I wonder how long before this happens here. Of course here the kids would be tased, tear gassed, deemed terrorists and hauled off to prison. I find it odd that Europe is more willing to let the young people protest than the US. the "birthplace of Democracy"
EU youth are tired of gaining multiple degrees and then not having jobs and they are taking to the streets to bring attention to it. Article below.
Their numbers had already swelled to more than 2,000 by the Sunday before, when they had occupied the entrance to the Bastille Opera and half the square. But then the police arrived with teargas and, since then, have kept strict watch over this symbolic site.
The protestors are trying to create a movement to rival the protests in Madrid and Lisbon. They want tens of thousands of young people to march in the streets of Paris, calling for "démocratie réelle," or real democracy. They believe that there is also potential for such large-scale protest in France, with youth unemployment at more than 20 percent, precarious working conditions and what feels like a constant state of crisis.
"Until now, our problems were always seen as individual problems," says Julien, a 22-year-old physics student who has joined a group called Actions. "You were told that if you couldn't find a job, it was your own fault. Perhaps we are now experiencing a change taking place, and that we are joining forces to form a pan-European movement against this system."
A Fundamental Change
As in Cairo months ago, everything began on Facebook -- with an appeal that Alexandre de Sousa Carvalho and some of his former fellow students at the University of Coimbra posted. They called upon the Geração à rasca (or "generation of junk"), to join together in protest. "We, the unemployed, the underpaid and the interns, are the best educated generation in the country's history," they wrote. "We are protesting so that those responsible for our precarious situation quickly change this untenable reality."
Carvalho, 25, who studied international relations, is a polite young man with a beard and a leather armband on his wrist. He says that he is normally a patient person. But when he discovered that, despite having obtained a master's degree in English, he would likely only be able to get a limited contract and that he would likely be forced to find work in Africa, he was overcome with fury.
Link
I am waiting for governments to try to close down Facebook as more of these protests are organized. The protests are starting to spread to other countries in the EU as well. This really reminds me of Fight Club, the lost generations are realizing they have no real hope, that they have been lied to, they are being manipulated and their governments are truly in the hands of corporations not people. I think those moneyed interests are in for some rude wake up calls in the next few years. These younger generations have no illiusions as to who the players are, they know they are pawns in the game and they are starting to get very very pissed off.
Chaos