Social movements and their societal impact

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS & INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence

On a basic or fundamental level, social movements are changes made mostly by the people and not a government or law enforcement agency. Social movements are not immediate and take years and often decades to yield results. Social movements are often but not always a response to unfairness, injustice, intolerance, and imbalance within a culture and/or society. In recent global history, the decade that saw a great deal of change due to social movements was the 1960s. In the 21st century, greatly in part to the advent of certain forms of digital technology, social movements are on the rise and grassroots activism has dispersed to deeper levels around Earth. Social movements are forms of organized actions usually taken by those who are disenfranchised, marginalized, or otherwise isolated or oppressed by the mainstream culture in which the social movement takes place. Social movements can enact a change, undo a change, and certainly resist a change. Therefore social movements can be both proactive as well as reactionary. The issues that social movements are based upon are usually very political; there are usually economic and social issues at the center of most social movements.

Social movements, again, are continuous and not instantaneous. The actions to which the social movements are responses were not instantaneous, neither should the response be. There is a logic to the progression of social change; it makes sense that social movements and social change(s) do not happen immediately. People need time to react and really understand their feelings about a particular subject before they organize themselves toward a specific goal via specific means. All social movements require time and planning. Why should those in the fields of intelligence, terrorism, and protection be interested and attentive to social movements? All the aforementioned fields are directly related to social movements and are often involved in the destruction of social movements.

Many of the parties involved in the social movements of the 1960s were considered terrorists and were treated as such by agencies such as the New York Police Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Chicago Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and many countless others. Law enforcement agencies or bodies arrest members and leaders of social movements when they protest, whether it is peaceful or violent. Agencies such as the FBI and the CIA perform surveillance on these groups as well as infiltrate them so as to sabotage the social movements from within. This does not have to be the case, nor it is always the case; it is, however, the norm. Instead of often combating, dismantling, and otherwise disrupting groups in favor of and enacting social movements, these agencies and departments can work with them. There is even potential for the people involved in social movements and agencies of enforcement and intelligence to cooperate and learn from each other. The tactics that each respective side uses can be of great use to the other side with regard to accomplishing goals. If there was more dialogue among these agencies and groups for social change, perhaps there will be less violence when the groups for social change express their views to the public.