Sidney Tarrow, Author at Public Seminar

Politics

Movements and Parties or Movement Parties?

Our contemporary conundrum

March 30, 2022 • by Sidney Tarrow

But how deeply have these recent developments disrupted the forms of the two main political parties? Are we still dealing—as the title of my book implies—with “movements and parties?” Or with movement-parties, hybrids that have added the passions of movements to the parties, while depriving the parties of one of ...

Movements and Parties or Movement Parties?

Politics

Social Movements and Political Parties in the Making and Unmaking of Modern American Democracy

Taking a long view of a contentious history

March 28, 2022 • by Sidney Tarrow

Where can the American left go from here? How should the Democratic party respond to the continuing electoral potency of the illiberal currents that now dominate the Republican party? And how should movement activists respond?...

Social Movements and Political Parties in the Making and Unmaking of Modern American Democracy

Activism

Reckoning with Deva Woodly’s Reckoning

What kind of coalition must the Left forge in order to defeat Trumpism and whatever comes after it?

January 18, 2022 • by Sidney Tarrow

Black Lives Matter was not born in the streets, even if it sometimes moved there following the police murder of Michael Brown in 2014, and again after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. But the movement, after these intense episodes of protest and direct action has not stayed in ...

Reckoning with Deva Woodly’s <em>Reckoning</em>

The Right

A Tale of Two Democracies

How a movement that claimed to be democratic undermined the rule of law

June 28, 2021 • by Sidney Tarrow

_____ “Democracy,” wrote Charles Tilly, “does not resemble an oilfield or a garden, but a lake. A lake,” he continues, can come into being because a mountain stream feeds into a naturally-existing basin, because someone or something dams up the outlet of a large river, because a glacier melts, because an earthquake ...

Democracy

How to Head Off the Coming Neo-Trumpian Movement

Focus on defending democracy, not trying to appeal to racist and sexist Republican voters

December 3, 2020 • by Sidney Tarrow

“As the count currently stands, nearly 80 million Americans voted for Joe Biden,” Senator Bernie Sanders recently remarked: “With this vote against the authoritarian bigotry of Donald Trump, the world can breathe a collective sigh of relief.” But how did Trump’s bigotry triumph in the first place? Sanders has an answer similar ...

How to Head Off the Coming Neo-Trumpian Movement

Democracy

How Trump Has Politicized the Executive Branch

“Retail” politicization of the state may be worse than “wholesale”

November 5, 2020 • by Sidney Tarrow

During a press conference a week before the 2020 elections, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe warned that Iran was sending intimidating emails to Americans in order to “damage President Trump.” Ratcliffe underplayed Russia’s actions, adding, “although we have not seen the same actions from Russia, we are aware ...

How Trump Has Politicized the Executive Branch

North America

What America Got Wrong About COVID-19–and What We Can Learn from France and Italy

Institutional fragmentation and a lack of national solidarity have derailed the pandemic response

August 26, 2020 • by Isabel Perera and Sidney Tarrow

On Tuesday, August 11, just as Florida was setting a new daily record for deaths from Covid-19, Billy Woods, sheriff of Marion County in north central Florida, banned all of his employees, with a few exceptions, from wearing masks. “This is no longer a debate,” he told his staff, explaining how ...

What America Got Wrong About COVID-19–and What We Can Learn from France and Italy

Activism

The New Abolitionists

And what they can learn from their predecessors

June 11, 2020 • by Sidney Tarrow

On the same weekend when hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the streets of countless American cities, I saw a yard sign reading “Black Lives Matter!” in Genoa, New York -- which came as a real shock. Genoa is an overwhelmingly Republican town of 1,900 residents, with a tiny black ...

North America

“There Go the People….”

By endorsing protesters who demand that states reopen, Donald Trump reveals himself as a leader of a movement, not a party or a nation

April 21, 2020 • by Sidney Tarrow

There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader. No one could be further from Donald Trump in either ideology or personal biography than Ledru-Rollin, who was the grandson of Nicolas Philippe Ledru, a well-known quack doctor under the Old Regime. But the celebrated quote attributed to the radical French ...

Activism

From Mad Cows to Coronavirus

When Government Fails, Grassroots Activism Flourishes

March 17, 2020 • by Sidney Tarrow

This was bad enough; but in March 1996, Britain’s secretary of state for health announced ten cases of something similar in another species: a new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) had been diagnosed in human patients. CJD is a fatal disease caused by a rampant protein that eats away the brain cells ...

North America

Don’t Cry for Her — Elizabeth Warren!

Democratic voters have shown themselves increasingly likely to vote for women, and Warren will be back in 2024

March 10, 2020 • by Sidney Tarrow

The commentariat -- almost to a woman -- wrung its collective hands when Warren dropped out of the race (where were they when she needed them?). Writing for The Guardian, Moira Donegan lamented that “As a woman, the Massachusetts senator always faced an uphill battle of double standards and misogynist resentment. She had ...

Democracy

Lies, Fakes, and Deep Fakes

Deceptions and Scams in the Age of Trump

September 11, 2019 • by Sidney Tarrow

Following the speech three things happened: first, a video was almost immediately made and posted online; a video in which Pelosi’s delivery was slowed down and her tone changed to give the impression that she was either drunk or affected by a health disorder. Second, the next day President Trump tweeted a ...

Sidney Tarrow

Movements and Parties or Movement Parties?

Our contemporary conundrum

Social Movements and Political Parties in the Making and Unmaking of Modern American Democracy

Taking a long view of a contentious history

A Tale of Two Democracies

How a movement that claimed to be democratic undermined the rule of law

How to Head Off the Coming Neo-Trumpian Movement

Focus on defending democracy, not trying to appeal to racist and sexist Republican voters

How Trump Has Politicized the Executive Branch

“Retail” politicization of the state may be worse than “wholesale”

What America Got Wrong About COVID-19–and What We Can Learn from France and Italy

Institutional fragmentation and a lack of national solidarity have derailed the pandemic response

The New Abolitionists

And what they can learn from their predecessors

“There Go the People….”

By endorsing protesters who demand that states reopen, Donald Trump reveals himself as a leader of a movement, not a party or a nation

From Mad Cows to Coronavirus

When Government Fails, Grassroots Activism Flourishes

Don’t Cry for Her — Elizabeth Warren!

Democratic voters have shown themselves increasingly likely to vote for women, and Warren will be back in 2024

Lies, Fakes, and Deep Fakes

Deceptions and Scams in the Age of Trump

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