Tiananmen square and battle in seattle

STRUCTURES OF OPPORTUNITY: TIANANMEN SQUARE AND BATTLE IN SEATTLE
Using two of the most powerful peaceful demonstrators Martin Luther King Jr., and Gandhi, which set the stage for these nonviolent protest methods used both in the developing and developed world. Therefore, both worlds share similarities and differences in structures of opportunities in uniting to fight for a cause. One greatexample of a movement that impacted the world as the Battle in Seattle did has been the Beijing’s Tiananmen Square protests. Both of these events have created history in demonstrating the importance of solidarity and peaceful demonstrations, by using the media and the power of collectiveness.
Some of the difference of these two major events include that in Seattle, never before had so manydifferent movements from all over the world all united in one mass-action in one place. Therefore, Battle in Seattle unlike Tiananmen Square was a global pro-democracy protest, which was a response to the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations and saw as the evils of globalized capitalism that would bring more unregulated power to multi-national corporations and the maximization ofprofit at the expense of environmental principles and workers’ rights. Although Tiananmen Square was for democracy they focused on speaking out against the authoritarian Chinese government and called for economic change. Another major difference is that the Seattle WTO protests, is confronted with the challenges of historical memory due to the media misinterpretation and misinformation of theevents that happened such as marking them as violent and spontaneous acts (Solnit, 85). While the Tiananmen Square has had more positive media form the US and Europe supporting the protestors and deeming the Chinese government. For the most part, in the end of these two were fighting essentially the same power, of economic elites, that feed of the working class. Therefore, there are a lot moresimilarities to how they used the
In both instances of the protests, the demonstrators realized that using the “eye for an eye” method would bring nothing good to the world, and would not get their point across, as the saying goes, “an for an eye, makes you go blind.” This is another way of saying that, if they would have used violence, the protests would have not had the positive outcomes they did.Violence would have made the media and the people lose interest, because they would have viewed it as a vigilantly outburst with no reasoning behind it. Therefore, people around the world would have not seen the use of brutality by the government in order to instill fear in its people. In both cases one structure of opportunity that both protests used was the used of media attention. In bothinstances the media was used to spread the information that these two governing bodies were doing to the people, but as well as, how it affects everyone else I the world. The media was used for social awareness. The media played an important role in both these protest because it allowed people around the world to view the acts that were happening. It is also the media that made these two eventsbecome historical, because they captured not only the attention of the native people, but it allowed for the rest of the world to participate and acknowledge what was happening around them ,and that they would be part of a global change. Therefore, the media created these two protests into world protests. This then resulted in much media attention on the governments, therefore, increasingpressure on the government to bring the changed that the people were fighting for.
If it would have not been for the media’s role, and the importance that media has in shaping the decision of how we interpret and write the history of these events. For these reason both events were fighting to bring their story out and make sure that the peoples, side was being told not just the corporate,...