An article on BBC NEWS by Paul Mason, has intrigued me. "Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere" is a good an explanation as any, at the moment. There is a definite feel to things going on. At some point the universality of the current street actions may begin to spread globally as fast as a You Tube viral video, or a Tweet. It has the same feel to me as the beginning of the 60s, only on steroids.
This is the first time in awhile I have posted here, please forgive the brevity. All things begin with a few steps.
An article on BBC NEWS by Paul Mason, has intrigued me. "Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere" is a good an explanation as any, at the moment. There is a definite feel to things going on. At some point the universality of the current street actions may begin to spread globally as fast as a You Tube viral video, or a Tweet. It has the same feel to me as the beginning of the 60s, only on steroids.
"1. At the heart if it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future."
There will probably not be a recovery to our economic woes for some years, if at all. More and more,the angst of unemployed men and women will be forced to the surface. Although the article refers to the younger generation's lack of possibilities, there are the tech savvy "elders" realizing that they are also affected by these very same things. Where just a few years ago, people were blaming themselves for their circumstances, wondering what it was they prevented them from regaining a job, they have come to the conclusions, as of late, it really wasn't their fault. And now the blame game begins. It is beginning to boil. The Politicians, the Corporations, the Partisan Media are all following behind the tsunami. Once again, they are too slow for the rapid change that is necessary. They are incapable of competing with "memes" that reflect our daily lives. The incremental changes from supposedly forward thinking politicians, or the backward thinking of Conservative naysayers are nothing more than sand dykes trying to appease or hold back the rivers of progress needed in this fast moving and overpopulated world.
"3. Therefore truth moves faster than lies, and propaganda becomes flammable."
In my day (as they say) the technology for change was limited. There's an awful lot of us whose hands were stained with blue ink from the mimeographs. Long days spent handing out pamphlets, and fending off the elbow swats from our "betters". It's much faster, and easier now.
"8. They all seem to know each other: not only is the network more powerful than the hierarchy - but the ad-hoc network has become easier to form. So if you "follow" somebody from the UCL occupation on Twitter, as I have done, you can easily run into a radical blogger from Egypt, or a lecturer in peaceful resistance in California who mainly does work on Burma so then there are the Burmese tweets to follow. During the early 20th century people would ride hanging on the undersides of train carriages across borders just to make links like these."
There is an emergency, and I mean several interpretations to that word. But the outcry in the US will not be led by the usual suspects, liberal protestors, it will be more organic than that. Single Moms refusing to vacate their foreclosed upon homes, a 50 year old man acting out against being dropped from his unemployment check, students furious at rising costs, an aged man robbing a bank teller because his social security check is useless....oh wait, that's already happening!
Although this is a brief Diary, I don't want to run contrary to any copywrite provisions. I wish I could list all Twenty here, so I will leave it to you to read the column and comment. I have no solutions, or any Activism links, merely an overwhelming need to yell YIPPEE!
PS. I haven't a clue what to do about tags.