Disability Protests: Contentious Politics, 1970-1999

4. A Profile of Contentious Actions: How Success Became Possible

A Profile of Contentious Actions: How Success Became Possible In this chapter we examine the characteristics of contentious political actions that occurred from the beginning of 1970 to the end of 1999 in which members of the deafand disability communities and others have engaged for the improvement ofthe lives ofpeople with impairments. We present a descriptive profile ofall the contentious political actions included in our database. In this chapter, we focus on basic characteristics ofall of the protests taken together, with results reported for all groups and for all time periods together. In subsequent chapters we examine characteristics of the actions over time, disaggregated by period of time and type of disability. There are several themes or motifs that run through the analyses to be presented in the next three chapters. One is related to the problem of mobilizing a community for contentious political action given the nature of impairment. In the case of people with some types of impairments there are physical barriers to participation to overcome : If people cannot get to the protest, they will not come. Additionally, if people do not hear about plans for contentious action, they will not come. Finally, if they do not think that the issues apply to them, they will not come. In general, people participate in contentious actions, which are always somewhat risky, when their selfinterest is stronger than their fear of risk. Because the self-interests of people with impairments are potentially as different as the impairments themselves, mobilization is difficult, perhaps more so than it was in the women's movement or the civil rights movement. There is much less commonality among people with impairments than there is among people in other statuses. All females share certain basic physical characteristics as well as, to a lesser extent, basic social experiences. But that is not true of people with physical or mental impairments. They may not share an experience ofstigma or discrimination, let alone a sense of what could be done to increase the likelihood that the disabling aspect of their impairment would be ameliorated. Mobilization in the women's movement or the civil rights movement could build upon similar discriminatory experiences that potential adherents were quite likely to have experienced. But within the population of people with impairments there may not be the commonality of negative 66 A Profile of Contentious Actions 67 experiences that can as clearly be attributed to a sole characteristic, especially that of impairment. In order for mobilization to occur, there must exist a collective consciousness that impels contentious political action-as opposed to noncontentious politics-asusual -among people who have many different types ofimpairments. As we examine different aspects of the protests, we will see ways in which several of these potential barriers to contentious action have been overcome, permitting the escalation of such action as the years progressed. The second theme that we will examine is that of success. We will examine factors that have been found by social movement scholars to predict success either in short-term contentious actions or in longer-term social movements. We will examine the degree to which those factors are present in these protests and thus the degree to which the protests had the potential for being successful. PROTEST CHARACTERISTICS Locations Table 4.1 shows that the largest numbers of protests (16 percent) occurred in California. More than 12 percent occurred in Washington, D.C., more than 11 percent occurred in New York state, and almost 10 percent occurred in Colorado. Smaller numbers of protests were seen in Massachusetts and Texas, each of which had almost 7 percent of the protests, and Illinois, which had 6 percent. Georgia, Maryland, and Michigan had around 4 percent, Pennsylvania had over 2 percent, and Table 4.1. Frequency Distribution of Protest Locations (N =635) STATE NUMBER OF PERCENTAGE PROTESTS OF PROTESTS California 102 16.1% District of Columbia 77 12.1 Colorado 60 9.4 Massachusetts 44 6.9 Texas 42 6.6 Illinois 38 6.0 New York 72 11.3 Georgia 28 4.4 Maryland 23 3.6 Michigan 23 3.6 Pennsylvania 14 2.2 New Jersey 11 1.7 All others 101 15.9 68 A Profile of Contentious Actions New Jersey had less than 2 percent. All other states had fewer than ten protests each, although together they had almost 16 percent of the protests. All together, there were protests in forty-four...