The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic revealed longstanding health and healthcare disparities yet to be addressed. While some have described COVID as a “great equalizer,” policing, public health, housing, medical care, and public funds reveal otherwise. COVID-19’s impact on the working class in general and other marginalized populations, in particular, has elucidated the long disparate treatment of historically marginalized people in countries like New Zealand. Centuries-long neglect of public health concerns has been a central theme in racial justice and working-class movements (low wages, housing/gentrification, health disparities, education disparities, hyper-surveillance/policing).

Today, as the world grappled with the coronavirus, mandated quarantine, and racial injustice uprisings, global social movements have shed light upon embedded social ills where marginalized people bear the violence of the modern democratic state. From this basis, students grappled with challenging questions about the character of democracy and freedom in countries such as the United States, which is experiencing the largest social movement in history. This paper will offer insight into the historical legacies of systemic racism and class oppression by taking an in-depth look at key issues raised in 20th-century social movements.

Students will be introduced to theories, contexts, various rhetorical strategies, and tactics of dissent and resistance, particularly among grassroots movements. Students will come to understand, appreciate, and evaluate those strategies both in relation to the speakers creating those messages as well as the socio-political contexts against which these voices speak.