A movement that now has oligarchies all around the world worried started in the obscure Tunisian backwater town of Sidi Bouzid last December 17th when vegetable vendor Mohamed Bouazizi doused himself with flammable liquid and set himself on fire because his government no longer cared about the plight of the common working people like him. Like Mohamed Bouazizi working people in Tunisia and in countries all around the world are being squeezed brutally.
Ordinary citizens in many countries are being pushed into deprivation by their oligarchies, using the structures of Neo-Liberalism grab ever bigger shares of their societies wealth for themselves. Many working people have reached the end of their rope. They are finally ready to discard the conventional stupidity that the Neo Liberal economic system is working for their benefit, or for most people's benefit. People are taking matters into their own hands.
Bloggers say Arab Spring has gone global
Prominent Arab bloggers, who meet in Tunis, say their methods are being picked up by activists in the West.
TUNIS, Tunisia – New forms of activism that have evolved in the Arab world in 2011 are being picked up by activists in the West, speakers at the Third Arab Bloggers' Meeting have affirmed.
The innovative use of technologies and methods of dissent that had been used so effectively by Tunisian and Egyptian protesters, in particular, were being picked up in Europe and the US, according to Zeynep Tufekci, a professor at the University of North Carolina.
The forms of civic activism emerging in the region were influencing protesters in other parts of the world, becoming a model for Western countries where citizens had seen an erosion of democracy in recent years, she said.
The parallels between the Tahrir Square protests and the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in the US were clear.
"This is really a very hopeful time in history," she said.
Citizens United and Bush v Gore certainly would qualify as erosions of democracy fostered by a corrupt High Court.
As a Syrian-Spanish blogger, Leila Nachawati is uniquely placed to comment on the spread of the civil disobedience movement from the South to the North.
Focusing on the "15 M" movement that sprang up in the Spanish city of Madrid in May, Nachawati said that there was a common theme in protests on both sides of the Mediterranean.
"There is a growing gap between ordinary citizens and political structures.
Spanish protesters directly evoked the language of the Arab Spring, she said, and used peaceful protest to take back public spaces in a massive display of peaceful dissent.
These economic elites have have abrogated their respective social contracts to varying degrees often taking advantage of the one dimensional dictates of Neo-Libralism. Now comes the inevitable bottom up push-back in the form of popular movements that bypass their heavily co-opted governments. Taking to the streets peacefully, directly, demanding change.