Author Archives: David S. Meyer

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About David S. Meyer

Author and professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine

How the anti-gay movement faces defeat

Social movement activists lose all the time.  The stalwarts find ways to be more optimistic about the next battle (see Bill McKibben tracking the Keystone pipeline).  Occasional activists and amateurs can pick other issues and redirect themselves to more promising … Continue reading

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Inspiration across borders: Brazil and Turkey

Will a clever name, like Arab Spring or Occupy, link the protests erupting in disparate parts of the globe?  Will 2013 become a sign uniting all of them in memory, just like 1848, 1968, and 1989? The spread of wildly … Continue reading

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Just another Moral Monday

Democrats and liberals have been losing in North Carolina.  Democrats lost control of both houses of the legislature in 2010, but Republican legislative efforts were slowed by Democratic Governor Bev Perdue.  In 2012, Republican Pat McCrory soundly defeated Perdue’s lieutenant … Continue reading

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Can the IRS resurrect the Tea Party?

By allowing mid-level bureaucrats to dump on local Tea Party groups, the Internal Revenue Series provided the movement a chance to regroup and re-emerge on the public stage. Particularly at the grassroots, the Tea Party has mostly severely diminished, divided, … Continue reading

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Immigration divides the Tea Party

Or not?  Conventional wisdom among Republican regulars was that the Party’s harsh “self-deportation” posture was costly in the last election.  Party establishment figures pushed for quick action on immigration reform to put the issue behind them so that they might … Continue reading

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Occupy is an unprotected trademark

Sarah Maslin Nir produced a nice piece in the New York Times that identified–and poked at–the ever-increasing diversity of people and groups claiming to be Occupy. After Hurricane Superstorm Sandy hit New York, Occupy activists focused their efforts on helping … Continue reading

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Auditing the Tea Party: One style of American repression

Another example of the old joke: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you: The revelation that the Internal Revenue Service targeted groups with “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names for strict scrutiny tells us … Continue reading

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Gitmo and the hunger strikes

What happens when you run strap a prisoner down and run a tube through his nose to feed him?  What if it’s twice a day?  What if it’s one hundred people every day? This is what’s happening at the prison … Continue reading

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Remembering the shootings at Kent State

It’s the anniversary of the killing of four college students at Kent State University.  Young National Guardsmen opened fire on students protesting the war on May 4, discharging more than 60 rounds in roughly 13 seconds.  They killed four students: … Continue reading

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May Day 2013

Wednesday’s May Day events remind us about how the people who participate in an event define it for their own purposes.  Initially a celebration of Spring, organized around May poles (and May flies?),  for more than 100 years, May 1 … Continue reading

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