Are the Truly Disadvantaged Truly Demobilized? Neighborhood Disadvantage and Protest in Chicago, 1970–1990

Abstract

This article examines how neighborhood disadvantage affects neighborhood collective action. Neither the urban poverty literature nor the collective action literature has adequately examined how poverty would affect neighborhood level collective action on their own. I seek to bridge these two literatures to examine how collective action operates in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Though the existing literature would argue that increased social disorganization due to depopulation, social isolation, and hyper-segregation would result in decreased collective action, I argue that other neighborhood characteristics may offset the lack of ‘resources’ and ‘organization’ available to disadvantaged communities. I use the Chicago Tribune from 1970 to 1990 to create a data set of neighborhood-level protest events. Using random effects negative binomial regression, I show that while disadvantage does indeed negatively impact mobilization, factors such as the racial composition of the neighborhood, organizational density, and prior mobilization rates can offset the impact of increasing neighborhood disadvantage.