our analysis illustrates how claimsmakers at each campus used locally and situationally embedded interpretive resources both to establish the problem of sweatshops and to present solutions to this problem. We use these findings to draw implications for both social problems theory and the study of social movements.

While solidarity lies at the heart of collective action, it is not easily achieved. Social movements are characterized not only by difference within activist ranks but also by power asymmetries that reflect broader domination and distrust. The concept of intersectional solidarity is central to contemporary social justice movements' efforts to negotiate these divisions, but how can it be achieved? To answer this question, we offer some guidelines for enacting intersectional solidarity, drawing on a theoretically grounded examination of three contemporary social movements in the United States and abroad (Occupy, Gezi Park, and the Women's March). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]