John A. Noakes

Official Frames in Social Movement Theory: The FBI, HUAC, and the Communist Threat in Hollywood

Social movement researchers acknowledge that frames promoted by state managers compete in intense framing contests with collective action frames promoted by social movement entrepeneurs. But they have not analyzed the construction and promotion of these “official frames.” The FBI framing of the communist threat in Hollywood during the 1940s is examined and the limits of the countersubversive anticommunist master frame are explored. State agencies are established as signifying agents, and the construction and promotion of official frames is compared to similar processes for collective action frames.

Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Occupy Wall Street in New York City, 2011

The US national response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks accelerated the adoption and refinement of a new repertoire of protest policing we call ‘strategic incapacitation’ now employed by law enforcement agencies nationwide to police protest demonstrations. The occupation movement which formally began 17 September 2011 was the most significant social movement to utilise transgressive protest tactics in the United States in the last 40 years and posed a substantial challenge to law enforcement agencies. This research seeks to better understand the implementation of strategic incapacitation tactics through a detailed analysis of the policing of the first 2 months of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests in New York City. Original data for this study are derived from 2-week-long field observations made in New York City during the first and second month anniversaries of the OWS occupation in Zuccotti Park. These are supplemented by activist interviews, activist accounts posted on OWS websites, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds as well as news reports, official police documents, press releases and interviews with legal observers.

Whose Streets? Police and Protester Struggles over Space in Washington, DC, 29–30 September 2001

Over the weekend of 29–30 September 2001, approximately 20,000 people participated in anti-war protests in Washington, DC. Based on firsthand observations and interviews with police officials, we analyzed the response of the Metro DC police (MPDC) to three separate protests that weekend, including those sponsored by the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (ACC), the International Action Center (IAC) and the Washington Peace Center (WPC). Our observations illustrate how the MPDCs efforts to control the space in which the respective protests occurred varied across demonstrations. The MPDC tightly controlled the space in which transgressive groups (ACC) demonstrated, but were much more lenient with contained groups (WPC, IAC). We relate the MPDC tactics to changes in the policing of protests since the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle and highlight police tactics such as the partitioning of space, the rearranging of protesters, and the use of less-lethal weapons.