Looking Beyond My Tainted Views On Dissidence

Reading chapter 3 in Voices of Revolution drew a lot of  connections for me between the abolition and women's rights moment, but also gave me a greater appreciation for suffragist and dissident journalists.

I guess by watching the mainstream media, I've received a negative connotation with dissident journalism. For example, Glenn Greenwald and his articles about Snowden. I remember in class you showed us that interview with Greenwald where the interviewer was suggesting that his reports were encouraging law breaking. I mean, I could see how seems she had an agenda.

The reason this chapter made me see dissident journalism differently is because women's rights are something that really hits home for me. As I said before, my mom was the breadwinner in our family. She was the one who went to work everyday while my father got me ready for school. Having women in charger, or in power, has been something that is natural to me. I was brought up that way. Therefore, I admire many women who hold positions of power because it's something I'm used too.

So, when I read about how a lot of these things dissident journalists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton were fighting for, actually impacted the way I was raised, I decided to take a closer look. In a society back then, it wouldn't have been accepted for women to be the authority figures in the family structure. These journalist were the people who encouraged women to not accept the limitations put on them by society, but instead encouraged them have a voice and speak out.

The other thing I noticed when reading this was some of the struggles the women's right movement shared with the abolition movement. For example, on page 39, it talks about how the media gave the women's rights movement almost no coverage at first. When they did get coverage, it was negative. The "revered" New York Times had an article out called, "Women's Wrong Convention,"which argued that women already had enough political power.

The other similarity I saw was the financial struggle to keep these movements going. Since they used newspapers like The Revolution to get out their messages, it required people to be able to afford it. But since women usually didn't control the money, it was hard for some to get the paper since their husbands probably wouldn't be too keen on their spouse reading something that encouraged them to get out the house.

Like the abolition moment, I noticed how there was also a split between moderates and full women's rights advocates. We see this with Lucy Stone who founded the Woman's Journal, which didn't focus on as many broad issues like The Revolution, such as equal pay, sexual harassment and domestic violence.

So although I came in to this course with a tainted view of "dissident journalists," by reading how they were one of the reasons why my kind of upbringing was possible, allowed me to see beyond the perception the main stream media has given me about dissident journalist and acknowledge the need for them at times.

Disappointed

Although I wrote about the North Star in my paper, reading chapter 2 in Voices of Revolution helped me see the importance The Liberator had in starting a national dialog about Anti-Slavery.

As I wrote in my paper, it upset me to know how many Norther Publications either supported slavery or didn't voice criticism against it since I like to think the North was progressive, at least that was what I was taught in history class.

That being said, on page 29, I read about how it took the New York Tribune 20 years (20 YEARS!!!) to agree with Garrison on abolition. The Gazette even criticized his work. Although Garrison's approach to abolition differed from Douglass, by reading about the effects his paper had in growing the abolition movement, I realized how important it was to start some kind of dialog, even if it may not have been the one I wanted, such as arguing for full abolition. Another thing that disappointed me was that, not only did the mainstream media largely not support abolition in the beginning, but when someone like Garrison did voice support, the mainstream shunned him.

But because Garrison was able to keep that dialog going for so long, he was able to shift public opinion. As the chapter states, the majority of people were for slavery and that is easy to understand when the majority of the mainstream media was not shedding light on the horrors of slavery until much later.

Most of all, this chapter reinforced the notion that independent media had and still has an important role to play in our society. I am not saying I am ready to call it quits and stop reading and watching the mainstream media, but reading this chapter really made me feel afraid of what would happen had outlets like The Liberator and the North Star chosen to follow the dialog of the mainstream.

So, although I was raised watching the mainstream media with my dad and would work there if I was offered a job, I can't easily dismiss Indi outlets as I once might have because looking back at history, you can see just how influential these outlets were in starting conversations that would change public opinion and force the media to cover it.

My Mom, Target, and the Importance of Labor Weeklies

Chapter One in Voices of Revolution really hit home for me due to the closeness the topic of labor unions had to my family.

My mom was a nurse for 40 years and was very active in unionization (She is now retired). As a kid growing up in NYC, I remember her coming home exhausted and would talk about her union meetings and how they were working on improving things for nurses. Sometimes it was fighting for better benefits and contract or just making sure there was a healthy nurse-patient ratio. A few times she would shanghai me and my dad to go picket with her union outside the hospital.

I remember when I got my first job at Target and during the training session we had to watch a video about the negative effects of unionizing. I remember my mom telling me when I got the job, "make sure you join a union the first change you get." I was 18 at the time......The point is, unionizing has been something I am very familiar and by realizing that, had these weeklies not pushed for these kind of reforms that gave power to the labor movements, my mom might not have been protected in advocating for better working conditions.

With this chapter, I was able to see how the mainstream media of the time was actually part of the elites, which was disturbing to me because journalism is supposed to advocate for the people, give voice to the voiceless. In this chapter, we see how out of touch and elitist the mainstream media at the time really was.

Not only was the main stream media completely out of touch with the problems of the working class, but even when it did realize the need, it worked with the elites to suppress the working class attempts at getting political representation. We see this on page 18 when it describes the onslaught of attacks the movement received by papers like the Daily Advertiser and Evening Journal to name a few, which accused them of encouraging "infidelity" among the people.

Another things that really made me see the importance of these weeklies was their push to end imprisonment as a form of justice for not paying your debts. As a millennial, the idea seems crazy. Most people I know who graduated college are in DEBT! Imagine what it would be like had the weeklies not been a force in getting ride of a law like that. How many people sent to jail would it have taken for law makers, media, elites, to realize this is wrong?

Overall, this chapter reminded me that there is not just one side to history. I thought I knew my history of of the industrial revolution here in the U.S but after reading this chapter, I realize that there was so much I didn't.