In examination of the traditional, social unrest, war, and rebellion have always been one of the primal modes that humans have used to change any undesirable constrain placed upon them. This is true of changing one's class and moving between the different facets of society structure. Force is a very instinctual way of changing class, as seen in the aforementioned example of the Irish Rebellion, but also in occurrences such as the Russian Revolution of 1917, in which the conflict between working class and the upper class was a direct catalyst for the series of revolutions, and "there were many strikes and constant conflicts between the workers and the [upper class],"[Eli14] resulting in reform in the government to appease the farming and working class. The main point to convey is that in many endeavors for change with classism, racism, etc is that some resort to violence. This is still happening today, such as the recent events that have taken place in Ferguson, Missouri over the death of 18-year old Michael Brown; events that have been deemed "race riots" due to the police that shot Brown being white. According to a story by CNN, the "deadly race riots [that] erupted in East St. Louis in the early 1900s are [comparable] to the looting and angry protests that followed Brown's death" [Ray14]. .
Besides social unrest there is also peaceful, non-violent social activism that has been effective down through history and within the last few decades. The more familiar examples are the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. in opposition to Jim Crow legislation, protest in India by Mahatma Ghandi that inspire the nonviolence movement in the U.S., and union strikes that take place today (that represent the working American middle class). For instance, take the Birmingham Bus System Boycott led by Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., according to an article in the Global Nonviolent Action Database, "the protesters were polite and civil throughout, and after many hours of non-intervention, police arrested twenty-one protesters," [Dan11] resulting in national attention and eventual reformed legislation.
