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Material and physical threat can play a crucial role in the emergence of protest, yet few studies have explored the micro-level mechanisms that transform threat into collective action under repressive conditions. We address this gap by connecting the mobilizing power of grievances to the emotional dynamics of collective action in the context of a 1953 uprising in Communist Czechoslovakia. Following economic reforms that wiped out citizens' savings, several thousand workers in the industrial city of Plzeň took to the streets in protest. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews, our analysis shows how structural and incidental grievances can become a mobilizing force for high-risk activism. We find that the class position of protesters influenced their preexisting affective state and reactive response to the reform. As a result, class background helped to shape protesters' motivations, actions, and goals. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for future research.

While research has established how elite actors can work to protect structures that contribute to environmental harm, relatively less is known about the cultural resources that can serve elite interests at the local level. In cases of localized pollution, multiple groups have vested interests in protecting corporate legitimacy. We draw on treadmill of production theory and collective identity to analyze a case of community petrochemical contamination. Specifically, we asked: (1) how elite actors appropriated cultural resources to protect productivity following a legitimization crisis; and (2) how discursive retaliation matters in understanding the pathways to violence when protest threatens an industrial community's economic identity. Our data for this research included in‐depth interviews, newspaper coverage, and archival data. Findings indicate that the corporation, the city, and corporate employees responded to local environmental activism with a discursive campaign that ultimately paved the way for widespread threats and retaliation against the residents. This research highlights the ways in which local proponents of the energy industry can take advantage of cultural resources to suppress challengers to the industry.

Decades of scholarship have established that dissident activity provokes state repression when it threatens elite interests and legitimacy, but there has been research attention on how state repression diffuses through institutional channels such as courts. Legal settings operate as a key site for the construction and implementation of elite discursive strategies used to undercut the legitimacy of protesters and justify repression. Social movement research on repression and social control often glosses over these elite framing strategies, limiting our understanding of relationship between elite meaning work and repression. We address these gaps in the literature by examining the state's framing of a worker revolt against a 1953 currency reform in communist Czechoslovakia. Drawing on extensive archival materials, we analyze how the regime framed the event and how official frames influenced the legal repression of protest participants. Our research has important implications for understanding the relationship between legal repression and state cultural work.

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