Tag Archives: protest

As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe – NYTimes.com

28 Sep

Youth of the world unit, because if you don’t, your elders are just going send the world down the next available hell hole in history.

… from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over.

They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box.

“Our parents are grateful because they’re voting,” said Marta Solanas, 27, referring to older Spaniards’ decades spent under the Franco dictatorship. “We’re the first generation to say that voting is worthless.”

And the Arab spring is the avant-garde.

Increasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web.

In that sense, the protest movements in democracies are not altogether unlike those that have rocked authoritarian governments this year, toppling longtime leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Protesters have created their own political space online that is chilly, sometimes openly hostile, toward traditional institutions of the elite.

And democracies are being given failing grades, left and right.

Responding to shifts in voter needs is supposed to be democracy’s strength. These emerging movements, like many in the past, could end up being absorbed by traditional political parties,…. Yet purists involved in many of the movements say they intend to avoid the old political channels.

The political left, which might seem the natural destination for the nascent movements now emerging around the globe, is compromised in the eyes of activists by the neoliberal centrism of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The old left remains wedded to trade unions even as they represent a smaller and smaller share of the work force. More recently, center-left participation in bailouts for financial institutions alienated former supporters who say the money should have gone to people instead of banks.

via As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe – NYTimes.com.

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Protesters Are Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim – NYTimes.com

25 Sep

The group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many of its generation face — finding work, repaying student loans, figuring out ways to finish college when money has run out. But what were the chances that its members were going to receive the attention they so richly deserve carrying signs like “Even if the World Were to End Tomorrow I’d Still Plant a Tree Today”?

I don’t know what, if anything, will come of these Wall Street protests. But they anger out of which they grow is not going to disappear any time soon. It will deepen. What then?

If it gives way to despair, then this reporter’s obvious contempt for the protesters will seem sharp and realistic, if not wise. If that anger should take shape and organize, what then? The political system is vulnerable to well-organized and persistent anger. The Republicrats could have their death grip on government crumble in their grasp.

via Protesters Are Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim – NYTimes.com.

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A real Wall Street takeover threat – Wall Street – Salon.com

19 Sep

The hundreds of young people who converged on the New York Stock Exchange this weekend are calling their demonstration against Wall Street greed an “American Tahrir Square.” While they have a long way to go before they create the tremors that brought down the Mubarak regime, their passion was clearly on display on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.

The protestors were gathered in the square at the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street, after police blocked them from the epicenter of American finance a couple of blocks away. Many had spent the night in sleeping bags and insisted they were prepared to spend many more to make their point.

via A real Wall Street takeover threat – Wall Street – Salon.com.

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Walk Like an Egyptian: Protest the Fat Cats

4 Feb

Writing in The Nation, Johann Hari spells out this fantasy:

Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 was followed by a Tea Party of a very different kind. Enraged citizens gather in every city, week after week—to demand the government finally regulate the behavior of corporations and the superrich, and force them to start paying taxes. The protesters shut down the shops and offices of the companies that have most aggressively ripped off the country. The swelling movement is made up of everyone from teenagers to pensioners. They surround branches of the banks that caused this crash and force them to close, with banners saying, You Caused This Crisis. Now YOU Pay.

And he goes on to point out that it has happened:

This may sound like a fantasy—but it has all happened. The name of this parallel universe is Britain. As recently as this past fall, people here were asking the same questions liberal Americans have been glumly contemplating: Why is everyone being so passive? Why are we letting ourselves be ripped off? Why are people staying in their homes watching their flat-screens while our politicians strip away services so they can fatten the superrich even more?

And so a dozen British citizens decided to start protesting against Vodaphone, which had managed to to gull the government into forgiving £5 billion in taxes:

That first protest grabbed a little media attention—and then the next day, in a different city, three other Vodafone stores were shut down in the northern city of Leeds, by unconnected protests. UK Uncut realized this could be replicated across the country. So the group set up a Twitter account and a website, where members announced there would be a national day of protest the following Saturday. They urged anybody who wanted to organize a protest to e-mail them so it could be added to a Google map. Britain’s most prominent tweeters, such as actor Stephen Fry, joined in.

Could this happen in the USofA?

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